The artificial sweetener sucralose may stoke hunger rather than abate itAntonio Guillem Fernandez/AlamyPeople report being hungrier after consuming the artificial sweetener sucralose and experience heightened brain activity in regions involved with appetite. The finding suggests that artificial sweeteners may encourage overeating instead of satisfying our sweet tooth.Artificial sweeteners have become increasingly popular worldwide as awareness around sugars health risks grows. Unlike sugar, these additives sweeten foods and drinks without adding substantial calories. But they may come with their own set of health concerns. Studies in rodents and small numbers of people have shown, for instance,

A mammoth skeleton at the State Museum for Natural History in Stuttgart, GermanyDANIEL NAUPOLD/dpa/AlamyArchaeologists excavating 400,000-year-old rock in western Ukraine have uncovered fragments of what could be the oldest human-made ivory objects ever found. These artefacts would have been too soft to use as cutting tools, but they could have been used as teaching aids, the researchers suggest.If the interpretations are correct, they add to an apparently increasing appreciation of the intelligence of pre-modern humans, says Gary Haynes at the University of Nevada.

A female bonobo at Kokolopori Bonobo Reserve in the Democratic Republic of the CongoLukas Bierhoff, Kokolopori Bonobo Research ProjectBonobos combine their calls in a complex way that forms distinct phrases, a sign that this type of syntax is more evolutionarily ancient than previously thought.Human language, often described as the hallmark of our species, is made up of many different building blocks. One core block is syntax, where meaningful units are combined into longer sequences, like words into sentences. This is made possible through compositionality, where the meaning of the whole is derived from the meaning of the parts. AdvertisementCompositionality in itself isnt unique to humans. For example, chimpanzees combine calls to warn others of snakes. But, so far, only trivial compositionality has been identified in non-human animals, whereby each unit adds independently to the meaning of the whole. For example, the phrase blonde dancer has two independent units: a blonde person who is also a dancer. Humans were thought to be unique in also having non-trivial compositionality, where the words in a combination means something different to what they mean individually. For example, the phrase bad dancer doesnt mean a bad person who also dances.The issue was that biologists didnt have the tools to assign a clear meaning to animal vocalisations, says Mlissa Berthet at the University of Zurich in Switzerland, so they couldnt be certain if a combination was trivial or non-trivial.Berthet and her colleagues spent years learning and tweaking methods from linguistics to try to find unambiguous evidence of non-trivial compositionality in our closest living relatives. This first involved spending five months following 30 adult bonobos in the Kokolopori Bonobo Reserve in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, recording almost 1000 instances when a bonobo called out. Of these utterances, roughly half were combinations where at least two different call types were paired together in quick succession.Unmissable news about our planet delivered straight to your inbox every month.Sign up to newsletterIn a new step, the researchers noted everything that was happening at the time of the call and in the minutes after. They recorded over 300 of these observations, including what the caller was doing at the time, what was happening in the environment and the behaviour of the caller and audience after the vocalisation.To reveal the meaning of each call, they used a technique from linguistics to create a cloud of utterance types, placing vocalisations that occurred in similar circumstances closer together. We kind of established this dictionary, says Berthlet. We have one vocalisation and one meaning.Once they had this semantic cloud, they could see whether the individual calls in a combination had distinct meanings, and found that the combinations were close to the units that they were made of, which would suggest compositionality. Using this approach, they identified four compositional calls, of which three were clearly non-trivial, with their meanings not directly overlapping with their constituent parts. For example, high-hoot + low-hoot combines the calls that seem to mean pay attention to me and I am excited to say pay attention to me because I am in distress, which bonobos often used to call for support when another individual was intimidating them.Almost all of the bonobos chatter was about coordinating the group, says Berthlet. Team member Martin Surbeck at Harvard University thinks this is because bonobos have a fission-fusion group dynamic, where smaller breakaway groups can do their own thing.Its the first time in any animal species that there is an unambiguous evidence for non-trivial syntax, non-trivial compositionality, and so that changes the game, says Mal Leroux at the University of Rennes in France. Its revolutionary. Its the cornerstone for the next decade of comparative linguistics, basically, and evolutionary linguistics.This finding doesnt mean that bonobos have language, though, because language is the human communication system, says Berthet. But were showing that they have a very complex communication system that shares parallels with human language.Now we have evidence that both chimps and bonobos have syntax, it is inevitable that this capacity for compositionality was inherited from our last common ancestor, says Leroux. They just showed, unambiguously, that this core building block is evolutionary ancient and at least 7 million years old, and maybe even older.Journal reference:Science DOI: 10.1126/science.adv1170 Topics:animals

