Cereal farming produced excess food that could be stored and taxed LUIS MONTANYA/MARTA MONTANYA/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY The cultivation of cereal grains probably led to the emergence of the first states – which operated mafia-like protection rackets − and to the adoption of writing for the purposes of recording taxes. There is wide debate over how…
The wiring of our neurons changes with the passing decades Alexa Mousley, University of Cambridge Our brain function is far from static throughout our lives. We already know that our capacity to learn, and our risk of cognitive decline, varies from when we are a newborn through to our 90s. Now, scientists may have uncovered…
Adrià Voltà The ball rolls across the floor because it was kicked, just as Earth orbits the sun because it is tugged by gravity. The connection between cause and effect is fundamental to how we understand the world – or at least, it is for the world we see, governed by classical physics. Notoriously, everything…
Seafloor covered with manganese nodules Science History Images/Alamy A process to extract metals from their ore with hydrogen could make deep-sea mining for valuable materials more sustainable than mining on land, a new study claims. Swathes of the ocean floor are littered with nodules the size of tennis balls. These polymetallic nodules are comprised largely…
The swimming machinery of sperm has ancient origins Christoph Burgstedt/Alamy The evolutionary origin of sperm can be traced back to a single-celled ancestor of all living animals. Almost all animals reproduce by having a single-celled stage of their life cycle, involving two types of sex cells, or gametes. Eggs are larger cells containing genetic material…
Climate campaigners march on the sidelines of the COP30 summit in Belém, Brazil PABLO PORCIUNCULA/AFP via Getty Images Ten years on from the Paris Agreement, we should be seeing a massive ratcheting up of climate action. Instead, the past four years have seen almost no progress – including at the latest COP summit, which failed…
COP30 president André Corrêa do Lago (centre) with his advisers and UN climate secretary Simon Stiell (left) Pablo PORCIUNCULA / AFP via Getty Images The United Nations COP30 climate summit in Brazil was flooded by torrential rainfall, stormed by protesters and partially burned down by an electrical fire. The final session was briefly suspended due…
These “killer koalas”, or marsupial lions, are a highlight of the show Apple TV Back in 1999, the BBC’s Walking with Dinosaurs series spawned a new format: wildlife “documentaries” featuring long-extinct animals. I’m a big fan of this genre, and Prehistoric Planet: Ice Age, made by BBC Studios for Apple TV, is taking it to…
Ulcerative colitis is characterised by inflammation of the lining of the colon and rectum BSIP SA/Alamy A toxin produced by bacteria found in dirty water kills off immune cells in the lining of the colon, meaning people whose guts are colonised by these bacteria are much more likely to develop a condition known as ulcerative…
This moss grew from a spore exposed to space for nine months Tomomichi Fujita On 4 March 2022, astronauts locked 20,000 moss spores outside the International Space Station and left them exposed to the rigours of space for 283 days. They then rescued the spores and returned them to Earth on a SpaceX capsule so…