Conversation
If you’ve identified as transgender or nonbinary in Kansas, you’ve just lost your ID and driver’s license
The number of bills directly targeting and undermining the existing legal rights of transgender and nonbinary people in the U.S ...
The ‘Mind Diet’: How our diet shapes cognitive health and dementia
There’s long been evidence that what we eat can affect our risk of dementia, Alzheimer’s disease and cognitive decline as we age ...
Do microplastics pose a threat to food and farming on a global scale?
Microplastics are hindering photosynthesis, the process by which plants convert energy from the sun into the fruit and vegetables we ...
Synthetic biology may be the only way to survive and thrive on Mars and beyond
A field known as synthetic biology has become one of the most highly anticipated in science. Its outputs range from ...
Human-to-human transmission of bird fu? It’s not far fetched
Disease forecasts are like weather forecasts: We cannot predict the finer details of a particular outbreak or a particular storm, ...
Is intelligent life a ‘once in a universe’ likelihood? Recalibrating the possibility of extraterrestrial life
A popular model of evolution concludes that it was incredibly unlikely for humanity to evolve on Earth, and that extraterrestrial ...
How climate change is altering the look, taste and nutrition content of fruits and vegetables
The economic cost of food waste in Australia is staggering. It’s estimated $36.6 billion is lost to the economy every year ...
Did you follow COVID lockdown rules? Whether or not you did is partially driven by your DNA
All over the world, people suffered the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic on their wellbeing. However, the impact was not ...
Some endangered species can no longer survive in the wild. So should we alter their genes to protect them?
Around the world, populations of many beloved species are declining at increasing rates. According to one grim projection, as many as ...
Can cell-cultured breast milk provide parents with another option?
Science has made impressive gains in the art of producing animal products minus the animal. Now this emerging field of ...
EU’s Farm to Fork Green Deal could hurt South African agriculture unless production adjustments are made
The European Union – among a host of other countries – is seeking to implement urgent policy measures to combat ...
Viewpoint: CRISPR gene edited crops ‘mimic nature’ — but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be regulated
Legislators around the world are being asked to reconsider how to regulate the latest developments in gene technology, genome editing ...
CRISPR, fluorescent proteins, optogenetics: Three life-enhancing technologies inspired by nature
Watson and Crick, Schrödinger and Einstein all made theoretical breakthroughs that have changed the world’s understanding of science. Today big, game-changing ideas are less ...
Going back to your office for work may increase your productivity — and your weight. Here’s why
With millions of Americans vaccinated against COVID-19, many who have worked from home over the past year will be heading ...
Who bungled their nation’s COVID response the most? 5 world leaders in the running, and why
COVID-19 is notoriously hard to control, and political leaders are only part of the calculus when it comes to pandemic ...
Humanized pigs: How scientists bioengineered swine with human immune systems to accelerate research on viruses, vaccines, cancer and stem cell therapeutics
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration requires all new medicines to be tested in animals before use in people. Pigs make ...
Fact checking ancient Greek history: Teeth recovered from military gravesites contradict historical beliefs that no mercenaries were deployed in battles
Ancient historians loved to write about warfare and famous battles. While these millennia-old stories still feed modern imaginations – Homer’s ...
If you get a vaccine and you experience side effects, is that a sign it’s working?
If someone gets a headache or feels a bit under the weather after receiving a COVID-19 vaccine, it’s become common ...
COVID-19 variants pose new threats but our antibodies are evolving to fight them
The emergence of “variants of concern” has raised questions about our long-term immunity to the coronavirus. Will the antibodies we make ...
Viewpoint: ‘Deep structural flaws’ plague Nigeria’s food system: ‘Gene-editing and the use of genetically modified organisms need to be mobilized’
During the lockdown in Lagos, Nigeria, I joined a humanitarian team to distribute food to poor people in the urban ...
Genetics and a second Green Revolution: Gene editing essential to address increasing crop losses as warming temperatures cause a surge in insect populations
For millennia, insects and the plants they feed on have been engaged in a co-evolutionary battle: to eat or not ...
Epidemics helped shape the Americas. Blame Columbus and Europeans
The coronavirus pandemic has been compared with many previous contagions, including the great plague and the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic. However, there ...
5 ways the CDC is wrong in equivocating on airborne spread of COVID particles
Scientists have been warning for months that the coronavirus could be spread by aerosols – tiny respiratory droplets that people emit ...
Here’s how dogs really see the world
Dogs definitely see the world differently than people do, but it’s a myth that their view is just black, white ...
Why facts don’t work against vaccine deniers and other science skeptics
Bemoaning uneven individual and state compliance with public health recommendations, top U.S. COVID-19 adviser Anthony Fauci recently blamed the country’s ...
How to keep virtual reality from taking over real life
American R&B star John Legend is doing a major live show on Thursday June 25 to promote his new album, ...
Asymptomatic COVID-19 infections can still cause lung damage
Modern medicine rightly emphasises the importance of science. The focus, however, too often displaces our attention from the real point ...
How supercomputing is taking on the COVID-19 pandemic
In “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” by Douglas Adams, the haughty supercomputer Deep Thought is asked whether he can ...
