One of the world’s oldest nuclear reprocessing plants – and the last remaining one in the UK – will cease operations in July this year. Since its opening in 1964, the Magnox reprocessing facility at Sellafield in northern England has received almost 55,000 tonnes of spent nuclear fuel from Magnox power stations across the country, […]

Rechargeable aqueous aluminium batteries must overcome some fundamental problems before they can hit the market, new research shows. Having emerged as a more sustainable alternative to lithium-based batteries, aqueous aluminium batteries have been shown to have a high theoretical and volumetric capacity. Moreover, aluminium’s inherent safety and non-toxicity have added to researchers’ excitement about the […]

An autonomous spacecraft exploring the far-flung regions of the universe descends through the atmosphere of a remote exoplanet. The vehicle, and the researchers who programmed it, don’t know much about this environment. With so much uncertainty, how can the spacecraft plot a trajectory that will keep it from being squashed by some randomly moving obstacle […]

Back in April 1994, the world watched a remarkable event: South Africa’s first democratic election with universal suffrage. The country whose Apartheid system had legalized racial segregation since the late 1940s went to the polls and elected a new national assembly. In turn, that assembly picked a Black president: Nelson Mandela, who, after decades in […]

Caesarean births are not linked to an increased risk of food allergy during the first year of life, according to a new study. The research, led by the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute (MCRI) and published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology: In Practice, found caesarean delivery, either with or without labour, or elective […]

Once you have depressive symptoms, it’s easy to fall into a pattern where you aggravate the disorder by ruminative thinking. One of the key issues is what is called negative metacognitions, a phrase that needs some explaining. “Meta-thoughts – or metacognitions – are the thoughts we think about the thoughts we think,” says Leif Edward Ottesen […]

Researchers at University of Limerick, Ireland have developed a new material that has the ability to capture toxic chemicals from the air. The material is capable of capturing trace amounts of benzene, a toxic pollutant, from the air and crucially use less energy than existing materials to do so, according to the researchers. The sponge-like […]

Scientists at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai saw for the first time hallmarks of concussions and other head trauma in the brains of deceased headbutting animals—muskoxen and bighorn sheep. The results published in the journal Acta Neuropathologica may contradict the commonly-held belief that ramming animals do not suffer brain injuries and support […]

What does your SAT score mean for your ability to pay off a car loan? What does your Facebook feed say about your chances of landing a mortgage? And, what does your propensity for snacking on road trips mean for your credit score? The answers: More than you think. Traditional credit scoring is based on a person’s demonstrated […]

Insulation has never been the most thrilling of topics — in fact, we usually hide it away, out of sight, out of mind. But recently, a growing body of research in neuroscience is revealing that the specialized insulation of nerve cells may play an outsized role in brain health — from understanding the nervous system’s early development […]