Science | The Guardian

Invertebrates don't get the attention lavished on cute pets or apex predators, but these unsung heroes are some of the most impressive and resilient creatures on the planet. So when the Guardian opened its poll to find the world's finest invertebrate, readers got in touch in their droves. A dazzling array of nominations have flown in for insects, arachnids, snails, crustaceans, corals and many more obscure creatures. Patrick Barkham tells Madeleine Finlay why these tiny creatures deserve more recognition, and three readers, Sandy, Nina and Russell, make the case for their favourites.Invertebrate of the year 2025: vote for your favouriteSupport the Guardian: theguardian.com/sciencepod Continue reading...

I've become addicted to the show. But as a scientist I wonder: how many couples actually stay together?It has finally happened. After a decade of avoiding the show, my wife and I decided that we would try out the new season of Married at First Sight. We consume quite a bit of reality TV, so it's not that we avoided it precisely, but something about the idea of watching people struggle to build a healthy relationship amid a storm of cameras and manufactured drama just never drew us in. At least until we watched Married at First Sight and realised it was actually kind of fun.Relationship drama makes for addictive viewing. But after watching most of a season of weird marriages", screaming matches and couch quizzes accompanied by deep and meaningful music, one part of the show has struck me as really weird. Everyone keeps referring to the saga as an experiment". From the narrator to the experts who counsel the hapless couples on their relationship dramas, the entire show seems to be calling the experience a social experiment for which we don't know the outcome.How many couples stay together until the end of filming?How many couples stay together after filming is completed?How many couples are still together and is it fewer than we'd expect? Continue reading...

Survey finds vast majority of doctors are concerned at impact of health inequalities on their patientsDoctors have reported a rise in the number of patients with Victorian diseases such as scabies, as the Royal College of Physicians urged the government to do more to fight poverty.The survey of 882 doctors found 89% were concerned about the impact of health inequalities on their patients, while 72% had seen more patients in the past three months with illnesses related to poor-quality housing, air pollution and access to transport. Continue reading...

Agency canceled about $17bn in grants in move that went beyond Trump's orders targeting diversity, suit alleges

Jacobite leader was unknowingly following the footprints' of megalosaurs after escaping to the Isle of Skye in 1746When Bonnie Prince Charlie fled the Scottish Highlands after defeat at the Battle of Culloden, his route may have crossed the fossilised footsteps of massive meat-eating dinosaurs, researchers say.Newly discovered impressions at Prince Charles's Point on the Isle of Skye, where the Young Pretender is said to have hunkered down in 1746, reveal that megalosaurs, the carnivorous ancestors of the T rex, and enormous plant-eating sauropods gathered at the site when it was a shallow freshwater lagoon. Continue reading...

An Australian study found that babies with early exposure to antibiotics had lower levels of antibodies against jabs in later infancyBabies who are treated with antibiotics as newborns have reduced immune responses to vaccines in later infancy, likely due to changes in the gut microbiome, new research suggests.The Australian study tracked 191 healthy babies from birth, finding that those who received antibiotics in the first few weeks of life had significantly lower levels of antibodies against multiple vaccines at seven and 15 months. Continue reading...

Older adults in Wales who had the jab were 20% less likely to be diagnosed with dementia that those not vaccinatedResearchers who tracked cases of dementia in Welsh adults have uncovered the strongest evidence yet that the shingles vaccination reduces the risk of developing the devastating brain disease.Health records of more than 280,000 older adults revealed that those who received a largely discontinued shingles vaccine called Zostavax were 20% less likely to be diagnosed with dementia over the next seven years than those who went without. Continue reading...

To prevent a catastrophic failure of the drugs modern medicine relies on, look to animal farming in middle-income countriesIf the antibiotics we use to treat infections ever stopped working, the consequences would be catastrophic. It is estimated that the use of antibiotics adds about 20 years of life expectancy for every person worldwide (on average). As the King's Fund put it, if we lose antibiotics, we would lose modern medicine as we know it". Doctors, public health experts and governments take the threat of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) very seriously, yet the problem appears to be getting worse.A report from the National Audit Office in February finds that out of five domestic targets set in 2019 to tackle AMR, only one has been met - to reduce antibiotic use in food-producing animals. Others, such as the target to reduce drug-resistant infections in humans by 10%, haven't made much progress; in fact, these infections have actually increased by 13% since 2018.Prof Devi Sridhar is chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh, and the author of How Not to Die (Too Soon) Continue reading...

