The British Heart Foundation’s Reflections of Research competition showcases beautiful images captured by researchers studying heart and circulatory disease

Experiments where vampire bats were made to run on a treadmill have revealed how they extract energy from protein in their latest blood meal

This year’s average global temperature is almost certain to exceed 1.5°C above pre-industrial times – a milestone that should spur urgent action, say climate scientists

Chronic pain has increased among adults in the US since 2019, which could be due to a rise in sedentary lifestyles or reduced access to healthcare amid covid-19 restrictions

Averting an asteroid strike will need many of the same skills we must hone to tackle climate change and future pandemics

Shapes created by vortices in water often fall apart, but an odd quantum fluid made from ultracold atoms could support vortex knots that never lose their knottiness

We are living in a vaccine-hesitant moment, with conspiracy theories thriving on social media. We need to push back, says Simon Williams

Our Future Chronicles column explores an imagined history of inventions and developments yet to come. In our latest glimpse into the near future, Rowan Hooper tells how seaweed was a game changer when it came to getting carbon out of the atmosphere in the 2030s

The climate impact of flights taken by the super-rich rose sharply from 2019 to 2023, fuelling calls for a carbon tax on private aviation

In More and More and More, Jean-Baptiste Fressoz argues that tackling climate change means rethinking our history of energy consumption – and exposing the green transition as a fiction

Shortlisted for the Close-up Photographer of the Year contest, these images zoom in on animals in all their glory

Dangerous radiation reaches Mars at levels we aren't exposed to on Earth, which makes the Red Planet a particularly dangerous place to be during pregnancy

Genetic analysis of five individuals preserved as plaster casts in the ruins of Pompeii contradicts established beliefs about the people and their relationships

Four-legged robot dogs learned to perform new tricks by practising in a virtual platform that mimics real-world obstacles – a possible shortcut for training robots faster and more accurately

A stellar cast play leaders of G7 countries facing an existential crisis in Rumours, a smart film about communication, diplomatic nonsense and not coping, says Simon Ings

Our ancestors probably used a wide range of plant-based tools that have since been lost to history. Now we're finally getting a glimpse of this Botanic Age

From nuclear strikes to giant spikes, discover the systems in place to prevent a collision and test your decision-making to see if you could avoid a catastrophic impact

From just listening to reframing the situation, there are a few ways you can help someone with a negative outlook, says advice columnist David Robson

The controversies surrounding football’s video assistant referee (VAR) system highlight our troubled relationship with uncertainty – and point to potential solutions

Reaching net-zero emissions is essential for halting climate change - but even after we achieve this goal, parts of the planet will continue to warm. Delaying net zero will worsen these effects

Never underestimate what a single gopher can achieve in a day: one of the burrowing mammals helped boost soil fungi in an area blanketed by ash from the explosive eruption of Mount St Helens in Washington state

Seven major datasets used to train audio-generating AI models are three times more likely to use the words "man" or "men" than "woman" or "women", raising fears of bias

Campaigners are calling for stricter controls on rodenticides after finding that birds of prey in England are increasingly being exposed to high doses of rat poison

An analysis of crystals in lava from the 2022 eruption of Mauna Loa has revealed an unknown magma reservoir within the volcano, which could extend forecasts of eruptions from minutes to months

AI and Google Street View have created 'digital twins' of living trees in North American cities – part of a huge simulation that could help make urban tree planting and trimming decisions

An annual accounting of CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels and land use change finds no sign emissions will peak this year

DNA from bones found in a cave in Germany has been identified as from Homo sapiens, showing that our species endured frigid conditions there as they expanded across the continent

A Greek philosopher’s musings on pleasure, contained in ancient papyrus scrolls buried by Mount Vesuvius’s eruption 2000 years ago, have been rediscovered with the help of AI

3D mapping and artificial intelligence has helped decipher an ancient Herculaneum papyrus scroll which had been digitally scanned

A stone wall nearly a kilometre long found under the Baltic Sea may have been built by ancient hunters to channel deer into a confined space

Fossil evidence shows that humans have been practising cannibalism for a million years. Now, archaeologists are discovering that some of the time they did it to honour their dead

New archaeological evidence shows that ancient humans ate each other surprisingly often - sometimes for compassionate reasons. The finds give us an opportunity to reassess our views on the practice

Lake sediments reveal the ancient history of Aboriginal people’s use of fire to manage the landscape, a tradition that has benefits for biodiversity

Most people are too risk-averse when it comes to life's biggest choices. Learning how to overcome the cognitive biases at play can help you make better decisions - with no looking back

A southern mammoth skeleton found in Spain bears cut marks from stone tools and bite marks from carnivore teeth, suggesting that both hominins and felids feasted on its meat

Intact human brains 12,000 years old or more have been found in unexpected places such as shipwrecks and waterlogged graves, but it is unclear what preserved them

A settlement in the east of England burned down in a fire 3000 years ago, falling into a muddy waterway that preserved everything inside the houses including tools, fabric, cooking pots and more

Feedback is intrigued by new research into how major sports tournaments "were associated with increases in the number of babies born" nine months later - but only for supporters of the winning teams

Why childhood is so protracted has long been mysterious, now a spate of archaeological discoveries suggest an intriguing explanation

Can cultivating positive behaviours and tweaking our lifestyles lead to healthier, happier lives – even longer lives? Discover the daily choices that may make the difference in a fascinating new book

An excavation on an island in the Coral Sea shows that Indigenous Australians were producing ceramics long before the arrival of Europeans

A site in Siberia has evidence of human presence 417,000 years ago, raising the possibility that hominins could have reached North America much earlier than we thought

Around 3000 years ago, several empires and kingdoms in the Mediterranean collapsed, with a group of sea-faring warriors implicated as the culprit. But new evidence shows that many of our ideas about this turbulent time need completely rethinking

Outrunning prey over long distances is an efficient method of hunting for humans, and it was widely used until recently, according to an analysis of ethnographic accounts

Analysis of pollen in sediment cores from a large lake in Greece shows that nomadic livestock herders took over the region after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire

An experiment inspired by Homer’s description of combat in The Iliad tested the capabilities of the Dendra armour suit from Greece’s Bronze Age

Cut marks on a 4000-year-old skull suggest ancient Egyptian doctors tried to treat a man with nasopharyngeal cancer

Rock art along the Orinoco river in South America is made up of some of the largest etchings we know of and could date back 2000 years

Babies cannot tell us what they are experiencing, so it is hard to know what they are conscious of. But new research suggesting they perceive the world consciously could change how we care for them, says Claudia Passos-Ferreira

Rock art is a truly global phenomenon, with discoveries of cave paintings and etchings on every continent that ancient humans inhabited – but how many times was it invented over human history?