Science & Technology

Chocolate bars, chips and fries – why can’t we just ignore them in the supermarket? Researchers have now shown that foods with a high fat and sugar content change our brain: If we regularly eat even small amounts of them, the brain learns to consume pr…

In 1802, Ludwig van Beethoven asked his brothers to request that his doctor, J.A. Schmidt, describe his malady — his progressive hearing loss — to the world upon his death so that ‘as far as possible at least the world will be reconciled to me after …

Engineers have developed a new water treatment that removes ‘forever chemicals’ from drinking water safely, efficiently — and for good.

Urine scent marks are the original social media, allowing animals to advertise their location, status and identity. Now research is shining a new light — via thermal imaging of mice — on how this behavior changes depending on shifting social conditions.

Researchers have ‘hacked’ the earliest stages of photosynthesis, the natural machine that powers the vast majority of life on Earth, and discovered new ways to extract energy from the process, a finding that could lead to new ways of generating clean f…

The push toward truly autonomous vehicles has been hindered by the cost and time associated with safety testing, but a new system shows that artificial intelligence can reduce the testing miles required by 99.99%.

By combing through genomic data of over 1 million people of European or African descent, scientists have identified genes commonly inherited across addiction disorders, regardless of the substance being used. This dataset — one of largest and most div…

When the first interstellar comet ever seen in our solar system was discovered in 2017, one characteristic — an unexplained acceleration away from the sun — sparked wild speculation, including that it was an alien spacecraft. An astrochemist found a …

Researchers describe why SARS-CoV-2 subvariants spread more rapidly than the original virus strain, and how an early treatment might have made people more susceptible to future infections.

A model system created by stacking a pair of monolayer semiconductors is giving physicists a simpler way to study confounding quantum behavior, from heavy fermions to exotic quantum phase transitions.

In a new study, an international team of researchers warn that the Arctic Sea ice may soon be a thing of the past in the summer months. This may have consequences for both the climate and ecosystems. Ten thousand years ago, the ice melted at temperatur…

A global treaty called the Minamata Convention requires gold-mining countries to regularly report the amount of toxic mercury that miners are using to find and extract gold, designed to help nations gauge success toward at least minimizing a practice t…

Physicists have built a new technology on a microchip by combining two Nobel Prize-winning techniques. This microchip could measure distances in materials at high precision, for example underwater or for medical imaging. Because the technology uses sou…

Researchers behind the UK’s first pilot public health surveillance system based on analysis of wastewater say that routine monitoring at sewage treatment works could provide a powerful early warning system for the next flu or norovirus epidemic, alerti…

An oxygen-ion-battery has been invented, based on ceramic materials. If it degrades, it can be regenerated, therefore it potentially has an extremely long lifespan. Also, it does not require any rare elements and it is incombustible. For large energy s…

New method to study the movement, behaviour, and environmental context of group-living animals using drones and computer vision.

New research finds that simply anticipating stress related to political elections causes adverse physical health effects. However, the study also finds there is something people can do to mitigate those negative health effects.

A mosquito known only by its scientific name, Culex lactator, is the latest to establish in the Sunshine State, according to a new study.

Language that is easier to process encourages continued reading, as does language that evokes anxious, exciting, and hopeful emotions.

Conditions mapped for the first time of polaron characteristics in 2D materials. TACC’s Frontera supercomputer generated quantum mechanical calculations on hexagonal boron nitride system of 30,000 atoms.