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1 week ago | 
nature.com | Shamini Bundell |Dan Fox
Nature Video 08 May 2025 DNA sequencing of a family from children to great-grandparents reveals more mutations than previously seen. You have full access to this article via your institution. Human de novo mutation rates from a four-generation pedigree reference The DNA of each child that is born contains entirely new mutations, not found in either of their parents.
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2 weeks ago | 
nature.com | Elizabeth Gibney |Shamini Bundell |Dan Fox
The colours we see are interpreted by our brains based on signals from different types of cells in our eyes. So what if you could activate those cells without any ‘real’ colour existing at all? Brand-new colour created by tricking human eyes with laserScientists have used laser light to activate a specific type of cone cell in the retina and create the perception of a colour that falls way outside the spectrum of what humans can normally see.
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Dec 31, 2024 | 
nature.com | Dan Fox |Elizabeth Gibney
Precise timekeeping helps us in our daily lives: from pinpointing your precise location with GPS to synchronising financial deals to the millisecond, and physicists are also seeking ever more accurate measurements of time, as super-accurate clocks could help make planet-sized telescopes, hunt for dark matter or even monitor the shape of the planet from the air.
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Dec 18, 2024 | 
nature.com | Dan Fox
In this year's festive game, our contestants must stretch their memories to correctly answer questions about some of the year's biggest science stories. Play along and see if you can beat them, as we go back through how to detect AI-generated text, what happened to some mouse offspring and which direction turtles swim when hatching. Subscribe to Nature Briefing, an unmissable daily round-up of science news, opinion and analysis free in your inbox every weekday. Never miss an episode.
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Dec 4, 2024 | 
nature.com | Dan Fox
Meet RAVEN, the Robotic Avian-inspired Vehicle for multiple ENvironments. Researchers took inspiration from avian anatomy to design this drone, equipped with lightweight, bird-like legs that allow it to walk, hop and even leap into the air and take flight.
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Nov 27, 2024 | 
nature.com | Dan Fox |Elizabeth Gibney
How do you solve a problem like dark matter? Or explain why the Universe is built the way it is? For physicists, there’s been one answer that has worked for nearly one hundred years - take two particles and smash them together as hard as you can. But the current generation of massive colliders like the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, haven’t produced the flood of new particles some scientists were expecting.
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Oct 23, 2024 | 
nature.com | Dan Fox
An isolated plateau in the highlands of southeastern Uzbekistan in Central Asia, looks like an expanse of rolling hills. But look closer and a shard of pottery or the stony remnant of an ancient wall might hint at an archaeological secret hidden for hundreds of years. Read the paper: Large-scale medieval urbanism traced by UAV–lidar in highland Central AsiaNow a team of archaeologists have used drone-mounted LiDAR to virtually peel back the layers of sediment and vegetation.
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Aug 30, 2024 | 
nature.com | Dan Fox
Mallorca is the largest of the Balearic islands and the sixth-largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, but despite its size and location research suggests that it was among the last Mediterranean islands to be settled by humans. But exactly when people arrived on the island is a subject of much debate, with current estimates placing it at around 4,400 years ago. However, an ancient stone bridge in a flooded cave may call that timeline into question.
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Aug 14, 2024 | 
nature.com | Nick J. Howe |Dan Fox
Download the Nature Podcast 14 August 2024 In this episode:00:48 The mystery of Stonehenge’s Altar StoneStonehenge’s central stone came from Northern Scotland, more than 600 miles away from the monument, according to a new analysis of its geochemistry. It is commonly accepted that many of the rocks that make up the iconic neolithic monument came from Wales, 150 miles from the site.
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Jul 17, 2024 | 
nature.com | Dan Fox
Researchers have overcome efficiency and power issues to create what they believe to be the lightest and smallest sunlight-powered rotorocraft in the world. Micro aerial vehicles or MAVs could have a host of applications from environmental monitoring to search and rescue. But currently, these tiny flying machines have a problem — endurance. MAVs that weigh less than 10 grams are normally limited to around 10 minutes of flying time.
