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752 articles · page 7 of 16 · The Science front page
Researchers at the University of Oxford have directly observed virus-like particles assembling one molecule at a time, uncovering the simple physical rules that allow complex biological structures to form reliably. The findings, published in Nature, could lead to new antiviral drugs, improved vaccines, and a deeper understanding of how life builds itself from basic components.
A possible tornado tore through the central Arizona community of Heber-Overgaard overnight Wednesday, toppling trees onto homes, shattering windows and causing minor injuries, as severe thunderstorms brought golf ball-sized hail and damaging winds across the region, the National Weather Service and local officials reported.
A third storm in less than a week is bearing down on Scotland as the Met Office issues two new yellow wind warnings that cover much of the country. The warnings come as engineers work around the clock to restore power to the 15,000 homes still disconnected after Storm Boelo, which brought gusts of up to 85mph and left one person dead.
· 14 sourcesFrance was preparing on Thursday for Storm Austen, a newly named system moving in from the Atlantic, even as the south dealt with the aftermath of Storm Adam, whose flooding has killed at least four people and driven dozens of residents into emergency shelters.
· 3 sourcesNASA's Lucy spacecraft, launched in October 2021, is less than a year from its first encounter with the Trojan asteroids near Jupiter, having already made several notable discoveries during its journey, including a contact-binary moon and a peanut-shaped asteroid in the main belt.
At least 2,000 NHS patients have been inadvertently removed from waiting lists for hospital care since 2018 because of a flaw in the electronic referral system, according to interim findings from the Health Services Safety Investigations Body (HSSIB). The system automatically deletes referrals after 180 days of inactivity without notifying patients or clinicians, leaving thousands unaware they have fallen off the list.
Bipartisan US lawmakers this week introduced the Faster Clinical Trials Act, legislation designed to speed up research into rare disease treatments by creating reusable clinical trial networks and letting patients participate from their local doctor's office. The bill, sponsored by Democratic Rep. Jake Auchincloss and Republican Rep. Morgan Griffith, would direct up to $75 million a year to the FDA and comes a week after the agency announced its own rare disease initiative.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention added a third measles death to its dashboard this week but declined to reveal which state it occurred in, drawing sharp criticism from infectious disease and legal experts who say the agency is being less transparent than in the past. The decision comes as the outbreak continues to accelerate, with 4,410 confirmed cases so far this year, nearly double last year's count and an 8% increase in a single week.
French authorities have confirmed the first known human infection with the Shamonda virus in a severely immunocompromised patient who died in early October. Health officials stated there is no health risk to the general population, and the World Health Organization described it as an isolated case unlikely to lead to wider spread.
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Dame Judi Dench has said her worsening eyesight means she can no longer act on stage or in films, or read, more than a decade after she was diagnosed with age-related macular degeneration. The 91-year-old Oscar winner told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "I can't be on stage. I can't do a play any more. I can't do a film any more. I can't read any more."
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The US Food and Drug Administration has approved Hibsago (bepirovirsen), the first treatment that offers a functional cure for chronic hepatitis B, a disease affecting more than 250 million people worldwide and causing upwards of a million deaths each year. Clinical trials showed that 19% of patients achieved undetectable virus levels 24 weeks after stopping all therapy, compared with less than 1% under standard care.
A new clinical trial called Ad-Smart could dramatically speed up the discovery of Alzheimer’s treatments by testing multiple drugs at the same time, allowing ineffective ones to be dropped quickly. Prime Minister Andy Burnham, whose father Roy died with the illness in September, said he was proud to support the trial in the hope it could deliver results more quickly than traditional methods.
An elephant carrying a 650-kilogram gold shrine went on a rampage during a Hindu festival in Karnataka, India, flipping a car and damaging nearby buildings. The incident has drawn fresh attention to the severe human-elephant conflict plaguing the country, driven by habitat loss and encroachment.
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The Waiho River in Westland is changing course three to four years earlier than predicted, according to an independent technical advisory group, escalating the threat to lives, homes and infrastructure around Franz Josef. At a public meeting on Wednesday, the group called on councils to urgently secure central government funding and prepare for a managed retreat before a disaster occurs.
The mother of an 18-month-old Arizona boy who was declared dead by a hospital emergency doctor and later found breathing in the hospital morgue has spoken publicly about the ordeal, saying the family has been left with "no happy ending."
Amplia Therapeutics has released a broad update on its clinical program for lead drug narmafotinib, headlined by a new clue from its key pancreatic cancer trial suggesting the drug's effectiveness may not depend on whether a patient's tumour carries KRAS gene mutations, which are found in more than 90 per cent of pancreatic cancers.
