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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

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Plants & Animals
Mountain chickadees songs provide real-time evidence for Darwin's character displacement theory
Ecology
Eastern Pacific study highlights severe cold-water bleaching as an additional threat to deep reef ecosystems
Cell & Microbiology
Scientists discover how innate immunity envelops bacteria
Space Exploration
'Party atmosphere': Skygazers treated to another aurora show
Ecology
Hidden in the teeth: DNA study finds these 19th century lions preyed on humans and giraffes
Plants & Animals
Bat data study reveals conservation priorities in San Diego County
Earth Sciences
Machine learning could improve extreme weather warnings
Nanophysics
A quantum material could be the future of high-energy X-ray imaging and particle detection
Condensed Matter
Physicists reveal nonlinear transport induced by quantum geometry in planar altermagnets
Condensed Matter
First ever visualization shows photoexcited charges traveling across the interface of two semiconductor materials
Plants & Animals
Gazing at your dog can connect your brains, research suggests
Plants & Animals
One-third of European plant species could be in trouble due to declining seed disperser populations
Materials Science
New plant-based glitter shows no harm to soil organisms
Cell & Microbiology
Oxidative stress: How protein recycling protects against cell death
Condensed Matter
Scientists use light to visualize magnetic domains in quantum materials
Biochemistry
Chemists develop chiral DNA catalysts for asymmetric catalysis
Plants & Animals
Plant stem cells: Understanding the biological mechanism of growth control
Molecular & Computational biology
Intra-molecular distances in biomolecules measured optically with Ångström precision
Optics & Photonics
Harnessing quantum principles: Phased arrays within phased arrays for smarter, greener indoor optical wireless networks
Analytical Chemistry
Study unveils cobalt(III) reaction mechanism with nitriles, opening pathways for drug development

TED group backs pandemic response effort

The big-ideas TED Conference said Thursday it was allocating prize funding this year to a project aimed at tackling pandemics like the COVID-19 outbreak and related health initiatives.

US university tracking virus' spread warns of layoffs, cuts

Johns Hopkins University, whose researchers have been at the forefront of the global response to the new coronavirus, is expecting to cut salaries and furlough and lay off employees because of multimillion-dollar losses arising ...

Innovating the peer-review research process

A team of scientists led by a Michigan State University astronomer has found that a new process of evaluating proposed scientific research projects is as effective—if not more so—than the traditional peer-review method.

How to tame 'wicked problems' like COVID-19

It is easy to buy into the narrative that COVID-19 is one of the five horsemen of the apocalypse, if you read historian Ian Morris and his analysis of the rise and fall of human social development over the past 15,000 years.

How Africa has developed its scientific research capabilities

Africa's preparedness for containing the spread of COVID-19 is determined by several factors. So far the focus has been on Africa's weak health systems. But the region's growing scientific competence in virology, genomics ...