Clumps of cells known as organoids are helping us to understand the brain, and the latest version comes equipped with realistic blood vessels to help the organoids live longer

Using a superconducting quantum computer, physicists created a large and complex version of an odd quantum material that has a repeating structure in time

The amount of rainfall in the southern Amazon basin has declined by 8 to 11 per cent since 1980, largely due to the impact of deforestation

The measles vaccine has prevented 60 million deaths since 2000. So why are so many children around the world missing out on it?

A newly discovered collection of neurons suggests the brain and heart communicate to trigger a neuroimmune response after a heart attack, which may pave the way for new therapies

Chemist Omar Yaghi invented materials called MOFs, a few grams of which have the surface area of a football field. He explains why he thinks these super-sponges will define the next century

An evolution-inspired framework for how quantum fuzziness gives rise to our classical world shows that even imperfect observers can eventually agree on an objective reality

Excavations at an opencast mine in Greece have uncovered two wooden objects more than 400,000 years old that appear to have been fashioned as tools by an unknown species of ancient human

A woman's fertility can be partly gauged by levels of a hormone that reflects how many eggs she has. Now, scientists have built a strip that changes colour according to levels of this hormone, which is present in period blood, into a menstrual pad

JWST has created a map of dark matter that is twice as good as anything we have had before, and it may help unravel some of the deepest mysteries of the universe

The way time ticks forward in our universe has long stumped physicists. Now, a new set of tools from entangled atoms to black holes promises to reveal time’s true nature

Solar geoengineering could halve the economic cost of climate change, but stopping it would cause temperatures to rebound sharply, leading to greater damage than unabated global warming

Columnist Helen Thomson investigates the neurological benefits of saunas, and how heat therapy can have anti-inflammatory effects throughout the body

Despite its small size, Mars seems to have a huge impact on the orbital cycles that govern Earth’s climate, especially those that cause ice ages

9front, by far the best operating system in the whole world, pushed out a new release, titled “GEFS SERVICE PACK 1“. Even with only a few changes, this is still, as always, a more monumental, important, and groundbreaking release than any other operating system release in history.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to sneak into the earliest parts of the boot process, swap the startup config without breaking anything, and leave without a trace. Are you ready? Let’s begin.

Encrypting the data stored locally on your hard drives is generally a good idea, specifically if you have use a laptop and take it with you a lot and thieves might get a hold of it. This issue becomes even more pressing if you carry sensitive data as a dissident or whistleblower and have to deal with law enforcement.

Last year brought a wealth of new features and fixes to Firefox on Linux. Besides numerous improvements and bug fixes, I want to highlight some major achievements: HDR video playback support, reworked rendering for fractionally scaled displays, and asynchronous rendering implementation.

A drug that kills cancer cells by puncturing them comes with an additional benefit: tests in mice suggest it reduces the growth of pain-sensing nerves around tumours

An “epigenetic” adaptation could prevent large numbers of loggerhead turtles from hatching as female due to climate change – a threat that was feared to lead to population collapse

Developing for Windows seems to be a bit of a nightmare, at least according to Microsoft, so they’re trying to make the lives of developers easier with a new tool called winapp. The winapp CLI is specifically tailored for cross-platform frameworks and developers working outside of Visual Studio or MSBuild.

So Markdown is this Lightweight Markup Language. Everyone (relative; among programmers, writers, and other “power-users”) uses it. LLMs use it. So it’s destined to eat the world. But it doesn’t mean Markdown is good.

Whether it be singing, dancing or crafting, engaging in the arts is good for our health, and we're beginning to understand how this behaviour affects our biology

Two extremely damaging crop pests have interbred to create hybrids resistant to more than one pesticide that could cause serious problems in many countries

The company’s mega-constellation is having to perform a huge number of manoeuvres to prevent a collision in Earth orbit

Your chronological age can’t always tell you the state of your health, which is why biological clocks have been developed to show our risk of developing diseases or dying – but they’re not all they are cracked up to be, says columnist Graham Lawton

Many species of fungus across the world produce psilocybin, a chemical with psychedelic effects in humans, but its evolutionary purpose may be to deter mushroom-munching insects

ReactOS is celebrating its 30th birthday. Happy Birthday ReactOS! Today marks 30 years since the first commit to the ReactOS source tree. It’s been such a long journey that many of our contributors today, including myself, were not alive during this event.

A 5500-year-old genome recovered from human skeletal remains in Colombia may give insights into the early evolution of syphilis and its relatives

If you have any interest in SGI’s IRIX or used IRIX back when it was still current, you’re undoubtedly aware of Nekoware, a collection of freeware for IRIX, maintained and kept up-to-date as much as possible.

A distinct set of microbes has been identified in people with obesity, which might help spot and treat the condition early – but whether it is a cause or effect of the condition isn’t known

Long thought to have walked bipedally, like us, Australia’s extinct giant kangaroos have features that indicate they could also have bounced

In January 1976, MOS Technologies presented a demonstration computer for their recently developed 6502 processor. MOS, which was acquired by Commodore later that year, needed to show the public what their low-cost processor was able to.

