One bad night’s sleep can make you put on fat and lose muscle mass
Sleep restriction seems to drive extra fat storage and loss of lean muscle, which could explain why troubled sleepers and shift workers are prone to obesity
The ancient palaces of Iraq glittered with a special type of glass
The ancient city of Samarra was famed for its palaces. Now we know they were made with unique glass found nowhere else.
Fireflies don’t just glow for sex – they do it to warn away bats too
We’ve long known that fireflies light up to woo mates, but now we know they also do it to warn bats that they taste disgusting
It’s too soon to tell if robots help autistic children’s social skills
A US study is the latest to suggest robots could help autistic children learn social skills. Unfortunately, it's far from proven
The big slowdown: 6 reasons why UK life expectancy growth is stalling
Life expectancy has grown massively in recent decades, but in the UK the gains are starting to ease off. Could dementia, austerity, or something else be to blame?
Prehistoric girl had parents belonging to different human species
A sliver of bone once belonged to “Denny”, the child of a Neanderthal mother and a Denisovan father – the first such first-generation hybrid ever found
Record measles outbreak in Europe reaches 41,000 cases
The failure of parents to vaccinate their children has contributed to the biggest surge in measles cases Europe has seen in a decade, included 37 deaths
Flint water crisis: How AI is finding thousands of hazardous pipes
Artificial intelligence is helping to find the thousands of lead pipes responsible for the water crisis in Flint, Michigan
Asteroids get spun so fast by the force of sunlight they fall apart
Sunlight can transfer energy to asteroids and make them spin so fast they break up. Understanding how they break could help us protect Earth from asteroid impacts
Parrots make wise investment decisions to get what they want: walnuts
Macaws and African grey parrots can learn the value of tokens and choose to make investments that will earn them a better snack in the long-run