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Explore the most exciting new ideas and emerging concepts in science, health, technology and the environment with New 杏吧原创鈥檚 exclusive in-depth articles, interviews and long reads.

Environment

Volcano eruption may have led to the Black Death coming to Europe

Climate data and historical accounts suggest that crop failures in the 1340s prompted Italian officials to import grain from eastern Europe, and this may have carried in the plague bacterium

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Life

Tigers seem to be bouncing back in remote Sumatran jungle

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Overall winner Mesmerizing spider threads The image shows two exceptional silk threads of the Australian netcaster spider, Asianopis subrufa. Unlike typical web-builders, this spider holds a specialized, sticky net between its four front legs. When an unsuspecting insect approaches, the spider rapidly expands its net and casts it over the prey, a maneuver that demands dramatic extensibility from the supporting lines at the sides of the sticky net. These threads are composed of an elastomeric core encased in a sheath of harder fibers of varying sizes; the result is a structure that is both strong and stretchy. The mesmerizing, looping fibers in the image capture the eye with their meandering fiber bundles, which shift in their complex winding from large to small scales. The image covers 50 microns in width and was captured using a Zeiss GeminiSEM 360 field-emission scanning electron microscope under high vacuum and after coating of Au-Pd. Minimal adjustments of curves and cropping were applied via Adobe Photoshop. Martin J. Ramirez Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales - CONICET "Jonas Wolff, Greifswald University. Website: https://zoologie.uni-greifswald.de/struktur/abteilungen/erc-junior-research-group-evolutionary-biomechanics/ BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/evoimec.bsky.social Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/evoimec/ ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/lab/EVOMEC-Macro-Evolution-Comparative-Biomechanics-and-Biomaterials-Jonas-O-Wolff" Royal Society Photography Competition 2025 overall winner, 'Mesmerizing spider threads' by Mart?n J. Ram?rez. Sample obtained by Jonas Wolff.

Life

Incredible close-up of spider silk wins science photo prize

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food Allergy and Intolerance Warning Sign

Health

Experimental vaccine prevents dangerous allergic attack for a year

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African forest elephant in the water 1_Wali Bai, just outside the Nouabale-Ndoki National Park, Republic of Congo_Credit F. Maisels WCS

Life

IUCN report finds more African forest elephants than we thought

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Health

Dogs may make us more caring and sociable by changing our microbiome

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Space

Planned satellite launches could ruin Hubble Space Telescope images

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Moon Crossing Face of Earth

Space

Forming moon may have taken three big impacts early in Earth鈥檚 history

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Cave passages in Murubbeh Cave

Humans

Ancient human artefacts found near caves in Arabian desert

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OSIRIS-REx Sample

Space

Asteroid Bennu carries all the ingredients for life as we know it

We knew from prior analyses that a distant asteroid sampled in 2020 carried all but one of the molecules needed to kick-start life, and researchers have just found the missing ingredient: sugar

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Space

What would Russia’s inability to launch crewed missions mean for ISS?

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Environment

Coral reefs have fuelled severe global warming in Earth’s past

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Health

We now have a greater understanding of how exercise slows cancer

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Health

Man unexpectedly cured of HIV after stem cell transplant

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