Researchers report important new insights into evolution following a study of mitochondrial DNA from about 5 million specimens covering about 100,000 animal species. Mining "big data" insights from the world's fast-growing genetic databases and reviewing a large literature in evolutionary theory, researchers at The Rockefeller University in New York City and the Biozentrum at the University of Basel in Switzerland, published several conclusions today in the journal Human Evolution.

Thirty years after a former Nasa scientist sounded the alarm for the general public about climate change and human activity, the expert issued a fresh warning that the world is failing “miserably” to deal with the worsening dangers.

As the level of carbon dioxide in the air rises because of human activity, scientists are trying to pin down how plants are affected. There's evidence that it's changing many important plants we eat.

The gut is the largest lymphoid organ in the body. The human microbiome is composed of trillions of bacteria.

Mexico's win over Germany rocked Mexico City. But not literally.

The University of California, San Diego has discovered the world’s first known nursery for manta rays, an idyllic spot in the Gulf of Mexico where the “gentle giants” approach divers along colourful reefs that seem drawn from the imagination of Walt Disney.

Seeing how microbes snatch new genetic material from their environment could help in the fight against antibiotic resistance.

Scientists have made a breakthrough that could open the doors to a whole new way of producing nuclear fuel, and they did it using nothing but the power of the ocean – or at least the chemicals floating inside it.

Around 1,500 years ago, shortly after the collapse of the Roman Empire, a baobab tree started growing in what is now Namibia. The San people would eventually name the tree Homasi, and others would call it Grootboom, after the Afrikaans words for “big tree.” As new empires rose and fell, Homasi continued growing. As humans invented paper money, printing presses, cars, and computers, Homasi sprouted new twigs, branches, and even stems, becoming a five-trunked behemoth with a height of 32 meters and a girth to match.

Frogs trapped in amber for 99 million years give clues to lost world. The four fossils were found in Myanmar.

The discovery changes our understanding of the basic mechanism of photosynthesis and should rewrite the textbooks. It will also tailor the way we hunt for alien life and provide insights into how we could engineer more efficient crops that take advantage of longer wavelengths of light.

The specimens, the oldest known, were excavated from northern Myanmar.

In Costa Rica—and increasingly in other countries—sustainable agriculture is taking on new meaning and value due to climate change.

Scientists still believe it possible that extraterrestrial life could flourish in our own neighbourhood. This week, Nasa’s veteran Curiosity rover discovered complex organic matter that had been buried and preserved for more than 3bn years in sediments forming a lake bed. This means that if microbial life did land on Mars, it would be nourished.

For farmers, protecting fields from pests and plagues is a constant battle fought on multiple fronts. Many insects have a taste for the same plants humans do, and pathogenic microbes infect leaves, shoots and roots. Then there are the weeds that compete with crops for soil and sun.

It was to test Einstein's theory of general relativity.

Get ready for a big nova event.

City-based Institute for Plasma Research (IPR) has developed ‘wonder water’ that can kill E. coli, fungus and other microbes. What’s more, once dipped in this water, fruits and veggies like tomatoes and potatoes remain bright and fresh for a good 40 days! IPR scientists have developed the Plasma Activated Water (PAW) system at its Facilitation Centre for Industrial Plasma Technologies (FCIPT) in Gandhinagar.

A widely used pesticide could be placing frog populations in danger by diminishing their ability to reproduce properly. Not only does exposure to the chemical linuron – a potato herbicide – reduce male frog fertility, it skews the sex ratios of growing tadpoles significantly towards females. As frog populations are already under global threat of extinction, scientists are concerned that disrupting their natural reproduction could further hasten their decline.

Astronomers Seppo Mattila and Miguel Pérez-Torres usually study the natural deaths of stars, but they weren’t going to pass up the chance to investigate a stellar murder. A new paper in Science describes how they nabbed photographic evidence that a supermassive black hole in a relatively nearby galaxy tore apart and consumed part of a star in a phenomenon called a tidal disruption event (TDE), spewing jets of material in the process. Scientists have observed these cosmic crime scenes before, but this was the first time anyone managed to get such detailed images of the jets and their changing structure over time.

The melting rate of Antarctic ice has tripled in recent years. If the acceleration of ice melt were to continue, it could potentially cascade.

It’s been known for years that air travel is one of the worst things a person can do for the environment. In fact, just one round-trip flight from New York to California emits 20 percent of the greenhouse gases produced by the typical passenger vehicle over the course of an entire year. However, in even worse news for travel-lovers, a recent study found that tourism accounts for a full 8 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. This includes not only plane transit, but food production for tourists; hotel construction, maintenance and cleaning; and the manufacture and sale of souvenirs.

Two new species of predatory creatures with giant sabre teeth have been unearthed in Russia. The prehistoric animals belong to a group known as therapsids or “protomammals” that ruled the planet long before the first dinosaurs over 250 million years ago. These creatures would ultimately give rise to modern mammals, but they were largely wiped out by a massive extinction event at the end of the Permian era that made way for the age of the dinosaurs.

Record shows a trend that could mean higher storm rainfall totals.

A team of Japanese scientists led by Masahiro Kayama of Tohoku University's Frontier Research Institute for Interdisciplinary Sciences, has discovered a mineral known as moganite in a lunar meteorite found in a hot desert in northwest Africa. This is significant because moganite is a mineral that requires water to form, reinforcing the belief that water exists on the Moon.

A lot of the powers found in the comics exist in real life. They’re just a bit different.

A new prospect for cancer treatment opened up last month, when researchers for the first time successfully used tiny, nanometre-sized robots to treat cancerous tumours in mice. Researchers from Arizona State University

The multibillion-dollar Earth BioGenome Project is being called a "moonshot for biology." An international team of scientists is finalizing plans for the Earth BioGenome Project, a multibillion-dollar “moonshot for biology” that will assemble the genetic blueprint of every plant, animal and fungus known to science — some 1.5 million species in all.

Like everyone, people with type 2 diabetes and obesity suffer from depression and anxiety, but even more so. Researchers at Joslin Diabetes Center now have demonstrated a surprising potential contributor to these negative feelings - and that is the bacteria in the gut or gut microbiome, as it is known.

Rakesh Mogul, a Cal Poly Pomona professor of biological chemistry, was the lead author of an article in the journal Astrobiology that offers the first biochemical evidence explaining the reason the contamination persists.

Academics share machine-learning research freely. Taxpayers should not have to pay twice to read our findings

Scientists have produced the firmest evidence yet of so-called sterile neutrinos, mysterious particles that pass through matter without interacting with it at all. The first hints these elusive particles turned up decades ago. But after years of dedicated searches, scientists have been unable to find any other evidence for them, with many experiments contradicting those old results.

The first human corneas have been 3D printed by scientists at Newcastle University. It means the technique could be used in the future to ensure an unlimited supply of corneas. As the outermost layer of the human eye, the cornea has an important role in focusing vision.

The 20th century was a remarkably productive one for physics. First, Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity helped us view gravity not as a force but as a distortion of space. Then Max Planck, Erwin Schrödinger and Werner Heisenberg gave us quantum mechanics — and a fresh understanding of the subatomic world. In the middle of the century, two new forces were discovered deep within the atom (the strong and weak nuclear forces). Finally, in the century's last decades, we got the Standard Model of particle physics — an accounting of all the particles and forces known to exist in our universe.

Scientists have discovered what they say is “direct evidence” supporting the theory that Ice Age migrants from Asia traveled down the Pacific Coast, rather than through North America’s interior.