Plague Inc, a game that lets users destroy the world with a novel pathogen, has created a new version of the game, in which players can save the world from a virus. The game, which has occupied a position on the App store charts ever since it was created in 2012, reached new levels of

In a single announcement on Tuesday, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi almost doubled the planet’s tally of people who have been placed under lockdown to avoid the spread of the coronavirus.   His strict order to the nation’s 1.3 billion people to stay home brings the global number of people under some form of lockdown

According to Google Trends, the top two most searched terms about mobile phones this week in Australia were “how to disinfect phone” and “how to clean your phone.” And the third most-searched “can I get coronavirus from…?”-style question in the past week in Australia was “can you get coronavirus from mail?” (If you were wondering,

For the first time, scientists have reprogrammed the stem cells of a 114-year-old woman, the oldest donor to date. After first transforming cells from her blood sample into induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), the researchers then generated mesenchymal stem cells, which help to maintain and repair tissues like bone, cartilage and fat.   “We set

If the United Kingdom put aside even a small fraction of its urban land to grow fruit and vegetables, it could quadruple the amount of food the nation produces from current horticulture, according to new research.   Using the city of Sheffield as a case study, researchers showed that if just 10 percent of this

The proliferation of fake news about the COVID-19 pandemic has been labelled a dangerous “infodemic“. Fake news spreads faster and more easily today through the internet, social media and instant messaging.   These messages may contain useless, incorrect or even harmful information and advice, which can hamper the public health response and add to social

Not all dogs cope well when their owners leave them at home. Some get so anxious they end up barking all day long, while others destroy the house and precious objects in their cooped-up state. Still, pinning it down to ‘separation anxiety’ isn’t particularly helpful for pet owners.   Instead, new research suggests this is

The Abel Prize for mathematics was on Wednesday awarded to Israeli-American Hillel Furstenberg and Russian-born Gregory Margulis, both probability experts, the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters said.   The pair were honoured “for pioneering the use of methods from probability and dynamics in group theory, number theory and combinatorics,” the Academy said in a

For hundreds of years, it lay undisturbed. Then, almost a century ago, archaeologists discovered it: a single pine tree, buried amidst the grandest of all the great houses of Chaco culture.   Pueblo Bonito (Beautiful Town), in New Mexico’s Chaco Canyon, has long been considered the cultural hub of the Ancestral Puebloans who dwelled here

Humans and animals have a long and beautiful history together, but a noblewoman named Cui Shi from the Tang Dynasty presents a rare first. She loved her donkeys so much that she was buried with them – together in death, perhaps, as they were in life.   The grave, dated to 878 CE, is the

Long before the comfort of modern amenities, ancient human communities were capable of living in some truly harsh and frigid environments. On the central Russian Plain, a mysterious ring of mammoth bones has been dated to the peak of the last European ice age, when winter temperatures regularly reached -20 degrees Celsius or lower.  

A thorough investigation of one of the world’s most valuable collections of Dead Sea Scroll fragments has revealed a shocking truth: not one of the collection’s 16 fragments analysed is authentic.   The Dead Sea Scrolls, a trove of religious manuscripts containing the oldest known foundations of the Old Testament, date as far back as the

Life during a global pandemic takes on a surreal quality. The ubiquitous presence of social media and a constant fire hose of coronavirus news can make it particularly hard if you’re already feeling anxious.   So, we’ve put together a little round-up of recent science news that we find inspiring, encouraging, and worthy of note

Our noses appear to be home to thriving ‘neuron nurseries’, according to new research. It’s a curious finding, given recent investigations on whether our brains keep making new neurons as we become adults; some evidence points to us growing these nerve cells well into old age.   But we don’t really know whether such neurogenesis

Working through an exercise in gratitude or counting your blessings can often have positive health benefits and lift our mood – but it isn’t actually much help when it comes to properly dealing with symptoms of depression and anxiety, new research has found.   Weighing up the evidence from 27 previous studies, covering 3,675 individuals

Evolution explains how all living beings, including us, came to be. It would be easy to assume evolution works by continuously adding features to organisms, constantly increasing their complexity.   Some fish evolved legs and walked onto the land. Some dinosaurs evolved wings and began to fly. Others evolved wombs and began to give birth

