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

Some dogs and cats may be passing gut microbes to their owners that withstand last-resort antibiotics, which can be needed to fight off pneumonia from a coronavirus infection

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

The membership of the UK's Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies has so far been kept secret, but a list of names will soon be published, the UK's chief scientific adviser has said

The ongoing spread of bluetongue virus among European farm animals may have started when a cow was inseminated with infected bull semen stored from an earlier outbreak

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

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

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

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

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

As many as 86 per cent of people meet the criteria for a psychiatric diagnosis by middle age – and in many cases, a different diagnosis at some other time

Healthcare systems need to prepare for the extensive physiotherapy and mental rehabilitation that people put on ventilators for covid-19 will need as they recover

NASA has awarded $967 million to three space flight companies – Blue Origin, Dynetics and SpaceX – to build lunar landers that will be part of the Artemis programme to send humans to the moon by 2024

Australia recorded just 229 flu cases this April, compared with 18,705 last April, probably due to lockdown measures to stop the spread of the coronavirus

The Tully Monster is a famously odd 300-million-year-old fossil that looks like an alien, but a new analysis suggests it was a backboned animal like a hagfish or lamprey

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

For orangutans, scratching is contagious – but unexpectedly, the behaviour is transmitted more between individuals that do not know each other well

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

China just tested its biggest rocket yet, along with a new capsule designed to carry humans to its planned space station, the moon and beyond

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

With social media, newspapers and politicians all espousing unverified covid-19 findings, use these seven signs to tell if a study should be treated with caution

A study of brain cells in a dish adds to growing evidence that Alzheimer’s disease can be caused by herpes viruses, but antiviral treatment may help stop it

The BCG tuberculosis vaccine boosts the production of immune cells and this may explain how it protects newborns from dying of sepsis

The leading hypothesis for how the moon formed involves a collision between a Mars-sized object and Earth that would have boiled away elements like carbon, making its discovery on the moon a mystery

Of course, the first comment on the comic is this BS: Nobody gets to be a billionaire without creating something that millions, even billions, of people want and pay for. If you don’t like billionaires, then trying living your life without everything they’ve made possible for you. Reassuringly, that commenter will never be a billionaire, […]

Finally, I’ve waded through the entire backlog of grading for my genetics class, and have sent every student a personal email stating where they currently stand, what assignments are missing (I’m offering amnesty on all the homework), and what they can do to improve their grade this week — lab reports, for instance, can be […]

I grew up in the Pacific Northwest, and no one ever told me about the Pacific folding trap-door spider. I sure never saw one. But this lucky woman out walking her dog saw one on the sidewalk and — oh what a waste — ran away. Experts say the spider she spotted is a Pacific […]

You have to give a lot of credit to Tim Bray, an Amazon vice-president who quit over the company’s treatment of workers. He was making a big sacrifice to expose Amazon’s corruption. May 1st was my last day as a VP and Distinguished Engineer at Amazon Web Services, after five years and five months of […]

“Venezuela!” is the reflexive argument of the right-wingers against socialism, so it’s not surprising that a cocky gang of American thugs would decide they could just swagger in and topple the Venezuelan government — 62 stupid mercenaries against a nation of 28 million people. They were so arrogant that the head of the mercenary organization […]

Like Minneapolis, the city of Mississauga is allowing mosques to broadcast the call to prayer during Ramadan, which seems reasonable, since 12% of the population is Muslim. The only problem is that some people are objecting, for bogus reasons. An open letter attached to three petitions, two of them hosted on Change.org, calls on Mississauga […]

I’ve got one I could spare. I had a suggestion to help with her general pukiness — to provide her with a puzzle feeder to giver something to do. So I did. How did she react? She puked all over it. When I discovered that, I just left and went for a long walk around […]

Yikes. My social media are squirming with the maggoty indignation of cranks lit up by this pseudo-documentary, Plandemic, which is actually nothing but an overlong trailer that was live on YouTube and Facebook briefly, before it got shot down and banned for spreading misinformation. I’m not going to encourage anyone to watch it — I […]

Up and angry with my mayds for letting in watermen, and I know not who, anybody that they are acquainted with, into my kitchen to talk and prate with them, which I will not endure. Then out and by coach to my Lord Treasurer's, who continues still...