A flammability test on a western juniper tree (Juniperus occidentalis) Rebecca Koll Tucked away in a laboratory at the University of Exeter in the UK, Rebecca Koll is setting conifer trees alight in the hope of answering burning questions about the future of forest fires. Wildfires are increasing in severity around the world as the…
A human Y (right) and X chromosome seen with a scanning electron microscope POWER AND SYRED/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY Men who have lost their Y chromosome from a significant number of their immune cells are more likely to have narrow blood vessels, a key contributor to heart disease, according to a study of more than 30,000…
Can social media’s problems be solved? MoiraM / Alamy The polarising impact of social media isn’t just the result of bad algorithms – it is inevitable because of the core components of how the platforms work, a study with AI-generated users has found. It suggests the problem won’t be fixed unless we fundamentally reimagine the…
Gone are the days when the web was dominated by humans posting social media updates or exchanging memes. Earlier this year, for the first time since the data has been tracked, web-browsing bots, rather than humans, accounted for the bulk of web traffic. Well over half of that bot traffic is from malicious bots, hoovering…
August 12, 2025 4 min read Trump Order Gives Political Appointees Vast Powers over Research Grants Researchers are alarmed that an expansive executive order issued by President Donald Trump might upend a long-standing tradition of peer-review for grants By Dan Garisto & Nature magazine Andrew Harnik/Getty Images US President Donald Trump issued an expansive executive…
The skeleton of a girl from Updown cemetary, who was found to have West African ancestry M George et al. Two unrelated young people buried in cemeteries in England in the Early Middle Ages probably had grandparents from West Africa. How and when their relatives arrived in Britain is unknown, but the discovery implies that…
Toastier fall weather might cause migrating monarch butterflies to wing it and change their flight plans, starting the countdown toward death. Eastern monarchs captured during their autumn migration and exposed to warm temperatures in the lab came out of their usual reproductive hiatus, evolutionary biologist Ken Fedorka and colleagues report August 12 in Royal Society…
In a desperate parenting moment after dinner, I told my six-year-old, who was mid-meltdown, to “use your words!” He had just started yelling and hitting his eight-year-old sister because she wasn’t sharing a stuffed animal he believed was his. Both kids froze for a moment, giving me just enough of a pause to slow my…
Illustration of an ancient Denisovan man JOHN BAVARO FINE ART/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY This is an extract from Our Human Story, our newsletter about the revolution in archaeology. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every month. One of the things I try to do in Our Human Story is answer the most commonly asked questions…
August 12, 2025 5 min read The Math Trick Hidden in Your Credit Card Number Find out how this simple algorithm from the 1960s keeps your wallet safe By Jack Murtagh edited by Jeanna Bryner Isabel Pavia/Getty Images You’re at the checkout screen after an online shopping spree, ready to enter your credit card number….