Research highlights link between low LDL cholesterol and reduced dementia risk, with statins offering additional protectionLowering your levels of bad cholesterol could reduce the risk of dementia by 26%, a study suggests.People with low levels of low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) in their blood have a lower overall risk of dementia, and a reduced risk of Alzheimer's disease specifically, according to research published in the Journal of Neurology Neurosurgery & Psychiatry. Continue reading...

Experts say previous economic models underestimated impact of global heating - as well as likely cascading supply chain disruptions'Economic models have systematically underestimated how global heating will affect people's wealth, according to a new study that finds 4C warming will make the average person 40% poorer - an almost four-fold increase on some estimates.The study by Australian scientists suggests average per person GDP across the globe will be reduced by 16% even if warming is kept to 2C above pre-industrial levels. This is a much greater reduction than previous estimates, which found the reduction would be 1.4%. Continue reading...

In his first news conference since returning home, Nasa astronaut Butch Wilmore said he holds himself partly responsible for what went wrong on the space sprint-turned-marathon and - along with Suni Williams - said he would strap into Boeing's Starliner again. SpaceX recently ferried the duo home after more than nine months at the International Space Station following their bungled mission. The astronauts ended up spending 286 days in space - 278 days more than planned when they blasted off on Boeing's first astronaut flight on June 5

While other diet fads come and go, the ultra low carbohydrate Keto diet seems to endure. But as scientists begin to understand how the diet works, more is also being discovered about its risks. To find out more, Madeleine Finlay speaks to Javier Gonzalez, professor in the department of health at the University of Bath, with a special interest in personal nutrition. He explains how the diet works, what it could be doing to our bodies and what could really be behind the weight loss people experience while on itSupport the Guardian: theguardian.com/sciencepod Continue reading...

Termination of at least 145 grants will decimate progress toward eliminating epidemic, scientists sayThe federal government has cancelled dozens of grants to study how to prevent new HIV infections and expand access to care, decimating progress toward eliminating the epidemic in the United States, scientists say.The National Institutes of Health (NIH) terminated at least 145 grants related to researching advancements in HIV care that had been awarded nearly $450m in federal funds. The cuts have been made in phases over the last month. Continue reading...

Barry Wilmore and Sunita Williams' story markedly at odds with abandonment narrative painted by Trump and MuskIn the end, whatever Elon Musk and Donald Trump liked to insist, astronauts Barry Butch" Wilmore and Sunita Williams were never stuck, nor stranded in space, and definitely not abandoned or marooned.The world heard on Monday, for the first time since their return to Earth two weeks ago, from the two Nasa astronauts whose 10-day flight to the international space station (ISS) last summer turned into a nine-month odyssey. And their story was markedly at odds with the narrative painted from the White House. Continue reading...

Members of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine warned Americans of real danger in this moment'More than 1,900 members of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine signed an open letter warning Americans about the danger" of the Trump administration's attacks on science.The letter comes amid the administration's relentless assault on US scientific institutions which has included threats to private universities, federal grant cancelations and ideological funding reviews, mass government layoffs, resignations and censorship. Continue reading...

The answer to today's puzzleEarlier today I set you the following problem featuring Albert, Bernard and Cheryl, the protagonists in a viral puzzle from a decade ago. Here it is again with the solution.Cheryl's house number problem Continue reading...

Procedure for patients with thinking and memory problems could help medics decide which drugs are most suitableResearchers have developed a blood test for patients with thinking and memory problems to check if they have Alzheimer's and to see how far it has progressed.The team behind the work say the test could help medics decide which drugs would be most suitable for patients. For example, new drugs such as donanemab and lecanemab can help slow the progression of Alzheimer's, but only in people in the early stages of the disease. Continue reading...

