New Scientist
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Female clones created from the blood of male mice | New Scientist
A CRISPR-based tool can perform sex reversal on male mouse embryos, reliably turning them into healthy females – a feat that could be valuable for conservation
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Planes flying over the Atlantic will be re-routed to avoid contrails | New Scientist
Operation Blue Skies is the world’s first trial to deploy contrail avoidance measures across an entire airspace, aiming to lower the climate impact of flights on a large scale
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Did humans evolve to be active throughout the day and night? | New Scientist
Evidence from hunter-gatherers suggests humans aren't diurnal but cathemeral, with bouts of activity at nighttime – a sleep pattern similar to some lemurs
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Postbiotic could reduce the risk of brain damage after a concussion | New Scientist
Giving mice a byproduct produced by gut bacteria reduced their risk of severe brain damage and cognitive difficulties after a traumatic brain injury
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Feeding our books into generative AI risks creating a cultural void | New Scientist
When we put our literature, games and films into AI models, we risk replacing our cultural history with a mishmash of auto-generated works. We desperately need to preserve human writing, says columnist Annalee Newitz
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Physicists may have solved a 30-year mystery over missing neutrinos | New Scientist
Since the 1990s, researchers have wondered if unexpected results from gallium-based neutrino detectors are a sign of a new kind of particle, but a new study suggests that revising their calculations could explain the anomaly
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Why women with ADHD feel overwhelmingly 'controlled' by their hormones | New Scientist
People with ADHD are unusually sensitive to hormone shifts. Psychiatrists have started to pay attention, creating strategies to address the intense emotions and cognitive challenges caused by these changes
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Britain's only desalination plant remains idle during drought | New Scientist
Water flow in the river Thames has dropped low enough to warrant the use of England’s only large-scale desalination plant, but it hasn’t been switched on at all this year
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Weightlifting makes older women leaner, stronger and more mobile | New Scientist
Lifting at least 50 kilograms twice a week improved older women's muscle mass, mobility and balance
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Quantum computing may be facing a replication crisis | New Scientist
A review of thousands of scientific papers about quantum computers finds that most don’t provide code that can be tested on independent devices or that the code doesn’t work
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Our blood's body clock may be causing anaemia cases to be missed | New Scientist
Blood tests may give different results depending on when in the day, or the year, they are taken, which could result in people missing out on an anaemia diagnosis
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Rogue hacking AIs have changed the cybersecurity landscape | New Scientist
Attackers with no technical skills can now use AI models to find and exploit loopholes quickly and they can deploy them on a massive scale, raising fears that organisations without large budgets for cyber defence will be much more vulnerable
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THC in cannabis may reduce nightmares in people with PTSD | New Scientist
A drug made up of THC, the main psychoactive component of cannabis, reduced the severity and incidence of nightmares in people with PTSD
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Test moderators use AI-generated writing to judge literacy standards | New Scientist
To cut the cost of key stage 2 assessments, a UK government project proposes to use scripts generated by ChatGPT instead of real children's writing as examples supplied to moderators who check that grades are awarded fairly
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Fishers detonate a bomb every hour on one Indonesian coral reef | New Scientist
The use of explosives to kill fish is widespread across the tropics, and acoustic monitoring in an Indonesian archipelago detected more than 3500 explosions in 483 days
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How bad is the UK drought and how long will it continue? | New Scientist
Almost three-quarters of England is now in drought conditions, resulting in restrictions on water use in many areas and severe wildfires – here's how it's affecting farming, wildlife and trees
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Why do people ask so few questions in conversation? | New Scientist
We've perhaps been conditioned to not ask too many questions, in case it comes across as rude or prying. But columnist David Robson argues that asking people open-ended questions benefits our wellbeing, and doesn't have to be complicated
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Monsoon-driven wildfires may have shaped human evolution | New Scientist
A reconstruction of East Africa's environment 1.75 million years ago suggests wildfires spiked during wetter times, which may have influenced human evolution
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'Remarkable' discovery upends our understanding of how brains store memories | New Scientist
Memories in mice persisted even after they lost the connections that we thought were needed for recall, expanding our knowledge of memory in the mammalian brain
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Quantum entanglement is key to solving 250-year-old maths problem | New Scientist
Analysis of a mathematical puzzle that Leonhard Euler deemed unsolvable in the 1700s reveals that the crucial ingredient for cracking it after all is quantum entanglement
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DNA reveals a society organised around women in pre-Roman Britain | New Scientist
Descent passed from mother to daughter rather than from father to son, a study of more than 500 Iron Age individuals from north-east England suggests
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The most breathtaking photos of the total solar eclipse | New Scientist
Photographers in Spain captured spectacular images of the rare alignment of the moon and the sun, as it cast a dark shadow over much of the country
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Fate of the AMOC may depend on how quickly CO2 rises | New Scientist
The critical current could remain stable beyond 5°C of warming, but only if the warming happens very slowly
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Mammal ancestors were giving birth to live young 236 million years ago | New Scientist
Almost all mammals give birth rather than laying eggs, and we have new clues about when they began to do so
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From the mine to the grid | New Scientist
How Komatsu machines help build Atlassian Williams F1 Team’s FW48
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Running with a stroller seems to reduce the risk of injuries | New Scientist
Pushing a pram while running may reduce the force produced with each foot strike, decreasing the risk of injuries
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Last Word: This week’s new questions | New Scientist
Humans can see water but not air. So can fish see air? And would it be possible to have anti-black holes, and how could we tell if we were looking at one?
