While an alarming 9 per cent of insects on land are being lost each decade, the state of the world’s insects is much more nuanced than warnings of an insect apocalypse

Are shark attacks and ice cream sales linked? Do drugs work? Being able to distinguish cause and effect is crucial. Now we have the maths to do it reliably

Many people are turning to virtual therapy and mental health apps to cope with the stress of the coronavirus pandemic, but they may not be as helpful as talking face to face

We need to be very cautious about preliminary studies estimating how many people have already been infected by the coronavirus

Bamboo is a renewable material that when microwaved becomes stronger by weight than steel or concrete – which could make it ideal for constructing buildings, cars and planes

Black paint usually absorbs heat, but a new two-layer polymer paint reflects infrared light and keeps objects 16°C cooler, which could help make buildings more energy efficient

Extraterrestrial oceans are an obvious place to search for alien life, but getting there and having a look won't be easy, says NASA's Kevin Hand in his book Alien Oceans

Srinivisa Ramanujan’s ideas seemed to come from a parallel universe and mathematicians are still getting to grips with them today, say Ken Ono and Robert Schneider

A podcast called Science Diction looks at the stories behind scientific terms and phrases. Each episode is short and nicely put together, says David Silverberg

Covid-19 contact tracers are part healthcare worker, part detective and part call centre operative. But what is the job really like? New Scientist spoke to one in Ireland to find out

Half a million people taking part in the UK Biobank, which gathers genetic information for researchers to study, won't be told if they turn out to be genetically vulnerable to the coronavirus

A 3D printed grate can be used to make a smart window that blocks heat from sunlight out in the summer while letting it through in the winter, conserving energy

New images reveal threads of ultra-hot gas woven throughout the sun's corona, in the most detailed look at previously unseen parts of the atmosphere of our closest star

Lessons learned from natural disasters and the military can help guide our responses to help people's mental health during the covid-19 pandemic

The Pine Island glacier has three tipping points that could lead to the collapse of the entire West Antarctic ice sheet, potentially raising sea levels by 3 metres over centuries

Robots made of 3D-printed muscle and rat spines could help us understand conditions like motor neurone disease and the technique may eventually be used to build prosthetic devices

The UK government has set a new target of recruiting an army of 18,000 coronavirus contact tracers by the middle of May, to be in place for the launch of the NHS contact tracing app

Humans, chimpanzees, gorillas and bats have evolved to be good at metabolising alcohol, according to a study that suggests many mammals can get drunk

In TV series Devs, a tech company has built an extremely powerful quantum computer. The show is both beautiful and captivating, says Rowan Hooper

Trials of experimental coronavirus vaccines are already under way, but it’s still likely to be years before one is ready and vaccination may not even be possible

It can be difficult for doctors to assess the level of consciousness in people who have had serious brain injuries, but observing their reaction to strong odours may help

A well-preserved fossilised tail from Spinosaurus suggests this massive dinosaur may have been able to propel itself and hunt for prey in the water

Looking at how many more people are dying than usual gives an idea of the coronavirus pandemic’s true effect – and suggests a far higher death toll in many countries

A robot that uses artificial intelligence to find and remove weeds could eventually be used as an alternative to chemical insecticides

We are already seeing the pandemic's effects on mental health, and we need to act urgently to avoid a full-blown crisis, says Sam Howells  

Many studies suggest coronavirus has low transmission rates among children, but there are still risks to reopening schools that were closed due to social distancing policies

Getting your wok scorching hot and preparing your ingredients in advance is the best way to make a tasty stir-fry, says Sam Wong

The UK government has refused to say how many covid-19 contact tracers it has employed, with less than three weeks to go until its target of recruiting 18,000 of them by mid-May

Can you really be addicted to your smartphone? Daria Kuss has shown that it is only a problem for a small number of people - and she knows how to help

Hyperconsumption adds to environmental destruction that brings people into contact with animal viruses that can spark pandemics. We have to avoid the temptation to rely on it to get us out, writes Graham Lawton

Lockdown measures and pandemic-related anxiety may be making you have more vivid dreams. Evidence suggests talking about them can help

Vampire bats are social creatures that build relationships through grooming and food-sharing, but when they feel ill, they self-isolate and call out for contact far less

Slow-moving underwater currents are leading to build ups of microplastics in biologically rich areas on the sea floor

Stars that are similar to the sun in every way we can measure are mostly more active than the sun, which hints that the sun’s activity may ramp up someday, risking solar eruptions

Apollo 11, Take Your Pills, Pandemic: How to prevent an outbreak, and Icarus are all great documentaries available to stream at the moment

For years, the oldest turtle fossils we could find had fully formed shells. Now, more primitive fossils are revealing the strange tale of how turtle shells evolved

We tend to overestimate our height and underestimate our weight to fit society’s ideals, or because we think we're still the same as our younger selves

Weird blasts of radio waves from space called fast radio bursts have been baffling astronomers since they were discovered, but after finding one in our galaxy we may finally know what creates them

SpaceX’s first crewed launch is planned for 27 May and will be run from a mission control with desks set six feet apart to comply with social distancing protocols

Mark O'Connell's book Notes from an Apocalypse is an exploration of doomsday preparation from Mars colonists to fallout shelter estate agents

Martha Wells's action-packed novel Network Effect puts you inside the head of a Murderbot. It raises fascinating questions you will think about for a long time, says Sally Adee

Four coronaviruses cause around a quarter of all common colds, but each was probably deadly when it first made the leap to humans. We can learn a lot from what happened next

A fresh look at the world’s oldest religious texts suggests ancient Egyptians saw the sky as a water-filled iron container from which chunks fell to Earth as meteorites

The UK government will begin trials of its coronavirus contact-tracing app this week, but what impact it will have on slowing the spread of covid-19 is unclear

Our best mathematical theory of consciousness is sparking a rethink of one of science’s hardest problems – how simple matter gives rise to a complex mind

From vintage satellites to lunar rovers, space archaeologist Alice Gorman is teasing out a unique history of humanity from the objects we've dispatched from Earth

We’ve found a 200-metre cliff in Mars's Hellas basin, the first evidence of a river that flowed on the planet for more than 100,000 years

Brain implants have revealed that we replay conscious experiences while we sleep, with the same patterns of neurons firing during sleep as in waking life

To figure out what makes some people more vulnerable to severe cases of covid-19, we need to rethink what we know about infection

Telling Lies is a game where you sift through video calls to solve a mystery. Half the time you don't know what you should be doing, but that's part of the fun, says Jacob Aron