Have you ever looked at a shiny fish scale or the metallic flecks of colour in a peacocks majestic tail and wondered how nature could be so reflective? Researchers from the University of Bristol in England think they have the answer, with what they call a “universal explanation” for all of the shiny colours in the natural world. They have published their findings in the Journal of the Royal Society. In a pr ...

A pair of bioengineers in California are trying to create milk - but without the cow (goat, sheep, buffalo…). Perumal Gandhi and Ryan Pandya are two vegans from San Francisco who have founded a synthetic-dairy start-up business called Muufri (pronounced “Moo-free”). But the pair has not always been vegan. They miss the taste of dairy in the form of cheese and butter and ice cream, so recreating every aspect ...

A man who was paralysed from the neck down has been able to walk again after pioneering surgery from researchers in Poland and England, publishing their work in Cell Implantation. In 2010, Darek Fidyak was repeatedly stabbed  in the back with a knife, resulting in his spinal cord being completely severed apart from a thin piece of scar tissue on the right-hand side. Despite intensive physiotherapy - five ho ...

While working on an ancient burial site dating back to the 4th century in Amphipolis in Greece, archaeologists came upon a vast mosaic, spanning the whole floor of one of the rooms inside the site. The mosaic is 3m wide (10ft) and 4.5m long (15ft). It is made up of pebbles in red, yellow, blue, black, white and grey, and depicts a horse-drawn chariot driven by a man wearing a laurel wreath. Beside the chari ...

Sidewinder rattlesnakes are unusual in how they quickly travel across deserts and are able to climb steep sand dunes. Observing the creatures in motion, US scientists from Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Mellon University created a robot snake, designed to mimic the movements. However, it was found that these Snakebots - one of which was nicknamed “Elizabeth” - were only loosely based on the creatures' movements. The ...

Acute oak decline and ash dieback are just two of many diseases killing off trees in woodland areas across the UK. But there might be a cure for our wooden friends - garlic! Or more specifically, allicin, which is a compound found in garlic that is responsible for its unique and pungent scent. What makes allicin so special is that it is not only have numerous antibacterial properties, but also antifungal an ...

This year, the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine is being shared between three scientists, Professors Edvard and May-Britt Moser from Trondheim’s University of Science and Technology in Norway and Professor John O’Keefe from University College London. Their combined works have helped to explain not only how our brains recognise where we are, but also how we are about to navigate from one place to anoth ...

A mammal the size of a cat - that has long been thought to be extinct - has actually been found living and well beneath the world-famous Incan archaeological site of Machu Picchu. The Machu Picchu arboreal chinchilla rat was first discovered in 1912, inside some 400-year-old Incan pottery. However, all that remained of the rodent's existence were two sets of skeletal remains, and their location in the buria ...

Something wonderful has been discovered 27,000 light-years away in the centre of the Milky Way - iso-propyl cyanide! Okay, so it doesn’t sound very exciting, but does actually suggest that the life-bearing chemistry and building blocks of life could be widespread throughout our galaxy. This makes it more probable that there is life out there other than us on Earth. What makes this discovery so important is ...

It really is one of those controversial questions: is a religious person, in fact, more moral than an atheist? You may very well already have your opinion on that matter, but new research from Germany, the Netherlands and the US might surprise you… Religious and non-religious people are just as moral - and immoral - as each other. Previous psychological studies about morality were through laboratory observa ...