Adopting behaviors of people who buck trends could boost public health and sustainability. In any large dataset involving the choices people make, a handful of people will succeed when most others like them fail. Zooming in on those outliers and mapping out how they made their choices could give those failing in similar circumstances a leg up.

What are the main six debates to watch this year in European research policy?

Theranos case highlights the importance of peer review for biotech entrepreneurs, scientists say.

Horizon Europe Missions will reach full steam this year. The €1.9 billion two-year plan for the missions saw the light of day last autumn, with the European Commission launching the first calls in the last weeks of 2021.

With the COVID-19 crisis still underway and a climate crisis looming, an international group of senior researchers is pushing the world's biggest economies to reform the way they manage collaboration on emerging technologies. In coming years, argues a group participant, David Delpy, professor of medical photonics at University College London, the world risks conflict over who controls and benefits from a range of emerging technologies from climate control to 6G wireless networks.

A new COVID-19 vaccine, developed by researchers from the Texas Children's Hospital and Baylor College of Medicine, is being offered patent-free to vaccine manufacturers across the world.

Countries and universities are once again engaged in a war for talent over researchers, entrepreneurs and students as the world emerges in fits and starts from a pandemic-induced slowdown in international migration.

B.1.640.2 was discovered in a traveler returning from Cameroon and has a high number of mutations. And a first "flurona" case has been confirmed in Israel.

Africa urgently needs to guarantee its own health security.

The island nation struggles to keep the lights on but has inoculated 90% of its population with home-developed vaccines

In December 2019 the WHO was told of a cluster of pneumonia cases in Wuhan, China. These charts show how Covid-19 has spread across the world since then

Ancient Greeks have been credited with the invention of trigonometry, but a mathematician reveals Babylonians used it about a thousand years earlier.

For 75 days straight, Costa Rica ran on 100% renewable electricity.

A report shows that a $50 trillion redistribution of income to benefit the richest has made America less healthy, resilient, and secure.

These are some of the fun science stories from this year.

The COVID-19 pandemic has delivered a significant blow to EU R&D investment growth, according to data published in the 2021 edition of European Commission's industrial R&D scoreboard.

A look back at 2021 through the Sustainable Development Goals.

The extraordinary vaccination of more than four billion people, and the lack of access for many others, were major forces this year - while Omicron's arrival complicated things further.

The EU's proposed artificial intelligence act fails to fully take into account the recent rise of an ultra-powerful new type of AI, meaning the legislation will rapidly become obsolete as the technology is deployed in novel and unexpected ways. Foundation models trained on gargantuan amounts of data by the world's biggest tech companies, and then adapted to a wide range of tasks, are poised to become the infrastructure on which other applications are built.

Microplastics from Africa and North America found airborne in French Pyrenees, 2,877 metres above sea level

The European Medicines Agency has approved the Novavax coronavirus vaccine. The protein-based vaccine may be a real alternative, both for bringing forward the global vaccination campaign, and for vaccination skeptics.

At least 66m-year-old fossil discovered in southern China reveals posture previously unseen in dinosaurs

Experience in grant-writing, data analysis and presentation will serve researchers well - even when they move away from academia.

Research has stalled, funds have evaporated and many scientists are still struggling to get out.

A row between the European Parliament and the Council over whether unspent money in the previous Horizon 2020 EU research and innovation programme should be rolled into the 2022 Horizon Europe budget remains unresolved - and could repeat itself again next year. 

Analysis: scientists are only starting to understand new COVID mutation but there is encouraging news from the laboratory, South Africa and on antiviral drugs.

After years of government rhetoric about boosting the commercial benefits from university research, Australia's record is still among the worst in the developed world.

A new study finds that scholars who wrote about topics associated with women, or used methodologies associated with women, were less likely to go on to get senior faculty positions than those who did not.

A patent waiver will not help guarantee COVID-19 vaccines equity around the world and instead richer countries should back compulsory licensing, says a new report by the European Federation of Academies of Sciences and Humanities (ALLEA).

A high-profile replication study in cancer biology has obtained disappointing results. Scientists must redouble their efforts to find out why.