Science | The Guardian

Scientists fear early emerging insects may fall out of sync with pathogens, predators or availability of foodMidsummer butterflies are on the wing in early May after a sunny spring sparked one of the most advanced seasons for Britain's Lepidoptera on record.The Lulworth skipper - usually found in June and July - is flying at Lulworth Cove in Dorset, the chequered skipper emerged in April rather than mid-May in Scotland and the first swallowtail, which is commonest in mid-June, was spotted in Norfolk on 1 May. Continue reading...

Experts found 60% of the EU's agricultural soils had been degraded, with about 40% similarly damaged in the UKMore than 60% of the EU's agricultural soils are degraded due to intensive agriculture, with similar damage to about 40% of British soils, a report has found.Experts from the Save Soil initiative said nourishing and restoring agricultural soils could reduce the impact of the climate crisis and provide protection against the worsening extremes of weather, as well as the food shortages and price rises likely to accompany them. Continue reading...

And yet science cannot get rid of them. Or can it?

Researchers say AI could give every developing country a vital early warning system of extreme eventsWeather forecasting has gradually been getting more and more sophisticated. It has also got far more important as the climate gets more unpredictable and extreme events threaten to cause massive economic damage and loss of life. So an early warning system is vital.Ever larger computer systems making millions of calculations over many hours are now part of the daily forecasting in most developed countries. Sadly large parts of the world, many very vulnerable to dangerous climate events, do not have the money, personnel or computing power to develop the 10-day forecasting system they need. Continue reading...

Small genetic changes in enzyme that prevents bad breath in humans lead to sulphurous scent in some asarumWith a smell of rotting flesh the flowers of certain species of wild ginger are unlikely to be used in a wedding bouquet - although they are irresistible to carrion-loving flies. Now researchers say they have worked out how the sulphurous scent is produced.Scientists say the odour is down to small changes in an enzyme that prevents bad breath in humans. Continue reading...

Lack of rain and floods both threaten crops. Ministers should heed the experts' warningsIt is so ingrained in British culture to celebrate sunshine that unless you are a farmer or gardener, it is unusual to complain about the lack of rain. But alarms are being sounded by environmentalists and farmers after a very dry spring followed a winter during which parts of the country, including Northern Ireland, had only 70% of average rainfall.Some crops are already failing, and worse will follow unless more rain arrives soon. Conditions at the moment are said to resemble 2022 - the last time that farms suffered significant losses due to drought. In certain regions, fields have had to be irrigated months earlier than usual. The National Drought Group, which coordinates management of scarce water resources, met on Wednesday. Long-range forecasts are predicting more warm, sunny weather, but the UK's weather is changeable. Two years ago the driest June on record was followed by an exceptionally wet July. Continue reading...

Eric Topol says we can prevent age-related disease and live fuller lives - but only if we reject anti-science malarkey'Dr Eric Topol's new book examines the best evidence-based approaches to longevity, and seeks to challenge the malarkey" of the bio-hacking, age-reversal and anti-science movements - all of which have found new purchase in American society amid scientific distrust stoked during the Covid pandemic.This book is trying to set the record straight, get rid of the pseudoscience, and paint an incredibly optimistic picture of how we are so well-positioned to prevent the three age-related diseases that compromise our health span," says Topol, director and founder of the Scripps Research Translational Institute and a practicing cardiologist, in an interview with the Guardian. Continue reading...