A boot print on the dusty surface of the moonPublic domain sourced / access rights from CBW / AlamyFuture lunar bases could be powered by solar cells made on-site from melted moon dust.Building items on the moon, using materials that are already there, would be more practical than shipping them from Earth. When Felix Lang at the University of Potsdam in Germany heard about this idea, he instantly knew what to do. It was like, We have to make a solar cell like this, immediately, he says. AdvertisementTwo years later, Langs team has built and tested several solar cells featuring moon dust as an ingredient. The other key component is a crystal called halide perovskite, which contains elements such as lead, bromine and iodine, alongside long molecules of carbon, hydrogen and nitrogen.The team melted a synthetic version of lunar regolith the layer of loose rocks and dust that blankets the moon into moonglass, which they then layered with the crystal to complete a solar cell. They did not purify the regolith, so the moonglass was less transparent than materials in conventional solar cells. But Lang says that the teams best prototypes still reached about 12 per cent efficiency. More conventional perovskite solar cells typically reach efficiencies close to 26 per cent; Lang says computer simulations suggest his team could reach that number in the future.In general, researchers agree that perovskite solar cells will outperform the more traditional silicon-based devices, both in space and on Earth. From the lunar standpoint, using perovskite materials is also attractive because they can be kept very thin, which would reduce the weight of the material to be transported to the moon. According to the teams estimates, a solar cell with an area of 400 square metres would require only about a kilogram of perovskite. This is an impressive claim, says Ian Crawford at Birkbeck, University of London.Voyage across the galaxy and beyond with our space newsletter every month.Sign up to newsletterNot having to purify the regolith is similarly important, as it means that no special reactors would be necessary. In fact, Lang says that a large curved mirror and sunlight could create a beam of light warm enough to make moonglass. One of his colleagues already tested this technique on the roof of their university and saw some signs of regolith melting, he says.Nicholas Bennett at the University of Technology Sydney says that, while past studies tried to process lunar regolith into transparent glass, this is the first time that a solar cell has been shown to work instead with the less finicky moonglass. The challenge now, he says, is to make lots of moonglass outside the lab. If successful, such melting technology could help create other items a lunar base may need, like tiles, says Crawford.Michael Duke at the Lunar and Planetary Institute says that manufacturing moonglass-based solar cells will require many technological advancements, from excavating regolith to connecting individual cells into arrays. Still, if a solar cell factory were ever established on the moon, it could have positive knock-on effects. In this future, space-based systems like satellites could use moon-made solar cells instead of those created on Earth, because launching payloads from the moon requires less energy, he says.Lang and his colleagues are now working on increasing their solar cells efficiency. For instance, they are working out whether they can improve the quality of their moonglass by using magnets to pick out iron from the regolith before melting it.Ultimately, they want to expand the process to other dusty denizens of space. We are already thinking, Can we make this work with Mars regolith? Lang says.Journal referenceDevice DOI: 10.1016/j.device.2025.100747Topics:

Josie FordFeedback is New Scientists popular sideways look at the latest science and technology news. You can submit items you believe may amuse readers to Feedback by emailing feedback@newscientist.com Streisand strikes againSome things are sadly inevitable: death, taxes, another Coldplay album. One such inevitability, long since proved beyond any reasonable doubt, is that if you try to suppress an embarrassing story, you will only draw more attention to it.This phenomenon is called the Streisand Effect, after an incident in 2003 when Barbra Streisand sued to have an aerial photograph taken off the internet. The shot was part of a series documenting coastal erosion in California, but identified her cliff-top mansion. She lost, and in the process drew public attention to the photo. Having previously been downloaded six times (twice by her lawyers) it was then accessed hundreds of thousands of times.AdvertisementAnd so, with weary inevitability, we come yet again to Meta, Mark Zuckerbergs personal empire encompassing Facebook, Instagram, Threads, WhatsApp and a sizeable chunk of Hawaii. In March, Sarah Wynn-Williams Facebooks former director of public policy put out a memoir of her time at the company, which has the Gatsby-esque title Careless People. Feedback isnt going to repeat the specific allegations in it, because Meta has very high-powered libel lawyers and we dont want to be responsible for New Scientists in-house lawyers all dropping dead of heart attacks. Suffice it to say, it is a real page-turner.Meta responded by taking legal action. By leveraging a non-disclosure agreement Wynn-Williams had signed when she left the company, Meta prevented her from promoting Careless People. Any interviews you may have seen with her were conducted before Meta obtained the injunction.The result? The book has become a global bestseller, and you just read about it in the silly bit at the back of New Scientist.Offensive ParidaeFeedback recently told the story of researcher Nicolas Guguen, who has had some of his papers retracted including one about the advantages of having large breasts while hitchhiking as the result of investigations by data sleuths Nick Brown and James Heathers (15 March).So we were naturally intrigued to get an email from Brown, who came across our coverage because he has a Google alert set up for Nicolas Guguen'. We wondered if we might have got a detail wrong, or otherwise bungled the story.However, he was writing in response to another item in the same column. This related to the perennial Scunthorpe problem: the fact that completely innocent words can contain letter strings that are offensive in isolation, so the automated systems that block questionable words often catch harmless ones in their nets.Before I became a scientist I worked in IT, explains Brown. Maybe around 1999, someone came to me with a question. Her email to the Royal Bank of Scotland had bounced, and the rejection notice literally said this: Reason: Dirty Word: TITS.Readers: take a moment to recover from the shock. We too were stunned that the automated system used the phrase dirty word: we didnt realise RBSs systems were based on primary school behaviour guidance.Brown examined the message, which was entirely innocuous and contained no reference to birds of the Paridae family. Then he used a text editor to look at the email header, and there he found the dirty word.We were in France and used names from the Asterix comics for our servers, says Brown. One of the mail servers that the message had passed through was named Petitsuix. This is an innkeeper who appears in three Asterix volumes: his name is a parody of petit-suisse cheese, if you didnt get that. So, says Brown, the email header contained something like Via:Petitsuix.domain.com, thus bumping up against the Scunthorpe problem.This led Brown to wonder what might have happened if, by some infernal coincidence, his employers had been using the same anti-spam software. Would our spam filter server have replied with You said tits, and then they would have come back with No, you said tits, and so on for ever?So what happened next? I remember saying at the time, Well, clearly that bank is going to go bust, says Brown. He had to wait until 2008 and legally Feedback has to say that despite the glory of Browns pun, that didnt happen: the government bailed the bank out.Queued upSometimes, Feedback comes across a solution to a problem that is simultaneously brilliant and rock-stupid. Such a solution was brought to our attention by reporter Matthew Sparkes.Three researchers were trying to make queueing less deadly dull, so they developed a robot for people in queues to play with. As they explained, the robot is called Social Queue. It is a robotic stanchion pole with a responsive tentacle on top that interact[s] with people through three modes of interaction, Attracting, Escaping, and Friendly. Apparently, this enhanced peoples enjoyment.Feedback isnt a roboticist: not out of an utter lack of technical ability perish the thought it is just that we saw Battlestar Galactica and decided not to be complicit in the robot apocalypse. Still, this sounds like a feat of engineering.But we did wonder why anyone would go to the bother of designing a queue robot, when you could just set up a timed-entry system and eliminate the queue.Got a story for Feedback?You can send stories to Feedback by email at feedback@newscientist.com. Please include your home address. This weeks and past Feedbacks can be seen on our website.

