The European Court of Human Rights ruled that a group of Swiss women partially won their climate case.

More consensual touch helps ease or buffer against mental and physical complaints, meta-analysis showsWhether it is a hug from a friend or the caress of a weighted blanket, the sensation of touch appears to bring benefits for the body and mind, researchers say.The sense of touch is the first to develop in babies and is crucial in allowing us to experience the environment around us as well as communicate. Indeed, the loss of touch from others during the Covid pandemic hit many hard. Continue reading...

Total solar eclipse will be visible along ‘path of totality’ that measures about 115 miles wide, sweeping across 15 US states beginning at 1:30pm CTFull story – Millions gather across US, Mexico and Canada for total solar eclipseHow and when to watch today’s total solar eclipseTotal solar eclipses occur when the moon passes between the sun and Earth, blocking the sun’s face completely, and causing the bright sky to darken to twilight in just seconds. The track of the moon’s shadow is called the path of totality.The most recent total solar eclipse in the US was in 2017, but an...

Frantic giraffes, barking gibbons, randy tortoises … previous solar eclipses have revealed varied responses to sudden onset of darknessNot every scientist’s attention will be focused on the skies during Monday’s solar eclipse. Animal behaviorists at several zoos across its pathway will be watching creatures great and small for their reactions to the sudden, unexpected darkness.The research is an extension of their observations from 2017’s most recent total eclipse in the US, when usually sedentary tortoises started rutting, frantic giraffes ran around aimlessly, and siamang gibbons...

Researchers have found fresh evidence that may connect the mysterious Denisovans to the early human species Homo longiThey remain one of the most elusive groups of humans to have walked on earth. Evidence from the DNA traces left by Denisovans shows they lived on the Tibetan plateau, ­probably ­travelled to the Philippines and Laos in south Asia and might have made their way to northern China more than 100,000 years ago. They also interbred with modern humans.What Denisovans looked like or how they lived has remained a­ ­mystery, however. Only a jaw ­fragment, a few bits of bone and one&...

Mechanism unpicked that allows black-capped chickadees to stash and relocate huge quantities of foodWhile adults might be spending the weekend trying to remember where they have hidden a hoard of Easter eggs, the black-capped chickadee has no trouble recalling where its treats are stashed. Now researchers have discovered why: the diminutive birds create a barcode-like memory each time they stash food.Black-capped chickadees are known for tucking food away during the warmer months – with some estimates suggesting a single bird can hide up to 500,000 food itemsa year. But more remarkable still...

Farmers from across the UK are driving into central London on a 'go-slow' to protest a lack of support for British food production.

The benefits of drugs such as donanemab, aducanumab and lecanemab are proving harder to quantify than potential harms, experts sayIt was heralded in news articles as a “breakthrough”, a “turning point” and a “gamechanger” for Alzheimer’s disease. Some experts went so far as to call the drug, donanemab, the “beginning of the end” for the debilitating condition.Pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly in May 2023 released data from a clinical trial they said showed donanemab slowed cognitive and functional decline in people with early symptomatic Alzheimer’s disease by 35% over 18...

Anti-abortion researchers ‘exaggerate’ and ‘obfuscate’ in their scientific papers – but by the time they’re published, it’s too lateExplainer: the mifepristone caseTell us: have you used an abortion pill in the US?A pharmacy professor who strenuously avoids heated political discussions is an unlikely candidate to get involved in a fight over abortion, particularly one as high stakes as a case now before the supreme court: the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) v the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine (AHM).But when the professor Chris Adkins of South University in Georgia...

The mass deaths were puzzling scientists around the world – there were no signs of viruses or parasites. Then we looked closely at their skinIt was while we were sitting and talking in a hotel bar at the first global congress of herpetology that the world’s amphibian experts realised there was a problem: frogs, toads, salamanders and newts were disappearing in their thousands around the world and nobody understood why.Not a single talk at the 1989 congress at the University of Kent had discussed the strange disappearance of the world’s amphibians. But scientist after scientist had the...

