BBC
Can indoor farming surmount agriculture’s biggest challenges?
A car park opposite the infamous New York City housing estate where rapper Jay-Z grew up seems an unlikely place ...
American farmers urge UK to accept GMO crops, US food safety standards in post-Brexit trade deal
The UK must accept US food standards as part of any future trade deal with Washington, the head of America’s ...
How widespread genetic testing could change the way we live, treat disease
More than half of Icelanders have now had their precise genetic make-up sequenced and analysed. ... The aim of such ...
Is this the Alzheimer’s blood test we’ve been looking for?
Researchers say they can accurately identify people on track to develop Alzheimer's disease before symptoms appear, which could help the ...
Are we as smart as we’ll ever be? Why we may be getting dumber.
You may not have noticed, but we are living in an intellectual golden age. Since the intelligence test was invented ...
Walking trees and swimming spiders: Why evolution on Earth could travel ‘some truly mind-boggling paths’
What creatures could develop in, say, 100 million years, given what we know about life on Earth and the principles ...
1/3 of the world’s soil is degraded. But technology can bring our farmland ‘back to life’
In Iowa they call it “black gold” – a fertile blanket covering the landlocked Midwestern state. Thousands of years of ...
HPV vaccinations could eliminate cervical cancer, researchers say
The success of the HPV vaccination offers hope of one day eradicating cervical cancer, say scientists who carried out a ...
How your personality is influenced by your physical appearance
Known as “facultative personality calibration”, this is the idea that our personalities develop in a way that best suits the ...
Savagnin Blanc: The 900-year-old grape still used in wine making today
DNA from ancient grape seeds shows the grapevine behind a local vintage has been cultivated continuously for 900 years. Ancient ...
Plant extinction occurring up to 500 times faster than naturally expected, study claims
Almost 600 plant species have been lost from the wild in the last 250 years, according to a comprehensive study ...
How biotech could help save rice, staple crop consumed by half the world daily, from climate change
For more than half the world’s population, rice is on the menu every single day. As a crop that can ...
‘Testes in overdrive’: Male efforts to improve attractiveness can damage ability to have children
Scientists have uncovered an evolutionary paradox where men damage their ability to have children during efforts to make themselves look ...
Why you may have invented your earliest childhood memories
Around four out of every 10 of us have fabricated our first memory, according to researchers. This is thought to be ...
Dream quest: Why you can’t remember your dreams—and how you can change that
For many of us, dreams are an almost intangible presence. If we’re lucky, we can only remember the most fleeting ...
‘Nature’s pest controllers’: How wasps reduce chemical pesticide use in farming
Scientists have put together a map of the UK's wasp population, showing the distribution of key species. Data recorded by ...
‘Silent crisis’? UN report warns agriculture, overfishing accelerate biodiversity declines
The world's most comprehensive, and damning, report on the state of nature [was released May 6] in Paris. The UN's ...
Soil erosion accelerates climate change, impacting 3.2 billion people, UN report claims
There's three times more carbon in the soil than in the atmosphere – but that carbon's being released by deforestation ...
Stonehenge mystery solved! DNA analysis tells us where builders came from
The ancestors of the people who built Stonehenge travelled west across the Mediterranean before reaching Britain, a study has shown ...
Taking cancers apart ‘piece-by-piece’ in search for vulnerabilities that could be attacked with precision medicine
Scientists have taken cancer apart piece-by-piece to reveal its weaknesses, and come up with new ideas for treatment. A team ...
Birth control pill for men: Why is it taking so long?
A birth control pill for men has passed initial human safety tests, experts at a leading medical conference have heard ...
Do our brains hamper our response to climate change’s growing threat?
In early phases of human existence we faced an onslaught of daily challenges to our survival and ability to reproduce ...
Why setting testosterone levels for female athletes risks setting ‘far reaching’ ‘unscientific precedent’
New rules to reduce naturally high testosterone levels in female athletes have been branded "unscientific". [In 2018], athletics chiefs ruled ...
Relapse risk could be predicted by cancer’s ‘internal wiring’
The "internal wiring" of breast cancer can predict which women are more likely to survive or relapse, say researchers. The ...
Animal cells grown on grass could yield next version of lab-grown meat
Scientists at the University of Bath have grown animal cells on blades of grass, in a step towards cultured meat ...
Glyphosate on trial: Second jury says Bayer’s Roundup weed killer carcinogenic
A US jury has found that one of the world's most widely-used weedkillers was a "substantial factor" in causing a ...
Gene-edited disease-resistant animals could reduce poverty in Africa’s most vulnerable communities
A researcher in Edinburgh is leading efforts to develop gene-edited farm animals for poor farmers in Africa. Prof Appolinaire Djikeng ...
Global average income has tripled in 50 years, driving rapid increase in meat consumption
You may have heard an increasing number of people vow to reduce their meat eating lately - or cut it ...