Comment and TechnologyA cost-cutting initiative in the world of passenger aviation could see flight-deck staff reduced to just a captain, with their co-pilot replaced by AI. It may save money, but it's a risk too far, argues Paul Marks 2 April 2025 Adri VoltA dangerous idea is stalking the world of passenger aviation: that of halving, sometime in the 2030s, the number of pilots at the helm of civilian airliners and filling the vacant seats with AI a move experts say could make flying far less safe. Instead of a captain and co-pilot on the flight deck, as big jets have today, Single Pilot Operations (SPOs) will have just one pilot alongside an AI somehow designed to undertake the tough, safety-critical role of co-piloting.This, airlines argue, will address a pilot shortage that has become economically debilitating for the industry. But SPO

The Three Gorges Dam in China is a major source of hydropowerCostfoto/NurPhoto/ShutterstockChinas vast electrical grid buzzes with more renewable energy than that of any other country, but this system is also becoming more vulnerable to power shortages caused by unfavourable weather. The need to ensure a reliable power supply could push Chinas government to use more coal-fired power plants.Chinas energy system is rapidly getting cleaner, with virtually every month setting new records for wind and solar energy generation. The countrys overall greenhouse gas emissions the worlds highest are expected to soon peak and begin to decline. Wind, solar and hydropower currently make up about half of Chinas power generation capacity, and are expected to increase to almost 90 per cent by 2060, when the country has pledged to reach carbon neutrality. AdvertisementThis growing reliance on renewable energy also means the countrys power system is increasingly vulnerable to changes in the weather. Intermittent wind and sun can be supplemented by steadier hydropower, produced by huge hydroelectric dams concentrated in southern China. But what happens when a wind and solar slump coincides with a drought?Jianjian Shen at Dalian University of Technology in China and his colleagues modelled how power generation on the increasingly renewable grid would respond to these extreme weather years. They estimated how the countrys current and proposed future mix of wind, solar and hydropower would behave under the least favourable weather conditions seen in the past.They found that the future grid would be substantially more sensitive to changes in the weather than today. In 2060, an extremely unfavorable year could reduce the amount of power generation capacity used by 12 per cent relative to todays grid, leading to power shortages. In 2030, under the most extreme case, they found this would result in a power shortage of more than 400 terawatt-hours, nearly 4 per cent of total energy demand. Thats not a number that anyone can just ignore, says Li Shuo at the Asia Society Policy Institute in Washington DC.Unmissable news about our planet delivered straight to your inbox every month.Sign up to newsletterIn addition to an overall lack of power, droughts could specifically limit the amount of hydropower available to smooth out irregular wind and solar generation. This could also lead to power shortages. It is essential to equip the power grid with a proper proportion of stable power sources that are less affected by meteorological factors to avoid large-scale extensive electricity shortages, the researchers wrote in their paper.One way to help would be to move surplus electricity between provinces more efficiently. Expanding the transmission infrastructure to do so could eliminate the risk of power shortages on todays grid and cut the risk in half by 2060, the researchers found. Adding tens of millions of kilowatts of new energy storage, whether using batteries or other methods, would also mitigate against hydropower droughts, they found.The amount of additional storage China will need to add in order to achieve carbon neutrality will be an astronomical number, says Li Shuo.While these changes will be difficult, adding that much storage is feasible given the huge volume of batteries already being produced in China, says Lauri Myllyvirta at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air in Finland. He says the country is also building 190 gigawatts of pumped hydro storage, which can provide longer-term energy storage by pumping water above a dam using surplus electricity, then releasing it when more power is needed.However, to date, power shortages have mainly spurred Chinas government to build more coal-fired power plants. In 2021 and 2022, for instance, hydropower droughts and heatwaves raised power demand enough to cause severe blackouts, creating political pressure for a continued expansion of coal. In 2023, record-low hydropower generation led to record-high emissions.Chinas president Xi Jinping has said coal power would peak this year, but entrenched political support for the power source makes this a difficult prospect. If China suffers another round of those episodes, more coal-fired power plants should not be the answer, says Li Shuo. Its just hard to phase out coal; China loves coal.Journal referenceNature Water DOI: 10.1038/s44221-025-00408-9Topics:

