Viral RNA relies on an enzyme to replicate, which offers up a target to protect against a range of pathogens Juan Gaertner/Science Photo Library/Alamy A single drug has been found to inhibit a range of common viruses in lab studies, including coronaviruses, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), norovirus, and influenza and hepatitis viruses. It will be…
Compost worms can make quick work of food scraps and other waste Rob Walls/Alamy Worms. I’ve got a few. I split my time between a small inner-city apartment in Sydney, Australia, and a wild property that was once a farm, before it was abandoned in the 1970s, four hours to the south. They are opposites…
Artist’s reconstruction of the ancient ocean ecosystem preserved in the Jiangchuan biota Xiaodong Wang A huge and beautifully preserved suite of fossils discovered in China has cast doubt on the idea that complex life flourished dramatically during a rapid burst of evolution known as the Cambrian explosion. This event, spanning roughly 541 million to 513…
A buff-tailed bumblebee on an artificial flower Bee lab at Southern Medical University Bumblebees have learned to recognise Morse code-like sequences of flashing lights and vibrations, demonstrating a sense of rhythm that has never been seen in such a small-brained animal. The ability to recognise flexible, abstract rhythms – when, for example, the same pattern…
Nelson Dellis holds his trophy after winning the annual USA Memory Championships in New York in 2011 DON EMMERT/AFP via Getty Images Nelson Dellis is a six-time US memory champion who once memorised the order of a shuffled deck of cards in 40.7 seconds and knows the first 10,000 digits of pi. Now, scientists have…
An artist’s impression of star formation in the early universe Adolf Schaller for STScI/NASA Astronomers have had the most compelling glimpse yet of some of the universe’s first stars. These are unlike any other stars we have seen and could help us understand crucial properties about the early universe, such as how massive the earliest…
Tim Friede with a water cobra Centivax I know what it feels like to almost die from a snake bite. You can’t move. You can’t breathe. Your diaphragm’s frozen. But you can hear everything. So when I was in the ICU, I could hear the doctors talking about me. “Why did he do it? Was…
The Artemis II mission launched from Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida AFP via Getty Images The first crewed mission to the moon since the Apollo programme ended in 1972 is on its way. The Artemis II mission launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida on 1 April, and if all goes well, the four astronauts aboard…
California condor embryos can develop without fertilisation Shutterstock/Barbara Ash On the Origin of SexLixing Sun, Profile Books As children, many of us learn the facts of life with examples from the natural world. The thinking is that it is more straightforward (and certainly less uncomfortable) to illustrate “the talk” with images of birds laying eggs…
The history of North America’s Indigenous peoples is fraught with stereotypes – and often seen through a European lens. In Native Nations, historian Kathleen DuVal, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, sets the record straight, as she weaves together centuries of development to show how Indigenous groups have interacted with a shifting…