The death cap mushroom has been implicated in many people’s deaths, from Roman emperors to modern foragers Shutterstock/Tisha Razumovsky Death cap mushrooms are back in the news. Amanita phalloides has once again been linked to poisonings, this time lacing beef Wellingtons served at a family meal in Leongatha, Australia, which resulted in three fatalities. Such…
September 2, 2025 3 min read New ‘Glass Straw’ Fibers Could Speed Up the Internet A cable design that sends light through air rather than solid glass could cut signal loss and make long-distance transmissions cheaper By Davide Castelvecchi & Nature magazine Typical optical fibres consist of thin, solid glass wires. Tweaking the design could…
Illustration of the drug rapamycin (red) blocking a protein called mTOR (blue) Science Photo Library/Alamy The drug rapamycin’s anti-ageing effects could at least partly be due to it preventing DNA damage in our immune cells – an understanding that might help us unleash its potential as a life extender. Originally developed as an immune suppressant…
Cuban brown anoles have the highest blood lead levels of any vertebrate known — three times that of the previous record holder, the Nile crocodile.
September 2, 2025 2 min read Is Consciousness the Hallmark of Life? As AI grows more fluent in mimicking human empathy, language and memory, we’re left asking: If a machine can fake awareness so well, what exactly is the real thing? By Andrea Gawrylewski More than half a billion people around the world have downloaded…
Scrap vehicles contain many different metal alloys, which can be hard to recycle Marc Hill/Alamy A new way to recycle the metal from scrap cars could eliminate millions of tonnes of waste each year and cut the carbon emissions from producing virgin aluminium. For decades, much of the scrap aluminium in cars has been recycled…
McKenzie Prillaman is a science and health journalist based in Washington, DC. She holds a bachelor’s degree in neuroscience from the University of Virginia and a master’s degree in science communication from the University of California, Santa Cruz. She was the spring 2023 intern at Science News.
September 2, 2025 2 min read New Knot Theory Discovery Overturns Long-Held Mathematical Assumption Mathematicians have unraveled a key conjecture about knot theory By Max Springer edited by Sarah Lewin Frasier In a recent preprint paper, mathematicians connected two knots in a way that could be undone in a surprisingly small number of moves. Scanning…
Solar storms pose a threat to electronic systems on Earth Solar Dynamics Observatory, NASA. We may one day be able to forecast powerful solar storms capable of devastating Earth’s electronics more than half a day in advance, following a successful test of the approach using the Solar Orbiter spacecraft. The sun occasionally releases powerful blasts…
Think back through your day and consider all the amazing tasks your brain has helped you perform. From brushing your teeth to eating your lunch and reading the words on this page, your thoughts, feelings and actions may appear to be the product of a finely tuned machine. Simply telling someone your name is a…