WD J1330+6435, a white dwarf described as "the first green star", is the subject of NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day for 22 October 2026. Astronomers have found that trace elements drawn onto some white dwarfs can shift their normally white light into colours such as green, yellow, pink and purple.
A decomposing humpback whale carcass that washed up in Lurline Bay, between Coogee and Maroubra, has prompted authorities to close both beaches. Officials say they have no current plan to remove the carcass, citing a preference for natural decomposition and the cultural significance of the whale to the local Bidjigal community, while warning of an elevated shark risk.
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An adult fossil from South Africa strengthens evidence that Homo erectus lived in southern Africa about 2 million years ago, roughly 200,000 years earlier than previously thought. The finding supports an earlier identification based on a child's skull and offers a clearer picture of two ancient human relatives that lived alongside one another.
A second privately owned mounted thylacine head has surfaced in the UK just weeks after a similar specimen sold for more than £60,000, after a family in London discovered they had been storing the extinct Tasmanian tiger's head under their bed for years.
Floodwaters are receding across south-east Queensland after torrential rain forced multiple rescues, closed more than a dozen schools and triggered a 'prepare to leave' order in parts of Moreton Bay. The Bureau of Meteorology says the worst of the rainfall has passed, though isolated falls and riverine flooding remain a concern.
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The U.S. Department of Agriculture confirmed the first detection of New World screwworm in U.S. wildlife on Wednesday, after a hunter harvested an infected elk at a game ranch in Pecos County, Texas. The finding marks an escalation in the pest's northward advance, which has already prompted a ban on Mexican cattle imports and pushed beef prices to record highs.
· 2 sourcesA family's complaint against NHS Lothian has been upheld after medical teams argued over symptom management at the bedside of their dying six-year-old daughter, leaving her gasping in pain. The health board has apologised and identified eight major learning outcomes from a review of Flora Gentleman's care at Edinburgh's Royal Hospital for Children and Young People.
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South-east Queensland is facing another day of severe weather on Monday, with the Bureau of Meteorology warning of flash flooding, large hail and wind gusts up to 90 kilometres an hour. The warning covers Brisbane, the Gold Coast, the Sunshine Coast and inland areas including the Lockyer Valley, Scenic Rim and South Burnett, where very dangerous thunderstorms are possible in the afternoon and early evening.
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The James Webb Space Telescope has discovered a surprising abundance of heavy metals in gas clouds surrounding Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way. The finding, published in The Astronomical Journal, could help explain how metals forged in supernovae are distributed across galaxies and what that means for the black hole's slow feeding rate.
NASA conducted a hot fire test of RS-25 engine No. 10001 on October 21 at Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, firing the developmental engine for nearly eight and a half minutes at up to 111% power, the thrust level required for new production engines on the Space Launch System.
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University of Queensland researchers have discovered that growth rings in the shells of native land snails can reveal prehistoric cyclone activity, offering a new tool to reconstruct rainfall history before official records began in 1900.
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Families of care home residents who died during the Covid-19 pandemic have expressed deep anger at the findings of the public inquiry's latest report, which concluded that the entire care sector was an 'afterthought' to government planners and that blanket restrictions led to 'profound isolation''. Relatives say they feel vindicated but also furious that their loved ones suffered unnecessarily.
Pope Leo XIV will require no further treatment for lung cancer, his doctors announced Wednesday, after final post-operative tests confirmed the disease was a localized pulmonary adenocarcinoma. The 71-year-old pontiff, who had the lower lobe of his right lung removed on October 13, was discharged from hospital on Saturday and has made two public appearances since, including his weekly general audience at St Peter's Square.
· 9 sourcesA new study published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine found that New York City's pioneering program providing free lawyers to low-income tenants facing eviction was associated with a significant drop in emergency room visits in the first neighborhoods where it rolled out. However, the study also found an unexpected increase in emergency department visits related to mental health and substance use disorders in those same areas.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is celebrating its 90th anniversary, tracing its origins to a Halloween rocket test in 1936 by Caltech graduate students. Managed by Caltech for NASA, the lab is marking the milestone with a look at past achievements, first U.S. satellite, first planetary flybys, Mars rovers, and future missions including the SkyFall Mars helicopters, MoonFall lunar drones, and the asteroid-hunting NEO Surveyor.
Health officials are investigating whether Ebola patients in Nigeria and Kenya could have been exposed to the virus at Uganda's main airport on the same day earlier this month, as Nigeria confirmed its first case matches the Bundibugyo strain behind the major outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention said Wednesday that genomic testing had linked the Nigerian case to the DR Congo outbreak, while also exploring whether the two patients overlapped at Entebbe airport on 3 October.
