Spouse's voice easy to home in on... and easy to ignore
The brain has an uncanny ability to focus on one voice in a sea of chatter. Research on married couples shows that it may be down to familiarity of voice
Walking shark moves with ping-pong paddle fins
A new species of epaulette shark, discovered in Indonesia, moves across the ocean floor like a salamander – is this how the first land animals walked?
Steep rise in drug harm – opioids the most deadly
Death and disability caused by both illicit drug use and mental health disorders has climbed significantly since 1990, finds biggest epidemiological survey
Butterfly-wing electronics converts light to heat
Carbon nanotube networks fused with butterfly wings could be used to power microscopic photovoltaic cells or even to replicate DNA sequences
Out of the shadows: Picking up hints of dark matter
With more than a dozen experiments looking for it and some good theory to guide them, dark matter's days of obscurity may be numbered
I could have sworn… Why you can't trust your memory
From repressed memories to faulty eyewitness testimony, psychologist Elizabeth Loftus has revealed just how fallible our memories really are
Planet Earth was blue long before we knew
Earth may have become a watery world just 200 million years after it formed, making it a potential home for life hundreds of million years earlier than thought
Feedback: Ghost in the latrine
The internet of things, strange road crossings, vegetarian razor blades, and more
Poverty can sap people's ability to think clearly
Some poor people make poorer decisions because financial worry and all that goes with it reduces their mental bandwidth
Firms unite to bring internet to billions of new users
Mark Zuckerberg's lofty ambition of bringing connectivity to the "next 5 billion" people is backed by big companies, but will it get off the ground?
Bio-inspired speaker uses clear gel to play music
The stretchy speaker is the first to use ions in place of electronics – it could be used to build noise-cancelling windows or music-making smartphone screens
Reroute town's traffic to get emergency vehicles through
Using a network of vehicle sensors – and "evolutionary algorithms" – to rejig traffic could one day get emergency responders on the scene faster
Astrophile: Milky Way's black hole is a picky eater
Our galaxy's central black hole is a fussbudget, refusing to eat most of what it pulls to its lips because the food is too hot
Whooping cranes learn migration from wise elders
Endangered whooping cranes learn way home by following older, wiser leader and don't just rely on inner GPS
Vast canyon discovered under Greenland ice sheet
At almost twice the length of the Grand Canyon, the enormous channel was a gushing river before Greenland froze over
Why your brain may work like a dictionary
A new analysis of the links between definitions of English words has uncovered structures that may resemble how our brains represent language
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