Discovery of GS-9209, one of the furthest from the Milky Way, adds to evidence that large black holes prevent star formation, astronomers sayA supermassive black hole discovered at the heart of an ancient galaxy is five times larger than expected for the number of stars it contains, astronomers say.Researchers spotted the immense black hole in a galaxy known as GS-9209 that lies 25bn light-years from Earth, making it one of the most distant to have been observed and recorded. Continue reading...

Concerns about birth defects first raised in 1960s but evidence for causal link to pregnancy test remains contentious• Families lose bid for compensation over PrimodosThe high court in London has struck out a bid by families who believe their babies were harmed to sue the pharmaceutical company behind the hormone-based pregnancy test Primodos. Scientists first published concerns about birth defects in the 1960s, a decade before the tests were withdrawn, but the evidence for a causal link remains contentious. Continue reading...

Therapy could help you figure out why you still resort to this coping mechanism from your past – which is one I can relate toSince childhood I have bitten the skin off my fingers, often leaving them bloody and painful. I am in my 50s now and my poor fingers look dreadful after years of chewing.I understand this to be a form of self-harm but it is such ingrained behaviour I seem unable to stop. I feel embarrassed by the state of my hands and find myself often tucking my fingers under so people can’t see them. Continue reading...

The prehistoric age has been stuck in a cultural rut since Jurassic Park. As a palaeontologist, I’m glad to see this era is overThe utterly extraordinary Prehistoric Planet has returned this week for a second season and, as a palaeontologist, I remain utterly enthralled by the whole thing. You might think I’d be spoiled for choice with the apparently unending parade of movies, video games and documentaries featuring animated dinosaurs, but this programme stands head and shoulders above anything else in terms of the accuracy of its animals and the naturalism they evoke.The jump from Ray Harryhausen classics such as One Million Years BC in the mid-1960s to Jurassic Park in 1993 was massive. Jurassic Park showed dinosaurs in a new way to vast audiences and ushered in a new wave of interest and representation, most notably in the BBC’s Walking with Dinosaurs series in 1999. However, 30 years on, most dinosaurs in mainstream film and TV still follow its look and feel, despite our scientific understanding of dinosaurs and their contemporaries having advanced enormously since then. Prehistoric Planet is as much, if not more, of a leap forward in showing dinosaurs as we think they really were.Dr David Hone is a reader in zoology at Queen Mary, University of London, specialising in dinosaurs and pterosaurs. He blogs at Archosaur Musings, and presents the Terrible Lizards podcast. His latest book is The Future of Dinosaurs Continue reading...

Since being laid low with the virus more than a year ago, Catherine Heymans can only operate in half-hour bursts. But her work could still change the way we understand the universe Continue reading...

After the ‘great dimming’, the closest red giant star to Earth is pulsating twice as fast as usual and lighting up the southern hemisphere’s early evening skyOne of the brightest stars in the sky is behaving strangely, pulsating from bright to dim twice as fast as usual and giving scientists an unprecedented insight into how stars die.Betelgeuse, the closest red giant to Earth, has long been understood to move between brighter and dimmer in 400-day cycles. But from late 2019 to early 2020, it underwent what astrophysicists called “the great dimming”, as a dust cloud obscured our view of the star. Continue reading...

Package of measures for UK life sciences sector also includes overhauling regulatory process for new medicinesGPs could be offered financial incentives to help recruit patients for clinical trials under ambitious government plans to quadruple the participants in commercial clinical trials in the next four years.Unveiling a £650m package of measures for the UK life sciences sector, the chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, said patients would get quicker access to new medicines and the government would cut the bureaucratic burden of approving clinical trials, which has been blamed for a rapid decline in NHS-based trials for cancer and Alzheimer’s drugs. Other measures announced include funding for an upgrade of the UK Biobank and details of a proposed train route between Oxford and Cambridge. Continue reading...

