Werewolf plant waits for the light of the full moon

It's the only known plant species that relies on the lunar cycle for survival – and we found out by complete accident.At night, Ephedra foeminea, a non-flowering relative of conifers and cycads, secretes small translucent globules of sugary liquid to attract nocturnal pollinating insects. The globules are like tiny beads oozing out from cone-shaped female organs, where the seeds are produced. If a pollinator lands on a globule, any pollen it is carrying...

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AI interns: Software already taking jobs from humans

Continue reading page |1|2 People have talked about robots taking our jobs for ages. Problem is, they already have – we just didn't notice FORGET Skynet. Hypothetical world-ending artificial intelligence makes headlines, but the hype ignores what's happening right under our noses. Cheap, fast AI is already taking our jobs, we just haven't noticed.This isn't dumb automation that can rapidly repeat identical tasks. It's software that can learn about...

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Fire ants kill and eat baby caimans as they hatch

THIS puts the story of David and Goliath into perspective. Tiny red fire ants in Argentina target fearsome caimans, with as many as one in four of the crocodilian's babies falling prey to insect attackers.The ants colonise more than half the broad-snouted caiman nests, where the fermenting bedding material provides the humidity and warmth the insects' eggs and larvae need.They bite the caiman mum, forcing her to abandon the nest. Then, when the young...

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I believe: Your personal guidebook to reality

A Balinese Hindu purification ceremony – beliefs are both fundamental and widespread (Image: Felix Hug/Corbis) THE day I sat down to write this article the news was rather like any other day. A teenager had been found guilty of plotting to behead a British soldier. Fighting had broken out again in Ukraine. Greece was accusing its creditors of being motivated by ideology rather than economic reality. Some English football fans were filmed racially...

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The moon's got two tails - and its friends might too

The man in the moon must be wearing a tailcoat. Turns out, our satellite has two tails of particles streaming in its wake. If the same is true of other bodies in the solar system, it could give us a way to study their surfaces without having to land.Data from NASA's Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE), which spent seven months orbiting the moon in 2013 and 2014, has revealed a tail of nanoscale dust particles.The finding follows...

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Seahorse reveals secrets of paradoxical grasping tail

Video: Seahorse grasps object with paradoxical tail There's more than a twist to this tail. One of the ocean's most strangely shaped creatures is even more special than we knew. Seahorses have tails that are paradoxically rigid and flexible at the same time. Now we have insight into how they have such contradictory characteristics. (Image: Courtesy of Dominique Adriaens/Ghent University) Dominique Adriaens of Ghent University in Belgium and his colleagues...

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Is this ET? Mystery of strange radio bursts from space

Continue reading page |1|2 Mysterious radio wave flashes from far outside the galaxy are proving tough for astronomers to explain. Is it pulsars? A spy satellite? Or an alien message? BURSTS of radio waves flashing across the sky seem to follow a mathematical pattern. If the pattern is real, either some strange celestial physics is going on, or the bursts are artificial, produced by human – or alien – technology.Telescopes have been picking up so-called...

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Asian solar spending helps drive renewable energy boom

Almost half of global investment in new electricity generation last year was in renewables, thanks to a hike in investment by developing countries, says a UN report.Global investment in green energy rose 17 per cent, but developing countries saw a surge of 36 per cent. The big spending was on solar power in Asia, as well as on wind turbines in the North Sea.Chinese investment – up 37 per cent at $83 billion – again beat the US. But Brazil, India...

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We must pull together to grasp consciousness

Are robots with human-like intelligence just around the corner? Are we close to understanding consciousness? In the run-up to the New Scientist Live Consciousness and the Extended Mind event at the Edinburgh International Science Festival on 7 April, Liz Else spoke to Margaret Boden, one of the participants, about the real state of the art Big money is being spent on initiatives like the European Union's Human Brain Project. Will people hoping to...