A trial will finally reveal whether limiting the time teens spend on social media really does affect their mental health

Donated placentas can be processed into thin, sterilised sheets that are packed with natural healing substances and reduce scarring when applied to wounds

A striking shot of biting flies on the head of a crocodile is among the winning entries in the British Ecological Society’s annual Capturing Ecology photography competition

Women using frozen embryos as part of their IVF treatment can either choose to use a medicated cycle or their natural one to prepare their uterus for a pregnancy. Now, scientists have found that the latter option seems to carry fewer risks

Howard Oakley answers a very interesting question – is it possible to slim macOS down by turning off unneeded services and similar tricks? The answer is obviously no, you cannot. Classic Mac OS was more modular, with optional installs that the user could pick and choose, as shown above in Mac OS 9.1.

Photographer Frédéric Noy's shots give an insight into life around the rainforests of Udzungwa Mountains National Park – and efforts to protect it

Imposing order on the world is seductive, but it flattens out the diversity and rich messiness of human life. Oddly, playing by the rules may help us fight back, argues C. Thi Nguyen in The Score

Almost 80 years ago, sociologists identified a new personality type that is particularly sensitive to loneliness. It's even more relevant today, says Annalee Newitz

We thought we could address big social problems by steering individual behaviour. But "nudging" people doesn't work, say behavioural scientists Nick Chater and George Loewenstein

The books, TV, games and more that New Scientist staff have enjoyed this week

Feedback has seen all the fuss about the finale of Stranger Things, but would like to point out that if we're going to dissect the plot, we have bigger things to worry about

Peter F. Hamilton’s new book A Hole in the Sky is set on a troubled ark ship hundreds of years into its voyage, with fantastic plot twists and turns. I'm a big Hamilton fan, but one aspect of the novel proved alienating for me, says Emily H.

Time it right each month, and you can spot two fleeting tricks of light on the lunar surface. Abigail Beall is planning ahead

From smartphones to net zero, there has been no shortage of innovative ideas in the past 25 years, which is why we have taken a look back to choose the best

Extraordinary fossils of 518-million-year-old jawless fish, among the earliest known vertebrates, appear to show that these animals had two pairs of eyes

Newly discovered rock art sites in Sulawesi, Indonesia, that date to nearly 68,000 years ago are thought to be the oldest rock art in the world, pre-dating Neanderthal hand stencils in Spain by 1100 years

A fossil discovery in northern Ethiopia expands the known range of Paranthropus, a genus of strong-jawed hominins that lived around 2 million years ago, and suggests they lived in a range of habitats

The light-sensitive tissue of birds’ eyes is not supplied with oxygen by blood vessels – instead, it powers itself with a flood of sugar, and this may have evolutionary benefits

The 9020 is a fascinating system, exemplary of so many of the challenges and excitement of the birth of the modern computer. On the one hand, a 9020 is a sophisticated, fault-tolerant, high-performance computer system with impressive diagnostic capabilities and remarkably dynamic resource allocation.

This follow-up to the influential 28 Days Later continues to take the zombie movie franchise in a surprising and thought-provoking direction

A popular idea suggests a link between big brains and a rich social life, but octopuses don't fit the pattern, which suggests something else is going on

Humpback whales off the west coast of Canada have learned a cooperative hunting technique from whales migrating into the area, and this cultural knowledge may help the population cope as food becomes scarce

People who combine different types of exercise - such as running, cycling and swimming - seem to live longer than those with less varied workouts

I totally forgot you could do this, but back in the Windows 9x days, you could hold down shift while clicking restart, and it would perform a sort-of “soft” restart without going through a complete reboot cycle.

Xous is a microkernel operating system designed for medium embedded systems with clear separation of processes. Nearly everything is implemented in userspace, where message passing forms the basic communications primitive.

Startling findings in 2024 suggested that metallic nodules on the sea floor produce oxygen and might support life. Now researchers are planning an expedition to learn more and refute criticism from mining companies

Countries have spent beyond their sustainable water budgets for so long that critical assets are depleted and the world faces huge economic, social and environmental costs

An electrical outage at Chernobyl nuclear power plant risks dangerous fuel overheating, but experts say that the chances are extremely slim due to the age of the reactors, which were shut down over two decades ago

Have you noticed how it seems like how the “light mode” of your graphical user interface of choice is getting lighter over time? It turns out you’re not crazy, and at least for macOS, light mode has indeed been getting lighter.

Two or more satellites could communicate and manoeuvre around one another using magnetic fields, although getting the technique to work at scale in space might be tricky

If only it was that simple – cue the rollercoaster ride. What an absolutely garish state of affairs lies behind this simple radio button on a website. I’m also well aware OSNews has a certain amount of complexity it might not need, and while I can’t fix that, I am at least working on a potential solution.

I’m not particularly interested in photo editing or management, professional or not, but one thing I do know is that many people who are miss one application in particular: Aperture. Discontinued over a decade ago, people still lament its loss, and Daniel Kennett explains to us layman why that’s the case.

