Science
2025-26
“Science is fun. Science is curiosity. We all have natural curiosity. Science is a process of investigating. It’s posing questions and coming up with a method. It’s delving in.”
Nosy researcher’s quest to map the world’s ‘smellscapes’
We can share images and sounds, so why not smells? Dr Kate McLean-MacKenzie hopes her new atlas will make scents. Christmas may be associated with the aromas of oranges and mince pies but our towns and cities also boast special scents during the rest of the year. Now, one researcher is publishing an atlas attempting to capture these quirky “smellscapes”.
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Source. theguardian.com, 25.12.2025
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Uncovering the mysteries behind eel migration and spawning
Uncovering he mystery behind eel breed has proven to be a difficult task, but passionate scientists are far from calling it quits. Senior lecturer at AUT, Dr Amandine Sabadel is a chemist, ecologist, environmental scientist and an eel expert. She told The run home to Christmas that tracking technology has helped scientists find the first clues as to how and where eels spawn but there is still more to go in understand the process and location.
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Source. rnz.co.nz, 24.12.2025
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Organ-tuning books in English churches provide notes on a warming climate
Researchers have realised the records are a ‘goldmine’ to study changes in environmental conditions. Yangang Xing had never heard of organ-tuning books, but his colleague Andrew Knight often played the pipe organ at churches as a teenager. When the pair, who are researchers at Nottingham Trent University, set out to study how environmental conditions in churches had changed over time, Knight explained that all over the country.
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Source. theguardian.com, 22.12.2025
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Some dolphins appear to have orca friends - scientists think they have figured out what’s going on
A pod of Pacific white-sided dolphins off the coast of British Columbia have been observed cooperating with orcas, a traditional enemy that is better known for taking out great white sharks than friendly interaction. Scientists say they have documented the dolphins and a local population of killer whales known as Northern Resident orcas teaming up to hunt the orcas' staple food: salmon.
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Source. rnz.co.nz, 16.12.2025
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Humans made fire 350,000 years earlier than previously thought, discovery in Suffolk suggests
Groundbreaking find makes compelling case that humans were lighting fires much earlier than originally believed. Humans mastered the art of creating fire 400,000 years ago, almost 350,000 years earlier than previously known, according to a groundbreaking discovery in a field in Suffolk. It is known that humans used natural fire more than 1m years ago, but until now the earliest unambiguous example of humans lighting fires came from.
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Source. theguardian.com, 10.12.2025
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Linguists start compiling first ever complete dictionary of ancient Celtic
More than 1,000 words used as far back as 325BC to be collected for insight into past linguistic landscape. It is not likely to be a hefty volume because the vast majority of the material has been lost in the mists of time. But the remnants of a language spoken in parts of the UK and Ireland 2,000 years ago are being collected for what is being billed as the first complete dictionary of ancient Celtic.
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Source. theguardian.com, 09.12.2025
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The safest way to get up close with sharks
From a shark the size of a cigar to the long-extinct 400-kilo 'buzzsaw' to those that glow in the dark, sharks are an incredibly diverse species - and according to the exhibition's curator, 'the most misunderstood animals on the planet'. Some are the size of a cigar, others outweigh an elephant, and all are on display at Auckland Museum's newest exhibition, titled: Sharks.
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Source. rnz.co.nz, 09.12.2025
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Scientists discover four major turning points for human brain
Scientists have discovered the human brain goes through five different phases of life, with key turning points at four different ages. These "major turning points" occur around the ages of 9, 32, 66 and 83, a media release from the University of Cambridge said. The neuroscientists found the brain structure changes over the course of a human life, as the brain rewires to "support different ways of thinking while we grow, mature, and decline".
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Source. rnz.co.nz, 26.11.2025
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Why does New Zealand keep disappearing from world maps?
Has anyone ever asked you whether New Zealand is part of Australia — or where exactly it sits on the world map? From the famous Universal Studios globe in Florida to a 2019 IKEA wall map, New Zealand has been cropping up as a glaring omission. But why does it keep happening, and what does it reveal about the way we read maps?
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Source. rnz.co.nz, 23.11.2025
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