The diabetes drug Ozempic can help people lose significant amounts of weight quicklyMarc Bruxelle/ShutterstockUsing Ozempic to lose weight, even when combined with lifestyle changes, is judged as requiring less effort and being less praiseworthy than doing so via dietary changes and exercising.Ozempic contains the drug semaglutide, which mimics the appetite-suppressing hormone GLP-1. It is widely approved for treating type 2 diabetes and is also often used for obesity, helping people lose 15 to 20 per cent of their body weight, on average.In popular

The drive to explore has taken humans to most ofthe habitable planetMarco Bottigelli/Getty ImagesThe Explorers GeneAlex Hutchinson (Mariner Books (UK, 10 April; US, on sale now))Approximately 50,000 years ago, our ancestors the first modern humans set out from their African homeland in droves. We dont know for sure what prompted this mass uprooting (sometimes known as the Great Human Expansion), but our species staggering geographic spread is proof of its success.In relatively short order, humans made it to more or less every habitable corner of the planet, writes Alex Hutchinson, a journalist,

Leader and MindFor decades, autistic women and girls have had to play "diagnostic bingo" before getting their true diagnosis. As new neuroscience offers a fresh understanding of the condition, the time for change is now 2 April 2025 Maskot/Getty ImagesIf you are having a heart attack, you had better hope you are a man. Women are 50 per cent more likely than men to be misdiagnosed when having a heart attack. The main reason? Stereotypes: we tend to think of heart attacks as a man thing.Autism, too, has long been seen as a condition predominantly affecting men. As with heart attacks, this perception is widely held by the public and often portrayed in cultural characterisations of autism. But it is also a self-propagating belief that has affected scientific research for decades. The more that autism researchers

Ilulissat Icefjord in Greenland, where the Sermeq Kujalleq glacier terminatesSean Gallup/GettyA team of scientists and engineers will head to Greenland next month to test fly drones in the Arctic, in the hope of pioneering a new low-cost surveillance system that will transform monitoring of ice sheets.Currently most data on the state of the Greenland ice sheet comes from satellite monitoring and crewed flights. Drones could provide a cheaper, more accurate solution, say researchers, unlocking near real-time monitoring of the rapidly melting feature.

The Nintendo game Super Mario Advance, a version of Super Mario Bros compatible with a more modern consoleNINTENDOGamers have especially strong nostalgia for childhood video games and game consoles that they played when they were about 10 years old at least according to a study of Nintendo Switch players.Through playing older games, people can feel connected to who they were, and how they were feeling at the time when they played them for the first time, says Nick Ballou at the University