Plan to cut most standalone positions in favour of shorter fellowships will hurt international recruitment, critics say

Follow your instincts' has become a modern mantra. But what if they lead you astray?What should I do?" Whether openly stated or implicit, this is the question a new client usually raises in their first therapy session. People come to see me for many reasons: relationship problems, addiction and mental health difficulties, such as anxiety. Increasingly, I have found that beneath all of these disparate problems lies a common theme: indecision, the sense of feeling stuck, and lack of clarity as to the way forward.Making decisions is difficult. Anyone who has lain awake contemplating a romantic dilemma, or a sudden financial crisis, knows how hard it can be to choose a course of action. This is understandable, given that in any scenario we must contend with a myriad conflicting thoughts and emotions - painful recollections from the past, hopes for the future, and the expectations of family, friends, and co-workers. Continue reading...

Research shows that while women experience feelings of revulsion from a young age, men catch them up in later years. Maybe I should stop scraping the mould off the jam ...What disgusts you? I hope it's not inexpertly summarised research, because I have been intrigued by the recently reported finding that men get more disgusted as they age. Researchers at the Institute for Environmental Decisions in Zurich found that while young women generally experience more disgust than men", later in life the difference between the sexes narrows, and men and women will reach similar levels of disgust when they get older".I don't think anyone who has encountered young men's bedrooms either in person or through the @boyroom social media account (a festival of coverless, unwashed duvets, defrosted bags of Ikea meatballs left to fester and stockpiled used tissues) will be surprised to learn that male disgust doesn't kick in early. However, the theory is that as physical vulnerability increases with age, it makes survival sense for men to become warier of potential contaminants. For women, disgust stays stable - high in their fertile years (perhaps an evolutionary safeguard for potential pregnancies) and high post-menopause too, as they become more susceptible to disease. Continue reading...

Albert, Bernard and Cheryl returnTen years ago I published a maths olympiad question from Singapore on the Guardian website, and it changed my life.Cheryl's birthday problem' went viral. Its unexpected success led to the birth of this column in May 2015. And here we are, almost 250 puzzles later.May 15, May 16, May 19June 17, June 18July 14, July 16August 14, August 15, August 17 Continue reading...

The pinnacle of this celestial display will be the waxing crescent moon cruising past the Pleiades star clusterWe start April with a glorious tableau of planet, moon and stars. The chart shows the view looking west-south-west from London at 2030 BST on 1 April. The last of the twilight will still be visible in the west, but in the rest of the sky the night will be nearly fully gathered.The stars of the familiar constellations of Orion, the hunter, and Taurus, the bull, will be easy to spot, as will the brilliant beacon of Jupiter. The planet will be sitting between the horns of Taurus. The face of the bull is marked by the V-shaped collection of stars known as the Hyades, and its eye is denoted by Aldebaran. Continue reading...

Uncrewed Spectrum test rocket's failure seconds after blast-off said to have produced extensive data nonethelessA test rocket intended to kickstart satellite launches from Europe fell to the ground and exploded less than a minute after takeoff from Norway on Sunday, in what the German startup Isar Aerospace had described as an initial test.The Spectrum started smoking from its sides and crashed back to Earth in a powerful explosion just after its launch from from the Andoya spaceport in the Arctic. Images were broadcast live on YouTube. Continue reading...

An uncrewed test rocket intended to kickstart satellite launches from Europe fell to the ground and exploded less than a minute after takeoff from the Andoya spaceport in Norway. The German startup Isar Aerospace, which had warned the launch could end prematurely, said the test produced extensive data that its team could learn from

For one writer, tragedy led to comedy, the sudden loss of a colleague giving her the nudge she neededThere's nothing funny about your co-worker being assassinated. But it was the death of my beloved colleague and friend Hisham al-Hashimi that led me into the world of standup comedy. I knew it would trash my hard-won career in international security, but I didn't care any more.Hisham had run a workshop with me in Iraq six months prior to his death, and I'd taken everything so seriously, marching around the hotel yelling about how everything was going wrong. But Hisham always had a lightness in his step, a smile on his face. Every evening, he'd take me to a cafe, order me my favourite shisha and proceed to tell the most disgusting jokes. Continue reading...

