Science

Representative Image (AI-generated) A mine in south-western Spain is offering new clues about how copper travelled across Bronze Age Europe, potentially linking miners in the Iberian Peninsula with communities in Scandinavia thousands of kilometres away. Around 1300 BC, people were extracting copper ore at Las Minillas, using stone tools to work deposits deep underground. Centuries…

Nasa astronaut Anil Menon rides the Canadarm2 robotic arm to install a solar array on the ISS, 260 miles above Earth. (Photo: Nasa) Nasa astronaut Anil Menon and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Joshua Kutryk completed a seven-hour, 11-minute spacewalk on October 29, installing and deploying the seventh roll-out solar array on the International Space Station…

Representative Image of Isabella Garry researching okra, fenugreek and psyllium in a school laboratory (AI-generated image) A seventh-grade student from Minnesota has tested whether gels made from common plants could absorb microplastics in a laboratory model of the stomach. Isabella Garry, from Eden Prairie, was named one of 30 finalists in the 2026 Thermo Fisher…

A 42-year-old man in Russia discovered that a seed had sprouted inside his eye after suffering months of agonising headaches, inflammation and double vision. Maxim Sleptsov, a welder and plumber from Siberia, reportedly sustained the injury when a branch struck his face during a summer trip to a remote district. Although he rinsed his eye…

Nevada mine site gets a new park amid $257 million cleanup and plans for 3,000 homes (Image Credit: Nevada Division of Environmental Division) What was once a mining site associated with potentially harmful industrial waste is now making way for neighbourhood parks, walking trails and thousands of homes. In Henderson, Nevada, a former manganese mine…

Fewer than 400 bearded vultures remain in the wild across South Africa and Lesotho, and conservationist Shannon Hoffman is working to give the unusual birds a chance of survival. Through the Bred 4 the Wild Bearded Vulture Breeding Programme, Hoffman has spent more than a decade developing a specialised captive-breeding effort intended to build a…

Scientists have discovered twin and triplet embryos inside two eggs laid by a single wild Burmese python in southern Florida, marking the first recorded instance of triplet embryos in a snake. The unusual finding emerged from a clutch of 37 eggs laid on 17 May 2024 by a radio-tagged female python in Big Cypress National…

For generations, Australia’s tiny native stingless honey bees have been part of Indigenous medicine. Scientists now believe they may hold clues to tackling one of modern medicine’s biggest challenges: antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Researchers at the University of Sydney examined the potential medicinal benefits of honey and propolis (a mixture of plant resin and beeswax that bees…

Make-up as an art never began simply to enhance the appearance but to draw courage from what was not mere beauty, but power and protection. Mistaken for mere garb, its long expanse across myriad empires and dynasties has symbolized unyielding power, stretched in strokes of black kohl and rosy rouge, painting a face not just…

The Louisiana black bear, the animal associated with the origins of the teddy bear, was removed from the US federal list of endangered and threatened wildlife in 2016 after more than two decades of conservation work. When the bear received federal protection in 1992, habitat loss and human-related deaths had left its known breeding populations…

For decades, researchers have assumed that meaning could be distilled into three core emotional dimensions: valence, i.e. positive vs. negative; arousal, i.e. excited vs. calm; and dominance, i.e. controlling vs. submissive; collectively known as the VAD framework. Based on pioneering work in the 1950s by Charles Osgood and others, this model has been widely used…

Researchers have successfully recreated an ancient bronze naval ram using experimental archaeological methods, casting the weapon for the first time in more than 1,500 years. Used in Mediterranean naval warfare for nearly a millennium, from around 500 BCE to 500 CE, these weapons were designed to destroy, swamp, or sink enemy vessels. The experimental project…