Possibility of ‘sharp market correction has increased’, says Bank’s financial policy committee

The Nobel Prize rewards science, humanism and peace efforts. This is one of the central concepts in the will of Alfred Nobel, and it also permeates the outreach activities that have been developed for the purpose of engaging, inspiring and spreading knowledge about the Nobel Prize as well as the discoveries and achievements of the laureates.

Could you use pedal power to get to school? Find out more about Cycle to School Week and how you can get involved.

As a writer, I have been rejected thousands of times, and it initially led to shock, denial and anger. Then I accepted it. Here’s what you can gain from doing so too

Kanazawa gold leaf, one of the world’s thinnest metallic foils and a UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage, owes its brilliance and durability to an unusual deformation mechanism. A team led by Professor Yoshifumi Oshima at JAIST discovered that non-octahedral {110}–<110> slip systems, normally inactive in gold, are activated during the traditional hammering process. This finding provides a scientific foundation for sustaining cultural heritage while inspiring new approaches to advanced nanomaterials and ultrathin metallic films.

Cells all require the transport of materials to maintain their function. In nerve cells, a tiny motor made of protein called KIF1A is responsible for that. Mutations in this protein can lead to neurological disorders, including difficulties in walking, intellectual impairment and nerve degradation. It’s known that mutations in KIF1A also result in a weakened motor performance, but this has been difficult to measure so far. Researchers including those from the University of Tokyo and the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) in Japan have measured changes in the force of KIF1A using a nanospring, a tiny, coiled structure, made of DNA which could lead to improved diagnosis of diseases related to the protein’s mutations.

A Stanford-led study found that snow leopards have the lowest genetic diversity among all big cats, a dubious distinction previously held by cheetahs. Without a variety of genetic adaptations to fall back on, the snow leopard population is vulnerable to any drastic change, including the warming climate.

This week’s top stories Oxfordshire's council leaders issued a rare joint statement following the terrorist attack in Manchester. In it they expressed shock and horror, sending thoughts and prayers t...

The rise of cetaceans (whales and dolphins) to become the dominating megafauna of the oceans happened remarkably quickly, within only 50 million years since some sort of hippopotamus-like species took the plunge to go fully aquatic. Their demise, which very nearly might have led to the extinction of a number of species, happened even more rapidly, within less than a century. A couple of recent studies have enlightened us on the rise of whales, and ongoing news regarding whaling remind us of their entirely human-made fall, so I combined these two to the feature called: **The rise and fall of whales** Current Biology Volume 34, Issue 19, 7 October 2024, Pages R877-R879 FREE access to full text and PDF download See also my Mastodon thread where I highlighted all CB features of 2024. The thread for 2023 is here . Baleen whales like this humpback typically feed on krill. (Photo: Admitter/Flickr (CC BY-ND 2.0).)