A book about psychiatrist William Sargant's unethical treatments at a London hospital in the 1960s is all the more powerful for its vivid patient testimoniesA child of 14 is forced to walk on to a stage and strip to her underwear. Tiny and mute beneath the stacked rows of medical students, she is paraded for their benefit by a consultant psychiatrist some 44 years her senior. It is 1966 - the peak of Swinging 60s' hedonism, liberalism and youthful counterculture - but in a locked psychiatric ward in London's RoyalWaterloo hospital, unspeakable violations are being inflicted upon patients.The perpetrator-in-chief, William Sargant, is the subject of thriller writer Jon Stock's first nonfiction book, The Sleep Room: A Very British Medical Scandal. One of the most notorious figures in British psychiatry, Sargant initially wished to be a physician. He pivoted to psychiatry after one of his earliest pieces of research met with a humiliating reception at the Royal College of Physicians, causing him to suffer a nervous breakdown and spend time in a psychiatric hospital himself. At this time - the 1930s - effective psychiatric treatments were virtuallynon-existent. Serious mental illness usually led to lifelong incarceration in an asylum. But the therapeutic nihilism of psychiatry was shifting towards optimism. Psychiatrists began experimenting with so-called heroic" therapies, such as putting patients into insulin comas or givingthem electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) to try to reset" their brains. Continue reading...

The common cooking ingredient has sparked fierce debate since the US health secretary urged people to avoid itIt's curious that something so bland could cause so much controversy. Most of us have a bottle of seed oil, normally called vegetable oil in the UK, in our kitchens - a nearly tasteless but very useful fat that has been a commonplace cooking ingredient for decades.And yet this previously unremarkable golden liquid has sparked online furore and vicious debate. Nutrition influencers on social media have described it as toxic", inflammatory", unnatural" and the root cause of the obesity epidemic. Continue reading...

The epidemiologist who advised on Ebola and Covid discusses the value of evidence in light of AI and social media, and how the notion of fact has long been divisiveAdam Kucharski is a professor at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. As a mathematician and epidemiologist, he has advised multiple governments on outbreaks such as Ebola and Covid. In his new book Proof: The Uncertain Science of Certainty, he examines how we can appraise evidence in our search for the truth.What inspired you to investigate the concept of proof?

US academics, fearing persecution by their own government, are becoming ideological refugees. Europe, and Britain, must offer them sanctuaryAt international academic conferences recently, one sees an interesting trend. Some American participants are travelling with burner" phones or have minimalist laptops running browsers and not much else. In other words, they are equipped with the same kind of kit that security-conscious people used to bring 15 years ago when travelling to China.So what's up? Well, these academics have a finger on the pulse of Trump's America, and are concerned about what might happen when they return home. They've read on Robert Reich's Substack about the French scientist who was prevented from entering the country because US Border Patrol agents had found messages from him in which he had expressed his personal opinion" to colleagues and friends about Trump's science policies.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...

Tiny aquatic animal can also withstand desiccation, radiation and extreme heat, and reproduces asexually

Eclipse peaked in London at about 11am on Saturday and was visible in parts of UK between about 10am and noonPeople across the northern hemisphere have gathered to catch a glimpse of the partial solar eclipse.The eclipse peaked in London at about 11am on Saturday and was visible in parts of the UK between about 10am and noon. Continue reading...

While humans are more boisterous than ever, other species are talking too - this is what you will hear if you really listenIt's a spring day in northern Sweden, just 100km (62 miles) below the Arctic Circle. I tuck my sound gear into my backpack, clip into my cross-country skis and glide out on to a frozen lake, looking for a small ice-fishing hole.It's a quiet day, with no snowmobiles or other skiers about. Conditions are perfect for the fishing I hope to do: not for dinner, but for sounds. Continue reading...

The moon partly obscured the sun during an phenomenon that could be seen across the northern hemisphere Continue reading...

This blog is now closed, you can read our story hereHere's a view of the sun from Dakar, Senegal:How visible today's partial eclipse will be depends, unsurprisingly, on how clear the sky is where you are. Continue reading...