Science correspondent Hannah Devlin joins Ian Sample to discuss three intriguing science stories from the week, from a global study that puts the UK third from bottom when it comes to flourishing, to a man who intentionally suffered more than 200 snake bites in the quest to find a universal antivenom and a breakthrough in the quest to understand the contents of the charred Herculaneum scrolls buried when Mount Vesuvius eruptedUK among lowest-ranked countries for human flourishing' in wellbeing study

It is shocking that while illnesses specific to men are studied, those affecting women are ignoredSix years after Caroline Criado Perez's bestselling book Invisible Women drew a mass readership's attention to the long history of sexist bias in medical research, it is shocking that women and their illnesses are still underrepresented in clinical trials. Analysis by the Guardian of data gathered for a new study showed that from 2019 to 2023, 282 trials involving only male subjects were submitted for regulatory approval in the UK - compared with 169 focused on women.Health inequality is a complex and multifaceted problem. There are massive socioeconomic differencesin life expectancy and infant mortality, aswell as race inequalities - for example, in maternity and mental illnesses. These and other disparities, alongwith those relating to disability, can also be mapped geographically.Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...

Superb starlings seen to build reciprocal relations in which they return favours when a helper' has offspring of its ownBirds of a feather flock together, so the saying goes. But scientists studying the behaviour of starlings have found their ability to give and take makes their relationships closer to human friendships than previously thought.About 10% of bird species and 5% of mammal species breed cooperatively", meaning some individuals refrain from breeding to help others care for their offspring. Some species even help those they are unrelated to. Continue reading...

SpaceX and Starlink owner may benefit from Trump cuts to projects that could have led to regulations and costsThe Trump administration is poised to kill federal research into pollution from satellites and rockets, including some caused by Elon Musk's space companies, raising new conflict-of-interest questions about the billionaire SpaceX and Starlink owner.The pollution appears to be accumulating in the stratosphere at alarming levels. Some fear it could destroy the ozone layer, potentially expose some people to higher levels of ultraviolet radiation or help further destabilize the Earth's climate during the climate crisis. Continue reading...

Feeding the world sustainably is an incredibly complex challenge, yet some people are trying to sell us a bucolic fairytaleThe fire that has just destroyed 500 hectares (1,230 acres) of Dartmoor should have been impossible. It should not be a fire-prone landscape. But sheep, cattle and ponies have made it so. They selectively browse out tree seedlings, preventing the return of temperate rainforest, which is extremely difficult to burn. In dry weather, the moor grass, bracken and heather covering the deforested landscape are tinder.The plume of carbon dioxide and smoke released this week is one of the many impacts of livestock grazing. But several recent films, alongside celebrities, politicians, billionaires and far-right podcasts, seek to persuade us that cattle and sheep are good for the atmosphere and the living planet. This story, wrapped in romantic cottagecore, is now the most active and seductive frontier of climate-science denial. It is heavily promoted by the meat industry, which is as ruthless and machiavellian as the fossil fuel industry. It sows confusion among people desperately seeking to do the right thing in an age of misinformation.George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Crowning achievement of Alan Turing's codebreakers is now straightforward', according to computer scientistsThe Enigma code was a fiendish cipher that took Alan Turing and his fellow codebreakers a herculean effort to crack. Yet experts say it would have crumbled in the face of modern computing.While Polish experts broke early versions of the Enigma code in the 1930s and built anti-Enigma machines, subsequent security upgrades by the Germans meant Turing had to develop new machines, or Bombes", to help his team of codebreakers decipher enemy messages. By 1943, the machines could decipher two messages every minute. Continue reading...

Exclusive: doctors and patients forced to make decisions in vacuum of evidence' as women under-represented in dataHealth experts are calling for more UK clinical trials to focus on finding new treatments for women, as concerning" data reveals they are severely under-represented, with 67% more male-only studies than female-only.Details of thousands of studies were collected by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) and the University of Liverpool. The evidence shows the UK is a hub for pioneering research, with one in eight trials testing humans for the first time, and cutting-edge treatments such as gene therapies becoming a new growth area. Continue reading...

British team says new study radically transforms' understanding of bronze age trade networksIn about 1300BC, the major civilisations of the eastern Mediterranean made a cultural and technological leap forward when they began using bronze much more widely for weapons, tools and jewellery. While a form of the metal had previously been used in smaller quantities by the Mycenaeans and Egyptians among others, bronze was now abundant - but how?Most bronze is an alloy of copper and tin, but while the former was widely available in antiquity, tin is a rare element, with no large sources within thousands of kilometres. This left one big question, referred to by archaeologists as the tin problem". Where were the bronze age societies of the Mediterranean getting the tin for their bronze? Continue reading...

