Ears of early humans could hear frequencies used in speech
Bones from two human ancestors living between 1 and 3 million years ago show their hearing shifted towards frequencies useful for savannah survival and speech
Painting bot follows your eyes to create art
Robots that can interpret human gaze offer the chance to extend control outside our bodies
Invasive herb could hamper East Africa’s fight against malaria
Mosquitoes live more than twice as long without blood if they drink nectar from an invasive plant called famine weed instead of liquid from a local vegetable
Crowds beat computers in answer to Wikipedia-sized maths problem
A maths puzzle that hit the headlines last year for generating a proof the size of Wikipedia has now been solved in just a few pages by a human
Plastic in the food chain: Artificial debris found in fish
Textile fibres and plastic have been found in the guts of fish caught off the coasts of California and Indonesia, raising concerns over food safety
How did Volkswagen cheat in tests and can it fix affected cars?
VW has been cheating in emissions tests to make its diesel cars appear less polluting than they really are – we look at the options the company now faces
The Martian: The science of surviving a space catastrophe
Movie astronaut Mark Watney is left alone on Mars – here's our spoiler-lite guide to how he channels NASA's innovate-and-improvise philosophy
Why lack of sleep makes us emotionally distracted by everything
We can all be distracted by stirring images, but sleep-deprived people lose focus even when viewing emotionally neutral ones – brain training could help
Bumblebees cope with climate change by evolving shorter tongues
wo bumblebee species have got 25 per cent shorter in 40 years, allowing them to feed from shorter flowers as warming makes deeper ones vanish
Deepest earthquakes seem to be seasonal but we don’t know why
Large magnitude, deep earthquakes occur more often between April and October – but the jury is still out on whether this is just down to chance