A partial solar eclipse has been visible to varying degrees across the northern hemisphere, depending on the location. Eclipses occur when the sun, moon and Earth align. At its peak, the moon covered approximately 90% of the sun's disc. In the UK, between 30% and 40% of the sun was obscured Continue reading...

Ambitious project could soak up funding for subatomic physics for decades, say opponentsScientists are refining plans to build the world's biggest machine at a site beneath the Swiss-French border. More than $30bn (23bn) would be spent drilling a 91km circular tunnel in which subatomic particles would be accelerated to near light speeds and smashed into each other. From the resulting nuclear debris, scientists hope they will then find clues that would help them understand the detailed makeup of the universe.It is an extraordinarily ambitious project. However, it is also a controversial one - for many scientists fear the machine, the Future Circular Collider (FCC), could soak up funding for subatomic physics for decades and leave promising new research avenues starved of resources. Continue reading...

Dr Peter Marks was seen as a guardrail against any future politicisation of the FDA's approval of life-saving vaccinesA senior health official in the US, who was seen as a guardrail against any future politicisation of the Food and Drug Administration's approval of life-saving vaccines, has resigned abruptly, citing the health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr's misinformation and lies".Dr Peter Marks served as the FDA's top vaccine official. He had been lauded by Donald Trump during the US president's first term for his role in Operation Warp Speed, the initiative that developed, manufactured and helped distribute the Covid-19 vaccines. Continue reading...

About 30% to 40% of the sun will be obscured over the UK, and experts advise on viewing the celestial event safely

Airbus also built the Rosalind Franklin rover, due to launch in 2028 to search for signs of past lifeEurope's first rover to be sent to another planet is back on track to reach Mars, with the lander that will deposit it on the surface lined up to be built in the UK.The Rosalind Franklin rover - named after the scientist who played a key role in the discovery of the structure of DNA - is part of ExoMars, a European Space Agency (Esa) mission to probe whether life once existed on the red planet, and features a drill to retrieve samples, up to 4bn years old, from two metres below the surface. Continue reading...

Botulinum toxin injections are being used to treat the condition which affects more than one million Australian women

Exclusive: early stage trials of drug that uses antibiotics finds benefits for people whose pain is caused by infectionMillions of people worldwide with severe back pain may be able to get relief from a new drug that uses antibiotics rather than painkillers to tackle the condition.Doctors who have tested the drug said it could be a gamechanger" for the one in four people whose lower back pain is caused by an infection rather than a muscular or spinal problem. Continue reading...

AlphaFold, which uses AI to find a protein's structure, has only been around since 2020 but has already had a meteoric impactAlphaFold might be the most exciting scientific innovation of this century. From Google DeepMind, and first reported in 2020, it uses artificial intelligence to figure out a protein's 3D structure. The technology has already been used to solve fundamental questions in biology, awarded the Nobel prize (in chemistry - to Demis Hassabis and John Jumper) and revolutionised drug discovery. Like most AI, it's only getting better - and just getting started.A protein's structure gives us clues about its function, and helps us design new drugs. AlphaFold, which was trained on a huge database of experimentally solved structures called the Protein Data Bank, predicts a protein's structure based on its amino acid sequence.Solving a decades-old problem: the structure of the nuclear pore complex, one of the biggest structures in the cell. This complex is the guardian of entry to the nucleus, which holds the cell's DNA. It's implicated in cancer, ageing and neurodegeneration - and now we know what it looks like at the atomic level.Finding a new liver cancer drug. In a lab (not in patients), the drug, which targets the cancer protein CDK20, prevented liver cancer growth.Helping to design a molecular syringe", which delivers a therapeutic protein payload into human cells.Samuel Hume is a fellow at The Foulkes Foundation and pursuing PhD in the University of Oxford's department of oncology Continue reading...