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Twisteddoodles on how to handle memes featuring medical symptoms | New Scientist
This week's cartoon from Twisteddoodles
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If this brilliant cosmic horror show passed you by, rectify that now | New Scientist
The Killings at Parrish Station is a terrifying cosmic horror six-parter, which starts back in 1987 when two detectives find mangled bodies at an outback radio research station. TV columnist Bethan Ackerley is a big fan
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Last Word: At what point does my family tree stop doubling and start decreasing? part 2 | New Scientist
Our readers do the maths on what one of their mothers calls the family forest
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Last Word: What changes will occur on Earth as the moon moves further away? part 2 | New Scientist
One reader explains how the moon’s drift will lead to longer (and warmer) days
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Does shapewear make us less prone to taking risks? Weirdly, maybe yes | New Scientist
Feedback is a little nonplussed by an experiment that involved wearing (or not wearing) compressing shapewear, and then playing cards
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Tom Gauld on failed science clip art | New Scientist
Tom Gauld's weekly cartoon
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I reread The Road 20 years on. It was even more devastating | New Scientist
Tim Winton's Juice gave Alison Flood the appetite for more post-apocalyptic science fiction. Returning to Cormac McCarthy's scorched landscape was tough – but worth it
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We should decide how AI shapes the future, not tech firms | New Scientist
OpenAI and its competitors want to dictate the role that artificial intelligence will play in our society – it's time to take back control of the narrative
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Last Word: What is the optimal way to ice a cocktail? | New Scientist
Readers dig into whether it’s best to have fewer big cubes or lots of small ones – and offer up their services to test it out
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Three black holes discovered in a young galaxy for the first time | New Scientist
Three massive black holes have been found in a galaxy that existed during the earliest times of the universe
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How ancient trees are warning us about the next enormous solar storm | New Scientist
Our sun is capable of storms far bigger than we’ve ever recorded. Studying the world’s oldest trees suggests we could be due one of these gargantuan events soon
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Breast-augmentation method uses your own fat in dissolving scaffolds | New Scientist
A new approach to breast augmentation injects fat from elsewhere in the body into dissolvable scaffolds shaped like bra cups, which may lead to a more natural look and fewer complications
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Greatest science books: Gödel, Escher, Bach: a daunting but captivating look at consciousness | New Scientist
Douglas Hofstadter’s weighty tome, an exploration of mathematics, music and the mind, runs to almost 800 pages – but is worth the effort, finds Gerardo Bandera
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How to watch today's spectacular solar eclipse | New Scientist
A total solar eclipse is set to be visible across parts of Europe today, while a partial eclipse will sweep across about a quarter of the planet – here’s how to see it
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Rainbows can be made from sounds – and we've created the best ones yet | New Scientist
Two research teams have independently created devices within which sound waves could be separated by frequency, creating the most complete sound rainbows yet
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Heart surgery cured a man’s skin cancer – and gave him a bee allergy | New Scientist
Having surgery for a heart condition is thought to have triggered an immune response that put the patient into remission for his severe skin cancer, but also caused him to develop a serious allergy to bee stings
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CRISPR-armed phages help treat severe superbug infection | New Scientist
Bacteria-killing phage viruses souped up with DNA-destroying CRISPR appear to have helped clear up a very serious infection caused by antibiotic-resistant E. coli
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Denisovans may have dwarfed other ancient humans | New Scientist
Two leg bones found on the seabed near Taiwan have been identified as Denisovans, and their size suggests these hominins stood up to 190 centimetres tall
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Where, when and how to watch the 2026 solar eclipse | New Scientist
A total solar eclipse is set to be visible across parts of Europe, while a partial eclipse will sweep across about a quarter of the planet – here’s how to catch it
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The proton is more quantum than we thought | New Scientist
Our understanding of the internal structure of protons is largely based on classical physics, but data compiled from accelerator experiments has uncovered quantum behaviour that has never been seen before
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Could we eliminate any particles from the standard model of physics? | New Scientist
The standard model of physics is one of the most successful scientific theories in existence, but do we need it all? Columnist Chanda Prescod-Weinstein explores whether it’s carrying any excess baggage
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The shock revelation that light bulbs are wrecking your metabolism | New Scientist
Since the 2000s, our light exposure has changed drastically as we make our buildings more energy-efficient. Now, we’re discovering how this may mess with our mitochondria, contributing to diabetes, dementia and more
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Your running style changes when you’re short of sleep | New Scientist
There are measurable changes in the way we run when we are short of sleep, which give us a clearer picture of how a lack of shut-eye affects our risk of injury