If discovery is feasible in humans it could be used to send astronauts into suspended animation, say scientistsIn science fiction, space crews are often spared the boredom and inconvenience of long-distance space travel by being placed into a state of suspended animation. Now this goal may have come a step closer after scientists showed that hibernation can be artificially triggered in rodents using ultrasonic pulses.The advance is seen as significant because the technique was effective in rats – animals that do not naturally hibernate. This raises the prospect that humans may also retain a vestigial hibernation circuit in the brain that could be artificially reactivated. Continue reading...

The Southern Ocean overturning circulation has ebbed 30% since the 90s, CSIRO scientist claims, leading to higher sea levels and changing weather

We need to know more about what goes into plastics in the first place and better regulation of how recycled products are used

People who have chronic pain without a visible injury are often not believed, but new research can help visualise that painMost people, including doctors, do not appreciate that the organ that produces pain is the brain. A broken bone, damaged tissue or a bleeding wound is often the focus, but the experience of pain is the sum total of more than just the physical injury – it is the result of information sent from our nerves being filtered through an individual’s unique psychological makeup, genetics, gender, beliefs, expectations, motivations and emotional context. Pain is therefore an individual experience, and often confounds and frightens us, as well as those we love and who love us.Acute pain is a life-preserving sensory and emotional experience, like hunger or thirst, and is produced by the brain to alert us to an actual or potential threat to our survival from damage to our bodies. It is a complex biological alarm system and, like all systems, may malfunction. When it becomes dysfunctional, the individual experiences pain without identifiable damage. The disease state that results is called chronic pain. At the moment, it cannot be cured – in other words, there is no bone that can be mended or wound that can be stitched that will cause the alarm to be switched off.Dr Abdul-Ghaaliq Lalkhen specialises in pain medicine and is a visiting professor at Manchester Metropolitan University. He is the author of Pain: The Science of the Feeling Brain Continue reading...

There is nothing quite like the spectacle of a tech bro with vast financial resources failing to grapple with his own mortalityThere are a lot of details to enjoy in the story of Bryan Johnson, the middle-aged almost-billionaire spending $2m (£1.6m) a year pursuing eternal youth. As described in the Times this week, Johnson has received “plasma infusions” from his 17-year-old son, had “33,537 images of his bowels” taken, and tried experimental treatments previously only tested on mice. But the one I like best, I think, revolves around his meal plan. As a man who made $800m (£646m) from the sale of his company to eBay, he enjoys a diet of “brown sludge” made of pureed vegetables – baby food, in other words. From the photos, these measures certainly seem to be working: the 45-year-old tech entrepreneur looks approximately 43.It is, of course, a source of reliable entertainment to study how the very wealthy set about ruining their lives. If excess is the quickest and most conventional route to self-destruction, self-denial is the more rewarding approach for the idle observer. There is nothing quite like the spectacle of a man with huge resources failing to grapple with his own mortality and spending what precious time he has left in joyless pursuit of a goal that is doomed to fail.Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Since it was introduced to the UK in 1850, Japanese knotweed has gone from novel ornamental plant to rampant invasive species. Madeleine Finlay speaks to journalist Samanth Subramanian about the huge costs associated with finding it on a property, and Dr Sophie Hocking explains what the plant, and our attempts to control it, might be doing to the environment. Continue reading...

A man who was paralysed in a cycling accident in 2011 has been able to stand and walk with an aid after doctors implanted a device that reads brainwaves and sends instructions to the spine to activate the right muscles.Gert-Jan Oskam, 40, was told he would never walk again after breaking his neck in a traffic accident in China, but has climbed stairs and walked for more than 100 meres at a time since having the operation. The 'digital bridge' is the latest from a team of neuroscientists in Switzerland who have a longstanding programme to develop brain-machine interfaces to overcome paralysis

Exclusive: Archaeologist says 5th-century BC wine vase with modern decoration widely regarded as fakeDays after Greece announced the recovery of hundreds of antiquities from a disgraced British dealer, its ministry of culture faces the accusation that one of those artefacts, a vase of the early 5th-century BC, bears a decoration that is in fact a “modern forgery” created in the 1990s.Christos Tsirogiannis, an archaeologist based in Cambridge, expressed astonishment that the ministry had included the olpe – a vase for wine – among treasured ancient objects that will be coming home. Continue reading...

