Science X Dialog

Evolution explains how all living beings, including us, came to be. It would be easy to assume evolution works by continuously adding features to organisms, constantly increasing their complexity. Some fish evolved legs and ...

Apart from mammals and birds, most animals develop as eggs exposed to the vagaries of the outside world. This development is energetically "costly." Going from a tiny egg to a fully functioning organism can deplete up to ...

In a hot summer Sunday braai or shisa nyama (South African barbecue), if you don't finish your favorite beverage quickly, the ice cubes will melt and the drink will get warm—undoubtedly spoiling your braai/shisa nyama. ...

US$2.4 million. $1.5 million. $2.28 million. These are the amounts of money the health system where I work, teach and receive health care spent purchasing a PET scanner, a CT scanner and a three-month supply of pembrolizumab, ...

Recently, my team reported unprecedented evidence of a continental connection between the ancient landmasses Laurentia (North America) and Iberia (the northern margin of Gondwana) in the Late Pennsylvanian period (307-299 ...

In 2019, there were 44 million fewer breeding birds in the UK than there were in the 1970s. There are thought to be fewer than one million hedgehogs, compared to 35 million in the 1950s. Two-thirds of British butterflies ...

Poor quality medicine is one of the obstacles to improving health in developing countries. One in 10 medicines may not meet acceptable standards, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).

Despite billions of dollars spent and decades of research, computation in the human brain remains largely a mystery. Meanwhile, we have made great strides in the development of artificial neural networks, which are designed ...

This year, we celebrate the 60th birthday of the laser. Its inventor, Theodore Maiman, once famously called it "a solution looking for problems," a judgment that has been soundly contradicted over the decades, as demonstrated ...

The aye-aye is one of nature's most fascinatingly bizarre creatures. Native to Madagascar, this lemur is the largest nocturnal primate in the world and has unique features that set it apart. It has bat‐like ears that allow ...

A new discovery regarding the human intestinal mesentery may radically change the fundamentals of anatomy and embryology and related surgical approaches.

The asteroid belt is the ring-shaped disc consisting of irregular small bodies called asteroids located between Mars and Jupiter. I have studied the origins of the asteroid belt in the the solar system and showed how the ...