New Scientist

Virtual green spaces and classical music reduce blood pressure in hospital Watching a river flow via a virtual-reality headset while listening to classical music seems to quickly bring people's blood pressure down from a dangerously high level in hospital

Is China catching up to the US and SpaceX on reusable rockets? The next space race is not about making rockets faster, bigger or more capacious, but about reusing them reliably and cheaply. The US is well ahead, but can China catch up?

Anthropic’s discovery will, at best, be just another gene-editing tool The AI company Anthropic has announced that its Claude large language model has discovered a system reminiscent of CRISPR, but that doesn’t mean the Nobel prizes will start rolling in, says Michael Le Page

The first season of Heroes is almost perfect – here’s why Starring the late Hayden Panettiere as the self-regenerating cheerleader who could save the world, science-fiction series Heroes first aired 20 years ago today. It might have gone downhill in subsequent seasons, but its first is still brilliant, says TV columnist Bethan Ackerley

Mathematician discovers rare eight-faced shape It isn't easy to demonstrate that a new geometric shape can actually exist in the real world, but one researcher argues that the genus-3 polyhedron can

Copying others can help young orangutans build a broad diet Orangutans spend more than eight years learning how to cope on their own, and now we have a clearer idea of how they work out which foods to incorporate into their diet

Dogs pay more attention to consonants than vowels when we speak Hooking up dogs to non-invasive EEG monitors has helped identify exactly which component of human speech the animals are most attuned to

Backpack massages muscles when it detects they’re fatigued A backpack consisting of electrodes, cables and a soft massage head kneads muscles in the back when it picks up on them being fatigued

Taking HRT in perimenopause may ward off cardiovascular disease Hormone replacement therapies may reduce the risk of heart attacks and stroke, but the timing of when they are started could be critical

Benedict Cumberbatch’s nature show is stunning, if a little cloying The actor urges us to work with nature, not against it, in new documentary How to Live on Earth. Let's hope it can make a real difference, says Alec Luhn