April sees the release of a new space opera trilogy from Neal AsherAlamy Stock PhotoWhen the sun is out, its just about warm enough here in north-east London to read outside which means its time to crack out the best new science fiction and find a sheltered spot. I love the way the genre continues to tackle the biggest issues of our day, whether thats ageing or artificial intelligence. Top of my pile is Lucy Lapinskas look at how a robot might deal with being freed from human governance, but Im also looking forward to Nick Harkaways latest, set in a world where a drug can (for a huge price) stop you from ageing, but it will also make you grow very large. And Im keen to try out Sayaka Muratas strange and disturbing vision of the future, Vanishing World.Our science fiction hub is where you can read all of our round-ups, reviews and interviews with leading sci-fi authors.Vanishing World by Sayaka Murata, translated by Ginny Tapley TakemoriAn intriguing-sounding new novel from the author of the bestselling Convenience Store Woman. Amane lives in a society where children are conceived by artificial insemination and raised by parents in clean, sexless marriages. When she and her husband hear about an experimental town where residents are selected at random to be artificially inseminated en masse and children are raised collectively and anonymously, they decide to try living there.Sleeper Beach by Nick HarkawayWe loved the first Titanium Noir novel from Nick Harkaway here at New Scientist, set in a world where the megarich can take a drug that stops them from ageing, but grows them to huge titanic proportions. In this latest from Harkaway, whos fresh from continuing his father John Le Carrs legacy in Karlas Choice, he tells the story of detective and Titan Cal, who is investigating the murder of a young woman in a rundown holiday town.AdvertisementDark Diamond by Neal AsherThis is the first in a new space opera trilogy from Asher, following the story of Captain Blite, whom somebody keeps trying to kill. A mysterious black diamond, left to him by a dark AI, is keeping him alive, but each failed attempt on his life generates temporal anomalies. Blite sets out to uncover the dark diamonds true natureCity of All Seasons by Oliver Langmead and Aliya WhiteleyFor Jamie Pike, Fairharbour is a city stuck in perpetual winter. For Esther Pike, it is stuck in constant summer. In both versions, oppressive powers have taken control after a cataclysm, forcing a city that was once united to fall apart. Jamie and Esther find a way to communicate across their fractured worlds, but can they solve the mystery of what split Fairharbour?Join us in reading and discussing the best new science and science fiction booksSign up to newsletterSome Body Like Me Lucy LapinskaHighly rated by our sci-fi columnist Emily H. Wilson, this is set during humanitys final days and follows the story of Abigail, a robot built in the image of Davids late wife. The law is about to change, however, and soon Abigail will be free to go where she likes and do what she wants. There have been a number of interesting fictional takes on robot ethics and freedoms lately, and Im keen to read this robot emancipation tale.Abigail is a robot that is about to be emancipated in Lucy Lapinskas novelGetty Images/iStockphotoLove and Other Paradoxes by Catriona SilveyTime travel counts as sci-fi, for me, so I am planning to chill out with this time-travelling romance, in which student Joe is dreaming of a future where hell be a renowned writer. Meanwhile Esi (who is from the future) sets out on a time-travelling tour to witness historys greatest moments which includes Joe falling for Diana, the subject of his famous love poems. But (of course!) destiny is sent awry by Esis arrival, and she and Joe start falling for each other insteadThe Cure by Eve SmithIn this speculative thriller, an injection has been invented that delays ageing. Of course, the super-rich are spoiling things, taking an upgrade that extends human life still further. The population is skyrocketing when a dangerous side-effect of the vaccine emerges, and the planet is under threatThe Expanded Earth by Mikey PleaseThis sounds like a fun thought experiment: humanity has been reduced to the height of a handspan, making the world into a place full of peril, but also of abundance. Giles wakes in his new body on a remote coastal path and sets out on a quest to find his loved ones.Where the Axe is Buried by Ray NaylerRay Nayler is a fabulous writer I loved his previous novel, The Mountain in the Sea, and he wrote me a great comment piece for New Scientist arguing that governments should use speculative fiction to predict the future. In this terrifying-sounding latest, the president of the authoritarian Federation maintains his grip on power by downloading his mind into a succession of new bodies, while western Europe has plumped for AI-powered prime ministers rather than human governance. However, an artificial mind is malfunctioning, and disaster is looming.A Line You Have Traced by Roisin DunnettSet against the East London marshes, this story moves from 100 years in the future, when outsiders are living off-grid away from a corrupt government and a city wracked by climate change, back across three centuries, as Ess journeys into the past to save her present.The art and science of writing science fiction course: EnglandExplore the world of science fiction and learn how to craft your own captivating sci-fi tales on this immersive weekend break. Hosted by New Scientist comment and culture editor Alison Flood, along with author and former New Scientist editor Emily H. Wilson.Find out moreTopics:Science fiction

KeyGenes new potato variety (centre) has the skin of Pimpernel (left) and the flesh of Bintje (right)Courtesy of KeyGeneA new technique for creating fruit and vegetables with the skin of one variety and the flesh of another could make crops more resistant to pests and droughts.A lot of the fruit and vegetables we eat comes from grafted plants created by cutting off part of one plant and replacing it with part of another. What makes grafting useful is that even plants that are too distantly related to hybridise can be grafted together. For instance, a desirable variety of fruit plant can be grafted onto a rootstock of another type that is resistant to pests and diseases. AdvertisementVery occasionally, a shoot arises from the junction between grafted plants that is a strange mix of the two called a graft chimera with the outer layer of one plant and the insides of another. This can happen because shoots develop from three distinct layers of stem cells at their tip, one of which forms the skin of the plant. By chance, shoots from a graft junction can end up with a mix of stem cell types from the two plants.Normally, creating a certain type of grafted plant requires performing a graft for each one you want to cultivate, so making large quantities is taxing. But graft chimeras can be propagated by taking cuttings from them or simply from their tubers, which would make them more desirable.However, while researchers have occasionally deliberately created graft chimeras, it isnt easy. Many of the known graft chimeras, such as the Bizzarria citrus, are a very rare accidental byproduct of conventional grafting.Unmissable news about our planet delivered straight to your inbox every month.Sign up to newsletterNow, Jeroen Stuurman at KeyGene, a crop technology company in the Netherlands, says he has developed a reliable way to produce graft chimeras for the first time. He wont reveal details of the method, but he says he has used it to create many different graft chimeras from varieties of potatoes, tomatoes and aubergines, and between sweet and chilli peppers.For one graft-chimera potato, with the skin of a variety called Pimpernel and the flesh of another called Bintje, KeyGene has been awarded plant breeders rights the horticultural equivalent of copyright. This is a first for a graft chimera. Getting these rights shows that producing them is a potentially viable business, says Stuurman. For us, this was the signal that we can now go into the next step.The company is now planning to create graft chimeras with properties such as resistance to pests and diseases. Pest resistance is often due to hair-like structures called trichomes on the surface of plants, which may secrete repellents or sticky substances to trap insects, says Stuurman. Trichomes are very hard to transfer between plant varieties with conventional breeding or genetic engineering as they involve many genes, but his method allows existing varieties to be effectively given a skin transplant.Because potatoes are already grown from tubers rather than seeds, farmers could start growing such graft chimeras tomorrow if they chose, says Stuurman. There is no need for any change in the way things are grown.Its really interesting that they can make stable graft chimeras that have commercially relevant properties, says Charles Melnyk at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. Im not aware of this being done before, so their finding is really significant.Graft chimeras have a tendency to be unstable, meaning they can revert back to one of the original forms, but KeyGene must have overcome this to get plant breeders right, says Colin Turnbull at Imperial College London. The novelty seems to be the stability of the skin graft such that they have a marketable variety.Topics:

Roberto CignaOn a large table draped with hundreds of cables, a maze of mirrors and lenses bounces and guides a thin beam of laser light. It culminates at a silvery capsule, which holds 40,000 strontium atoms cooled to within a whisker of absolute zero. This delicate edifice is an optical clock, one of the worlds most accurate timepieces.Instruments like this arent exactly designed to be portable which makes it more than a little surprising that the operators of one such device at the German national metrology institute packed it into a trailer and sent it hurtling down a motorway. It was the start of a perilous journey: a bad jolt could disrupt the beat of its precise ticks. But it was necessary.That was because, in 2022, scientists globally agreed that we should start work on redefining the second based on our latest and greatest timekeeping technology: optical clocks. However, this meant bringing together several of the worlds best specimens for comparison.Doing so proved a huge challenge, but it will surely be worth the trouble. A new definition of the second will be profoundly consequential for nearly every other measurement that scientists use to describe nature, from speeds to masses and more. Our efforts to define it more precisely, then, will ripple out across our entire view of the world. This was the first global comparison

It may not matter how many days a week you exercise, as long as you do itHugh Bao / AlamyYou dont need to exercise every day to be healthy. Squeezing in at least 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous activity at the weekend seems to have similar health benefits as spreading it out throughout the week.This adds to existing evidence that weekend warriors, who fit their weekly physical activity into just one or two days, have a lower risk of early death than people who dont exercise and about the same risk as those who are consistently active all week. AdvertisementThe World Health Organization recommends that most adults do at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity each week, which includes brisk walking, gardening or cycling, or at least 75 minutes of vigorous activity, such as running and swimming, or a combination of both.To investigate whether it makes a difference when people exercise, Zhi-Hao Li at Southern Medical University in Guangzhou, China, and his colleagues analysed data in the UK Biobank study on the physical activity of more than 93,000 people, aged between 37 and 73. This was recorded by wrist accelerometers, worn between 2013 and 2015. Most previous studies have relied on surveys, which can be unreliable.Over eight years of follow-up, nearly 4000 of the participants died. The researchers found that among people who did at least 150 minutes of weekly physical activity but squashed it into one or two days, the risk of death from all causes was 32 per cent lower than it was for people who didnt manage this level of exercise. The risk of death from cardiovascular disease was 31 per cent lower, and from cancer was 21 per cent lower.Get the most essential health and fitness news in your inbox every Saturday.Sign up to newsletterFor people who spread their activity throughout the week, the risk of death from all causes, cardiovascular disease and cancer was 26 per cent, 24 per cent and 13 per cent lower, respectively, than it was for the less active people.This might make it seem that exercising at the weekend is better than spreading out your physical activity, but there was no statistically significant difference in the risk of death between the weekend warriors and those who were active more regularly.This study adds to what we know about the right way to be active. That is, there is no single right way, says I-Min Lee at Harvard Medical School. Whether one is regularly active, or whether one bunches activity over only one to two days a week, it is equally beneficial.All the participants lived in the UK and about 97 per cent were white, so the researchers write that additional studies that include a wider range of ethnicities are required to validate the results and make them more applicable to general populations.Journal reference:Journal of the American Heart Association DOI: 10.1161/JAHA.124.039225Topics:exercise

The only nation-wide assessment of drug use in the US is a critical tool in fighting the opioid epidemicShutterstock / Kimberly BoylesOn 1 April, the US government abruptly laid off all 17 people running the countrys only nationwide survey on substance use and mental health. For more than half a century, the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) has tracked these issues across the US, helping inform doctors, researchers and policy-makers. Its future is now uncertain, as it isnt clear who if anyone will take over the task.