This display caused by Earth passing through debris from Halley's Comet will peak this week and be most visible on Wednesday - but only if you're up before dawn

A new study has found that helping sufferers manage their emotions lessens their experience of chronic painWhen Jabez Allies developed chronic lower back pain 10 years ago, her doctor sent her to the physio, who recommended different types of stretching and exercises - some that helped, some that didn't help at all - as well as hot-water bottles and painkillers.But as the pain got progressively worse every year, so too did Allies' feelings of being overwhelmed - frustrated she couldn't do the things she could before and spiralling into hopelessness that there was nothing she could do to fix it.Sign up for a weekly email featuring our best reads Continue reading...

Advocacy groups say gutting EPA's scientific research arm would turn it into a purely political agencyAmericans' health is being put at risk after new cuts were announced by Donald Trump's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to reduce staffing to 1980s levels and gut its scientific research arm, experts and advocacy groups warned.The EPA's administrator, Lee Zeldin, announced on Friday that the agency would slash its budget by $300m in the fiscal year 2026 as part of a broad overhaul that he said was designed to cut it to levels resembling those in the Reagan administration. Continue reading...

A British company is producing mosquitoes that carry a self-limiting' gene that kills off female offspring, limiting the spread of diseases such as malaria and dengue feverIn an unassuming building on an industrial estate outside Oxford, Michal Bilski sits in a windowless room with electric fly swatters and sticky tape on the wall, peering down a microscope. On the slide before him is a line of mosquito eggs that he collected less than an hour previously and put into position with a brush.Bilski manoeuvres a small needle filled with a DNA concoction and uses it to pierce each egg and inject a tiny amount. Continue reading...

This display caused by Earth passing through debris from Halley's Comet will peak this week and be most visible on Wednesday - but only if you're up before dawn

This display caused by Earth passing through debris from Halley's Comet will peak this week and be most visible on Wednesday - but only if you're up before dawn

Direct to consumer tests that claim to tell us our biological - as opposed to chronological - age are getting a lot of attention, but what can they really tell us about our health? Science editor Ian Sample talks to Dr Brian H Chen, an epidemiologist at the California Pacific Medical Center Research Institute, who has conducted research into a variety of these tests called epigenetic clocks. He explains what exactly they are measuring and whether, once we have the results, there are any evidence-based strategies we can adopt to lower our biological ageReal age versus biological age: the startups revealing how old we really areSupport the Guardian: theguardian.com/sciencepod Continue reading...

Ink traces show text is part of work by Epicurean philosopher Philodemus, burned during AD79 volcano eruptionA charred scroll recovered from a Roman villa that was buried under ash when Mount Vesuvius erupted nearly 2,000 years ago has been identified as the influential work of an ancient Greek philosopher.Researchers discovered the title and author on the Herculaneum scroll after X-raying the carbonised papyrus and virtually unwrapping it on a computer, the first time such crucial details have been gleaned from the approach. Continue reading...

Survey of 164 primates in Rwanda shows how impact of being close to others is affected by group size and sexHuman friendship groups are complex - and often fraught - but a study of mountain gorillas has found that their societies can also be head-scratchingly complicated.The study, which took in 20 years of health data involving 164 gorillas in Rwanda, discovered that the costs and benefits of being close to others changed depending on the size of groups and differed for males and females. Continue reading...

Three different tests flagged up a long list of potential problem foods, but they failed to agree on a single oneThe list of foods I should consider cutting out is long and daunting.Meat, mushrooms, most nuts and seeds, milk products, soya beans and potatoes - all this would no doubt result in me losing weight, but weight loss is not what I'm investigating. These are the combined results of three commercial food sensitivity tests that are sold online and have surged in popularity in recent years. Continue reading...

