BBC News
Hundreds of dog breeds have disappeared over the centuries. Could — and should — we bring them back?
The World Canine Organization officially recognises around 370 different breeds, including the fashion-victim Chinese Crested, with its nude, greyish body ...
Carbon farming: Can growing interest in regenerative agriculture make a difference for climate change?
Farmlands cover half of the Earth's habitable land, and the global food system produces 21-37% of the world's greenhouse gas ...
A brief history of the revolutionary impact of psychedelic therapy
In the last 10 years, psychedelic drugs like LSD, magic mushrooms, DMT, a host of "plant medicines" – including ayahuasca, ...
6.3 billion tons of plastic: That’s how much waste we’ve generated. Fungus and bacteria might be part of the solution
Samantha Jenkins was studying a number of types of fungus in a research project for her company, when one of ...
Like almost everything with COVID, the scientific debate over the virus’s origins has become politically toxic
Scientists often disagree with each other - that is part of the scientific process... But the "lab leak v natural spillover" ...
Dogs and cats can contract and transmit COVID
Covid is common in pet cats and dogs whose owners have the disease, research suggests. Swabs were taken from 310 ...
Frustrated by flavorless fruits and vegetables? Genetic engineering is poised to change that
You might be surprised that flavour ever went out of fashion. But finding truly tasty fruit and vegetable varieties can ...
Infographic: How contagious are the various COVID variants compared with other diseases?
The cleanest way of comparing the pure biological spreading power of viruses is to look at their R0 (pronounced R-naught) ...
India and Pakistan face a deluge of COVID patients struggling with mysterious black fungus infections. What’s its origin? Are other countries threatened?
About 12,000 cases of a condition known as "black fungus" have been reported in India, mostly in patients recovering from ...
Florida Atlantic salmon? Recirculating aquaculture systems without antibodies or vaccinations poised to spur boom in in-land fish farming
In a series of indoor tanks 40 miles south west of Miami, Florida, five million fish are swimming in circles ...
Charles Darwin proposed the theory of life’s watery creation 100 years ahead of everyone else
Darwin never wrote about how life began in his books, but he did speculate about it in private. The key ...
‘Already facing extinction’: Recently discovered leaf-eating Popa langur species down to 200 monkeys
Langurs are a group of leaf-eating monkeys that are found across south east Asia. The newly described animal is known ...
Why COVID-19 won’t be our last pandemic: We’ve created a ‘perfect storm’ for wildlife disease spillover
[Researchers] have now developed a pattern-recognition system to predict which wildlife diseases pose most risk to humans. [Editor's note: Health ...
‘Paradigm-changing’: Artificial nerve cells could lead to treatments for Alzheimer’s, other brain disorders
Scientists have made artificial nerve cells, paving the way for new ways to repair the human body. The tiny "brain ...
‘Virus really has no chance’: Protein-suppressing treatment could stop common cold in its tracks
A team at Stanford University and the University of California, San Francisco, found one of the components which the viruses ...
‘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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
First human test for gene therapy targeting most common cause of blindness
A woman from Oxford has become the first person in the world to have gene therapy to try to halt ...
Are thin people just lucky to have ‘skinny’ genes?
Scientists say they have discovered the secret behind why some people are skinny while others pile on the pounds easily ...
Genetically modified chickens lay cancer-treating eggs
Researchers have genetically modified chickens that can lay eggs that contain drugs for arthritis and some cancers. The drugs are ...
Were humans superior to Neanderthals? Or just luckier?
Prof Clive Finlayson, director of the Gibraltar Museum, explains why some old assumptions about the intellectual capabilities of our evolutionary ...
Can a simple breath test detect cancer?
Researchers want to find out if signals of different cancer types can be picked up in patterns of breath molecules ...
