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Chemical engineers have discovered a greener way to make an industrial chemical used to produce many everyday products – from plastics and textiles to antifreeze and disinfectants. The manufacture of ethylene oxide is estimated to be a US$40 billion per year global market. But its current production process requires the use of toxic chlorine gas, […]

Glaciers worldwide have lost a staggering 6,542 billion tonnes of ice in just 23 years – contributing 18mm to the global rise in sea levels and reducing vital supplies of freshwater. “To put this in perspective, the … [water] lost in one single year amounts to what the entire global population consumes in 30 years, […]

Astronomers believe they have found evidence to support a 30-year-old theory that Jupiter’s moon Callisto has a saltwater ocean. Callisto is Jupiter’s second largest moon, with a diameter of 4,820km – the same as the solar system’s smallest planet, Mercury, and roughly a third that of Earth. Callisto is one of the 4 Galilean satellites […]

Galaxies, planets, black holes: to most people, everything about our Universe sounds and feels enormous. But while it’s true that much of what happens millions of light years away is large, there are also processes happening at the quantum end of the scale. That’s the branch of science which explains how nature works at very […]

Researchers are working with the mining industry to create a new source of sand – which at present is being mined at an unsustainable rate and might run out with a generation. Miners are being asked to extract sand from their ore processing, to help alleviate the global sand crisis. Researchers are calling for a paradigm […]

Research into the shape of Neanderthal inner ears challenges the theory that the extinct human species originated out of an evolutionary event that led to a loss of part of their genetic diversity. The findings, published in Nature Communications, are based on fossils from across Europe and Western Asia. Unlike modern humans, Neanderthals never lived […]

Spine injections offer little, or no pain relief for certain kinds of chronic back pain compared to sham injections, a panel of international experts has found. They strongly recommend against the use of the procedures, such as epidural steroid injections and nerve blocks, for people living with chronic back pain that lasts least 3 months […]

King Thutmose II’s tomb has been found in Egypt – the first tomb found since 1922 when archaeologists uncovered the resting place of Tutankhamun. It is the last missing royal tomb from the 18th dynasty of Egyptian kings. Thutmose died before the age of 30 in 1479 BCE. It is not clear if he ruled […]

Dinosaur fossils found in southeastern Australia reveal a unique ecosystem unlike any other in the world. The research, published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, describes a hierarchy of predators in Cretaceous Australia which is unlike anywhere else. The fossils were unearthed along the coast of the state of Victoria. They are from the roughly […]

Emus have a reputation for being “bird-brained” but a new study has found they can innovate – solving a tricky puzzle to access a food reward.

A nuclear fusion machine in southern France has maintained a plasma for more than 22 minutes, beating the previous world record by nearly 5 minutes. Such machines are sometimes referred to “artificial suns” because they mimic the nuclear fusion process which powers stars in their cores. It is believed that stable nuclear fusion on Earth […]

Scientists have figured out how one of the main drivers of prostate cancer, the enzyme Protein Serine Kinase H1 (PSKH1), can be switched off.

Australia’s sea-surface temperature anomalies are putting coral reefs at risk again. National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) data shows the Great Barrier Reef off Cape York in Queensland, is again heading for a two-degree heat spike. Coral bleaching expert, Professor Terry Hughes, said in a social media post on Bluesky 12 days ago: “Silence so […]

Marine scientists worried that key fish species, and “near threatened” dolphin and shellfish around South Australia’s coastline are under pressure are calling for stepped up conservation efforts to protect the ecosystems. Challenges of the South Australian marine environment have been highlighted in 3 recent scientific reports from Flinders University. Mike Bossley, who has led a team […]

A centuries-old technique for making cement may be the key to large-scale carbon capture, according to US chemists. The first step in making cement involves converting limestone to calcium oxide, inside a kiln heated to 1400 degrees Celsius. Calcium oxide is then mixed with sand to produce a vital ingredient for cement. Inspired by this […]

Archaeologists have found stones shaped into blades by ancient humans near the town of Al Madam in the United Arab Emirates. The 80,000-year-old remains are the oldest example of stone blade production on the Arabian Peninsula. The researchers say that the characteristic long flakes with parallel edges suggest the blades were made by Homo sapiens […]

Astronomers have peered into the atmosphere of an exoplanet some 900 light-years away and found powerful weather patterns that make the most severe storms in the Solar System seem like a calm breeze. “It feels like something out of science fiction,” says Julia Victoria Seidel, a researcher at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Chile […]

Humans can’t remember their time in the womb, but new research suggests it might not be so dark in there. The first foetal eye movements can be seen on 2D ultrasound at 14 weeks of gestation, but it isn’t until 31 weeks that the pupils can constrict, dilate, and detect light. So, what’s it like […]

European researchers have made the startling claim that fish can recognise individual divers. In a peer reviewed paper published today in Biology Letters, the research team from the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior (MPI-AB) in Germany conducted a series of experiments while wearing a range of diving gear, finding that “fish in the wild […]

Australian plants adapted to resist and recover from fire are becoming threatened by it, as climate change worsens fire weather and drives more frequent and severe wildfires. A recent study of the striking hairpin banksia (Banksia cunninghamii), in areas of Victoria affected by the 2019-2020 Black Summer bushfires, found the species is threatened with local […]

It’s party time all the time at the heart of the galaxy, according to new observations from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). The space observatory has taken the longest and most detailed look yet at Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way, and found that it’s constantly emitting […]

The extinction of the largest dinosaurs might have aided the evolution of the small, fruit-eating ancestors of primates, according to new research. Early primates – ancestors of humans – would not have been able to flourish alongside sauropods, the largest animals to ever walk on Earth. Sauropods were dinosaurs and are known for their long […]

A new 3D computer model of the planet through time has helped answer a contentious question: How did the Earth’s ice caps form? “The study looked at the Earth’s long-term stable climate,” explains the University of Adelaide’s Andrew Merdith, lead author on the new study in Science Advances. “Over tens to hundreds of millions of […]

Grasslands in Africa are key to the lives of people as well as wildlife. New research shows that grassland restoration leads to less conflict between humans and animals. Kenya’s grasslands are home to animals including elephants, giraffes, lions, buffalo and hyenas. They are also key areas for human activity. New research published in the Frontiers […]