Pure Science

Science Focus

Human beings can barely move a muscle without some kind of deleterious effect on the environment around us. Our diets, our transport and our creature comforts have been scrutinised amid ongoing climate change – all multiplied by the sheer...

Science Focus

It’s rare for nutritionists to recommend a single food to everybody. These days, we’ve come to understand that nutritional needs are personal, healthy eating is about balance, and individual foods all have their pros and cons. However,...

Science Focus

Steve Ramirez knows how devastating painful memories can be. In 2015, when he was a doctoral candidate working on manipulating memories in mice, his close friend and lab partner, Xu Liu, died unexpectedly at the age of 37. Haunted by...

Science Focus

Carol was in her mid-seventies when she arrived at Dr Majid Fotuhi’s office. Having retired just eight years prior, she now spent her days mindlessly watching TV, feeling forgetful and confused.  Carol’s sister had brought her in. She...

Science Focus

The ecological impact of rocket launches has long been a concern. Some fuel systems, such as the solid rocket boosters used by NASA's Space Launch System, release vast quantities of damaging chlorine into the atmosphere. 20 years ago, an...

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According to some scientists, the interstitium is the largest organ in the human body. That is a slightly controversial view, however, for reasons we’ll get into shortly. The interstitium was only discovered in the last 10 years and most...

Science Focus

Does my brain live a little in the past? Yes, your brain does live a little in the past. It can't help it. The information it receives via your senses is always a little out of date. Whether it’s light entering the retinas in your eyes, or...

Science Focus

The door clicks shut on the soundproof booth in which I find myself, and I’m left alone in the dark. I’m sitting in an office chair, headphones on my head, as classical music begins to play.  What I am about to experience, I was told...

Science Focus

Personal question: would you say you're a frequent farter? On average a day, how many backside burps are you responsible for: five? 20? More? There are no bum answers, because scientists recently discovered that our textbooks are...

Science Focus

Neanderthal dental care could be surprisingly sophisticated, according to a recent study led by scientists at the Russian Academy of Sciences, St Petersburg. The study analysed a molar from 59,000 years ago, found in Chagyrskaya Cave,...

Science Focus

In 1941, the battleship USS Arizona sank during the attack on Pearl Harbour, along with nearly 5,000 tonnes of oil in its fuel tanks. This has been slowly leaking out over the past 84 years, and the tanks are still half full. While this is...

Science Focus

Dermatologists envisage your face to be like Earth’s crust, explaining that wrinkles grow along its ‘fault lines’ as the skin ages. Like the boundaries between tectonic plates, these fault lines are subject to all manner of pressures that...

Science Focus

What animal has the weirdest pee? There are so many to choose from. Male Amazon river dolphins flip onto their backs and pee into the air, creating an arc of urine that lands somewhere near their head. Not competitive urination, but a rich...

Science Focus

We tend to talk about monogamy as if it’s both sacred and obvious – the default way of being within our romantic relationships. But behind closed doors, monogamy can sometimes feel fragile, negotiated and even improbable. If being sexually...

Science Focus

Ultra-processed foods (UPFs) might taste good and provide an easy hunger fix, but their long-term health consequences are starting to scare nutrition experts. These foods are often high in added sugars, salt and saturated fats, while being...

Science Focus

Weight loss no longer has to be an exhausting uphill battle. Glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) drugs – sold under brand names such as Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro – have revolutionised how we tackle obesity, delivering dramatic results...

Science Focus

As much as we’d like to pretend otherwise, we’ve all been there. Sitting, straining, waiting for that satisfying plop – to no avail. If that’s you, there are plenty of ways to improve your time on the porcelain throne, such as adding fibre...

Science Focus

The first high-fidelity systems took shape in the 1950s, when separate components such as turntables and amplifiers allowed sound reproduction to be finely controlled and optimised. In the 1970s – the golden age of analogue – the pursuit...

Science Focus

Beans really are good for the heart, according to a new study from the UK and Norway. The researchers discovered that a higher intake of legumes – such as beans, peas and lentils – as well as soy foods – including tofu, edamame and...

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An orangutan has been filmed using a rope bridge to cross a road in the Pakpak Bharat district of North Sumatra, Indonesia, much to the delight of conservationists. The young male Sumatran orangutan used the bridge to venture into a new...

Science Focus

There's an old Chinese proverb that says, “if you take 100 steps after eating, you'll live to 99.” It’s been a maxim of traditional medicine for centuries that gentle exercise soon after you leave the dinner table promotes better digestion...

Science Focus

Multiple studies have shown that women write faster and more legibly than men. The difference is detectable right at the start of primary school, and the gap seems to widen until the start of secondary school before levelling off. Boys and...

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Cold substances have been used to treat skin problems for centuries. Doctors use liquid nitrogen to freeze warts, while acne-treatment devices that use liquid oxygen date back to the 1920s (although whether they worked is still up for...

Science Focus

Does exercise 'use up' your heartbeats? No – there's no evidence humans have a fixed number of heartbeats. In fact, exercise actually reduces lifetime strain on the heart. While your heart rate rises during activity, regular exercise...

