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A small but decade-long study on the effects of fluoride in drinking water in Bangladesh, suggesting a link between the chemical and lower cognitive abilities in kids, has raised the eyebrows of other experts. The work was by a team from the Institute of Environmental Medicine at Sweden’s highly respected Karolinska Institute; the Department of […]

Dozens of 3-toed dinosaur footprints from nearly 200 million years ago could illuminate a mysterious period in the Australia’s ancient past. The footprints were identified on a rock which was on display at Queensland’s Biloela State High School for more than a decade. The boulder has the highest concentration of dinosaur tracks ever found on […]

Climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions is directly affecting the world’s food crops through changes to rainfall, but rising atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) levels also change crop quality at the cellular level — with far-reaching consequences for human and animal health. New research published in Engineering reveals the complex trade-off tied to elevated CO2 […]

Seabird chicks that ingest even small amounts of plastic are suffering from hidden but severe health issues, including cell damage, organ failure, and cognitive decline, new research from the University of Tasmania has found. The study, published in Science Advances, analysed changes in 745 proteins found in young seabirds with and without plastics in their stomachs. […]

A galaxy sitting in the background of the Lizard constellation is emitting a narrow jet of ionised matter near the speed of light. But the radiation spectrum of the object has astronomers scratching their heads. The object in question is BL Lacertae, first discovered in 1929. It was initially thought to be a star. Further […]

A new study looking at fossilised structures inside cells hints at our mammal ancestors’ nocturnal past when they lurked in the shadows of dinosaurs. The research, published in the journal Science, involved a comparative analysis of fossilised melanosomes – organelles inside cells which dictate pigments in the eyes and skin of animals. Unlike birds and […]

Northern Territory crocodile populations have grown from 1000 to 100,000 in the fifty-four years since commercial hunting was banned — a slow-motion population explosion of teeth, powerful jaws and tails. Crocodile densities have risen from less than 1 to more than 5 reptiles per kilometre of river, and they’ve shifted their main food from fish to […]

Adelaide-based researchers have created a tiny, 3D-printed micro-lens that can peer inside blood vessels and therefore might help prevent heart attacks. “We 3D-printed this micro-lens, with a diameter of less than 0.26 mm, directly on an optical fibre in a single step,” says Jiawen Li, who leads the intravascular imaging program at the Institute of […]

In an important win for people living with Parkinson’s, a new study has finally determined the structure of a protein linked to an early-onset form of the disease. The work shows how a protein, PINK1, attaches to the surface of damaged mitochondria, a new insight which could help researchers find a drug to slow or […]

A fossil found in Spain and dating to 1.4 to 1.1 million years ago is the oldest human face ever found in Europe. The face bears features that represent the shift from our ape ancestors toward more “human” characteristics. Humans probably arrived in Europe between 1 and 2 million years ago. But the exact timing […]

Plant ecologists are having a fresh look at the impact of the varroa mite which might change the relationships between bees and local native vegetation. The introduced European honeybee, although feral, is well established across Australia. Varroa mite, a European honeybee parasite, poses a threat to the feral honeybee population on which much of our […]

Feral cats have been implicated in the deaths of reintroduced native mammals at two conservation sites in South Australia. Such predation can often mean failure for translocation programmes, say lead author, Dr Ned Ryan-Schofield of the University of Adelaide. Feral cats, house cats gone wild, kill an estimated 815 million animals each year throughout the […]

Fossils found in China’s Turpan-Hami Basin reveal a refuge, or “life oasis”, for plants and animals during the Permian extinction – the worst mass extinction in Earth’s history. The findings suggest the end-Permian extinction 252 million years ago did not affect terrestrial environments as much as marine ecosystems, challenging previous beliefs about the scale of […]

We’ve all watched water droplets dance across a car window, stopping and starting, sometimes with a rush. The droplets are building up an electrical charge, and physicists say it is 10 times greater than previously thought. The research, published in Physical Review Letters, is based on observations of what happens when water droplets get stuck […]

Ukraine’s mineral wealth has been a key factor in its negotiations with the U.S. as the two countries work out details for a ceasefire agreement in Ukraine’s war with Russia. After a rocky start to those negotiations, officials from the U.S. and Ukraine announced an agreement on March 11, 2025. The U.S. would resume support […]

Harvard University physicist Avi Loeb has responded to those who have cast doubt over his claim that metallic spherules retrieved from the seafloor near Papua New Guinea are from a meteorite of interstellar origin. Loeb has even claimed that the fragments’ unusual chemical makeup could be evidence of an alien civilisation from another stellar system. […]

Unexplained chemical reactions observed at the centre of the Milky Way galaxy could be caused by the existence of a type of dark matter not accounted for in current physics. “At the centre of our galaxy sit huge clouds of positively charged hydrogen, a mystery to scientists for decades because normally the gas is neutral,” […]

Finds from a cave dating to the Middle Palaeolithic have reshaped archaeologists’ understanding of how early modern humans and Neanderthals interacted. Several human burials have been discovered at Tinshemet Cave in central Israel. The ancient burials, belonging to both Neanderthals and Homo sapiens, date to between 130,000 and 80,000 years ago. Analysis of remains from […]

Modelling of changes in vegetation during Earth’s most severe mass extinction event at the end of the Permian period could help explain how our planet’s biomes will change under conditions of another mass extinction amid current global warming. Known as the “Great Dying”, the end-Permian mass extinction saw the disappearance of about 90% of marine […]

New research throws doubt on claims that meteorite material recovered from the Pacific Ocean in 2023 is of interstellar origin. At the time, seismic signals linked to the meteor helped Harvard scientists to locate its fragments on the sea floor. However, these new findings suggest the signals were actually just from a passing truck rumbling […]

Thousands of residents are mopping up in the wake of ex-Cyclone Alfred, which has damaged homes and cars, flooded roads and gouged out beaches. I write from Brisbane, where rain has fallen for several days. Most of it is draining to a coastline already swollen and eroded by Alfred’s swell. Flood warnings are current in […]

A few months ago, scientists determined that the Sun’s current sunspot/solar storm cycle had hit its peak and was likely to remain that way for up to a year. At the same time, NASA’s Sun-studying heliophysics program was ramping up to its own maximum, with its Parker Solar Probe making the closest approach ever to […]

Biomedical scientists are urgently developing new vaccines to prevent tuberculosis (TB), the deadliest infectious disease in the world which kills about 1.5 million people each year, mostly in East Asia, Africa, and the Western Pacific. While the disease is uncommon in Australia, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the Northern Territory and Far North […]

Radio astronomers see what the naked eye can’t. As we study the sky with telescopes that record radio signals rather than light, we end up seeing a lot of circles. The newest generation of radio telescopes – including the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) and MeerKAT, a telescope in South Africa – is revealing […]