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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

Cell & Microbiology
Scientists show how sperm and egg come together like a key in a lock
Plants & Animals
Scientists create new overwintering sites for monarch butterflies on a warming planet
Plants & Animals
Cats associate human words with images, experiment suggests
Astronomy
Astronomers detect ancient lonely quasars with murky origins
Astronomy
Rare ultra-luminous nova spotted in the Small Magellanic Cloud
Astronomy
'Old' star could provide new insights into star evolution
Planetary Sciences
Second exoplanet detected orbiting an early G-type star
Economics & Business
Philosopher finds glitch in worldwide patent laws
Astronomy
A near-Earth microquasar emerges as a source of powerful radiation
Astronomy
Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer helps researchers determine shape of black hole corona
Condensed Matter
Physicists report emergence of ferromagnetism at onset of Kondo breakdown in moiré bilayer lattices
Ecology
Study: Smaller, more specific academic journals hold more sway over conservation policy
Quantum Physics
New benchmark helps solve the hardest quantum problems
Quantum Physics
Harnessing diamond imperfections opens a new frontier in quantum sensor development
Ecology
Environmental DNA and epidemics in wood frogs: Collaboration examines eDNA's precision in population size estimation
Biotechnology
More efficient phenotypic screening method can simultaneously test multiple drugs
Evolution
Why do we love carbs? The origins predate agriculture and maybe even our split from Neanderthals
Ecology
Pioneering robot system enables 24/7 monitoring of honeybee behavior
Cell & Microbiology
Catching prey with grappling hooks and cannons: The unusual weapons arsenal of a predatory marine bacterium
Analytical Chemistry
Visible light energy yields two-for-one deal when added to carbon dioxide recycling process

Pope gets philosophical with ISS crew in space chat

Pope Francis chatted with six astronauts at the International Space Station (ISS) on Thursday, kicking off the rare interview with a philosophical question on "man's place in the universe".

Rethinking the private sector's role in disaster relief

Natural disasters have filled the news in recent months, occurring so frequently that they seem to intimate apocalypse: wildfires, earthquakes, hurricanes. But as national and international media coverage of these events ...

Stephen Hawking's PhD thesis goes online for first time

Stephen Hawking's PhD thesis, 'Properties of expanding universes', has been made freely available to anyone, anywhere in the world after being made accessible via the University of Cambridge's Open Access repository, Apollo.

A statistical fix for the replication crisis in science

In a trial of a new drug to cure cancer, 44 percent of 50 patients achieved remission after treatment. Without the drug, only 32 percent of previous patients did the same. The new treatment sounds promising, but is it better ...

Human speech, jazz and whale song

Jazz musicians riffing with each other, humans talking to each other and pods of killer whales all have interactive conversations that are remarkably similar to each other, new research reveals.

Sweden won't prosecute Italian stem cell scientist

Swedish prosecutors have abandoned an investigation against a disgraced Italian stem cell scientist suspected of involuntary manslaughter in connection with three patients who died after windpipe transplants.

24 receive 'genius grants' from MacArthur Foundation

A director who has taken opera from the concert hall to the streets of Los Angeles and an organizer who helped put a human face on the plight of young undocumented immigrants are among this year's MacArthur fellows and recipients ...