Exhibition aims to help visitors get inside the minds that thought mercury and roasted apples would cure liceMedieval treatments might make you question the sanity of the doctors of the day, but a new exhibition is set to take visitors inside the minds of such medics and reveal the method behind what can seem like madness.Curious Cures, opening on Saturday at Cambridge University Library, is the culmination of a project to digitise and catalogue more than 180 manuscripts, mostly dating from the 14th or 15th centuries, that contain recipes for medical treatments, from compendiums of cures to alchemical texts and guides to healthy living. Continue reading...

The decision to put documents on the assassination of John F Kennedy into the public domain comes alongside a digital book burning' of dataWhat does the public need to know? The Trump White House boasts of being the most transparent administration in history - though commentators have suggested that the inadvertent leak of military plans to a journalist may have happened because senior figures were using messaging apps such as Signal to avoid oversight. Last week, it released thousands of pages of documents on John F Kennedy's assassination. Donald Trump has declared that Kennedy's family and the American people deserve transparency and truth".Strikingly, this stated commitment to sharing information comes as his administration defunds data collection and erases existing troves of knowledge from government websites. The main drivers appear to be the desire to remove woke" content and global heating data, and the slashing of federal spending. Information resources are both the target and collateral damage. Other political factors may be affecting federal records too. Last month, Mr Trump sacked the head of the National Archives without explanation, after grumbling about the body's involvement in the justice department's investigation into his handling of classified documents.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...

Naicker Scientific wins 150,000 for device that produces drinking water from icy lunar soilA 150,000 prize for a device that can produce clean water from icy lunar soil has been won by a pair of inventors whose solution involves a microwave oven, a motorised device for feeding woodchips into a barbecue and sound waves.The 1.2m Aqualunar Challenge, funded by the UK Space Agency's international bilateral fund and split between Canadian-led and UK-led teams, is designed to encourage innovative solutions to the problem of producing drinking water from ice-rich regolith - rocks and dust - around the moon's south pole. Continue reading...

Now I understand the terminology, it all seems so clear

The Oscar winner answers your questions about playing everyone from Peter Sellers to the Marquis de Sade, his home town of Toowoomba and new care-home horror The Rule of Jenny PenThe Rule of Jenny Pen looks terrifying! Does the prospect of sudden ageing frighten you? BenderRodriguez

Cambridge study finds algorithm is as effective as a pathologist in detecting disease - and much quickerAI could speed up the diagnosis of coeliac disease, according to research.Coeliac disease is an autoimmune condition affecting just under 700,000 people in the UK, but getting an accurate diagnosis can take years. Continue reading...

Gene Likens, who first identified acidic rainwater in 1960s, said the Trump administration's rollbacks are alarming'The US could be plunged back into an era of toxic acid rain, an environmental problem thought to have been solved decades ago, due to the Donald Trump administration's rollback of pollution protections, the scientist who discovered the existence of acid rain in North America has warned.A blitzkrieg launched by Trump's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on clean air and water regulations could revert the US to a time when cities were routinely shrouded in smog and even help usher back acid rain, according to Gene Likens, whose experiments helped identify acidic rainwater in the 1960s. Continue reading...

Millions paid to give away their most personal data. At least in return they found out more about their earwaxInformation is the most valuable resource on Earth. We shed data from everything that we do, and megalithic corporations hoover it up. With that, they know us better than we know ourselves, and the information we readily give up is used to upsell to us, and manipulate our political and personal views. We are users of social media, but in reality we are the product. Google's mission was never simply to provide a search engine; it was to curate the world's information. Perhaps it is no coincidence that the commercial genetic testing company 23andMe was cofounded by Anne Wojcicki, once the wife of one of the Google creators; 23andMe's mission was to curate the single richest dataset in the known universe, the one you carry around in your cells: your genome.23andMe provided information purporting to be about your personal health and ancestry. All you had to do was spit in a tube and give them some money, and in return you'd get a very glossy map of your genetic genealogy, and some info on the probability that you like the taste of coriander, or your skin flushes when you're drunk, or whether you have sticky or wet earwax, or your eye colour - things you might have already known, if you have ever looked in a mirror, or stuck your finger in your ear. If you look carefully, they did give solid info on the science underlying the results, but who reads the small print?Dr Adam Rutherford is a lecturer in genetics at UCL and the author of How to Argue With a Racist Continue reading...