Small experiment monitored transfer of gluten after couples had kissed with tongues for at least one minutePeople with coeliac disease can kiss gluten-eaters without concerns for their health, researchers have said after finding only trivial amounts of the protein are transferred during a french kiss.About 1% of people around the world are thought to have coeliac disease, an autoimmune condition triggered by gluten, although many do not have a clinical diagnosis. Continue reading...

Exclusive: British scientists over the moon' with re-entry to funding scheme after losing out for three yearsBritish scientists are over the moon" to be back in the EU's flagship science research programme Horizon after a three-year Brexit lockout, with new data revealing they have been awarded about 500m in grants since re-entry.As the EU secretly draws up strategies for the next seven-year funding cycle in 2027, the UK is hoping its success in the first 12 months since returning to Horizon will leave it in pole position with Germany and France to dominate European science, despite Brexit. Continue reading...

Eta Aquariids have roughly a week of activity in May, though they are better seen from southern hemisphereDebris from the tail of one of the most famous comets of all - Halley's comet - will slam into the Earth's atmosphere this week, creating a meteor shower. The Eta Aquariids are not fantastically well placed for northern sky watchers, but they can still be rewarding for those willing to get up in the early hours.Unlike most meteor showers, which have a definite night of peak activity, there is roughly a week of activity during the Eta Aquariids, which are usually centred around the nights of 5-7 May. Continue reading...

Beyond self-help mantras like Let them', radical acceptance shows us the value in learning how to truly accept life just the way it isHave you ever been in the middle of difficult life circumstances to be told let it go" or don't dwell on it" as if it were a simple choice?Such advice can have the effect of minimising our distress and abruptly changing the subject. Yet it is not the phrases themselves that are troubling - there is real substance to them - but the missed opportunity to grasp the true meaning of what Buddhist teacher Tara Brach calls radical acceptance". Continue reading...

Macron and von der Leyen expected to announce protections for researchers seeking to relocate amid Trump's crackdownFrance and the EU are to step up their efforts to attract US-based scientists hit by Donald Trump's crackdown on academia, as they prepare announcements on incentives for researchers to settle in Europe.The French president, Emmanuel Macron, alongside the European commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, will make speeches on Monday morning at Sorbonne University in Paris, flanked by European university leaders and researchers, in which they are expected to announce potential incentives and protections for researchers seeking to relocate to Europe. Continue reading...

Residents - most of them SpaceX workers - in remote Texas community approve plan to create new cityVoters in a small patch of south Texas voted this weekend to give Elon Musk a town to call his own, officially creating a new city called Starbase in the area where Musk's SpaceX holds rocket launches.A couple of hundred residents of what was previously known as Boca Chica decided to make their unincorporated neighborhoods into a town that will grant them the authority to pass city ordinances. Continue reading...

It would now be easier for us if Dad had sorted things before he died but the process of emptying his house allowed me to see him differently

Musk and Bezos are the heirs to a quasi-religious belief in tech salvation. The rest of us are stuck in the real worldIt's tempting to believe that tech billionaires' embrace of Donald Trump and the far right is a sudden rupture with the usual political ideology of Silicon Valley. Op-eds in the New York Times and elsewhere have made this case. Even Marc Andreessen, one of the billionaires in question, claims that this is what happened - he said that it was a change in the Democratic arty that pushed him and his fellow oligarchs into the arms of the GOP.Yet this is a serious misunderstanding of the situation. There wasn't a sudden shift in the politics of tech - it was a homecoming. While it's true that Silicon Valley has long supported Democratic candidates for political office - and that rank-and-file tech workers still vote overwhelmingly for Democrats - the fundamental ideology underpinning the culture of Silicon Valley's venture capitalists and CEOs has always had a far-right libertarian core. This is even true for Andreessen: while he likely believed what he said while he was saying it, his own words and actions make it clear that he wasn't giving an accurate assessment of his own motivations, much less anyone else's. His venture capital firm, Andreessen Horowitz, has long opposed government regulation of any sort that touches on their investments; Andreessen himself posted a techno-optimist manifesto" that, despite its claim to be politically neutral, promotes an authoritarian vision of unfettered power for tech oligarchs. He even lovingly paraphrases Filippo Marinetti, the co-author of the Fascist Manifesto. Continue reading...