Science Focus

Of all the strange and wonderful animals that live in the deep sea, perhaps the most tantalising are the ones that are occasionally glimpsed by deep-submerged cameras, then swim off into the darkness before scientists can get a good look....

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A centrepiece of Prof Stephen Hawking's theory of black holes states that black holes can only grow. Thanks to precision observations made with the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), this theory has now been...

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One crime scene. Two people. Three sets of DNA. In China, a woman’s body is found with a gunshot wound to the head – but something doesn’t add up. Forensic analysis reveals a second set of genetic material coexisting in her blood… the...

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Hanky panky. Rumpy pumpy. Going all the way. Bonking. Special cuddles. Woohoo time. Sealing the deal. Getting lucky. Fornication. Coitus. Making love.  Pick your synonym; it’s not happening much in Japan. A recent meta-analysis led by...

Science Focus

It’s human nature to be curious about places where we’re forbidden from going. But there are often good reasons for keeping us out. From sites housing deadly materials to the locations of precious artefacts, here’s the science behind some...

Science Focus

As Apple turned 50 in April 2026 (happy birthday Apple!), we decided it was best to take a look at some of the company's most iconic products, the flops that helped shape it, and what could be coming next. The hits #1 Apple II Launched in...

Science Focus

It’s true, I really do love my dog more than most humans and I refuse to believe I’m being brainwashed... but if I was being brainwashed, that’s exactly what I would say. Most dog owners put in time and effort to train their pets. We...

Science Focus

You may have come across the idea that more boys are born after a war. It’s an effect that could be interpreted as divine intervention – a karmic response to men being lost in combat. This shift in the sex ratio, however, isn’t limited to...

Science Focus

A major ocean current system that helps regulate climate across the Northern Hemisphere is likely to weaken far more severely by the end of this century than scientists previously estimated, according to new research published in Science...

Science Focus

Astronomers have gathered overwhelming evidence that 80 per cent of all matter in the Universe is invisible. This ‘dark matter’ explains what binds galaxies together and makes them rotate. The large-scale structure of the Universe and...

Science Focus

Whether it's Darth Vader or Cruella de Vil, we all have a favourite movie villain. But logically, this doesn’t make sense. Such characters are objectively bad, dangerous, often downright evil… and yet we end up rooting for them anyway?...

Science Focus

When she died in 2024, Spain's Maria Branyas was the world's oldest woman. She was 117. Experts believe the secret to her longevity may have been the bacteria living in her gut – her microbiome – and luckily, before she died, she donated...

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You might picture knights charging into battle on towering steeds, but medieval horses were typically no bigger than modern-day ponies. An analysis of around 2,000 horse bones from English archaeological sites dating between 300 and 1650...

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The term déjà vu was coined by the French philosopher and parapsychologist Émile Boirac in 1876 and translates, literally, as ‘already seen’. It’s that eerie, uncanny feeling you get when you sense that a supposedly new experience that...

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The physical and mental health, exercise regime and food/drink intake of International Space Station (ISS) astronauts are carefully monitored, before, during and after their missions. This ensures they're fit and healthy, reducing the risk...

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Scientists have discovered that giant octopuses up to 19m (62ft) long were the true apex predators of the dinosaur-age oceans. Publishing their findings in the journal Science, researchers analysed fossilised jaws from two species of...

Science Focus

Ozempic for all? GLP-1 drugs provide a potential solution to the obesity crisis. What happens if we seize it, and weight-loss drugs become available to everyone who needs them? Planet Myopia Short-sightedness has reached epidemic...

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Science Focus

Identical twins form when a single fertilised egg splits into two separate embryos early in development. Because they originate from the same cell, the embryos have virtually identical DNA. This means they’ll be similar for characteristics...

Science Focus

In 1977, the year the movie Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope was released, marine geologists laid eyes on a deep-sea hydrothermal vent for the first time. They were diving inside the submersible, known as Alvin, in the eastern Pacific...

Science Focus

Gibraltar macaques have been observed eating soil, perhaps to cope with the negative effects of human junk food, according to a study published in Scientific Reports. This strange new habit seems to help the monkeys digest treats taken...

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Our ultra-social brains mean that human emotional expressions are a lot more communicable than most of us realise. Indeed, we can often find ourselves sharing the emotional state of the people around us without even realising. It’s a...

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A wave is beginning to break over the internet – one that may be unstoppable. In the two years preceding 2025, the global number of weekly cyber attacks jumped by 58 per cent, according to the World Economic Forum.  Much of that...

Science Focus

As Earth Day approaches, this global observance serves as a reminder that protecting the environment also means paying closer attention to the conditions that shape daily life at home, including the quality of the water we use. One issue...

Science Focus

Astronomers have spotted what appears to be two supermassive black holes locked in a death spiral at the heart of a distant galaxy – and they could collide in as little as 100 years.  The pair, discovered at the centre of the galaxy...

Science Focus

Scientists have finally mapped the nerves of the clitoris, decades after mapping the nerves of the penis, in a new study that has yet to be peer reviewed. Researchers at Amsterdam University, the Netherlands, used specialised X-ray imaging...