Emily Smith

A new strategy in the fight against HIV?Sebastian Kaulitzki/Getty By Clare WilsonWhat have researchers achieved? The claim is they have eliminated HIV from living animals for the first time, by cutting it out of its hiding places in the body – in other words, that they have cured the animals. How did they do it?…

Environment 2 July 2019 The Netherlands, like much of Europe, experience a heatwave last weekLEVIN DEN BOER/AFP/Getty By Adam VaughanClimate change made last week’s deadly heatwave in Europe at least five times more likely, according to a rapid analysis. The team of European researchers who conducted the work also found humanity’s warming of the planet…

Space 2 July 2019 Strange stars suggest something unusual is out theresololos/Getty By Leah CraneThese may be the weirdest stars we’ve ever seen. A pair of stars about 360 light years away experienced 28 dips in their light over the course of 87 days, measurements that would normally indicate an orbiting system of planets –…

Technology 2 July 2019 Young children find it hard to understand that a poodle is also a dogJeff Morgan 09/Alamy Stock Photo By Donna LuTeaching artificial intelligence to think like children may make them better learners. Kanishk Gandhi and Brenden Lake at New York University found that a common assumption children make while learning, called…

Environment 1 July 2019 The amount of Antarctic sea ice is falling fastStephen Alvarez/Getty By Adam VaughanDecades of expanding sea ice in Antarctica have been wiped out by three years of sudden and dramatic declines, leaving scientist puzzled as to why the region has flipped so abruptly. A new satellite analysis reveals that between 2014…

Environment 1 July 2019 Mexico has been hit by an unseasonal hailstormULISES RUIZ/AFP/Getty Images By Michael Le PageA hailstorm in Guadalajara on 30 June left some parts of the Mexican city covered in up to 2 metres of hail pellets, nearly burying cars. No injuries were reported but two people were said to be showing…

Environment | Analysis 1 July 2019 New power plants with have a disastrous impactDoin Oakenhelm / Alamy By Michael Le PageAs the world grows dangerously warm due to carbon dioxide emissions, the last thing we want to do is keep building fossil fuel power plants that make the problem worse. But that’s exactly what we…

Space 1 July 2019 Strange, but probably not alien technologyESO/M. Kornmesser By Leah CraneThe interstellar asteroid ‘Oumuamua is almost definitely not an alien spaceship. A review of all the data we have on the strange object, which came hurtling through our solar system in 2017, has concluded that everything about it can be explained by…

Technology 1 July 2019 Hocus Focus Studio/GettyBy Adam Vaughan Anti-vaccination views can spread on YouTube, but a new analysis suggests the site has begun to get a handle on its vaccine disinformation problem. Twelve years ago a study found 42 per cent of more than 150 videos on YouTube were negative towards vaccination. By comparison,…

Startling revelations of covert consciousness in 1 in 10 people in vegetative states makes their care more important than ever Health | Leader 26 June 2019 A pill that unexpectedly brought Louis Viljoen out of a long coma is being tested to see if it could help othersYOU magazine/Gallo Images/Getty THE faces of five people…