York University

Two new studies collected air samples from zoos and demonstrated the ability to identify a range of animals living there from their airborne DNA. This could eventually be used as a non-invasive way to track biodiversity.

Getting drugs into the brain is no easy feat, but the nose is one of the most direct routes. Now, UK researchers have developed a nasal spray hydrogel that lines the tissue in the nose to deliver a common Parkinson’s drug straight to the brain.

There are worlds out there so weird they’d put Dr. Who writers to shame. The latest to join the ranks is K2-141b, a scorching planet where it rains rocks, winds whip at supersonic speeds and huge swaths of the surface are covered in lava oceans.

Scientists looking into bilingualism's effects on Alzheimer's have uncovered some new insights, finding that while knowing a second language can delay the onset of the disease, it can also significantly accelerate cognitive deterioration thereafter.

Honeybees are increasingly under threat. To help save these creatures from extinction, researchers from York University have found a group of genes that appears to be related to how hygienic a particular colony of bees is, and selective breeding for these genes could help fight colony collapse.

A new study has demonstrated that six-month-old babies raised in a bilingual environment tend to display better attentional control than their monolingual exposed counterparts. The results suggest cognitive benefits from bilingual exposure can manifest before infants are even capable of speech.

Mummification is usually associated with the age of Pharaohs, but it didn't spring up overnight. Now an international team has found further evidence that deliberate mummification was taking place a millennium and a half earlier and across a much wider area of Egypt than previously believed.

Bacteria are hardy, but even they have their limits. One of those was previously thought to be polar ice, but a new study has now observed bacteria living in those conditions. That discovery has implications for our understanding of Earth's past climate, as well as life elsewhere in the universe.

Even robots exploring other planets need to take some time to unwind and just watch the clouds for a while. The Curiosity rover, which just last week celebrated its fifth anniversary on the Red Planet, has now sent back some of the clearest photos yet taken of extraterrestrial clouds.

​There are currently two main ways in which dentists look for cavities: visual inspections and x-rays. Now, technology being developed at Toronto's York University could provide a more effective alternative.

If Arctic sea ice melting trends continue, a US military base, built into the Greenland Ice Sheet and abandoned since the 1960s, could eventually be freed from the ice – along with hundreds of thousands of liters of waste and pollutants.

A molecular messaging system capable of transmitting over several meters has been built using off-the-shelf materials costing around US$100. The invention stands to have applications for communications in challenging environments by mimicking molecular signalling seen in nature.