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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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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
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Saturday Citations: Tarantulas and their homies; how mosquitoes find you; black holes not mysterious at all
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World's second largest diamond found in Botswana
Mathematics
New research analyzes 'Finnegans Wake' for novel spacing between punctuation marks
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Saturday Citations: Citizen scientists observe fast thing; controlling rat populations; clearing nanoplastic from water

Other news

Astronomy
'Islands' of regularity discovered in the famously chaotic three-body problem
Archaeology
Advanced technology discovered under Neolithic dwelling in Denmark
Materials Science
Inspired by Spider-Man, researchers recreate web-slinging technology
Bio & Medicine
New nanotherapy targets artery inflammation in cardiovascular disease
Astronomy
Astronomers find Webb data conflict with reionization models
Environment
How personal care products affect indoor air quality
Molecular & Computational biology
Advanced model predicts gene architecture via nucleosome position
Cell & Microbiology
Claustrophobic cells slow their own growth, forming beautiful patterns of concentric circles
Astronomy
A sharper view of the Milky Way with Gaia and machine learning
Molecular & Computational biology
Benchmarking study aims to assist scientists in analyzing spatial transcriptomics data
Biochemistry
A look into 'mirror molecules' may lead to new medicines
Cell & Microbiology
Signaling pathway discovery could lead to faster, more reliable human stem cell differentiation
Condensed Matter
Theoretical study demonstrates existence of giant photocaloric effects in ferroelectric perovskites
Ecology
Landscape effects of hunter-gatherer practices reshape idea of agriculture
Social Sciences
Deleting your Facebook may increase your well-being but reduce your political knowledge
Cell & Microbiology
Targeting 'selfish' bacteria could optimize inhibitors that fight antibiotic resistance
Earth Sciences
Geologist helps track lead pollution in a Tibetan glacier, revealing global impact of human activities
Molecular & Computational biology
High-resolution structural data shows how a supercomplex links mRNA translation and decay
Earth Sciences
Study finds it could take over 40 years to flush PFAS out of groundwater
Agriculture
What yields per acre reveal about the impact of extreme weather

WTF, when will scientists learn to use fewer acronyms?

Have you heard of DNA? It stands for Do Not Abbreviate apparently. Jokes aside, it's the most widely used acronym in scientific literature in the past 70 years, appearing more than 2.4 million times.