Robotics engineer Stephen Roberts was taking his lunch at Somerville College at the University of Oxford, in England, when the conversation turned to chicken. It wasn’t the food, though. His dining companion was animal welfare specialist Marian Dawkins, and she thought that the pattern-recognition technology Roberts was explaining might help identify misbehaving hens. Laying hens [...]

This past spring’s eruption of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland was a nightmare for travelers, but it gave scientists in Europe unprecedented access to a complex eruption right in their backyard.

When a new species comes to light, its effect on the arrangement of its family tree might be better measured by statistics than by headlines. In a study of primates and flightless dinosaurs, researchers at Bristol University, UK, have found that the likelihood of any given find shaking up the family tree depends on how [...]

EISRIESENWELT, AUSTRIA—Tracing his glove along a chalky layer in a house-size block of ice that lines this cave in the Austrian Alps, Michael Behm can feel all that is left of an ancient warm spell. The ice, likely formed over the decades or centuries as calcium-enriched rainwater trickled deep into the cave and froze, must [...]

Professional and amateur astronomers will be teaming up tonight to gather information about the origins and future of the Perseid meteor showers. The spectacle occurs every year when dust from a particular comet hits Earth’s atmosphere, visible as streaks of light shooting across the night sky. Members of the International Meteor Organization (IMO), a group [...]

Another twist has emerged in the debate over whether there is water inside the Moon. Researchers studying lunar samples from the Apollo missions have used chlorine isotope measurements to conclude that the Moon is bone dry after all — corroborating scientists’ original assumptions from the 1970s, but contradicting more recent studies of the Moon’s water [...]

Spain is the latest European government to reduce state incentives for solar power, after its industry ministry on 1 August confirmed cuts to feed-in tariffs — the price an electricity utility must pay to generators of solar energy. A draft law, now under review with the national energy regulator CNE, would cut subsidies by 45% [...]

In the Upper East River Valley of Colorado’s Rocky Mountains, yellow-bellied marmots (Marmota flaviventis) are thriving thanks to climate change. The rodents’ startling population boom — their numbers have tripled in ten years — has now been linked to the increasing size of their bellies, which is probably caused by climate-driven changes in hibernation patterns. [...]

The rust-coloured plateau above Mecca in Saudi Arabia may soon attract pilgrims of palaeontology. The hills, which overlook the Red Sea, have disgorged the 29–28-million-year-old partial skull fossil of an early primate that possesses features both of apes and monkeys. The skull could help palaeontologists to answer questions about the life of primates in a [...]

Cassava breeds that are resistant to two major viruses could soon be available to farmers in Africa. Cassava mosaic disease and brown streak disease stunt the growth and rot the roots of crops, respectively. Mosaic disease alone destroys an estimated 35 million tonnes of African cassava a year — the difference between needing to import [...]