You’d be forgiven if you haven’t heard of von Economo neurons (VENs) or spindle neurons, a rare type of human brain cell. But these cells are now at the centre of an exciting scientific development: researchers have recorded their electrical activity for the first time.   The discovery was made possible due to a delicate

Although we humans generally have control of our skeletal musculature, there’s at least one we don’t always have a handle on. In the middle ear sits the tensor tympani, and it seems most people are unable to contract it voluntarily.   Those that can contract their tensor tympani – a small muscle located above the

Recent days have brought reports of shoppers clearing out supermarket shelves from Wuhan and Hong Kong to Singapore and Milan in response to the spread of coronavirus. This behaviour is often described as “panic buying”.   However, the research shows that what’s going on here is nothing to do with panic. It’s a perfectly rational

A “doomsday vault” nestled deep in the Arctic received 60,000 new seed samples on Tuesday, including Prince Charles’ cowslips and Cherokee sacred corn, increasing stocks of the world’s agricultural bounty in case of global catastrophe.   Mounting concern over climate change and species loss is driving groups worldwide to add their seeds to the collection

Of all the volcanic eruptions to shake our planet in the last 2 million years, the Toba super-eruption in India was one of the most colossal. But it may not have been the global catastrophe we once thought it was.   The massive eruption happened roughly 74,000 years ago, spewing roughly 1,000 times as much rock as

It was said that all he touched turned to gold. But destiny eventually caught up with the legendary King Midas, and a long-lost chronicle of his ancient downfall appears to have literally surfaced in Turkey.   Last year, archaeologists were investigating an ancient mound site in central Turkey called Türkmen-Karahöyük. The greater region, the Konya

Katherine Johnson, a ground-breaking black NASA mathematician whose life was portrayed in the movie Hidden Figures, died on Monday aged 101, the space agency said. Johnson’s calculations helped put the first man on the Moon in 1969, but she was little known until the Oscar-nominated 2016 movie that told the stories of three black women

An amateur American astronaut who said he wanted to prove the Earth is flat has been killed in the crash of his homemade rocket in California, said the Science Channel, which filmed the launch.   “Michael ‘Mad Mike’ Hughes tragically passed away today during an attempt to launch his homemade rocket,” the channel, which is

Your dog may be the apple of your eye, but let’s be honest: she is an animal, with her own instincts and idiosyncrasies, and there are going to be times when she makes you want to tear your hair out.   However much you want to, however, new research suggests that you should never yell

Our evolutionary history is full of interspecies sex. Different human ancestor species seem to have mingled and mated far more than anthropologists previously realised. Neanderthals interbred with modern humans. Homo sapiens had sex with Denisovans.   And 700,000 years ago, according to a new study, a population of ancient humans mated with a distinct unknown

When it comes to health, education, and nutrition, kids in America could have it better. When it comes to their country’s future carbon emissions, they couldn’t have it much worse.   An extensive new report from the World Health Organisation, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), and The Lancet has ranked the United States 39th

Our evolutionary history is full of inter-species sex. Different human ancestor species seem to have mingled and mated far more than anthropologists previously realised. Neanderthals interbred with modern humans. Homo sapiens had sex with Denisovans.   And 700,000 years ago, according to a new study, a population of ancient humans mated with a distinct, unknown

For years, there has been a controversial theory about the famous 3,300-year-old tomb of King Tutankhamun: that Queen Nefertiti’s remains are contained just beyond its walls. A team of scientists led by Mamdouh Eldamaty, the former Egyptian minister of antiquities, seemed to have recently confirmed the theory.   The researchers surveyed the tomb with ground-penetrating

Vivid frescoes and never-before-seen inscriptions were among the treasures unearthed in a massive years-long restoration of the world-famous archeological site Pompeii that came to a close on Tuesday.   The painstaking project saw an army of workers reinforce walls, repair collapsing structures and excavate untouched areas of the sprawling site, Italy’s second most visited tourist

The psychological effect of having a clock in your shower is enough to get you in and out more quickly, saving water along the way, according to a small preliminary study. It makes sense that a visible time display would increase awareness of the passing minutes. While the study is yet to be published, we

Not since Baby Yoda had so many people collectively lost their minds over an impossibly cute Baby Thing. If you’re wondering what we’re talking about, meet Baby Platypus. This impossibly cute life-form started doing the rounds on social media this week, delighting anybody and everybody who laid eyes on the tiny, delicate bub.   There’s

