AB
Angharad Brewer Gillham
Editor
68 news posts
Featured news
08 Aug 2025
'One child called the robot "my little brother"': can assistance tech become part of the family?
In a new article published in Frontiers in Robotics and AI, Dr Zhao Zhao and her colleagues investigate the long-term lifespan of a social robot given to 20 families in 2021 to see whether it could help their children learn to read. Four years after their previous study, the robot was no longer needed for its primary purpose, but that didn’t mean it was no longer wanted. In this guest editorial, Zhao explores the new roles the robot that stayed took on — as keepsake, pet, and companion — and how our relationships to technology can change over time.
Featured news
29 Jul 2025
How much time did our ancestors spend up trees? Studying these chimpanzees might help us find out
A study on savannah-living chimpanzees suggests the need to move safely on thin tree branches could explain why early hominins that could walk upright kept their tree-climbing adaptations.
Featured news
24 Jul 2025
Students more likely to pass oral exams at noon — and that might apply to job interviews, too
Physiological rhythms could explain why Italian university students were more likely to fail exams early or late in the day.
Featured news
17 Jul 2025
Specialty of the house: Neanderthals at two nearby caves butchered the same prey in different ways, suggesting local food traditions
Differences in cut-marks left behind by butchery can’t be explained by different resources, tools, or skill levels, indicating cultural practices might be responsible.
Featured news
10 Jul 2025
Chemicals from turmeric and rhubarb could help fight antibiotic-resistant bacteria lurking in wastewater
Scientists monitoring wastewater find a range of antibiotic-resistant bacteria — but natural compounds show promise for fighting them off.
Featured news
01 Jul 2025
Cheese may really be giving you nightmares, scientists find
Scientists find lactose intolerance may link consuming dairy, bad dreams, and poor sleep.
Environment
24 Jun 2025
Wildlife forensic scientists develop new tool to detect elephant ivory disguised as legal mammoth ivory
Stable isotope analysis can tell apart ivory from mammoths dug up from the permafrost and modern elephants, closing a loophole for selling elephant ivory
Featured news
17 Jun 2025
Yes, in my back yard: people who live near large-scale solar projects are happy to have more built nearby
Scientists studying the impact of solar power on local neighborhoods find that most people living close to large-scale solar plants wouldn’t mind if a new plant was built nearby.
Earth science
10 Jun 2025
An Alaskan volcano could help scientists understand why ‘stealthy’ volcanoes erupt without warning
Veniaminof, Alaska, has frequent unexpected eruptions — modelling how they happen could help us protect people from unexpected eruptions.
Featured news
05 Jun 2025
Survival of the greenest: why world’s oldest organizations are surpassing young upstarts in environmental sustainability
In a new article published in Frontiers in Organizational Psychology, Daria Haner, Dr Yilei Wang, Dr Deniz Ones, Dr Stephan Dilchert, Dr Yagizhan Yazar, and Karn Kaura unveil surprising new findings: the world’s most sustainable businesses are the world’s most long-lived businesses, too. In this guest editorial, they explain their results, discuss the potential underlying reasons for their findings, and underline the importance of sustainability to the future of business.
Life sciences
03 Jun 2025
Ancient collagen can help identify a 'wombat the size of a hippo' in the fossil record
Scientists find new markers to identify species from fragments of fossilized bone and help us understand mysterious megafauna extinctions
Health
27 May 2025
Global warming could be driving up women’s cancer risk
A study on Middle Eastern countries links higher temperatures to an increased risk of breast, ovarian, uterine, and cervical cancers.
Featured news
20 May 2025
Baby on board: humpback whales give birth while migrating and carry on travelling
Humpback whale population’s recovery could reveal we were wrong about where humpback whales give birth — tropical waters aren’t the only nursery.
Environment
19 May 2025
‘Every single species is a unique product of evolution, like a work of art’: how Dr Kit Prendergast champions bees and biodiversity
Macrophotography and bee hotels introduced Dr Kit Prendergast to the world of native bees. Inspired, she began her PhD on protecting native bee biodiversity in urbanised habitats, and investigating the role of the introduced European honey bee on indigenous bee biodiversity and pollination networks. Since completing her PhD, she has worked in diverse roles as an ecological consultant, working to conduct native bee research for not-for-profits, environmental consultancies, Landcare groups, and local and state government, as well as with research institutions. She was awarded a Federal Government Grant to lead a project using bee hotels to help with the recovery of native cavity-nesting bees after the 2019/2020 bushfires. She is also a prolific science communicator, and has won a number of awards for her articles and scientific outreach.
Featured news
14 May 2025
Chimpanzees use medicinal leaves to perform first aid
Scientists observed chimpanzees in Uganda apparently cleaning and treating their own and others’ wounds.