Skybot F-850 will spend a week on the ISS charming astronauts with its sense of humor

Human movements can teach robots the skills they need to dig holes and—maybe someday—build the first colonies on Mars

Job postings from a NASA contractor suggest that a new humanoid robot is under development

Your weekly selection of awesome robot videos

Your weekly selection of awesome robot videos

The first clinical uses of whole-genome sequencing show just how challenging it can be.

Early in life, babies gain billions of viruses that target gut bacteria – but breastfed babies are less likely to pick up viruses that infect human cells

Some dogs and cats may be passing gut microbes to their owners that withstand last-resort antibiotics, which can be needed to fight off pneumonia from a coronavirus infection

People with rheumatoid arthritis often take medicines that can have damaging side-effects, but a system that uses red light to deliver drugs exactly where they are needed could help

“Thanks to future lunar inhabitants, the 1.5 liters of liquid waste a person generates each day could become a promising by-product for space exploration,” the ESA says

The different hominid species, possibly including the oldest-known Homo erectus, existed in the region's hills and caves

Celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Smithsonian's "David H. Koch Hall of Human Origins" with some of the biggest discoveries in human evolution

The Monte Conca cave system in Sicily is showing signs of being altered by pollution from above.

New research describes a new model for how the brain interprets patterns in complex networks. They found that the ability to detect patterns stems in part from the brain's desire to represent things in the simplest way possible and that the brain is constantly weighing the pressures of complexity and simplicity when making decisions.

Trials of a vaccine that could protect against Covid-19 are to begin in the UK.

Human trials of a potential coronavirus vaccine being developed at the University of Oxford will begin on Thursday, Health Secretary Matt Hancock said.

Prince Charles has warned we are "rapidly destroying" biodiversity across the planet.

A coronavirus vaccine is unlikely to be available before the year is out despite tens of millions of pounds being spent on UK trials that start imminently.

The coronavirus pandemic is fast becoming a human rights crisis as "structural inequalities" are impeding access to public services, the United Nations has said.

Conservationist Dr Jane Goodall has warned of future pandemics if lessons are not learned from the coronavirus crisis.

A consultant who died after contracting Covid-19 has been described as a "very special human being" and "a real NHS hero".

The first people have been injected as the UK starts human trials for a coronavirus vaccine.

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An aquarium in Japan has urged the public to video-chat their eels, who are forgetting that humans exist.

They are among the earliest enslaved African people brought to the Americas.

The space agency announces the companies that will work on landers to return astronauts to the Moon.

A video interview with Canada’s AI secretary general on crisis and opportunity. 

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Less than a third say government is doing enough to help healthcare workers

We’re interacting less with the outside world – and the societal pressures that come with it. Are some women still wearing makeup every day?

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The shutdown feels like a good opportunity to examine an age-old feminist question: when women put makeup on, can they ever truly be doing it for themselves?

We will probably never have an answer. The pressure imposed on women to look good is such a part of our existence that we might never get rid of it – even “dressing up for oneself” can be traced back to self-hatred fueled by a beauty-obsessed culture.

We can expect psychological difficulties to follow as we come out of lockdown. But we have an opportunity to remake our relationship with our bodies, and the social body we belong to. By Susie Orbach

When lockdown started, I was confused by bodies on television. Why weren’t they socially distancing? Didn’t they know not to be so close? The injunction to be separate was unfamiliar and irregular, and for me, self-isolating alone, following this government directive was peculiar. It made watching dramas and programmes produced under normal filming conditions feel jarring.

Seven weeks in, the disjuncture has passed. I, like all of us, am accommodating to multiple corporeal realities: bodies alone, bodies distant, bodies in the park to be avoided, bodies of disobedient youths hanging out in groups, bodies in lines outside shops, bodies and voices flattened on screens and above all, bodies of dead health workers and carers. Black bodies, brown bodies. Working-class bodies. Bodies not normally praised, now being celebrated.

A key piece of the human family tree is still missing, waiting to be found.

The Guardian’s data journalists in the UK, US and Australia explain how they have shone a light on the statistical narrative behind the pandemic, and what they have helped to reveal

The European Space Agency said Friday that human urine could one day become a useful ingredient in making concrete to build on the moon.

For the first in our new series of letters capturing tales and thoughts during lockdown, Amira Hashish finds comfort in her neighbour's act of kindness...

If only everyone was kinder we would all reap rewards

The novel coronavirus is making plain each day just how vulnerable we humans are to a brand new infectious disease. But humanity has an ally in robots.

The first study to report use of the rheumatoid arthritis drug anakinra to treat COVID-19 patients found that high-dose anakinra was safe and was associated with respiratory improvements and reduced signs of cytokine storm [1] in 72% (21/29) of patients, according to results from patients studied for 21 days (enrolled from 17 to 27 March 2020) in a Milan hospital, published in The Lancet Rheumatology journal.

The Monte Conca cave system in Sicily is showing signs of being altered by pollution from above.

New research describes a new model for how the brain interprets patterns in complex networks. They found that the ability to detect patterns stems in part from the brain's desire to represent things in the simplest way possible and that the brain is constantly weighing the pressures of complexity and simplicity when making decisions.

COVIDCon will explore how "tyranny sparked and is exploiting the novel coronavirus pandemic to crack down on civil liberties."