Science

Quantum computing promises society-changing breakthroughs in drug development and tackling climate change, and on an unassuming English high street, the race to unleash the latest tech revolution is gathering pace.

The founder of Cambridge-based Riverlane, Steve Brierley, predicts that the technology will have its "Sputnik" breakthrough within years.

Elon Musk recently pronounced that the next Neuralink project will be a “Blindsight” cortical implant to restore vision: “Resolution will be low at first, like early Nintendo graphics, but ultimately may exceed normal human vision.”

Unfortunately, this claim rests on the fallacy that neurons in the brain are like pixels on a screen. It’s not surprising that engineers often assume that “more pixels equals better vision.” After all, that is how monitors and phone screens work.

Over the past 20 years, social media has transformed how we communicate, share information and form social connections. A federal parliamentary committee is currently trying to come to grips with these changes, and work out what to do about them.

The social media platforms where we spend so much time are powered by algorithms that exercise significant control over what content each user sees. But researchers know little specific detail about how they work, and how users experience them.

Sometimes it’s unclear how or why a person died. A detailed examination of the body after death, known as an autopsy or postmortem, can help find answers.

Despite what you may have seen on TV crime shows, most autopsies are minimally invasive; body often stays intact throughout a mostly observational procedure.

Language enables people to transmit thoughts to each other because each person’s brain responds similarly to the meaning of words. In our newly published research, my colleagues and I developed a framework to model the brain activity of speakers as they engaged in face-to-face conversations.

We recorded the electrical activity of two people’s brains as they engaged in unscripted conversations. Previous research has shown that when two people converse, their brain activity becomes coupled, or aligned, and that the degree of neural coupling is associated with better understanding of the speaker’s message.

Lynne Ingram cuts a peaceful figure as she tends to a row of humming beehives in a leafy corner of Somerset, southwest England.

But the master beekeeper, who has been keeping hives for more than 40 years, has found herself in a fight against a tricky and evolving foe -- honey fraudsters.

This year’s area of low oxygen in the Gulf of Mexico is larger than average, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced Thursday.

The “dead zone” is approximately 6,705 square miles, as measured last week. Within NOAA’s 38 years of measuring the dead zone, this year’s assessment marks the 12th-largest area of low- to no oxygen, which can kill fish and marine life.

In the lush jungle of northern Guatemala -- in the largest protected area in Central America -- 30 leaders from Colombia's Amazon basin region are swapping strategies with local ethnic Maya farmers on how to live off this dense forest without destroying it.

Under the soaring, leafy mahogany and cedar trees in the Maya Biosphere Reserve, the visiting group discusses ways to ensure the rain forest remains healthy, while studying the reserve-type model Guatemala has been developing since 1994.

What do you think of when you think about ancient Egyptian mummies? Perhaps your mind takes you back to a school trip to the museum, when you came face to face with a mummified person inside a glass case. Or maybe you think of mummies as depicted by Hollywood, the emerging zombie-like from their sandy tombs with dirtied bandages billowing in the breeze.

It might surprise you to know that the Egyptians also preserved millions of animals.

Japan sweltered through its hottest July since records began 126 years ago, the weather agency said, as extreme heatwaves fuelled by climate change engulfed many parts of the globe.

Temperatures in the country were 2.16 degrees Celsius higher than average, breaking last year's record for July of 1.91 degrees Celsius above average.

To experience a volcanic eruption is to witness nature’s raw power. If you would like to see one for yourself, Iceland is a great location for it. Since 2021, seven eruptions have taken place along the Reykjanes Peninsula, close to Reykjavík.

These recent Icelandic eruptions have garnered attention from Earth scientists like me. The eruptions help us understand how volcanoes work in incredible detail. My team has been taking samples from the erupting lava from the Reykjanes Peninsula and finding some interesting results.

NASA’s DART mission – Double Asteroid Redirection Test – was humanity’s first real-world planetary defence mission.

In September 2022, the DART spacecraft smashed into the companion “moon” of a small asteroid 11 million kilometres from Earth. One goal was to find out if we can give such things a shove if one were headed our way.