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Just Like Humans, More Intelligent Jays Have Greater Self-Control

A study has found that Eurasian jays can pass a version of the ‘marshmallow test’ – and those with the greatest self-control also score the highest on intelligence tests.

Watching Lithium In Real Time Could Improve Performance Of EV Battery Materials

Researchers have found that the irregular movement of lithium ions in next-generation battery materials could be reducing their capacity and hindering their performance.

Study Of ‘Polluted’ White Dwarfs Finds That Stars And Planets Grow Together

A team of astronomers have found that planet formation in our young Solar System started much earlier than previously thought, with the building blocks of planets growing at the same time as their parent star.

Can Cosmic Inflation Be Ruled Out?

Astrophysicists say that cosmic inflation – a point in the Universe’s infancy when space-time expanded exponentially, and what physicists really refer to when they talk about the ‘Big Bang’ – can in principle be ruled out in an assumption-free way.

Non-Detection Of Key Signal Allows Astronomers To Determine What The First Galaxies Were – And Weren’t – Like

Researchers have been able to make some key determinations about the first galaxies to exist, in one of the first astrophysical studies of the period in the early Universe when the first stars and galaxies formed, known as the cosmic dawn.

Drought Encouraged Attila’s Huns To Attack The Roman Empire, Tree Rings Suggest

Hunnic peoples migrated westward across Eurasia, switched between farming and herding, and became violent raiders in response to severe drought in the Danube frontier provinces of the Roman empire, a new study argues.

Astronomers Use ‘Little Hurricanes’ To Weigh And Date Planets Around Young Stars

Little ‘hurricanes’ that form in the discs of gas and dust around young stars can be used to study certain aspects of planet formation, even for smaller planets which orbit their star at large distances and are out of reach for most telescopes.

Astronomers Observe Light Bending Around An Isolated White Dwarf

Astronomers have directly measured the mass of a dead star using an effect known as gravitational microlensing, first predicted by Einstein in his General Theory of Relativity, and first observed by two Cambridge astronomers 100 years ago.

Researchers Devise A New Path Toward ‘Quantum Light’

Researchers have theorised a new mechanism to generate high-energy ‘quantum light’, which could be used to investigate new properties of matter at the atomic scale.

First Wiring Map Of Insect Brain Complete

Researchers have built the first ever map showing every single neuron and how they’re wired together in the brain of the fruit fly larva.

‘Antisocial’ Damselfish Are Scaring Off Cleaner Fish Customers – And This Could Contribute To Coral Reef Breakdown

Damselfish have been discovered to disrupt ‘cleaning services’ vital to the health of reefs. And climate change may mean this is only likely to get worse.

Roadmap Sets Out New Global Strategy For Development Of More Effective Coronavirus Vaccines

Plan will accelerate a new approach to coronavirus vaccines research and development, to protect against COVID-19 variants and future pandemic threats from new coronaviruses

The Largest Penguin That Ever Lived

Fossil bones from two newly-described penguin species, one of them thought to be the largest penguin to ever live – weighing more than 150 kilograms, more than three times the size of the largest living penguins – have been unearthed in New Zealand.

New Form Of Ice Is Like A Snapshot Of Liquid Water

A collaboration between scientists at Cambridge and UCL has led to the discovery of a new form of ice that more closely resembles liquid water than any other and may hold the key to understanding this most famous of liquids.

Remarkable Squirting Mussels Captured On Film

Cambridge researchers have observed a highly unusual behaviour in the endangered freshwater mussel, Unio crassus.

Painful Fractures: Large Eggs Push Small Hens To The Breaking Point

EGGS The majority of laying hens in Denmark suffer from keel bone fractures, a new study conducted at the University of Copenhagen reveals. The fractures appear to be the result of disproportionately large eggs, which push the hen’s body to the breaking point. The researchers behind the new study call it a huge global problem for animal welfare.

Scientists Have New Tool To Estimate How Much Water Might Be Hidden Beneath A Planet’s Surface

In the search for life elsewhere in the Universe, scientists have traditionally looked for planets with liquid water at their surface. But, rather than flowing as oceans and rivers, much of a planet’s water can be locked in rocks deep within its interior.

Tiny Diamond Rotor Could Improve Protein Studies

A new way of machining microscale rotors from diamond crystal can enable ultrasensitive NMR devices for probing proteins and other materials.

Sudden Cardiac Episodes Could Be Caused By Deadly Combination

RESEARCH It has been a mystery why some people live a perfectly normal life until experiencing a potentially deadly cardiac episode. Now, researchers from University of Copenhagen present a possible explanation in a microscopic modification of a protein, which causes a mutation to turn harmful. The knowledge could help future diagnosis and drug regimens.

Giant Underwater Waves Affect The Ocean’s Ability To Store Carbon

Underwater waves deep below the ocean’s surface – some as tall as 500 metres – play an important role in how the ocean stores heat and carbon, according to new research.