China’s race to build practical humanoid robots has mostly played out behind factory doors so far. Machines have sorted parcels, carried components, and repeated carefully programmed movements in controlled environments. But a different challenge is beginning to emerge, one that appears far messier and far more personal. As reported by the South China Morning Post,…
Researchers at Stanford Medicine have reported a breakthrough in Type 1 diabetes research after successfully curing the disease in mice using a new method designed to “reset” the immune system. The experimental treatment combined stem-cell transplants, insulin-producing pancreatic cell transplants and a much gentler preparation process involving low-dose radiation and immune-targeting drugs. After treatment, the…
Brazil is developing lab-grown donkey collagen to counter a global decline in donkey populations driven by rising demand for China’s traditional anti-ageing medicine, ejiao. Through the effort, scientists are aiming to deliver a scalable alternative by 2027 that could reduce slaughter and stabilise the species.At the centre of this effort is Carla Molento, a veterinarian…
For decades, a vast region south of India has quietly refused to make sense. Satellites mapping Earth’s shape kept returning the same unsettling result: the ocean surface there sits noticeably lower than it should, as if something invisible is pulling it down from below. Ships passing through would never notice anything unusual, yet space-based measurements…
Inside factories, data centres and power plants, heat is usually treated as a problem rather than a resource. It drifts away in plumes, warms the surrounding air, and disappears into the atmosphere with little thought given to its potential. Yet some engineers are now circling back to that wasted energy and asking a slightly unusual…
A major chemical emergency in Garden Grove, Orange County, has forced around 40,000 residents to leave their homes after a storage tank at the GKN Aerospace facility began overheating and releasing hazardous vapours. The chemical inside the tank is methyl methacrylate, or MMA, a volatile industrial liquid used in plastics and resin manufacturing. Officials warned…
Brian Cox (Image: Wikipedia) Something is interesting about human beings that appears very early in life. Children ask endless questions before they know anything about science, philosophy or technology. They ask where stars go during the day. They ask why the sky changes colours in the evening. They ask why birds fly, why oceans seem…
Imagine an ocean so enormous it stretched across half the planet, wider than the Atlantic, older than the Himalayas, home to creatures we’ve only read about in history books. It was called the Tethys Ocean, and for hundreds of millions of years, it sat between the ancient landmasses that would eventually become Europe, Africa, and…
Gold has fascinated civilisations for millennia because of one remarkable quality: it rarely loses its shine. Ancient coins, jewellery and royal artefacts buried for thousands of years can still emerge gleaming with their familiar golden glow. Scientists have long known that gold resists corrosion better than most metals, but the exact atomic mechanisms behind this…
The link between artificial light at night, street lights, light pollution, biodiversity destruction, nocturnal fauna, bats, insects, and birds is becoming more evident in modern environmental science. It has been suggested that too much light during the night not only causes comfort for humans but also becomes a serious threat to the environment. Research concerning…