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A nurse at Auckland's Starship children's hospital has gone public with warnings that chronic staff shortages are leading to cancer treatment delays of up to a week, unsafe nurse-to-patient ratios, and daily medication errors. Hospital director Dr Greg Williams says the hospital is confident in the quality and safety of care, that medication error rates are very low, and that vacant nursing roles are being recruited for.
A team of divers has identified a German U-boat lying on the seabed off the Devon coast as U-672, solving an underwater mystery 82 years after the submarine was attacked and scuttled during the Second World War.
New research offers some of the first evidence in humans that psychedelics may help combat inflammation throughout the body, according to a study published Wednesday in JAMA Psychiatry. The findings, drawn from a small pilot study of 12 patients with Parkinson’s disease, show significantly lower levels of inflammatory markers and reduced mitochondrial stress after two sessions with psilocybin.
Oxford University researchers have identified a set of proteins in the blood that may indicate a man's risk of developing prostate cancer more than a decade before diagnosis, including markers for aggressive, life-threatening disease. The largest study of its kind, published in European Urology, examined blood samples from over 2,500 men and tracked them for an average of 16 years.
NASA's Perseverance rover has broken the record for the farthest distance driven on another celestial body, with its odometer reaching 45.22 kilometers (28.10 miles) on October 11, 2026. The milestone, achieved during the mission's 2,006th Martian day (Sol), marks a significant step in autonomous exploration as the rover climbs the Jezero Crater rim.
A new study using historical documents and forensic analysis of uranium cubes has concluded that the German B8 nuclear reactor, the centrepiece of the Nazi atomic bomb program, was far from achieving a self-sustaining fission reaction, contradicting the postwar claims of physicist Werner Heisenberg that it was almost ready.
Western Australian children with type 1 diabetes are losing automatic school support after Year 2, forcing families and schools to navigate a case-by-case funding extension process that parents and the opposition say is unsafe and outdated. Alana Marshall, mother of eight-year-old Declan, has joined Opposition Education Minister Liam Staltari in launching a petition calling for the state government to scrap the age cut-off.
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The 2026 Nikon Small World competitions have honored a collection of microscope images and videos that reveal the intricate activity inside living cells, from mitochondria weaving through the leaf cells of a kitchen houseplant to a parasite nest inside a host cell.
Scottish ministers have again rejected plans for a golf course at Coul Links in Sutherland, ruling that the revised 18-hole development would cause significant harm to nationally and internationally important habitats and species. The decision overturns Highland Council's 2023 approval and marks the second time the controversial project has been blocked.
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A serendipitous encounter by the European Space Agency's Solar Orbiter has allowed scientists to trace a giant magnetic switchback directly back to the Sun's corona, resolving a long-standing debate about where these kinks in the solar magnetic field form. The findings, published in Nature Astronomy, show that the plasma inside the switchback originated in an ultra-hot closed magnetic loop near a coronal hole, consistent with the process of interchange reconnection.
Physicists at Northwestern University have successfully trapped a single positron, the antimatter counterpart of the electron, for months in a cryogenic vacuum trap, a breakthrough that allows for the most precise measurements yet of antimatter properties. The achievement, reported in Physical Review Letters, brings scientists closer to testing one of the fundamental principles of modern physics: CPT symmetry, which requires particles and their antiparticles to have matching properties.
· 3 sourcesAfrican health ministers will hold crisis talks on Ebola as Nigeria becomes the fourth country to confirm a case, with the outbreak that began in Congo spreading across Central, Eastern and Western Africa. The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) has called for urgent action to contain the growing outbreak, which has now also reached Kenya and Uganda.
Researchers at Texas A&M University have discovered that excess RNA can directly damage mitochondria, the cell's energy producers, revealing a previously unknown link between RNA buildup and cellular energy supply. The study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows the damage occurs without involving an immune response, challenging prior assumptions.
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Since Israel escalated its attacks on Lebanon in 2023, the war has inflicted severe distress on young people with autism and ADHD, exacerbating their symptoms and cutting off access to vital support services as families and organizations struggle with economic pressures.
A new study led by Penn State College of Medicine and published in the journal *PLOS One* has found that a simple, four-minute daily strength training routine can yield significant improvements in strength, balance, and mobility for older adults. The findings challenge the assumption that meaningful improvements to physical function require lengthy or demanding workouts.
The Australasian Society of Clinical Immunology and Allergy (ASCIA) has published revised guidelines revealing that the majority of Australians labeled with penicillin allergy are not truly allergic. The change, based on new evidence, aims to improve patient care, reduce healthcare costs, and combat antimicrobial resistance by ensuring appropriate use of narrow-spectrum antibiotics.
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