Category Archives: Science

Chen Ning Yang, Chinese-American physicist and Nobel laureate, dies at 103

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Renowned 1957 Nobel prize winner worked on statistical mechanics and symmetry principles in elementary particle physics

Chen Ning Yang, one of the world’s most renowned physicists and a Nobel prize winner, died on Saturday in Beijing at the age of 103 after an illness, state media outlet Xinhua has reported.

Born in eastern China’s Hefei in Anhui province in 1922, Yang was a Chinese-American physicist who worked on statistical mechanics and symmetry principles in elementary particle physics.

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DNA from discarded straw leads to indictment of murder suspect after 41 years

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Richard Bilodeau, 63, charged with two counts of murder in 1984 death of Theresa Fusco, 16, of Long Island

Four decades after prosecutors sent the wrong men to prison for the rape and murder of a 16-year-old girl from Long Island, New York, DNA obtained from a discarded straw has led to the indictment of a new suspect.

A Nassau county grand jury on Tuesday indicted Richard Bilodeau, 63, of Center Moriches, on two counts of murder in the death of 16-year-old Theresa Fusco, who disappeared after leaving her part-time job at a Lynbrook roller-skating rink in November 1984. Her nude body was found weeks after the assault, buried under leaves in a wooded area near the rink.

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Plantwatch: An extraordinary orchid that lives and flowers underground

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Botanist trying to conserve highly vulnerable rhizanthella that survives by feeding on nutrients from a fungus

Rhizanthella is an extraordinary orchid that lives its entire life underground. It flowers below ground, has no leaves and survives by feeding on nutrients from a fungus that gets its food from the soil and by connecting with roots of the broom bush, Melaleuca uncinata.

Rhizanthella was an international sensation when it was first discovered by a farmer ploughing a field in Western Australia in 1928. It still remains incredibly difficult to find, usually by searching areas with the right habitat and carefully scraping away soil searching for the blooms buried underneath – tiny reddish flowers wrapped in creamy-pink bracts. The blooms also have a heady scent of vanilla, and may be pollinated by termites or tiny flies.

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Grisly recording reveals bat catching, killing and eating robin mid-flight

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Before the Spanish study, some scientists had been sceptical about the mammals attacking migratory birds

Bats are generally viewed as harmless, if spooky, creatures of the night. But scientists have revealed a more savage side, after witnessing a greater noctule bat – Europe’s largest bat species – hunting, killing and devouring a robin mid-flight.

The grisly recording reveals the bat as a formidable predator, climbing to 1.2km (4,000ft) before embarking on a breakneck-speed dive in pursuit of its prey. On capture, the bat delivered a lethal bite and subsequent chewing sounds, recorded between echolocation calls, indicated that the bat consumed the bird continuously during flight for 23 minutes without losing altitude.

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Grisly recording reveals bat catching, killing and eating robin mid-flight

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Before the Spanish study, some scientists had been sceptical about the mammals attacking migratory birds

Bats are generally viewed as harmless, if spooky, creatures of the night. But scientists have revealed a more savage side, after witnessing a greater noctule bat – Europe’s largest bat species – hunting, killing and devouring a robin mid-flight.

The grisly recording reveals the bat as a formidable predator, climbing to 1.2km (4,000ft) before embarking on a breakneck-speed dive in pursuit of its prey. On capture, the bat delivered a lethal bite and subsequent chewing sounds, recorded between echolocation calls, indicated that the bat consumed the bird continuously during flight for 23 minutes without losing altitude.

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Women carry a higher genetic risk of depression, new study says

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Researchers in Australia find 16 genetic variants linked to depression in women but only eight in men

Women carry a higher genetic risk of depression, a new study has found.

Claiming to be the largest genetic study to date on sex differences in major depression, the research published Wednesday in Nature Communications has found 16 genetic variants linked to depression in women and eight in men.

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Nobel prize in medicine awarded to scientists for immune system research

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Mary E Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell and Shimon Sakaguchi worked on how the immune system can be prevented from harming the body

The Nobel prize in physiology or medicine 2025 has been awarded to three scientists for their work on how the immune system is kept in check and prevented from attacking our own body.

Mary E Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell and Shimon Sakaguchi have been awarded the prize “for their discoveries concerning peripheral immune tolerance”.

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Covid school closures in UK damaged ‘very fabric of childhood’

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Inquiry hears of children exposed to pornography and suffering ‘grievous’ harm without protection of schools

The Covid pandemic disrupted the “very fabric of childhood”, the UK inquiry has heard, on the first day of a four-week session devoted to its impact on children and young people.

Clair Dobbin KC, counsel to the inquiry, said in her opening submission on Monday that some of the evidence drawn from the 18,000 stories and 400 targeted interviews would be “hard to listen to”.

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Supercentenarian gives scientists insight on secrets of healthy old age

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Tests on Maria Branyas Morera, who was world’s oldest person before she died last year aged 117, gave doctors a trove of discoveries

The nonagenarian actor Dame Joan Collins may have been on to something when she declared “age is just a number”.

The deepest dive yet into the biology of a supercentenarian has revealed that even extreme old age can be reached without the brain necessarily faltering or the usual illnesses mounting up.

