I am an only child. Saying this sometimes feels like a confession – not least when people respond with a well-meaning “oh, you don’t seem like it!”. Now, as the mother of a preschooler, I see my daughter navigating the...
A Ukrainian military vehicle driving passing a destroyed border crossing point with Russia, in the Sumy region, 14 AugustROMAN PILIPEY/AFP via Getty Images All four of Ukraine’s operational nuclear power plants have suffered occupation or attack by Russian forces since...
An experiment with beams of photons has confirmed quantum weirdness existsluchschenF/Shutterstock The world is as weird as we feared. A new experiment confirms yet again the existence of correlations between distant entangled quantum particles – and this time we have...
The common vampire bat (Desmodus rotundus) actually has fewer teeth than most batsMichael & Patricia Fogden/Minden Pictures/Alamy BiteBill Schutt (Algonquin Books) Our evolutionary history bears the bite marks of our teeth. And not just on our outcrop of the mammalian divergence,...
In the village of Tshabula, villagers search for cobalt and copperPascal Maitre/Panos Pictures These stark images tell a dark tale about the mining of cobalt, one of the most prized minerals of the modern technological age. Taken near Kolwezi in...
“Feeding Frenzy” by Jorge FontesJorge Fontes A DRAMATIC chase is afoot between two seabirds above the icy waters of north-east Norway in the image below. In a sly plan to steal a fish, an Arctic skua (Stercorarius parasiticus) tails a...
The movements of organisms like worms in the soil create distinctive sound patternsVitalii Stock/Shutterstock It may not have the appeal of a dawn chorus of birds, but the noises of ants, beetle larvae and worms recorded below ground can provide...
Creative hobbies provide us with a sense of self-expression and progressBotany vision/Alamy Engaging in arts and crafts boosts your mental well-being and improves the sense that life is worthwhile. These activities have a positive effect that is as strong or...
An opioid treatment clinic in VermontJordan Silverman/Getty Early in August, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a sixth medication for reversing opioid overdoses. The product, call Zurnai, is an automatic injection of the drug nalmefene, produced by Purdue...
Exoplanets that get too close to their parent stars experience harsh conditionsNazarii_Neshcherenskyi/Shutterstock A distant Earth-sized planet is orbiting so close to its parent star that gravity is stretching it to an extreme degree, turning it egg-shaped. A handful of known...