NASA funding cuts are already affecting research and educational programs across the USDCStockPhotography/ShutterstockNASA has cancelled contracts and grants worth up to $420 million, following guidance from the Trump administrations Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). The cuts will impact research projects and educational programmes across the US, but NASA is being tight-lipped about confirming exactly which organisations are affected.After DOGE, an independent task force led in effect by tech billionaire Elon Musk, announced the cuts, NASA confirmed the amount but refused to specify which programmes were cancelled. Casey Dreier at The Planetary Society, a non-profit organisation based in California, compiled a list of programmes that recently lost funding using the agencys public grant database. NASA has since taken down the database and did not respond to questions about the lists accuracy. AdvertisementMany of the cuts on Dreiers list align with President Donald Trumps scepticism towards climate science and his administrations aggressive targeting of its interpretation of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programmes.Climate-related cancellations include a project at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that uses satellite sensors to map the impacts of extreme heat, air pollution and flooding on prisons. Another target was University of Oklahoma research to develop digital twin simulations that predict the effects of floods on tribal lands.But it is unclear why NASA ended support for other research, such as using bioengineered cells to examine how spaceflight affects the human body or modelling how lunar dust could contaminate future moon missions.Voyage across the galaxy and beyond with our space newsletter every month.Sign up to newsletterNASA spokesperson Bethany Stephens told New Scientist that the agency is optimising its workforce and resources in alignment with the Department of Government Efficiencys initiatives. DOGE has pushed agencies across the US government to slash funding or shut down altogether.But cancellations of ongoing grants and contracts fly in the face of the rigorous review process that selected them in the first place as the most scientifically deserving proposals, says Michael Battalio at Yale University. Politics cannot and should not define what is scientifically worth studying at the level of individual grants, says Battalio, who studies the atmospheres of Mars and Titan in preparation for future missions.The DEI-related cuts disturb me the most, says Bruce Jakosky at the University of Colorado Boulder, who was the lead scientist on NASAs MAVEN mission to Mars. Those grants are about reaching out to underrepresented groups and ensuring that people have access to training and education none of them appear to be about promoting less qualified people over more qualified people.For instance, NASA cut funding for a conference hosted by the National Society of Black Physicists, a long-standing non-profit organisation that promotes the professional well-being of African American physicists and physics students. We were told that the reason for cancelling the contract was to comply with the executive order from the president concerning DEI, says Stephen Roberson, president of the National Society of Black Physicists. We are looking to appeal this decision and receive further clarification on why our annual conference where people of all races and academiclevels present their scientific work is considered DEI.New Scientist reached out to researchers and organisations that appear to have been affected, but with the exception of the National Society of Black Physicists, most did not respond. The San Diego Air & Space Museum, which appeared on Dreiers list, said its NASA funding for educational events seems to still be intact despite NASAs database showing a change in the grant end date. NASA did not respond to a request to confirm the status of this funding.Topics:

There is a form of nothingness even more empty than the vacuum of spacePanther Media GmbH / AlamyThe following is an extract from our Lost in Space-Time newsletter. Each month, we hand over the keyboard to a physicist or mathematician to tell you about fascinating ideas from their corner of the universe. You cansign up for Lost in Space-Time here.Most of us complain about nothing from time to time. Like when you open the fridge, see the empty shelves, and sigh, Theres nothing to eat even though theres a half-eaten yogurt and some suspicious

People harvesting cowpeas in Tahoua, NigerJake Lyell/AlamyHuman urine that has been matured in the sun for at least one month appears to be both a fertiliser and an effective pesticide. The findings could be particularly helpful for combatting insect infestations in West Africa, where soil quality is typically low and traditional pesticides are expensive.Farmers taking part in a previous trial in Niger to investigate the use of urine as a fertiliser discovered that it was also having a pesticide effect, as plants treated with it had less pest damage than those that werent.

Like all medications, GLP-1 drugs such as semaglutide the active ingredient in Ozempic and Wegovy have side effectsIuliia Burmistrova/Getty ImagesThe use of weight loss treatments like Ozempic and Wegovy has skyrocketed in the Western world. But as more people turn to these treatments, which mimic the appetite-suppressing hormone GLP-1, more potential side effects are emerging, including hair loss.Evidence of this first appeared during clinical trials of Wegovy. Of the more than 2100 adult participants taking the drug, 3 per cent experienced hair loss, compared with only 1 per cent of the roughly 1200 participants taking a

Scott WilsonWe all know the story: give every chimpanzee on the planet a typewriter and wait until something monumental occurs, either the recreation of the complete works of William Shakespeare or the heat death of the universe. Last year, mathematicians concluded the chimps would never achieve the former the likelihood of one typing even the more modest bananas in its lifetime is a meagre 5 per cent. That some of our closest relatives fail this test speaks to how human culture is like nothing else in nature. Ask biologists to explain why this is, however, and things get complicated.The problem became clear this century as studies revealed that culture, far from being uniquely human, is present across the animal kingdom, from whales to ants. This has encouraged researchers to search for the key ingredient that explains why our culture and ours alone flourished.It hasnt been easy, and for a surprising reason: animal cultures are far more sophisticated than we assumed. We once thought they couldnt become more technologically advanced, yet research published a few months ago suggests they can. We also suspected that animals lacked the smarts to learn complicated behaviours from one another but last year, we discovered that even bees may be sufficiently brainy to do so. Views have changed, says Edwin van Leeuwen, an animal cognition researcher at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. We now know much more about animals than we did before.In updating our expectations of animal cultural behaviour, though, we seem to have made explaining the culture gap much harder.