Pioneering research could help development of miniaturised devices for stroke patients and paralysed peopleA man who was paralysed in a cycling accident in 2011 has been able to stand and walk with an aid after doctors implanted a device that reads his brain waves and sends instructions to his spine to move the right muscles.Gert-Jan Oskam, 40, was told he would never walk again after breaking his neck in a traffic accident in China, but has climbed stairs and walked for more than 100 metres at a time since having the operation. Continue reading...

Hurtling down trails on two wheels might not be the most obvious way to cope with a life-changing news but for Tracey Croke it helped her find inner peaceIt wasn’t the news my doctor expected from the scan. I could tell by the look on his face. Most partial hearing loss episodes are caused by infections. I was that rare, one-in-whatever-thousand case in which they’d discovered a squatter – which I now call “the thing” – was hanging out in my head.“It’s a brain tumour,” he said. Continue reading...

Citations of Chinese research have risen because of sequencing of Covid-19 genomeChina has overtaken the US to become the biggest contributor to nature-science journals, in a sign of the country’s growing influence in the world of academic research.The Nature Index, which tracks data on author affiliations in 82 high quality journals, found that authors affiliated with Chinese institutions are more prolific than their US counterparts in physical sciences, chemistry, Earth and environmental sciences. The only category in which the US is still in the lead is life sciences. Continue reading...

Research on gulls in Brighton found birds can work out which scraps are worth snaffling by watching what humans are eatingIt will take more than a bunch of signs declaring “do not feed the birds” to deter gulls from swooping down to pinch people’s snacks, a study has suggested.Research on herring gulls at Brighton beach found that the birds can work out which kinds of scraps are worth snaffling by watching what humans are tucking into themselves. Continue reading...

Radar imagery collected during Nasa’s Magellan mission in 1990s used to develop volcano databaseOur planet has more than 1,500 volcanoes – but if you think that’s a lot then take a look at Venus. A new map, created from radar imagery collected during Nasa’s Magellan mission in the 1990s, catalogues more than 85,000 volcanoes on Venus, 99% of which are less than 5km in diameter.“Our new database will enable scientists to think about where else to search for evidence of recent geological activity [on Venus],” says Paul Byrne from Washington University in St Louis. Continue reading...

California-based company will fold after selling off its assets and filing for bankruptcy in the USVirgin Orbit, the satellite launch company founded by British billionaire Richard Branson, will permanently cease operations, just months after a major mission failure.The California-based firm, which had already filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the United States in early April, has auctioned off its main assets, recovering just over $36m. That figure is barely 1% of the value the company reached in late 2021 on Wall Street, when it was valued at $3.5 billion. Continue reading...

Archaeologists begin excavation of two 500-year-old vessels filled with porcelain and timberTwo 500-year-old shipwrecks in the South China Sea, filled with Ming-era porcelain and stacked timber, provide significant clues about the maritime Silk Road trade routes, Chinese archaeologists have said.The two shipwrecks were discovered in October, and cultural and archaeological authorities have now begun a year-long process of deep-sea exploration and excavation, government officials announced. Continue reading...

My friend Mike Bruford, who has died aged 59 after a protracted illness, dedicated his career to unravelling the genetic consequences of biodiversity loss and was a professor of conservation genetics at Cardiff University.Respected by governments and researchers worldwide, Mike was determined and driven, and communicated science in a compelling manner. When asked, after a talk in 2022: “Can we afford to make all these changes to protect biodiversity?” his response was simple: “We cannot afford not to.” Continue reading...