As infections pummel communities in the US, Mexico and Canada, fear of the most contagious human disease' growsA leading immunologist warned of a post-herd-immunity world", as measles outbreaks affect communities with low vaccination rates in the American south-west, Mexico and Canada.The US is enduring the largest measles outbreak in a quarter-century. Centered in west Texas, the measles outbreak has killed two unvaccinated children and one adult and spread to neighboring states including New Mexico and Oklahoma. Continue reading...

Ronan the sea lion can still keep a beat after all these years. She can groove to rock and electronica, but the 15-year-old California sea lion's talent shines most in bobbing to disco hits such as Boogie Wonderland.Not many animals show a clear ability to identify and move to a beat aside from humans, parrots and some primates. But then there's Ronan, a bright-eyed sea lion that has scientists rethinking the meaning of music.A former rescue sea lion, Ronan burst to fame about a decade ago after scientists reported her musical skills. From age three, she has been a resident at the University of California, Santa Cruz's Long Marine Laboratory

Infectious disease experts say the latest outbreak is still in its infancy and could get a lot worse - here's what to know

Infectious disease experts say the latest outbreak is still in its infancy and could get a lot worse - here's what to know

Sea lion grooving along to hits such as Boogie Wonderland helps show scientists rhythm is not exclusive to humansRonan the sea lion can still keep a beat after all these years.She can groove to rock and electronica. But the 15-year-old California sea lion's talent shines most in bobbing to disco hits such as Boogie Wonderland. Continue reading...

Blood from man bitten hundreds of times by deadly species is used to create most broadly protective antivenom yetHe has self-administered more than 850 doses of venom from cobras, mambas, rattlesnakes and other deadly species in pursuit of a singular quest: to develop immunity to snake bites in the hope of helping scientists create a universal antivenom.Now the extreme 18-year experiment by Tim Friede, a former truck mechanic from Wisconsin, appears to have paid off. Scientists have used antibodies from his blood to create the most broadly protective antivenom to date, which could revolutionise the treatment of snake bites. Continue reading...

Anfield celebrations of Alexis Mac Allister strike caused tremor with peak magnitude of 1.74Labelling a win as seismic" has become a lazy and overused term. But not in the case of Liverpool FC's title-clinching win over Tottenham Hotspur when scientists recorded genuine Earth-shaking seismic activity triggered by celebrations at Anfield.Researchers from the University of Liverpool's department of Earth, ocean and environmental sciences were on site on Sunday to measure ground movement from the crowd throughout the match when the home team won 5-1 and claimed the Premier League title for the 2024-25 season. Continue reading...

A wetter farming' project explores rehydrating peatland to help grow crops in boggier conditions while cutting CO2 emissionsI really don't like the word paludiculture' - most people have no idea what it means," Sarah Johnson says. I prefer the term wetter farming'."The word might be baffling, but the concept is simple: paludiculture is the use of wet peatlands for agriculture, a practice that goes back centuries in the UK, including growing reeds for thatching roofs. Continue reading...

Method of preserving 18th-century Austrian vicar has never been seen before, say researchersThe mystery of a mummy from an Austrian village has been solved, according to researchers who say it was embalmed in an unexpected way - via the rectum.Intrigue had long swirled around the mummified body stored in the church crypt of St Thomas am Blasenstein. The remains were rumoured to be the naturally preserved corpse of an aristocratic vicar, Franz Xaver Sidler von Rosenegg, who died in 1746 at the aged of 37, gaining the mummy the moniker of the air-dried chaplain". Continue reading...

