This brief shows how India sparked a digital payments boom and boosted financial inclusion through the introduction of its Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and outlines ways countries in the region can ramp up their own digital transformation.

This report outlines the cascading environmental, social, and economic impacts of aquatic biodiversity loss in Southeast Asia and recommends ways to develop scalable projects that tackle river pollution and support sustainable development.

Forget videos by gamers or influencers. For a real online thrill, watch the world's biggest flower emerging in a former web designer's greenhouse, says Annalee Newitz

The South American lungfish has a whopping 180 gigabases of DNA in each cell, compared with 6 gigabases in human cells

Cyanobacteria exposed to shorter days are better at surviving cold conditions, showing that even simple organisms can prepare for the arrival or summer and winter

The largest pterosaurs, ancient reptiles that were the first vertebrates to master flight, may have mostly soared while smaller ones flapped their wings, a pattern that persists in today's birds

The books, TV, games and more that New Scientist staff have enjoyed this week

What is it like to be a dog? And what can we learn from them? Mark Rowlands's take, in his book The Happiness of Dogs, is full of insights, finds Abigail Beall

Echolocating bats can more easily find and pollinate long-stemmed flowers that stand out from the surrounding foliage, which may be why this floral trait evolved

Unravelling the complex biological process that allows fish to regrow injured fins could help advance regenerative medicine in humans

A group of frogs from Madagascar have mating calls that sound like Star Trek sound effects – now their species names honour captains from the series

DNA analysis suggests Pando, a quaking aspen in Utah with thousands of stems connected by their roots, is between 16,000 and 81,000 years old

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

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

The New Horizons mission to Pluto, now zooming out of the Kuiper belt, has made a discovery that could upend what we know about where the solar system ends

There are many scary claims about excess time on digital devices for children and teenagers. Here’s a guide to the real risks - and what to do about them

Research has found the universe is remarkably similar in structure to the human brain. But does this mean the cosmos has a consciousness of its own?

With its particles in two places at once, quantum theory strains our common sense notions of how the universe should work. But one group of physicists says we can get reality back if we just redefine its foundations

Clouds can trap heat or reflect it away from Earth, making their impact on global warming extraordinarily hard to predict. Now, new ways of studying them are lifting the fog

Friends who blow hot and cold put more strain on your physical and mental health than enemies. Here's how to spot them and handle them

Physicists finally know whether black holes destroy the information contained in infalling matter. The problem is that the answer hasn’t lit the way to a new understanding of space-time

Our metabolism's response to food is highly idiosyncratic and there are hints that tailoring our diet to these personal differences can deliver health benefits

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

Nobel prizewinning theoretical physicist Peter Higgs has died aged 94. He proposed the particle that gives other particles mass – now named the Higgs boson and discovered by the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in 2012

We can’t stir ordinary solids, but one research team now claims to have stirred an extraordinary quantum “supersolid”, generating tiny vortices

Physicists have coaxed a cloud of atoms into having a temperature beyond absolute zero and placed them in a geometric structure that could produce an unknown form of matter

Research has found the universe is remarkably similar in structure to the human brain. But does this mean the cosmos has a consciousness of its own?

A subatomic particle called the muon caused waves when its experimental behaviour didn't align with a prediction based on the standard model. A new calculation might resolve the discrepancy – but some particle physicists are sceptical

Experiments in a wind tunnel have revealed why the sling action bowling technique made famous by Sri Lankan cricketer Lasith Malinga is so effective at hoodwinking whoever is batting

With its particles in two places at once, quantum theory strains our common sense notions of how the universe should work. But one group of physicists says we can get reality back if we just redefine its foundations

In 2022, physicists were excited by hints that something was wrong with our understanding of the universe - but new results have put that in doubt

Physicists finally know whether black holes destroy the information contained in infalling matter. The problem is that the answer hasn’t lit the way to a new understanding of space-time

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

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

From a sea turtle and diver swimming in harmony in Malaysia to a red-eyed tree frog in its Costa Rican rainforest home, take a peek at some of the winning entries in one of the most prestigious photography competitions

From a photograph of algae choking an Indian river to a shocking depiction of the wearing away of the UK coast, these are some of the pictures in the running for the contest

Changes in the distribution of groundwater around the planet between 1993 and 2010 were enough to make Earth's poles drift by 80 centimetres

Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela, the largest lake in South America, has been captured in detail by the European Space Agency's Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission

Strange volcanoes called kimberlites bring diamonds up from Earth's depths. Scientists have always struggled to understand why they switched off millions of years ago – but perhaps they didn't

Long feted by fossil hunters and geologists, if UNESCO recognises the extraordinary rock formation at Madygen in Kyrgyzstan, it will soon be a player on the world stage

This year could bring up to 25 named tropical storms in the Atlantic Ocean due to a shift to La Niña conditions, says the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

Smoke from wildfires burning in Canada and Mexico is already worsening air quality in the US, but some signs suggest clearer skies than last year

Sea-floor nodules raise oxygen levels in the deep ocean, suggesting they may have a valuable role in ecosystems and adding to concerns about the impact of deep-sea mining

In the western US, the average maximum growth rate of fires has more than doubled over the past two decades

Our metabolism's response to food is highly idiosyncratic and there are hints that tailoring our diet to these personal differences can deliver health benefits

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