Karelian bear dogs are being used to scare wild bears from human settlements and reduce human-wildlife conflictThe dog is moving through the grasses of the open meadow, closely followed by bear biologist Carrie Hunt, who is observing his reactions as he sees the grizzly bear carcass for the first time. “Find it,” says Hunt, encouraging the two-month-old puppy. The puppy’s ears and tail are up as he approaches the bear cautiously, but with the confidence that Hunt is looking for in a bear conflict dog.This is a Karelian bear dog, a hardy breed from Finland known to be fearless and capable of standing up to large mammals such as brown bears and moose. People once used the dogs to hunt big game in regions that now are part of Russia and Finland. Today, in Montana, Hunt is using the dogs to keep bears alive. Continue reading...

How a mind-altering, addictive substance was used as a weapon by one empire to subdue anotherHumans are an exquisitely intelligent and capable species of ape. Our physiology has been fine-tuned for efficient long-distance running; our hands are elegantly dextrous for manipulating and making; and our throats and mouths give us astonishing control over the sounds we make. We are virtuoso communicators, able to convey everything from physical instructions to abstract concepts, and to coordinate ourselves in teams and communities. We learn from each other, from our parents and peers, so new generations don’t have to start from scratch. But we’re also deeply flawed, physically and mentally. In many ways, humans just don’t work well.We’re also riddled with defects in our biochemistry and DNA – data-corrupted genes that no longer work – which means, for instance, that we must eat a diet more varied than almost any other animal to obtain the nutrients we need to survive. And our brains, far from being perfectly rational thinking machines, are full of cognitive glitches and bugs. We’re also prone to addictions that drive compulsive behaviour, sometimes along self-destructive paths. Continue reading...

Ministers to close loophole in 2018 Ivory Act that means animals other than elephants can be targetedIvory imports from hippopotamuses, orcas and walruses will be banned under new legislation to protect the endangered species from poaching.The Ivory Act, passed in 2018, targeted materials from elephants, but a loophole meant that animals other than elephants, including hippos, were being targeted for their ivory. Continue reading...

We now know that global temperatures are likely to temporarily rise by more than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels in the next five years. Breaching this crucial threshold will give humanity an insight into what the next few decades could bring. It will undoubtedly have serious consequences in all aspects of our lives, including what we eat.In the second of our special series of episodes looking at what a future world might look like, science editor Ian Sample explores how our diets could change as the Earth heats up. Ian talks to Kew’s kitchen gardener Helena Dove about climate-resilient vegetables, visits Tiziana di Costanzo’s insect farm to try mealworms and crickets, and hears from Solar Food’s CEO, Pasi Vainikka, about making food from bacteria, electricity and airClips: ITV, BBC, SkyListen to episode one of our series of future-focused episodes: can cities help us fight climate change? Continue reading...

Discovery of ‘objective biomarker’ raises hopes for new treatments for people living with intractable painBrain signals that reveal how much pain a person is in have been discovered by scientists who say the work is a step towards radical new treatments for people living with debilitating chronic pain.It is the first time researchers have decoded the brain activity underlying chronic pain in patients, raising hopes that brain stimulation therapies already used for Parkinson’s and major depression can help those who have run out of other options. Continue reading...

Far from being the preserve of weirdos, fandoms offer a model of community and wellbeingOf the many films that dramatise the deranged behaviour of celebrity fans, one of the most popular is Der Fan, a German production from 1982 about a teenage girl obsessed with a pop singer. It begins predictably enough – she writes him dozens of letters – but the ending is a little less orthodox. When he doesn’t reply she intercepts him outside one of his gigs, hangs out in his dressing room, has sex with him, kills him with a statue, chops him up and puts the dismembered body parts in a freezer. Unsurprisingly, it has become a cult classic.Like most works of its genre, Der Fan taps into a stereotype that fans have had to endure since the emergence of popular culture. Characterised as hysterics, fantasists, psychopaths, geeks, misfits or mindless consumers, they are feared either as obsessive loners who spend their lives fretting in their bedrooms (like the protagonists of most fan movies) or as members of a frenzied mob (screaming teenagers at a Harry Styles gig). The word is still associated with “fanatic” in the public consciousness. We assume that anyone with a consuming interest in a celebrity or fictional universe is this way inclined (unless they are a sports fan, in which case their behaviour is likely to be applauded). Continue reading...

