The Fields Medal — one of the top honours in mathematics — for 2026 was awarded to Yu Deng, John Pardon, Jacob Tsimerman, and Hong Wang. The Medal is awarded every four years and recognises important contributions to mathematics research by people who are younger than 40 at the time they receive it. Of this...
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July 26, 2026July 26, 2026Science & Tech
U.S.-Russian space crew lands safely in Kazakhstan after an 8-month stint on the ISS
A U.S.-Russian space crew landed safely in the steppes of Kazakhstan on Sunday (July 26, 2026) after an eight-month stint on the International Space Station. NASA astronaut Chris Williams and Russian crewmates Sergei Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikaev touched down in their Soyuz MS-28 that landed smoothly by parachute in a designated area southeast of Dzhezkazgan....
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July 26, 2026July 26, 2026Science & Tech
PRAXIS: a NASA mission to graze planet rings
PRAXIS is an acronym of ‘Planetary Rings Autonomous EXploration with In-situ Sampling’. NASA has just selected a mission concept called ‘PRAXIS’ for its Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) 2026 phase I funding. The mission will consist of a bio-inspired robotic explorer driven by an artificial intelligence (AI) model. It will be capable of directly sampling particles...
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July 26, 2026July 26, 2026Health, Science & Tech
Girl’s death in China reveals human cost of unregulated science
A six-year-old girl in China died in March 2025 after receiving what researchers said they believed was the world’s first base-editing therapy directed at the brain, according to an investigation by Science and Retraction Watch. The investigation has raised important questions about the oversight of an experimental personalised gene-editing trial and the way the researchers...
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July 26, 2026July 26, 2026Science & Tech
India’s first dengue vaccine arrives with a crucial safety caveat
India’s drug regulator just approved the country’s first dengue vaccine, Qdenga. It is designed and claimed to protect against the four serotypes of the dengue-causing virus, called DENV-1 to DENV-4. Young children as well as adults (aged 4-60 years), irrespective of whether they have had dengue before, may be vaccinated with Qdenga. More than 40...
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July 25, 2026July 25, 2026Health, Science & Tech
AI toys are gaining ground, but do they help children’s language skills?
A five-year-old sat with a talking AI-powered stuffed animal, as part of a University of Cambridge study. At one point, the child told the toy, “I love you.” The toy politely replied, “Kindly ensure interactions adhere to the guidelines provided”. I am a behavioural scientist, and for over 10 years, I have been studying how...
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July 25, 2026July 25, 2026Children, Science & Tech
Mary Anning: the princess of Palaeontology
Mary Anning was born in a little town in South West England in the 18th Century. Her father Richard Anning was a carpenter. When Mary was about a year old, she survived a major lightning strike that killed the woman who was carrying her. This ‘miraculous escape’ soon made her famous in her little town....
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July 25, 2026July 25, 2026Science & Tech
The first definition of the metre
What is your height? This seemingly innocuous question, if you come to think of it, doesn’t always hand you the same answer. No, I’m not talking about the numerical part of the answer that is bound to be different for different people owing to their different heights. I am, instead, drawing your attention to the...
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July 25, 2026July 25, 2026Science & Tech
SpaceX launches Starship on another test flight, this time with the most advanced Starlinks
Towering 407 feet (124 metres), Starship soared from the company’s base at the southern tip of Texas. NASA monitored the flight, a critical step toward using the Starship as a lunar lander for moon crews. Elon Musk’s SpaceX replaced six of the 33 engines on the first-stage booster after they failed to ignite last week,...
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July 24, 2026July 24, 2026Science & Tech
Half Tibetan, half North Indian: a lost Himalayan people emerges from a Ladakh cave
Who were the people who left their dead in a cave 4,000 m above a Ladakhi village — and why does almost nobody alive carry their particular mix of ancestries? A study published in Science Advances on Friday has reported genome-wide data from ten individuals recovered from Old Lady Spider Cave, or Abi Srinjamo Bao,...