Kosmos 482, weighing 500kg, was meant to land on Venus in the 1970s but it never made it out of orbit because of a rocket malfunctionA Soviet-era spacecraft meant to land on Venus in the 1970s is expected to soon plunge uncontrolled back to Earth.It's too early to know where the half-ton mass of metal might come down or how much of it will survive re-entry, according to space debris-tracking experts. Continue reading...

Ethel Caterham, who lives in a care home in Surrey and takes life in her stride, is first Briton to claim title since 1987The secret of longevity is to do what you like, according to the 115-year-old British woman named the world's oldest living person.Ethel Caterham, born in 1909, is the first Briton to claim the title of world's oldest person since 1987, when 114-year-old Anna Williams was the record holder. Continue reading...

Linzagolix hailed as a possible gamechanger' in tackling the painful condition for some patients in EnglandMore than 1,000 women a year in England could benefit from a new pill for endometriosis.The condition occurs when tissue similar to the womb lining grows elsewhere in the body, such as the pelvis, bladder and bowel. It can cause chronic pain, heavy periods, extreme tiredness and fertility problems. Continue reading...

Aluminium emissions from satellites as they fall to Earth and burn up is becoming more significant as their numbers soarRight now there are more than 9,000 satellites circumnavigating overhead, keeping track of weather, facilitating communications, aiding navigation and monitoring the Earth. By 2040, there could be more than 60,000. A new study shows that the emissions from expired satellites, as they fall to Earth and burn up, will be significant in future years, with implications for ozone hole recovery and climate.Satellites need to be replaced after about five years. Most old satellites are disposed of by reducing their altitude and letting them burn up as they fall, releasing pollution into Earth's atmosphere such as aerosolised aluminium. To understand the impact of these growing emissions from expired satellites, researchers simulated the effects associated with an annual release of 10,000 tonnes of aluminium oxide by 2040 (the amount estimated to be released from disposal of 3,000 satellites a year, assuming a fleet of 60,000 satellites). Continue reading...

The narrative of ancient tribes around the world regularly using ayahuasca and magic mushrooms in healing practices is a popular one. Is it true?Beginning in 2001, the Austrian anthropologist Bernd Brabec de Mori spent six years living in the western Amazon. He first arrived as a backpacker, returned to do a master's thesis on ayahuasca songs, and eventually did a PhD on the music of eight Indigenous peoples in the region. Along the way, he married a woman of the local Shipibo tribe and settled down.I did not have a lot of money," he told me, so I had to make my living there." He became a teacher. He built a house. He and his wife had children. That rare experience of joining the community, he said, forced him to realise that many of the assumptions he had picked up as an anthropologist were wrong. Continue reading...

Authorities are still trying to understand what triggered the massive power outage that left the majority of the Iberian Peninsula without electricity on Monday. To understand what might have been at play, and whether there's any truth to claims that renewable energy sources were to blame, Ian Sample hears from Guardian energy correspondent Jillian Ambrose. And Guardian European community affairs correspondent Ashifa Kassam explains what it was like to experience the blackout and how people reactedShipwrecked in the 21st century': how people made it through Europe's worst blackout in living memorySupport the Guardian: theguardian.com/sciencepod Continue reading...

Focus on overuse contributes to antibiotics reaching less than 7% of people with drug-resistant infections in poorer countries, say researchersLess than 7% of people with severe drug-resistant infections in poorer countries get the antibiotics they need, a new study suggests, with researchers warning that not only is this causing suffering and deaths, but is also likely to be driving antimicrobial resistance (AMR).With AMR forecast to cause 1.9m deaths a year by 2050, they are calling for urgent action, akin to the fight earlier this century to get HIV drugs to Africa's virus hotspots. Continue reading...

Corroboree frog belongs to 100m-year-old family of amphibians but is now found only in the puddles and peat bogs of Kosciuszko national park