After years in the police, Scott Walker became a ‘response consultant’, handling everything from abductions to piracy and cyber-attacks. The skills he used can help you get a pay rise, lower your rent, defuse a family crisis …Somewhere in Europe, a man is taken at gunpoint from his BMW. He is a successful businessman, worth an estimated €200m; from the burnt-out wreckage of his car, it’s clear this is a professional operation.In London, 48 hours later, Scott Walker is part of the team brought in to secure the man’s release. A hostage negotiator with more than a decade’s experience, Walker prepares himself for a long haul: it could be weeks before the kidnappers make contact with their demands. But the immediate negotiation is not with them – it’s with the hostage’s younger brother. Continue reading...

Castor and Pollux mark the heads of celestial siblings preparing to slip from view with the twilightThere is an absolutely beautiful cluster of celestial objects this week to look out for. The crescent moon will find itself close to the planets Venus and Mars, and the stars Castor and Pollux.The chart shows the view looking west from London on the evening of Tuesday, 23 May, at 22.00 BST. The constellation of Gemini, the twins, will be upright and preparing to sink below the horizon, disappearing from view along with the twilight. Venus and the moon will be in between the body of the twins, which are marked at the heads by the stars of Castor and Pollux. Mars will be sitting off to the left of the constellation, glowing with its characteristic ruddy light. In contrast, Venus and the moon will be shining bright white. Castor and Pollux will be yellowish and blueish respectively. Continue reading...

Darren Hawkes, garden designer and Samaritans helpline volunteer, has created a space full of empathy at the Chelsea Flower ShowDarren Hawkes knows exactly why he wanted to create a garden for Chelsea Flower Show that acknowledges life is full of fear and pain and loneliness: “When we are in despair, what’s common is, we all feel alone. We feel as if that despair is not a shared experience – it’s a personal one. And so, by putting the experience into three dimensions in a public space, there’s a chance it may remind someone that they are not alone. That there are other people who have experienced that.”Hawkes, an award-winning garden designer, gives up his free time to quietly confront this fact on a regular basis. He has lost friends to suicide and is a listening volunteer for the helpline of the suicide prevention charity, Samaritans, to whom he has dedicated his show garden. “It’s not a real garden. I wouldn’t create this garden for a Samaritans centre. But if, as a show garden, it helps to communicate some of the lived experiences of people who reach out and call Samaritans, that starts a dialogue.” Continue reading...

Called ‘humanity’s crew’, the four-person team comprises the first woman and the first person of color on a lunar assignmentAt a press conference on 5 July 1969, 11 days before the launch of Apollo 11, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins sat on stage in a plastic box with blowers making sure they did not inhale airborne germs from the sizeable gathering of journalists.Asked about the risk of getting stranded on the moon, Armstrong replied: “Well, that’s an unpleasant thing to think about.” Continue reading...

Footage captured from Cairns on the east coast to Normanton on the Gulf of Carpentaria shows growing fireball exploding with a loud boom

Research sheds light on how endotoxins play role in increasing risk of obesity and type 2 diabetesFragments of bacteria leaking into the body from the gut are damaging fat cells and driving weight gain, research suggests.Scientists at Nottingham Trent University have found that these microbe fragments, known as endotoxins, are able to enter the bloodstream and directly affect how well fat cells function. Continue reading...

Conquering diseases that appear among elderly people will eventually make life better for everyoneWhen members of the Hårga – Ari Aster’s Swedish cult in Midsommar – reach the age of 72, they are instructed to jump off a very high cliff. “They have reached the end of their life cycle,” the Hårga explain, Swedishly, to their dumbfounded American guests.As horror films go, it’s an unexpected twist – all the more so because it bucks what might be described as the genre’s most unrelenting theme, which is that the elderly are almost always villains, not victims. Throughout the long history of horror, the old have waited, jealously, to feast on the young, either in over-friendly cabals (Get Out, Rosemary’s Baby, Hereditary), or alone (X, Saw). All versions, perhaps, of horror’s longest-lived baddie: the vampire.Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 250 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at observer.letters@observer.co.uk Continue reading...