Hanuman langurs have adapted their behaviour to thrive around human environmentsOndrej Prosicky / AlamyA group of monkeys in India has developed a range of ingenious techniques to acquire food peacefully from devout tourists.Revered as holy at the Dakshineswar temple complex near Kolkata, Hanuman langurs (Semnopithecus entellus) quietly grab visitors legs, tug on their clothes, hold their hands or simply stand up in front of them, often around vendors food stands. The wild primates usually continue such begging tactics until they get their particular treat of choice: sweet buns, says Dishari Dasgupta at the Indian Institute of

In March 2024, a cargo ship smashed into the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, MarylandUPI / AlamyOne year after a container ship ran into the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, Maryland, causing the structures collapse, a study has identified other major US bridges that are surprisingly vulnerable to similar catastrophic ship strikes and their collective risk is so high that such incidents may occur every few years.Modern bridges can reduce the chances of ship collisions with measures like increasing the spacing between support piers and adding

MindBy studying the brains of autistic girls, we now know the condition presents differently in them than in boys, suggesting that huge numbers of women have gone undiagnosed 31 March 2025 Daniel StolleIn China, it is known as the lonely disease. The Japanese term translates as intentionally shut. Across the world, there is a perception of autistic people as aloof, socially awkward and isolated, seeming to not only lack the kind of automatic social instinct that enables successful interaction, but also the desire to achieve it. There is also a perception that autistic people tend to be men.For decades, researchers myself included have thought of autism as a predominantly male condition. The more we studied boys and men, the clearer the picture of autism that emerged or so we thought.Today, we have come to realise that we were missing a huge piece of the puzzle all along. Not only have we been failing to recognise autism in vast numbers of women and girls preventing them from getting a diagnosis and support but we have now made the profound discovery that the female autistic brain works differently than the male one, especially when it comes to social motivations and behaviours. As a result, an entirely new picture of autism in girls is crystallising, forcing a radical rethink of everything we thought we knew.Autism is a neurodevelopmental condition, commonly diagnosed by the age of 5. Current standard diagnostic criteria refer to persistent difficulties with social communication and social interaction, as well as restricted and repetitive patterns of behaviours, activities or interests to the extent that these limit and impair everyday functioning.The World Health Organization estimates that 1 per cent of children worldwide are autistic, but

A cave orb spiderblickwinkel/AlamySpiders known for elaborate circular webs have altered their spinning style in dark spaces to create apparent tripwires for walking prey.Those that make circular webs are known as orb-weavers, and most of them trap mosquitoes, beetles and other flying insects in sticky spiral frame webs sparsely attached to outdoor structures, like tree branches. But European cave orb spiders (Meta menardi) anchor their webs to cave walls using twice as many silk strands, which appear to vibrate when tripped by unsuspecting crawlers, says Thomas Hesselberg at the University of Oxford.

An observer hiding inside a black hole can eavesdrop on quantum objects outside itvan van/ShutterstockQuantum eavesdropping is possible across a black holes event horizon, one of the most impermeable cosmic boundaries at least in one direction.Daine Danielson at the University of Chicago, Illinois, wanted to know how the structure of space-time, the fabric of our reality, influences quantum objects. This led him and his colleagues to a thought experiment where two people, Alice and Bob, end up separated by one of space-times most extreme objects.

The thigh and shin bones of Paranthropus robustusJason L. HeatonA fossilised left leg unearthed in South Africa belongs to one of the smallest adult hominins ever discovered smaller even than the so-called hobbit, Homo floresiensis.The diminutive hominin was a member of the species Paranthropus robustus. This was one of several species of Paranthropus, a group of ape-like hominins that shared the African landscape with the earliest representatives of our human genus, Homo, between about 2.7 and 1.2 million years ago. Paranthropus had heavily built skulls that housed small brains and large teeth which some species

Aspirins health-boosting potential could extend beyond easing pain and preventing heart diseaseDavid Burton / AlamyImagine if a cheap, accessible and relatively safe pill could prevent cancer in those who have never had it and stop it from returning among those in remission. The idea that aspirin is such a wonder drug is the subject of intense research, but the picture is muddled.The notion that aspirin could have anti-cancer properties dates back decades. In 1988, researchers in Australia linked the painkiller to a lower risk of colorectal, or bowel, cancer. More than 100 of these observational studies

EnvironmentThe rate at which the planet is warming has sped up since 2010, and now researchers say that China's efforts to clean up air pollution are inadvertently responsible for the majority of this extra warming 31 March 2025 A steel factory in Hebei, China, in 2015Kevin Frayer/Getty ImagesA recent surge in the rate of global warming has been largely driven by Chinas efforts to reduce air pollution, raising questions about how air quality regulations are influencing the climate and whether we fully understand the impact of removing aerosols from the atmosphere. This extra warming, which was being masked by the aerosols, accounts for 5 per cent of global temperature increase since 1850.In the early 2000s, China had extremely poor air quality as a result of rapid industrialisation, leading to a public outcry in the run-up