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People with Alzheimer’s disease have lower levels of lithium in their brains than those without cognitive impairment, and a deficiency of the metal appears to accelerate the accumulation of amyloid plaques and memory loss – but it could possibly be reversed with a small dose of lithium

Unexpected archaeological discoveries are rewriting the story of how the big, bad wolf became our first and most beloved pet

The Indonesian island of Sulawesi was a likely stepping stone for ancient hominins to reach nearby Flores, the home of the mysterious Homo floresiensis

The acting administrator of NASA, Sean Duffy, announced a directive to build a powerful nuclear reactor on the moon, but it is unclear what it would power – or even if his plan is legal

Just eight sessions of a bespoke form of psychotherapy seems to ease lower back pain even three years later

Piles of dirt can cheaply store renewable energy as heat – and that stored energy can reactivate the machinery of retired coal power plants, letting them provide backup power for the electricity grid

There are three types of cognitive reserve that can protect against decline as we age. Columnist Helen Thomson explores the lifestyle choices that can help you build a more resilient brain – and finds that midlife is a critical time to implement them

We use the Navier-Stokes equations every day, for applications from building rockets to designing drugs. But sometimes they break – and we don’t know why

Increasing evidence suggests chronic constipation can be a causal factor in illnesses including cardiovascular disease and cognitive impairment. So what can you do to get moving again?

When rocks fracture in underground faults, they generate a variety of chemical compounds that could provide more energy sources for microbes in Earth’s depths

Scientists are exploring various proposals to repurpose existing spacecraft in order to chase after the interstellar object 3I/ATLAS and take a closer look – but time is against them

People lost twice as much weight if they ate a diet of minimally processed food compared with ultra-processed alternatives

People lost weight if they ate an ultra-processed diet that was still based on dietary recommendations

Differences in the skulls of carnivorous dinosaurs suggest some dinosaurs ripped flesh while others crushed bones

Mathematicians who call themselves ultrafinitists think that extremely large numbers are holding back science, from logic to cosmology, and they have a radical plan to do something about it

A new detection tool can accurately spot deepfake videos featuring any AI manipulation, from face swaps to completely synthetic AI-generated content

Particles of light travelling through a maze of devices seem to have passed a famous test for entanglement – without being entangled at all

The tendency for AIs to give misleading answers may be in part down to certain training techniques, which encourage models to prioritise perceived helpfulness over accuracy

At least 300,000 men died during Napoleon’s retreat from Russia - now the latest genetic techniques have identified two pathogens that may have contributed to some of the deaths

Neuromorphic cameras, which only record data when a pixel's brightness changes, may be advantageous for capturing extremely bright and dim objects in the same image and tracking fast-moving objects