The only mammals that fly are not affected by coronaviruses. Scientists are trying to work out whyWidely depicted as evil spirits or blood-sucking demons, bats have had a poor press over the years. No vampire film, from Dracula to Buffy, has been complete without an entrance of one of these harbingers of death.But these grim portrayals demean the bat. We have much to learn from them, insist researchers who now believe bats could be crucial in helping us cope with future pandemics. Continue reading...

AI can fight the climate crisis and fuel a renewable-energy revolution. It could also kill countless jobs or incite nuclear warThe last few months have been by far the most exciting of my 17 years working on artificial intelligence. Among many other advances, OpenAI’s ChatGPT – a type of AI known as a large language model – smashed records in January to become the fastest-growing consumer application of all time, achieving 100 million users in two months.No one knows for certain what’s going to happen next with AI. There’s too much going on, on too many fronts, behind too many closed doors. However, we do know that AI is now in the hands of the world, and, as a consequence, the world seems likely to be transformed.Michael Osborne is a professor of machine learning at the University of Oxford, and a co-founder of Mind Foundry Continue reading...

Experts predict US-approved fezolinetant can be a ‘blockbuster’ for thousands of women in the UKMenopause treatments will be revolutionised by a drug that acts directly on the brain to prevent hot flushes, leading doctors have predicted.Speaking after the US approved the first non-hormonal menopause drug, made by Astellas Pharma, experts said the treatment could be transformative for the hundreds of thousands of women in the UK for whom hormone replacement drugs (HRT) are not suitable. The drug, fezolinetant, was licensed in the US on 12 May and could be approved for use in the UK by the end of the year. Continue reading...

Researchers identify differences in bacteria that colonise the gut in adults living with obesityThe gut bacteria of a toddler can predict whether they will be overweight later in life, research suggests.The study, led by Gaël Toubon from the Université Sorbonne Paris, looked at the data from 512 infants who were part of a study that tracked the lives of 18,000 children born in France. Continue reading...

Prehistoric Planet’s intimate, moving CGI footage is revolutionising natural history – and it’s presented by a national treasure. We meet the creators of a unique TV seriesJurassic Park was released 30 years ago, but in those three decades our perception of dinosaurs has largely remained static. In the public consciousness, they were giant, scaly beasts with huge claws and teeth who spent their days chasing down victims and ripping them apart in brutal fashion. Think dinosaur and you will probably picture a primal, primitive force of unbelievable fury.And then along comes the new series of Prehistoric Planet (Apple TV+), which, in a single instant, undoes almost everything we thought we knew. The instant in question concerns the Hatzegopteryx: a vast, vicious-looking, giraffe-sized pterosaur. Had the Hatzegopteryx been depicted on screen at any point until now, it would undoubtedly have been to swoop down like a monster and gobble up its prey. Continue reading...

Wylam, Northumberland: Why would a rare mountain flower be found here? The answer lies in the soilThis lowland pastoral landscape around Northumberland Wildlife Trust’s Close House Riverside reserve, on the north bank of the Tyne, is an unlikely place to find a mountain wild flower, the nationally scarce alpine pennycress. But in spring, an area of grassland about the size of a football pitch is enlivened by its blunt-ended white flower spikes, tinged mauve when they first open.Percy Thrower, whose TV gardening shows earned him celebrity status in the 1960s and 70s, would surely have had a theory as to why this montane member of the cabbage family thrives here. He often prefaced answers to botanical conundrums with the phrase “the answer lies in the soil”, and that indeed explains why Noccaea caerulescens is abundant on the reserve. This is calaminarian grassland, a rare habitat contaminated with centuries of accumulated heavy metal deposits, washed downriver from mine spoil tips in the high Pennines – arguably one of the happier outcomes of pollution, for this species at least. Continue reading...

