We all love a happy ending. Romanno/Shutterstock All’s well that ends well, wrote William Shakespeare in 1623. The words may still seem to ring true today, but turns out they don’t. We have just busted the old myth in a recent brain imaging experiment, published in the Journal of Neuroscience.Continue Reading
Shutterstock Whisky is big business in Scotland. In 2019, the golden liquid accounted for 75% of the nation’s food and drink exports, with a value of almost £5 billion to the Scottish economy. Iconic bottles have sold at auction for over £1 million. But if you are the lucky ownerContinue Reading
Denys Niezhientsev/Shutterstock Wouldn’t it be great if chocolate were good for you? It’s no wonder many news outlets leap on any scrap of research that appears to show potential benefits to eating the tasty treat. But the history of such coverage provides a cautionary tale about why we should beContinue Reading
2shrip/Shutterstock Why is the reported number of COVID-19 cases rising across Europe now? Many countries ended their full lockdowns at the start of the summer, but it wasn’t until the autumn that most places began to see a significant increase in the spread of the virus again. The re-opening ofContinue Reading
Two _Cimoliopterus_ pterosaurs, with 5m wing spans. Mark Witton/University of Reading, Author provided With a wingspan of 12m–15m, Quetzalcoatlus was one of the largest flying animals that ever lived. Indeed, it seems astonishing that such monsters could fly at all. Yet over a period of more than 150 million years,Continue Reading
We’ve known for some time that people from ethnic minorities in the UK are several times more likely to be admitted to hospital or die from COVID-19. A new report authored by Baroness Doreen Laurence and commissioned by the Labour Party has found that the disease has thrived among minorityContinue Reading
NASA JSC The Moon was for a long time considered to be bone dry, with analyses of returned lunar samples from the Apollo missions showing only trace amounts of water. These traces were in fact believed to be due to contamination on Earth. But over the past two decades, re-analysesContinue Reading
As you drive down the road leading to Jodrell Bank Observatory, a sign asks visitors to turn off their mobile phones, stating that the Lovell telescope is so powerful it could detect a phone signal on Mars. Radio telescopes are designed to be incredibly sensitive. To quote the legendary astronomerContinue Reading
giuseppelombardo/Shutterstock After a fairly relaxed summer, more and more places are bringing back tighter restrictions in response to rising COVID-19 cases, with some even returning to full or near-full lockdowns. We all know that social distancing makes sense: the fewer people we meet (and the further away from them weContinue Reading
Artist's conception of the Milky Way galaxy, which should contain dark matter haloes. Nick Risinger/NASA The search for dark matter – an unknown and invisible substance thought to make up the vast majority of matter in the universe – is at a crossroads. Although it was proposed nearly 70 yearsContinue Reading