Mini missions are being launched amid the spires – a haven for dust particles that may contain clues about the cosmos and the early EarthOn the roof of Canterbury Cathedral, two planetary scientists are searching for cosmic dust. While the red brick parapet hides the streets, buildings and trees far below, only wispy clouds block the deep blue sky that extends into outer space.The roaring of a vacuum cleaner breaks the silence and researcher Dr Penny Wozniakiewicz, dressed in hazmat suit with a bulky vacuum backpack, carefully traces a gutter with the tube of the suction machine. Continue...

England's fastest-declining mammal is to be protected as part of a new habitats restoration fund.

The SpaceX rocket made a huge leap in progress in its third test flight

The first avian influenza cases in the penguins of South Georgia are reported by scientists.

The two species of pygmy squid the size of a fingernail live on Japanese coral reefs. Spotting them is a sign of a healthy ecosystem, say scientistsIn Japan, stories have been told of forest-dwelling magical spirits called kodama since ancient times. Over the centuries, they’ve adopted many guises: sometimes they’re invisible, sometimes they look like trees. The Studio Ghibli animated movie Princess Mononoke portrayed kodama as rotund little humanoids with rotating bobble heads. Now, a genus of miniature squid has been named in honour of the kodama and their role as nature’s guardians.“...

BBC News is shown the secret site protecting the remains of the Sycamore Gap tree felled last year.

Exclusive: Significant discovery, made by James Webb telescope, provokes disagreement over conditions on planet’s surfaceAstronomers have observed a distant planet that could be entirely covered in a deep water ocean, in findings that advance the search for habitable conditions beyond Earth.The observations, by Nasa’s James Webb space telescope (JWST), revealed water vapour and chemical signatures of methane and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of the exoplanet, which is twice Earth’s radius and about 70 light years away. This chemical mix is consistent with a water world where the ocean...

Scientists link tiny particles in blood vessels with substantially higher risk of death Doctors have warned of potentially life-threatening effects from plastic pollution after finding a substantially raised risk of stroke, heart attack and earlier death in people whose blood vessels were contaminated with microscopic plastics.Researchers in Naples examined fatty plaques removed from the blood vessels of patients with arterial disease and found that more than half had deposits contaminated with tiny particles of polyethylene or polyvinyl chloride (PVC). Continue reading...

A threat posed by a virus to the UK's sugar beet means a banned pesticide can now be used on seeds.

Creating organoids from cells found in amniotic fluid could bring insights into cause and progression of malformationsResearchers have grown mini-organs from cells shed by foetuses in the womb in a breakthrough that promises to shed light on human development throughout late pregnancy.They created the 3D lumps of tissue know as organoids from lung, kidney and intestinal cells recovered from the amniotic fluid that bathes and protects the foetus in the uterus. Continue reading...

If you can find a dark enough location, the constellation Cancer and Beehive star cluster are well-placed for observationMarch brings the zodiacal constellation Cancer, the crab, into an excellent viewing position for northern hemisphere observers.According to Greek mythology, the giant crab was slain by the hero Heracles during his battle with the Hydra of Lerna. The goddess Hera, who wanted Heracles defeated, placed it in the stars as a thank you for trying. Continue reading...

Parts of the structure are younger than expected while an east wind blows the whole thing across the desert, researchers findThey are impressive, mysterious structures that loom out of deserts on the Earth and are also found on Mars and on Saturn’s biggest moon, Titan.Experts from universities including Aberystwyth in Wales have now pinpointed the age of a star dune in a remote area of Morocco and uncovered details about its formation and how it moves across the desert. Continue reading...

This is the story of Geoffrey Hinton, a man who set out to understand the brain and ended up a group of researchers who invented a technology so powerful that even they don’t truly understand how it works. This is about a collision between two mysterious intelligences – two black boxes – human and artificial. And it’s already having profound consequencesThanks to Michael Wooldridge – his book is called The Road to Conscious Machines.And Melanie Mitchell – her book is called Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans. Continue reading...

A killer whale is captured on camera hunting and "eviscerating" a great white shark in less than two minutes.

Scientists say sea slugs could be migrating north into cooler waters because of climate change.