In 2022, countries pledged to halt biodiversity loss by protecting 30 per cent of the planet by 2030, but progress has been too slow thus far

Computer simulations of how influenza A moves through human mucus found it is ideally configured to slide through the sticky stuff on its way to infecting cells

Antibiotics can reduce diversity in the gut microbiome, raising the risk of infections that cause diarrhoea - and the effects may last years

Simulations suggest that when a quantum battery shares a quantum state with the device it is powering, the device can gain more charge than was stored in the battery to begin with

A fossil of a tadpole from Argentina is 161 million years old - and isn't that different from some modern species

A massive undertaking to map cancer tumours is providing new insights into how the disease forms, evolves and develops resistance to treatments

The US Census Bureau processes data before publishing it in order to keep personal information private – but a new approach could maintain the same privacy while improving accuracy

The Renaissance artist Michelangelo had carried out human dissections, which may have led him to include women with breast cancer in some of his pieces

An off-the-shelf millimetre wave sensor can pick out the tiny vibrations made by a smartphone's speaker, enabling an AI model to transcribe the conversation, even at a distance in a noisy room

Radiocarbon dating and DNA analysis have revealed that a complete skeleton found in a 2nd-century cemetery is made up of bones from many people spanning thousands of years – but we don’t know who assembled it or why

People conceived during the UK's 1940s and 50s sugar rationing have a lower risk of type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure than those conceived after rationing ended

In support of their AI ambitions, tech companies are rapidly expanding US data centres, and this growth is on track to significantly increase US gas demand by 2030

Light can be directed and steered around bends using a method similar to the way clouds scatter photons, which could lead to advances in medical imaging, cooling systems and even nuclear reactors

Just under 5 per cent of the Wikipedia pages in English that have been published since ChatGPT's release seem to include AI-written content

Alan Turing's theories about computation seem to have a startling consequence, placing hard limits on how fast or slow any physical process in the universe can grow

A bird flu virus that has been circulating in dairy cattle for months has now been found in a pig in the US for the first time, raising the risk of the virus evolving to become more dangerous to people

Soil is full of an uncountable number of viruses, and scientists are only beginning to understand just how substantial their role in the carbon cycle may be

Although the COP16 summit in Colombia ended with some important agreements, countries still aren’t moving fast enough to stem biodiversity loss

A surprising reversal of our usual understanding of the second law of thermodynamics shows that it may be possible for heat to move in the “wrong” direction, flowing from a cold area to a warm one

Zinc nanoparticles, a common sunscreen ingredient, can make plants more resilient to climate change – in a surprising way

Fibres in wet wipes and clothes often make their way into soil - and natural versions could be more damaging than synthetic ones

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

Experts predict that the number of cancer cases around the world will skyrocket, resulting in millions more fatalities by 2050

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

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

When it comes to the survival of animals living in the wild, the characteristics of the group can matter as much as the traits of the individual, according to a study in marmots

Blood tests have shown that about 7 per cent of workers on dairy farms that had H5N1 outbreaks had antibodies against the disease

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

Allowing for moves that create quantum superpositions makes a quantum version of a Rubik’s cube incredibly complex, but not impossible to solve

An analysis of thousands of cognitive tests carried out by chimpanzees finds that the number of spectators influenced their performance in different ways depending on the difficulty of the task

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

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

Experiments show that illuminating the underside of a decoy seal reduces attacks by great white sharks, revealing a possible strategy to protect surfers and swimmers

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

Most assessments of global warming use 1850-1900 as a baseline, but researchers have now established a new pre-industrial reference by using Antarctic ice cores to estimate the average temperature before 1700

Droplets of fluid have been known to hover above a hot surface, but a new experiment suggests the same can happen to tiny jets of liquid too

An AI-assisted robot can listen to spoken commands and assemble 3D objects such as chairs and tables out of reusable building blocks

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

Eurasian reed warblers don’t just get a sense of direction from Earth’s magnetic field – they can also calculate their coordinates on a mental map