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Eek! How your face reveals your body's real age

Think your looks belie your age? Soon there will be an app to tell you how old you really look, and whether your body's age is out of whack with your chronological age."Our study is the first to use 3D facial images to predict biological age in a human population to identify fast and slow agers," says Jing-Dong Han of the Shanghai Institutes of Biological Sciences in China.The aim, says Han, is to enable family doctors to easily identify patients...

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Clone your tumour to fight your cancer

If you had cancer, would you want to make clones of your tumour? (Image: Tom Haugmat) "The first doctor I saw told me I had six months to live," says Antonia Crawford. She was diagnosed with advanced pancreatic cancer in August 2013, at the age of 43.She went on to have the standard treatments but, aware that they might not be the most effective against her particular cancer, Crawford also did something quite extraordinary: she had bits of her tumour...

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A big bank balance leads to big-brained babies

Have Mum and Dad got a few quid to spare? You'd better hope so, because the wealthier your parents are, the larger the surface area of your brain is likely to be – a structural feature known to be associated with greater intelligence in children.This is according to the world's largest study of child brain structure and socioeconomic status. The results also reveal a link between brain surface area and the education levels of a child's parents.Previous...

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UK to pioneer national meningitis B vaccination scheme

Starting in September, all babies in the UK will begin receiving vaccinations against meningitis B. That will make the UK the first country in the world to have a nationwide vaccine programme for the disease.Meningitis B, caused by the "B" strain of the Neisseria meningitides bacterium, accounts for 60 to 80 per cent of all the UK's meningitis cases. On average there are 1200 cases of meningitis B each year in the UK, of which a tenth prove fatal....

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David and Goliath: What do we do about surveillance?

From spyware designed to catch students misbehaving to police tracking rioters by phone, we are spied on as never before, reveals a book by Bruce Schneier Book information Data and Goliath: The hidden battles to collect your data and control your world by Bruce SchneierPublished by: W. W. NortonPrice: $27.95/£17.99Police worldwide are trying to link specific phones to specific events (Image: Gleb Garanich/Reuters) "DEAR subscriber, you have been...

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Reverse silhouettes capture the beauty of nature

(Image: György Kepes (1906-2001) © Estate of György Kepes) THEY may look like conventional photographs, but no cameras were used in the making of György Kepes's "photograms". Instead, the artist arranged objects directly on top of light-sensitive paper, then illuminated them. Kepes showed just as much enthusiasm for scientific and mechanical subjects as for natural forms, and this is reflected in the 80 photographs, photomontages and photograms...

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Anglo Saxon remedy kills hospital superbug MRSA

Take cropleek and garlic, of both equal quantities, pound them well together… take wine and bullocks gall, mix with the leek… let it stand nine days in the brass vessel… So goes a thousand-year-old Anglo Saxon recipe to vanquish a stye, an infected eyelash follicle.The medieval medics might have been on to something. A modern-day recreation of this remedy seems to alleviate infections caused by the bacteria that are usually responsible for styes....

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Battle-scarred Earth: How war reshapes the planet

Leaving an indelible mark (Image: David Kennerly/Corbis) VERDUN, The Somme, Passchendaele, Gallipoli – the battles of the first world war have become bywords for death, destruction and human misery. Historically, they are just the tip of the iceberg. There have been countless thousands of battles, and still they go on: around 50 armed conflicts are raging right now. War shapes the past, destroys our present and will determine our future.But could...

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English speakers, you stink at identifying smells

Why do English speakers struggle to identify even common smells like cinnamon, asks linguist Asifa Majid. Is it down to language itself, or our environment? Why study the language of olfaction?There are centuries-old ideas that humans have evolved to be visual or auditory creatures, and that our senses of smell, taste and touch just aren't as important any more. We're looking to see whether that's reflected in different languages as well.Are there...

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Planet or not, Ceres rocks

WHAT makes a planet a planet? It's nearly 10 years since the International Astronomical Union created a stir by agreeing a new classification system that kicked Pluto out of the club, demoting it to dwarf planet status.In the intervening years it has become abundantly clear that the solar system's smaller bodies are at least as interesting as those that still enjoy full planetary status. We already think that the moons of Jupiter and Saturn are among...

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