Losing sense of smell could be linked to poor health
Lacking an immune system means it's a struggle to recognise certain smells – if you're a mouse. And it could be to stop you sniffing out dangers
Indonesian wildfires are releasing gigatonnes of carbon dioxide
Raging forest fires are releasing carbon that has been buried in peat for thousands of years, inching the world closer to breaching warming targets
NASA debates where to land on Mars – but are we ready to go?
Last week the space agency held its first meeting about where to land humans on Mars, but such a mission still has decades of technological hurdles to overcome
Crows might meet up for big dinners to exchange cutlery tips
New Caledonian crows usually only hang out with close relatives, except when they come across big meals requiring cutlery
The hot new job in Silicon Valley is being a robot’s assistant
With humans as the secret engine that powers Facebook's virtual assistant M, it's time to stop worrying about robot overlords in favour of their human underlings
Confusion reigns over mid-air break up of Russian flight 7K9268
Flight recorder of the plane that crashed in Egypt killing 224 people has yet to be analysed, but a tracking website may have captured its last moments
Death rates rise among white middle-aged US citizens
Alcohol, drug addiction and financial anxiety are among factors to blame for an increase in death rates among white, non-Hispanic US people aged 45 to 54
AI tool scours all the science on the web to find new knowledge
Semantic Scholar makes light work of digesting the planet's scientific discoveries to make connections and unearth key information
Rice was domesticated three times across Asia, not once in China
Sticky rice hails from southern China, but basmati is a hybrid of rice domesticated in the Himalayas and near Bangladesh
Vitamin supplements could save critically endangered kakapo
The fate of the world's heaviest parrot depends on a berry from an unreliable tree. Now conservationists have finally come up a replacement
