TUESDAY, 18 NOVEMBER 2025, 13:05
The long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific and philosophical concepts
Why aren’t more animals hermaphrodites? Snails and worms seem to have been successful using that method for sharing genes between any two individuals, but vertebrates evolved away from it. Why? Janet Lesley, Kent, UK
Send...
Given that we’ve literally grown up with them, we often know surprisingly little about how our bodies work. This new series aims to fill the gaps
All vertebrates yawn, or indulge in a behaviour that’s at least recognisable as yawn-adjacent. Sociable baboons yawn, but so do semi-solitary orangutans. Parakeets, penguins and crocodiles yawn – and so, probably, did the first ever jawed fish....
OpenAI hopes to upend the browser market currently dominated by Google Chrome, but it depends on paid users.
Vaccine production must be expanded to combat this ancient disease, especially in Africa. But a lack of political will is holding us back
Hakainde Hichilema is president of Zambia. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus is director general of the World Health Organization
The last outbreak of cholera in Britain was in 1866; in the United States there has not been an outbreak since 1911.
And yet today...
Oxfordshire: One minute you’re looking at an old, wet tree stump, the next you’re looking at some veiled poisonpie or smoky polypore
My local nature reserve used to be a Victorian rubbish dump, but now it is full of wildlife. And if you look closely on old logs on a mild, damp day you will probably see some wonders: fungi.
I went to visit last week. The brightly coloured leaves were painted...
The angst of nu metal is being discovered by Gen Z, but with digital eyes always looming, the ephemeral catharsis of collectively going mad is a thing of the past.
As part of a strategic shift away from exclusivity, Microsoft is bringing Halo to Sony’s competing console for the first time.
A new wave of socially engaged movies is storming the box office and changing how we think about the genre
It should surprise no one to learn that 2025 is being hailed as a golden year for horror films. All horror movies are a reflection of their time, and ours are pretty scary.
Tech dystopianism means that Frankenstein’s monster has become a byword for AI, while Bram Stoker’s Dracula has...
Successive governments criticised for doing ‘virtually nothing’ to reduce risk in decade since cancer link found
Bacon and ham sold in the UK should carry cigarette-style labels warning that chemicals in them cause bowel cancer, scientists say.
Their demand comes as they criticise successive British governments for doing “virtually nothing” to reduce the risk from nitrites in the decade...
Scientists warn of ‘insidious risks’ of increasingly popular technology that affirms even harmful behaviour
Turning to AI chatbots for personal advice poses “insidious risks”, according to a study showing the technology consistently affirms a user’s actions and opinions even when harmful.
Scientists said the findings raised urgent concerns over the power of chatbots to distort people’s...
Bacteria for paratyphoid fever and relapsing fever found in DNA from teeth of troops buried in mass grave
When Napoleon ordered his army to retreat from Russia in October 1812, disaster ensued. Starving, cold, exhausted and struggling with sickness, an estimated 300,000 soldiers died.
Researchers now say they have identified two unexpected diseases among soldiers who died in the retreat –...
Alasdair Keane tests out the new generation of stunt cars.
Taki Allen, 16, said he was eating a bag of Doritos after football practice before being handcuffed by police.
“Now we are just seeing OpenAI do the full Facebook when it comes to content policy.”
A mother in Florida filed a lawsuit against an A.I. start-up, alleging its product led to her son’s death. The company’s defense raises a thorny legal question.
Bharatiya Janata party launches first test flight as brown haze blankets city after Diwali – but experts decry ‘gimmick’
The Delhi regional government is trialling a cloud-seeding experiment to induce artificial rain, in an effort to clean the air in the world’s most polluted city.
The Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) has been proposing the use of cloud seeding as a way to bring Delhi’s air...
While the company announced job cuts in artificial intelligence, it also expanded plans to replace privacy and risk auditors with more automated systems.
Ford said a fire at an aluminum factory will lower profits in the last three months of the year. The company also said it has stopped making an electric version of its popular F-150 pickup.
Dating of rock formation in New Mexico casts doubt on theory that species was already in decline
Dinosaurs would not have become extinct had it not been for a catastrophic asteroid strike, researchers have said, challenging the idea the animals were already in decline.
About 66m years ago, during the late Cretaceous period, a huge space rock crashed into Earth, triggering a mass extinction that...
The government plans to introduce the scheme for workers by the end of parliament in 2028.
Mr Zhao was sentenced to four months in prison in 2024 after pleading guilty to violating money laundering laws.