It is impossible to get rid of anxiety because it exists to help us, says cognitive psychotherapist Owen O'Kane. Instead, he suggests three ways to reframe your relationship with anxiety in order to take back control

Spacecraft orbiting the Red Planet have helped researchers map out an ancient coastline that surrounded a large ocean billions of years ago

Concerns around common sunscreen chemicals have prompted the search for natural alternatives, with lignin from wood being one of the most promising candidates

The strange principle of quantum entanglement baffled Albert Einstein. Yet finally putting quantum weirdness to the ultimate test, and embracing the results, turned out to be a revolutionary idea

It never used to be possible to attribute individual weather events to climate change and map their full consequences. Thanks to the work of two pioneering climate scientists, it is now

Astronomers used to rely on chance to catch a glimpse of fleeting explosions in space. A fresh approach to watching these flashes has completely transformed astronomy

Net zero wasn’t always the target – the consensus used to be that we could continue releasing greenhouse gases and maintain global temperatures. How did that change?

From finding new antibiotic candidates to studying the insides of cells, snapping molecules together "like Lego" has completely overhauled chemistry, and biology too

A pet cow has learned to scratch herself with a broom, showing creative problem-solving skills that make it harder to ignore the fact that these animals have minds, says Marta Halina

Neurodiversity research has reshaped how we think about autism and ADHD, revealing that a “normal” brain doesn’t exist – and that unusual brains also come with unique strengths

The most powerful artificial intelligence tools all have one thing in common. Whether they are writing poetry or predicting protein structures, they rely on the "transformer" architecture

Time and time again, scientists have found that one diet beats all others when it comes to our health. Fortunately, it's delicious – and also good for the planet

How discovering that different parts of the brain work together as networks has transformed our understanding of everything from daydreaming and emotions to planning and memory

Following the surprising discovery that our genetic blueprint is much simpler than expected, we’ve rapidly learned that we have epigenetics to thank for our extraordinary complexity

How end-to-end encryption is the wall that keeps our digital secrets safe – and why modern life would be unimaginable without it

Since the turn of the millennium, our understanding of our ancestors and extended cousins has shifted dramatically, thanks to a swathe of surprising archaeological discoveries

Although we’re on course to cross 1.5°C of warming, the alliance of small island nations that revised our goal down from the 2°C threshold transformed global climate policy

Understanding the “landscape of fear” that predators create in their environments has helped us uncover just how drastically humans have upended the natural world

The “enormous revelation” that drugs can be used to prevent catching HIV has benefitted millions and helped slash transmission rates

Transitioning from fossil fuels to renewable power is crucial. The opening of Tesla's first "gigafactory", which used economies of scale to electrify our transport and energy systems, marked a turning point in this endeavour

Realising that our solar system isn’t like most others out there has helped astronomers rewrite the story of how it formed

A quarter of a century in, this is our definitive pick of the ideas in science and technology that are already transforming the world

The internet is typically defined by conflict. Yet a crowdsourced encyclopedia, open for anyone to edit, has transformed into one of the world's most essential knowledge hubs

They offered so much promise, but ultimately turned sour. These are the most disappointing ideas since the turn of the millennium

Some might say smartphones have caused more harm than good. Here’s why putting a powerful computer into every pocket was a good idea

Humans have been inadvertently using microbes to influence our health for thousands of years. But only recently has the microbiome rocketed to the forefront of healthcare

Our genomes are filled with errors that were once impossible to correct. But in CRISPR, we finally found an extraordinarily powerful tool for treating genetic disease – and perhaps making better versions of ourselves

A "living glue" used by barnacles to attach to underwater surfaces could also seal gut wounds caused by inflammatory bowel disease

As tensions over Greenland rise, some Europeans are asking whether it is time to disentangle themselves from US tech dominance – but from smartphones to cloud services, rejecting US tech is easier said than done

It is theoretically possible for a particularly massive star to collapse in on itself to form a black hole rather than exploding in a supernova, and we might now have seen the process in action

In the 13.8 billion years that our universe has been around, some moments stand out over others – for the most exciting and impactful one, we have to go back to the very beginning, says cosmology columnist Leah Crane

The protein that protects tardigrade DNA from radiation and mutagenic chemicals was thought to be harmless, but can in fact have major downsides

Eruptions from volcanic arcs, found where tectonic plates converge, are one of the major drivers of natural carbon emissions, but a model of Earth’s ancient carbon cycle suggests this is a relatively recent phenomenon

There’s cursed computing, and then there’s cursed computing. It turns out that you can render GNOME’s windows with the compositor from Windows 7, dwm.exe. Yes. tl;dr of how this clusterfuck works: this is effectively just x11 forwarding an x server from windows to linux.

Virtualisation is a lot older than you might think, with (one of?) the first implementation(s) being IBM’s VM/CMS, the line of operating systems that would grow to include things like System/370, System/390, all the way up until IBM/Z, which is still being developed and sold today; only recently IBM released the IBM z17 and z/OS 3.2, after all.