Many years of life left in Y chromosome

Suggestions that the Y chromosome will become extinct within a million years are greatly exaggerated.

Plant grown from 30,000 year-old seeds

The seeds of the herbaceous Silene stenophylla are by far the oldest plant tissue to have been brought back to life.

Team designs world's smallest transistor

While single-atom devices have been developed before, these had an error of about 10 nanometres in positioning of the atoms, which is large enough to affect functionality.

Metaphorically feeling: Comprehending textural metaphors activates somatosensory cortex

Researchers have found that textural metaphors—phrases such as "soft-hearted"—turn on a part of the brain that's important to the sense of touch. The result may help resolve a long-standing controversy over how the brain understands metaphors and may offer scientists a new way to study how different brain regions communicate.

Frog found to describe its home through song

When woo­ing fe­ma­les, a type of frog in Chi­na de­scribes its home through song—con­vey­ing the depth and en­trance size of the mud­dy bur­row with some ac­cu­ra­cy.

Using computer modelling to reconstruct words from patterns of brain activity

There is some evidence if you imagine speech it activates similar brain messages. If you can understand the relationship well enough between the brain recordings and sound, you could either synthesise the sound a person is thinking or write it out with a type of interface device.

Superstring Theory

A long-controversial but pop­u­lar the­o­ry of the uni­verse has en­a­bled a su­per­com­puter to ex­plain why space ap­pears three-di­men­sion­al.

Arabia identified as key stop in early human migrations

A­ra­bia was the first “stag­ing post” for hu­mans when they first mi­grat­ed out of their an­ces­tral home of Africa.

Mice Sing

Male house mice produce melodious songs to attract mates, not unlike many birds, according to new research.

Pigeons rival macaques in numerical ability

Understanding ab­stract con­cepts like nu­mer­i­cal rules is an abil­ity hu­mans gen­er­ally like to claim for themselves or to our clos­est ev­o­lu­tion­ary rel­a­tives. But sci­en­tists say it’s be­com­ing in­creas­ingly clear that this view underestimates the abil­i­ties of many other ani­mals. Birds in par­tic­u­lar have been found to share a number of abilities once thought un­ique to hu­mans, apes and mon­keys—including tool crea­t­ion, tool use and memory for specific events.

Monkeys pick up local “accents”

Apes and mon­keys have re­gion­al “ac­cents”—and as with peo­ple, this be­hav­iour is learnt rath­er than genetically pro­grammed.

Decision-making by great apes

Chimps, orangutans, go­ril­las and bono­bos cal­i­brate their de­ci­sions by tak­ing in­to ac­count the pos­si­ble re­wards and the role of chance.

Jumping spiders

Jumping spiders use green light to gauge the distance of their jumps.