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The extraordinary life of Alfred Nobel

The Nobel prizes may be one of the most famous and prestigious awards in the world—but who was the man behind them? As I explain in my lectures about Alfred Nobel, the inventor and entrepreneur has left a lasting legacy ...

Winning the Nobel 'an earthquake', says Ruvkun

US scientist Gary Ruvkun, who on Monday won the Nobel Prize in Medicine with fellow American Victor Ambros for their discovery of microRNA, said winning the honor was like "an earthquake".

Publisher Springer Nature makes stock market debut

Leading academic publisher Springer Nature made its stock market debut Friday, one of the few initial public offerings in Frankfurt this year despite the exchange's strong performance.

2024 Nobels offer glimmer of hope as global crises mount

Next week's Nobel Prize announcements will crown achievements that made the world a better place, a glimmer of optimism amid a spiraling Middle East conflict, war in Ukraine, famine in Sudan and a collapsing climate.

Will AI one day win a Nobel Prize?

Artificial intelligence is already disrupting industries from banking and finance to film and journalism, and scientists are investigating how AI might revolutionize their field—or even win a Nobel Prize.

Researchers unpack sign language's visual advantage

Linguists have long known that sign languages are as grammatically and logically sophisticated as spoken languages—and also make greater use of "iconicity," the property by which some words refer to things by resembling ...

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Records show that churches monitored multilingual gossip in Elizabethan London
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The 'publish or perish' mentality is fueling research paper retractions—and undermining science
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Scientists become a source of hope and information on TikTok, Instagram
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Global crises are multiplying: Here's how science can help our public decision-makers
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Saturday Citations: Football metaphors in physics; vets treat adorable baby rhino's broken leg
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'The data on extreme human aging is rotten from the inside out,' says Ig Nobel winner
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Study looks at funded partnerships between nonprofit organizations and researchers
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Saturday Citations: Permian-Triassic mystery solved; cute baby sighted; the nine-day 2023 seismic event
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Backside breathing and pigeon bombers studies win Ig Nobel prizes
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Studies on pigeon-guided missiles, swimming abilities of dead fish among Ig Nobels winners
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First publication of J.R.R. Tolkien's collected poems offers new insights into author's personality
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This year's $890,000 Balzan Prizes awarded for research on aging, restorative justice, climate crisis
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Saturday Citations: Teen seals photobomb research site; cell phones are safe; serotonin and emotional resilience
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A mural honoring scientists hung in Pfizer's NYC lobby for 60 years. Now it's up for grabs
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US disinformation researcher laments 'incredible witch hunt'
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Researchers propose framework for contextual metadata
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First Nations people are three times more likely to die on the road. Here's how to fix Australia's transport injustice
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Saturday Citations: Corn sweat! Nanoplastics! Plus: Massive objects in your area are dragging spacetime
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Claw machine games are Rio de Janeiro's new public enemy
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Best of Last Week—How humans really killed mammoths, making AI systems smarter, mitochondria fling their DNA

Other news

Political science
Democrats and Republicans agree on one thing: Censoring hate speech
Environment
Forever chemicals found in bottled and tap water from around the world
Cell & Microbiology
Protein signaling pathway provides insights into cell migration and cancer metastasis
Analytical Chemistry
New method for measuring luminescence lifetime offers versatility in scientific imaging
Plants & Animals
Higher oxytocin levels linked to reproductive success and better cooperation in house mice
Archaeology
In search of evidence of ancient human existence, researchers traverse the inhospitable Namib desert
Biochemistry
Plant fungus provides new drug target for colorectal cancer therapy
Ecology
Plankton balloon to six times their size in newly discovered mode of oceanic travel
Condensed Matter
Physicists report emergence of ferromagnetism at onset of Kondo breakdown in moiré bilayer lattices
Astronomy
'Old' star could provide new insights into star evolution
Planetary Sciences
Second exoplanet detected orbiting an early G-type star
Plants & Animals
Cats associate human words with images, experiment suggests
Ecology
Soil's secret language: Researchers decode plant-to-fungi communication
Polymers
Scientists discover fastest degrading bioplastic in seawater
Quantum Physics
Quantum scaling recipe: ARQUIN provides framework for simulating distributed quantum computing system
Earth Sciences
Calcium reduces CO₂ emissions from Arctic soils through mineral formation, study shows
Cell & Microbiology
Microbe opens the door to carbon dioxide–driven manufacturing
General Physics
China's underground lab seeks answer to deep scientific riddle
Evolution
City microbes surviving on disinfectants, research reveals
Archaeology
'Getting high' in Paleolithic hunting: Elevated positions enhance javelin accuracy but reduce atlatl efficiency

Trove of author Ray Bradbury's papers set for preservation

Ray Bradbury won over generations of readers to science fiction with "Fahrenheit 451" and other works during a writing career that spanned much of the 20th Century and produced a mountain of manuscripts, correspondence and ...

The mechanics of a parkour landing

Have you ever watched a person leaping from buildings or vaulting over railings and wondered, "How did they do that?"

Researchers map San Antonio's music scene

Innovative music research is underway at The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA). The university's music marketing coordinator and his undergraduate students are using geographic information system (GIS) technology ...

Au revoir, baguette! France goes mad for le burger

For the first time in history, hamburger sales in France have soared higher than the classic baguette jambon-beurre sandwich as French diners surrender to the American fast-food favourite.

Belgium says investigating 'significant' meat fraud

Belgium on Monday said at least three nations had received falsely labelled meat products from an abattoir in the south of the country in what it called a "significant" food fraud operation.

Gifted Colombia kids pay tribute to hero Hawking

Gifted children at the Stephen Hawking school in Colombia's capital Bogota have been paying a special tribute to the astrophysicist whose life inspired them to study science.