One of the most important archaeological sites for our understanding of Neanderthals is still disgorging its secrets. A new skeleton has been found in Shanidar Cave in Iraqi Kurdistan, and it’s helping reveal how the Neanderthals dealt with their dead.   Shanidar Cave is famous for what is known as the Flower Burial. Among 10

Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon and the world’s richest man, said Monday he was committing US$10 billion to a new fund to tackle climate change. In a post to his 1.4 million followers on Instagram, the e-commerce tycoon said the Bezos Earth Fund would “fund scientists, activists, NGOs – any effort that offers

The ‘simpler’ diet of palaeolithic humans has been romanticised into a health fad, but new research indicates our ancestors weren’t necessarily enjoying the pinnacle of food sources. In fact, they may have been consuming unhealthy levels of toxic heavy metals.   In Norway, between 6,300 and 3,800 years ago (a little bit later than the

There’s an old saying, “When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot in it and hang on.” In other words, before you give up, take matters into your own hands and try a little harder.   As a psychology researcher, I believe this adage applies to relationships, too. Before you let go,

On 14 February 1990, the Voyager 1 space probe shut down its cameras for the rest of eternity. A mere half hour before that, it recorded one final image. Humanity now knows that picture as the Pale Blue Dot. Suspended in a beam of sunlight, Earth is a mere speck of blue set against the

The mystery of Rapa Nui, or Easter Island, is often told as a “parable of self-destruction“, a cautionary tale of human exploitation and ‘ecocide’. When the last tree falls, so does humanity – or so the story goes.   It’s a narrative that’s been repeated many times and is often treated as fact, but in

The gene pool of modern West Africans contains the ‘ghost’ of a mysterious hominin, unlike any we’ve detected so far. Similar to how humans and Neanderthals once mated, new research suggests this ancient long-lost species may have once mingled with our ancestors on the African continent.   Using whole-genome data from present-day West Africans, scientists

A painting found stashed inside a wall at an Italian museum has been confirmed as the stolen “Portrait of a Lady” by Austria’s Gustav Klimt, prosecutors said on Friday, two decades after the artwork went missing.   The century-old painting was discovered concealed in an external wall by gardeners at the Ricci Oddi Gallery of

Sometimes there’s an archaeological find that makes all that laborious digging, careful brushing and meticulous cataloguing worth it – such as the 1,200-year-old board game piece that researchers have found on an island off the coast of northeastern England.   This is thought to be a ‘King’ piece from a Viking board game hnefatafl (“king’s

If humans are truly capable of learning while we sleep, our noses might be the key. A new study on children suggests that subtle smells, like the fragrance of a rose, might help us to strengthen specific memories from the day.   Researchers in Germany found students were able to memorise new English words about

Amongst all the different types of cancer treatment, photodynamic therapy – where light in is used to destroy malignant cells – might have one of the strangest side effects: patients are often better able to see in the dark.   Now researchers have figured out why this happens: rhodopsin, a light-sensitive protein in the retinas in our eyes, interacts with

Listening to upbeat music while you exercise might improve your physical performance, a small new study has found. When women who were training heard pop songs with over 170 beats per minute, scientists say they began to put in more effort, especially during endurance activities, such as brisk walking, running or cycling.   Meanwhile, music

The old well doesn’t look like much – a wooden crate-like object, dilapidated, crumbling a little. But according to new research, it’s really special. A tree-ring dating technique has revealed that the oak wood used to make it was cut around 7,275 years ago.   This makes it the oldest known wooden structure in the

Australia’s recent bushfire crisis will be remembered for many things – not least, the tragic loss of life, property and landscape. But one other factor made it remarkable: the deluge of disinformation spread by climate deniers.   As climate change worsens – and with it, the bushfire risk – it’s well worth considering how to

Mathematicians have finally figured out the three cubed numbers that add up to 42. This has settled a problem that has been pondered for 65 years: namely, can each of the natural numbers below 100 be expressed as the sum of three cubes?   The problem, set in 1954, is exactly what it sounds like:

Deep inside our DNA lurks a legacy of lust and romance between estranged human bloodlines reconnecting on an epic journey around the globe. It now seems we might have been misreading key details in this erotic tale.   A new method for analysing our genomes for traces of Neanderthal genes has revealed modern African populations