Sarah Barley-McMullen says she felt unable to stay in her post as a senior academic as her employers were unwilling to accommodate her needsTwo-thirds of UK workers with long Covid have faced unfair treatment, says report“Long Covid has had an emotional, social, physical and professional impact on me,” says Sarah Barley-McMullen, 53, who felt forced to leave a job she loved, as a senior...

The row over whether the pandemic started with a lab leak is growing. But the most important question is what we do nowWe may never know for certain how a disease that brought the world to a standstill and has killed almost 7 million people emerged. While many experts believe that Covid-19 arose through human contact with infected animals, most likely via a wet market in Wuhan, China, a...

Keep an eye to the sky this week for a chance to see a planetary hangout.

Earth’s gravity makes it harder to cultivate the proteins needed to study diseases and pathogens. And although the cost of space travel is high, private enterprise is stepping inIn a small lab, squeezed into the corner of a skyscraper in downtown Tel Aviv, Israeli entrepreneur Yossi Yamin is proudly holding what he calls “a little James Bond-style suitcase factory, powered by the sun”.As...

Many astonishingly creative people have lived lives cut tragically short by illness. Johannes Vermeer, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Jane Austen, Franz Schubert and Emily Brontë are some famous examples.

The journalist and academic says that the bias encoded in artificial intelligence systems can’t be fixed with better data alone – the change has to be societalMeredith Broussard is a data journalist and academic whose research focuses on bias in artificial intelligence (AI). She has been in the vanguard of raising awareness and sounding the alarm about unchecked AI. Her previous book,...

Since time immemorial, humans around the world have gazed up in wonder at the night sky. The starry night sky has not only inspired countless works of music, art and poetry, but has also played an important role in timekeeping, navigation and agricultural practices in many traditions.

When the first object ever known to have visited the Earth's Solar System from outer space zoomed past in 2017, it was so strange that at least one leading astronomer was convinced it was an alien vessel.

Expert urges greater monitoring of side-effect of drug used to treat depression, psychosis and schizophreniaPatients who are prescribed a common antipsychotic used to treat depression, bipolar disorder, psychosis and schizophrenia need to be told there is a risk they could develop a gambling addiction, an expert has warned.The National Problem Gambling Clinic has observed growing numbers of...

Two married therapists reveal 10 ways to improve the many highs and lows of your love lifeWhen couples get together, there is often the unspoken expectation that you will remain the same as you were on those first dates. An assumption that your level of curiosity, generosity, adaptability and interest will endure, or even increase, throughout your relationship. Even though we all know fairytales...

An owl hit by a truck near 100 Mile House last winter has been rehabilitated and released back into the wild, much to the excitement of those who rescued...

In chemistry, we have He, Fe and Ca—but what about do, re and mi? Hauntingly beautiful melodies aren't the first things that come to mind when looking at the periodic table of the elements. However, using a technique called data sonification, a recent college graduate has converted the visible light given off by the elements into audio, creating unique, complex sounds for each one. Today, the...

Black women and others with curly or kinky hair encounter a vast and confusing array of haircare options. Advice on the best products to use for a certain type of hair is often contradictory, and the results can be highly variable. Now, scientists are bringing order to this chaos by identifying properties such as the number of curls or coils in a given length of hair that could eventually help...

If you've ever seen a shooting star, you might have actually seen a meteor on its way to Earth. Those that land here are called meteorites and can be used to peek back in time, into the far corners of outer space or at the earliest building blocks of life. Today, scientists report some of the most detailed analyses yet of the organic material of two meteorites. They've identified tens of thousands...

Hundreds of volunteers descended on the beaches of the North Sea coast this weekend to collect sea shells as a measure of the sea's biological diversity.

Tomonori Totani, an astrobiologist with the University of Tokyo is proposing that the search for life beyond Earth be expanded to the study of space dust. In his paper published in the journal International Journal of Astrobiology, he suggests that space dust could be harboring signs of life blasted away from other planets by asteroid strikes.

Prof Nita Farahany argues in her new book, The Battle for Your Brain, that intrusions into the mind are so close that lawmakers should enact protectionsPrivate thoughts may not be private for much longer, heralding a nightmarish world where political views, thoughts, stray obsessions and feelings could be interrogated and punished all thanks to advances in neurotechnology.Or at least that is what...

Businesses want to trawl for nickel, manganese and cobalt to build electric cars and windfarmsAn investigation by conservationists has found evidence that deep-seabed mining of rare minerals could cause “extensive and irreversible” damage to the planet.The report, to be published on Monday by the international wildlife charity Fauna & Flora, adds to the growing controversy that surrounds...

Researchers identify ‘microbe signature’ found to be in infants who went on to develop disease in childhood or adolescenceBacteria in the gut of one-year-old infants could be used to predict their chances of developing type 1 diabetes in later life, scientists have announced. The disease most often occurs in children and adolescents and is triggered by the body’s immune system when it...

At least 23 people were killed as a devastating tornado ripped across the southern US state of Mississippi, tearing off roofs, smashing cars and flattening entire neighborhoods.

Antarctica is an icy place today, but the ice extended even further during past ice ages. The question of how and where life survived on land in the icy continent, through the ages, has long puzzled biologists.

How did life come about? The answer to this question goes to the very heart of our existence on planet Earth.

The black particles from an asteroid some 300 million kilometers away look unremarkable, like pieces of charcoal, but they hold a component of life itself.

After a long hiatus, the epic Ocean Race is back – but this year, as well as dodging icebergs, cracking masts and suffering the occasional ‘hull sandwich failure’, the teams are gathering crucial data from places even research vessels rarely reachThe Southern Ocean is not somewhere most people choose to spend an hour, let alone a month. Circling the icy continent of Antarctica, it is the...

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Friday delivered an urgent call for the world to modify and safeguard water resources to avert conflict and ensure future global prosperity.

Toothpaste tabs plunk into a jar. Maple syrup flows viscously from a spout. Dishwasher powder crunches under the tip of a metal scoop. The chorus of consumer goods lacks one familiar sound: the crinkle of plastic wrap.

A large asteroid will safely zoom between Earth and the Moon on Saturday, a once-in-a-decade event that will be used as a training exercise for planetary defense efforts, according to the European Space Agency.

Whether it’s based on hallucinatory beliefs or not, an artificial-intelligence gold rush has started over the last several months to mine the anticipated business opportunities from generative AI models like ChatGPT. App developers, venture-backed startups, and some of the world’s largest corporations are all scrambling to make sense of the sensational text-generating bot released by…

Our new study published in Nature Geoscience on an ancient chain of Australian volcanoes is helping to change our understanding of "hotspot" volcanism.

Every winter, millions of Canadians head down to the Caribbean. This year, however, tourists may have noticed something not-so-pleasant awaiting them on the beach: stinky, brown sargassum. What is it, and should you be...

Exclusive: Surgeons raise concerns that people using jabs are unaware of risks of redundant skinFrom unbearable side-effects to cravings curbed: readers on weight-loss jabsA surge in the number of people using slimming jabs to lose weight could lead to a rise in patients travelling abroad for tummy tucks or other surgery to remove excess skin, surgeons have said.Drugs such as liraglutide and...

Genetic data released by China three years after it was gathered has provided 'the best evidence' of how the pandemic started, scientists say.

Two cosmonauts and an astronaut who were supposed to leave the International Space Station this month will be brought back to Earth in late September, doubling their time aboard the orbiting laboratory to more than a year, Russia's space agency announced Friday.