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Huntington’s disease treated successfully for first time in UK gene therapy trial

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Surgical procedure to treat devastating illness slowed progress of disease by 75% in patients after three years

Huntington’s disease, a devastating degenerative illness that runs in families, has been treated successfully for the first time in a breakthrough gene therapy trial.

The disease, caused by a single gene defect, steadily kills brain cells leading to dementia, paralysis and ultimately death. Those with a parent with Huntington’s have a 50% chance of developing the disease, which until now has been incurable.

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Kenya’s Turkana people genetically adapted to live in harsh environment, study suggests

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Research which began with conversations round a campfire and went on to examine 7m gene variants shows how people survive with little water and a meat-rich diet

A collaboration between African and American researchers and a community living in one of the most hostile landscapes of northern Kenya has uncovered key genetic adaptations that explain how pastoralist people have been able to thrive in the region.

Underlying the population’s abilities to live in Turkana, a place defined by extreme heat, water scarcity and limited vegetation, has been hundreds of years of natural selection, according to a study published in Science.

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US judge rejects lawsuit challenge to SpaceX launch site over risks to wildlife

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FAA ruled to have satisfied obligations in granting approval for expanded SpaceX operations next to wildlife refuge

A US district court judge on Monday rejected a suit by conservation groups challenging the Federal Aviation Administration approval in 2022 of expanded rocket launch operations by Elon Musk’s SpaceX next to a national wildlife refuge in south Texas.

The groups said noise, light pollution, construction and road traffic also degrade the area, home to endangered ocelots and jaguarundis, as well as nesting sites for endangered Kemp’s Ridley sea turtles and for threatened shorebirds. US district judge Carl Nichols in Washington said FAA had satisfied its obligation “to take a hard look at the effects of light on nearby wildlife”.

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Billion-dollar coffins? New technology could make oceans transparent and Aukus submarines vulnerable

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Quantum sensing, satellite tracking and AI are part of an accelerating arms race in detection that should prompt a re-evaluation of Australia’s defence strategy

Military history is littered with the corpses of apex predators.

The Gatling gun, the battleship, the tank. All once possessed unassailable power – then were undermined, in some cases wiped out, by the march of new technology.

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Six great reads: rebels in Nazi Germany, how creativity works and Europe’s biggest pornography conference

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Need something brilliant to read this weekend? Here are six of our favourite pieces from the past seven days

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Fiji ant study provides new evidence of insects’ decline on remote islands

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DNA analysis of endemic specimens in museums finds 79% of ant populations in Pacific archipelago are shrinking

Island-dwelling insects have not been spared the ravages of humanity that have pushed so many of their invertebrate kin into freefall around the world, new research on Fijian ant populations has found.

Hundreds of thousands of insect species have been lost over the past 150 years and it is believed the world is now losing between 1% and 2.5% a year of its remaining insect biomass – a decline so steep that many entomologists say we are living through an “insect apocalypse”. Yet long-term data for individual insect populations is sparse and patchy.

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US drugmaker Merck scraps £1bn London research centre and cuts 125 science jobs

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New blow to UK’s key life science sector as industry body says country is losing ground on investment and research

The US drugmaker Merck has scrapped a £1bn London research centre and is laying off 125 scientists in the capital this year, in a big blow to the UK’s important life science sector.

Keir Starmer’s government has described life sciences as “one of the crown jewels of the UK economy” and the previous Conservative government had vowed to turn the country into a “global science and technology superpower” by 2030.

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Doctors trial £100 blood test that could transform how NHS detects Alzheimer’s

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More than 1,000 patients to take part in trial to see if the approach leads to faster and more reliable diagnoses

Doctors have launched a clinical trial of a £100 blood test for Alzheimer’s disease in the hope of transforming diagnosis of the devastating condition in the NHS.

More than 1,000 patients with suspected dementia are being recruited from memory clinics across the UK to see whether the test leads to faster and more reliable diagnoses and better care for those found to have the disease.

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Rare total lunar eclipse ‘blood moon’ to be visible from UK

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The satellite will turn deep red as the Earth passes between the sun and the moon at about 7.30pm on Sunday

A rare total lunar eclipse “blood moon” will be visible from the UK on Sunday night for the first time since 2022.

The moon is expected to turn a deep, dark red as the Earth passes directly between the sun and the moon, casting its shadow across the lunar surface.

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Archaeologists in Peru discover 3D mural that could date back 4,000 years

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The unprecedented find has shifted archaeological understanding about the first civilisations in the Americas

Archaeologists in Peru have discovered a multicoloured three-dimensional mural that could date back 4,000 years, in an unprecedented find that has shifted archaeological understanding about the first civilisations in the Americas.

The centrepiece of the three-by-six metre mural is a stylistic depiction of a large bird of prey with outstretched wings, its head adorned with three-dimensional diamond motifs that visually align the south and north faces of the mural. It is covered with high-relief friezes and features designs painted in blue, yellow, red and black.

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Malawi set to run out of TB drugs in a month after US, UK and others cut aid

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Gains in cutting deaths from tuberculosis at risk as health officials warn clinics forced to ration drugs and testing

Malawi is facing a critical shortage of tuberculosis drugs, with health officials warning that stocks will run out by the end of September.

It comes just months after the World Health Organization (WHO) revealed that the country had successfully reduced tuberculosis (TB) cases by 40% over the past decade.

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