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You’re at home, sitting on the couch. Outside, there is thunder and lightning. You notice something at the window: a strange, glowing ball of light. As you watch, it appears to pass through the glass. It wanders through the air before abruptly disappearing.

These mimic activities are about memory. To do them well, you need to remember exactly what you saw. Your brain makes memories in a few stages. Sensory memory describes what happens when you briefly see an object. It lasts just a split second, however.

The 2012 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been jointly awarded to Sir John B. Gurdon and Professor Shinya Yamanaka. They received the award ‘for the discovery that mature cells can be reprogrammed to become pluripotent’. What does that mean?

Do you own a dog? Do you ride a bike to school? Do you have black hair? Each of these questions divides people into two groups – you either have a dog, or you don’t.

A few months ago, Science by Email reported on the naming of two superheavy elements, flerovium and livermorium. Now a team from Japan has reported making a third atom of another, new superheavy element with an atomic number of 113.

Create a taste illusion with this fun recipe!

A clock that lasts forever, without batteries or winding up, sounds like something from science fiction. Right now, that’s the case. But a research team led by scientists in the USA thinks it might actually to be possible to make such a device.

Bionic vision technology aims to help people who are blind or vision-impaired regain their sense of sight. Like with the cochlear implant, or bionic ear, Australian researchers are again leading the way, this time to develop a bionic eye.

Written by Sarah Kellett Life jackets are often orange to make them easy to spot after an accident. And orange fruit have their own life jackets, all built in!

Scientists have announced the discovery of a new species of monkey in central Africa. It’s only the second new species of primate to be discovered on the continent in 28 years.