Italy's flourishing "cannabis light" industry is at risk, with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni pushes a bill through parliament to deflower a crop that is legal across much of Europe. Her conservative coalition wants to ban the sale of hemp flower products, but those in the trade say it's economic suicide. - REUTERS

We must build a new social contract for education – a contract based on equality, equity, and universal human rights. At the center of our global efforts to ensure education for all, we must put teachers first in everything we do. They are frontlines heroes who deliver every day to educate children, cultivate young talent, […]

Fossils in rocks that are 3.8 billion years old have puzzled biologists as they look nothing like modern cells, but now it seems they may be an ancient precursor life form that was unable to control its structure

Horses that are bred to race seem to perform better on the course if they had a diverse gut microbiome as foals

An estimate of annual bird fatalities due to building collisions in the US brings the figure to more than 1 billion – it is the first to include deaths from injuries after the strike

Tracking data from a pregnant porbeagle shark near Bermuda suggest it was eaten by a great white shark – a kind of predation that has never been seen before

Echolocating bats can more easily find and pollinate long-stemmed flowers that stand out from the surrounding foliage, which may be why this floral trait evolved

It seems to be more energy efficient for emus to keep one foot on the ground when running at a moderate pace, and the same may have been true for dinosaurs

Captive dolphins are more likely to make an open-mouthed expression when their playmate can see them and they often reciprocate, hinting that it is a form of visual communication

Tribalism can be toxic, yet we need more of it if we are to meet today’s global challenges, argues one anthropologist. His research reveals how to create a “teratribe”

They fight invaders, clear debris and tend neural connections, but sometimes microglia go rogue. Preventing this malfunction may offer new treatments for brain conditions including Alzheimer's

Astronomer Jo Dunkley is planning to use the Simons Observatory to snare evidence for inflation, the theory that the universe expanded at incredible speed after its birth

New research into the moments between wakefulness and sleep could bring hope for insomniacs and even make us more creative problem-solvers

Information contained within quantum objects gets scrambled when they interact. Physicists have now derived a speed limit for this process, challenging the idea that black holes are the fastest data scramblers

The true nature of time has eluded physicists for centuries, but a new theoretical model suggests it may only exist due to entanglement between quantum objects

Physicists have coaxed a cloud of atoms into having a temperature beyond absolute zero and placed them in a geometric structure that could produce an unknown form of matter

The gamma ray burst known as GRB221009A is the biggest explosion astronomers have ever glimpsed and we might finally know what caused the blast

A subatomic particle called the muon caused waves when its experimental behaviour didn't align with a prediction based on the standard model. A new calculation might resolve the discrepancy – but some particle physicists are sceptical

The direction of cause and effect was brought into question for quantum objects more than a decade ago, but new calculations may offer a way to restore it

Experiments in a state-of-the-art wave tank suggest we have underestimated the potential size and power of rogue waves and the risk they pose to offshore infrastructure

A mathematical proof shows that some quantum states can resist nature’s tendency to disorder – but only under very specific conditions

Alan Turing's theories about computation seem to have a startling consequence, placing hard limits on how fast or slow any physical process in the universe can grow

Billions of years ago, crushed quartz reacting with water could have created the conditions needed for the evolution of the photosynthetic microbes responsible for most of the oxygen now in Earth’s atmosphere

Pressure on the San Andreas fault from a now-dried lake could have been sufficient to trigger past major earthquakes in California. The lake’s disappearance could explain why there have been no such quakes for nearly 300 years

Earth appears to have less mass beneath a certain part of the Indian Ocean compared with the rest of the planet. Plumes of magma at the location could explain why

Climate researchers thought that current global average sea levels were the highest in more than 100,000 years, but new models suggest oceans just 6000 years ago may have been higher than at the beginning of the industrial revolution, and possibly even higher than today

Earth’s iron-rich inner core may owe some of its surprising softness to the motion of atoms, suggest experiments with iron at high temperature and pressure coupled to AI simulations

Two strange, high-density blobs buried more than a kilometre underground may have come from the ancient world Theia, which is thought to have slammed into Earth to create the moon

An area of the seabed north of Australia has been mapped in detail for the first time, revealing that large numbers of people could have lived there until it was inundated by rising seas

Several enormous craters left by explosions have been spotted in Siberia over the past 15 years, and a new explanation links them to hot gas – and climate change

Lightning strikes during volcanic eruptions could have provided nitrogen in a form that was needed by early life forms

In an ongoing swarm of earthquakes that began hitting Japan in 2020, the shifting weight of surface water may have spurred the shaking

Quartz crystals produce electricity when they are deformed by mechanical stress, which may explain how enormous chunks of gold can form in inert rock

A ring of asteroid debris could have orbited Earth for tens of millions of years, and perhaps even have altered the planet's climate

China's carbon emissions may have peaked in 2023, as figures suggest its output has plateaued so far in 2024

A specialised algorithm could help autonomous vehicles track hidden objects, such as a pedestrian, a bicycle or another vehicle concealed behind a parked car

In support of their AI ambitions, tech companies are rapidly expanding US data centres, and this growth is on track to significantly increase US gas demand by 2030

Alan Turing's theories about computation seem to have a startling consequence, placing hard limits on how fast or slow any physical process in the universe can grow

Soil is full of an uncountable number of viruses, and scientists are only beginning to understand just how substantial their role in the carbon cycle may be

Fibres in wet wipes and clothes often make their way into soil - and natural versions could be more damaging than synthetic ones

Experiments with a replica suggest that a piece of mammoth ivory with carved holes found in a cave in Germany was used by ancient humans to make ropes

Our hominin ancestors originated in Africa and the consensus is that they didn't leave there until about 1.8 million years ago, but stone tools found in Jordan challenge the idea

A 2200-year-old burial ground in northern Italy includes people interred with dogs and horses, perhaps showing they had strong bonds with their animals

Archaeologists say a mysterious language inscribed on a 2000-year-old metal hand may be related to Basque, but linguists aren't convinced

Korolevo, a site in Ukraine where early humans made stone tools, has been dated to 1.4 million years ago, suggesting early humans moved from Ukraine into the rest of Europe

Evidence from an archaeological site in Ethiopia suggests ancient humans adapted their diet during a dry spell after the Toba volcano eruption 74,000 years ago

In the foundations of a Maya temple, researchers found the charred bones of royal individuals – possibly evidence of a fiery ritual to mark the end of one dynasty and the beginning of another

The skull of Shanidar Z was found in the Shanidar cave in the Kurdistan region of Iraq, and has been painstakingly put back together

A fossil bone displaying features consistent with Down’s syndrome belonged to a Neanderthal child who survived beyond 6 years old, adding to evidence that these extinct humans cared for members of their community

Twenty people may have died 2000 years ago when an Iron Age bridge suddenly collapsed following a tsunami or flood, but scientists also cannot rule out that they were sacrificed