PM sounds a more cautious note after calls from tech experts and business leaders for moratoriumThe UK will lead on limiting the dangers of artificial intelligence, Rishi Sunak has said, after calls from some tech experts and business leaders for a moratorium.Sunak said AI could bring benefits and prove transformative for society, but it had to be introduced “safely and securely with guard rails in place”. Continue reading...

My friend Keith Neal, who has died aged 84, taught biology at Manchester grammar school (MGS) for 23 years, turning it from an elite, esoteric A-level to one of the most popular subjects at GCSE.As head of department, and ardent environmentalist, he enthused his students through his knowledge and adventurous field trips. He was an internationalist, taking students to India in 1988 and 1993, and on a groundbreaking trip to China in the late 1990s. Continue reading...

Evidence suggests ancient Mesopotamians kissed and practice could be more culturally universal than previously thoughtHumanity’s earliest record of kissing dates back about 4,500 years in the ancient Middle East, 1,000 years earlier than previously thought, according to researchers.Scientists have highlighted evidence that suggests kissing was practised in some of the earliest Mesopotamian societies and documented in ancient texts from 2500BC that have been largely overlooked. Continue reading...

Limits on numbers at Paris summit mean some of those ‘most needing to be heard’ will not be in attendanceScientists and NGOs have accused the UN’s environment programme (Unep) of locking out those “most needing to be heard” from upcoming negotiations in Paris aimed at halting plastic waste.Last-minute restrictions to the numbers of NGOs attending what the head of Unep described as the “most important multilateral environmental deal” in a decade will exclude people from communities in developing countries harmed by dumping and burning of plastic waste as well as marginalised waste pickers, who are crucial to recycling, from fully participating, they said. Continue reading...

From self-cannibalism to spilling tomato sauce down my wedding dress, my nightmares are trying to keep me realJust what is the function of a recurring nightmare? Why am I forever doomed to be nude in different workplaces? Are these fantasies constructed to rehearse for the play of your life? Or are they, as I suspect, a way for your brain to chop down the tall poppy of your psyche?Maybe my brain worms are just trying to get me to keep it real. Continue reading...

There are now two impressive possible treatments for this form of dementia. But concerns remain over cost and potential side-effectsCould a new treatment developed by the US pharmaceutical company Lilley mean “the beginning of the end” of Alzheimer’s? Could we even cure the disease some day? These are the types of headlines and questions swirling around after news of a new drug, called donanemab, showed promising results in phase-3 trials at slowing down the decline in cognitive functions and reducing the deterioration in the ability to undertake daily tasks independently.Alzheimer’s is the most common cause of dementia, accounting for 60-70% of cases. It is not a normal part of ageing, even though it largely affects those over 65. It’s a degenerative disease where symptoms worsen over years, starting with mild memory loss and moving towards the complete loss of ability to recognise loved ones and caregivers, confusion and disorientation between the past and present, and the inability to live independently. It can be heartbreaking for families to watch the deterioration of loved ones who almost become like a different person, with extreme mood and behavioural changes.Prof Devi Sridhar is chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh Continue reading...

Prehistoric hearths found near Madrid date back about 250,000 years, with nearby tools showing food tracesPrehistoric humans in Europe might have been sitting round campfires built to toast snacks as early as 250,000 years ago – 50,000 years earlier than originally thought, researchers have suggested.Human species have a long association with fire, with some sites suggesting its controlled use dates back more than 700,000 years in Africa and the Middle East and at least 400,000 years in Europe. Continue reading...

Indian drug company to make cheaper generic version of CAB-LA, potentially protecting millions of people in Africa from the virusAn affordable version of a groundbreaking HIV-prevention drug will be made in South Africa for the first time, potentially giving millions of people at risk of HIV infection in Africa access to a two-monthly jab that can almost eliminate their chances of contracting the virus.The Indian drug company Cipla confirmed that a generic version of the prophylaxis, long-acting cabotegravir (CAB-LA), would be manufactured at its plants in Benoni, near Johannesburg, or Durban. Continue reading...