Avi Loeb organizing $1.5m search to Papua New Guinea to look for interstellar object that crashed into ocean in 2014A prominent Harvard physicist is planning a Pacific expedition to find what he thinks might be an alien artefact that smashed into the ocean.Avi Loeb announced that he is organizing a $1.5m ocean expedition to Papua New Guinea to look for fragments of an object that crashed off the coast of its Manus Island in 2014. Continue reading...

Rare close encounter will occur this weekend, when the space rock will be visible through binoculars and small telescopesAn asteroid big enough to wipe out a city will pass harmlessly between Earth and the moon’s orbit this weekend, missing both, while providing scientists a chance to study the object close up.Asteroid flybys are common but Nasa said it was rare for one so big to come so close and that events like this occurred only about once a decade. Scientists estimate its size to be somewhere between 40 and 90 metres in diameter. Continue reading...

A tense, state-of-the-nation drama set in Covid-era India successfully exposes how the caste system underpins much of the country’s division and strife‘No one ever plans for the poor,” says a young police officer in this tense, painful pandemic drama from India. Shot in black and white, it’s set at the start of the government-imposed lockdown in May 2020 that led to the exodus of 10 million migrant workers from India’s cities. The police officer has been put in charge of a rural roadblock to stop poor workers returning to their families and villages – preventing the spread of the virus. But realising that no help is arriving, the crowd, feeling hungry and abandoned, get angry. The results are explosive, exposing the fault lines of caste prejudice and class conflict.The officer Surya (Rajkummar Rao), is himself from a lower-caste family, but he’s climbing the ladder; he is a competent, decent cop who refuses kickbacks or bribes (just what a modern police force needs). Still, his boss never lets him forget his place, and we see how Surya has internalised prejudice too. All of society turns up at his checkpoint. A rich upper-caste woman (Dia Mirza) waltzes over accompanied by her driver, fully expecting to sail through. A young woman who worked as a maid in the city risks her life to get her alcoholic father home to their village. There’s an elderly security guard travelling on a bus; then a film crew arrives from a TV news channel. Continue reading...

Now academics on the left have joined the anti-lockdown chorus. Yet their Covid theories rely on a travesty of the factsWas the pain worth it? Between March 2020 and March 2021, the UK had three national lockdowns. The goal was to control the spread of Covid-19. Essential businesses were closed, as were schools and universities, and “stay at home” orders meant families and friends were often kept apart. At the time, the government was unenthusiastic about lockdown and many Tories opposed it. Lord Sumption, for example, insisted that if it weren’t for lockdown, people could have “a perfectly normal life.”Now a new chorus of lockdown sceptics includes people who position themselves on the left, such as the historian Toby Green and his colleague Thomas Fazi. They have joined the ranks of the Tory right in saying that the public, which strongly supported lockdown and even wanted to go further and faster than the government did, were misled by an apocalyptic campaign by medical professionals overstating the benefits and understating the costs of lockdown.Richard Seymour is a political activist and author; his latest book is The Twittering Machine Continue reading...

Fatal bloodstream illnesses driven by urinary tract infections could rise, warn scientists as research shows link to food-borne bacteria

Ian Sample hears from Scotland’s Astronomer Royal Catherine Heymans about her experience of long Covid and how it has impacted her life. He also speaks to Professor Danny Altmann, an immunologist at Imperial College London, about the current scientific understanding of the condition, and whether we’re any closer to a treatment. Continue reading...

Nowhere to hide for former PM as he was finally cross-examined on lockdown gatherings in No 10

Disorder involves strong negative reaction to sounds such as chewing or snoringIf the sound of someone chewing gum or slurping their tea gets on your nerves, you are not alone. Researchers say almost one in five people in the UK has strong negative reactions to such noises.Misophonia is a disorder in which people feel strong emotional responses to certain sounds, feeling angry, distressed or even unable to function in social or work settings as a result. But just how common the condition is has been a matter of debate. Continue reading...

Cambridge study reveals the great composer experienced a hepatitis B infection and was at high risk for liver diseaseWhen an autopsy was carried out after Ludwig van Beethoven’s death in 1827, his liver was found to be “beset with nodules the size of a bean”. Now researchers say the cause may not have been alcohol consumption alone, with a genetic analysis revealing the great composer experienced a hepatitis B infection and was at high risk for liver disease – the condition generally thought to have killed him.Tristan Begg, first author of the research from the University of Cambridge, said Beethoven had been extremely sensitive in his lifetime about suggestions he was a drunkard. Continue reading...

Defence department puts out call for satellites that can talk to each other and to the ground, are ‘scalable, rapidly deployable and reconstitutable’

Swiss firm’s withdrawal from Leqvio trial with NHS dents government plans to attract post-Brexit research and investmentThe Swiss pharmaceutical firm Novartis has ditched plans for a large clinical trial in the UK, in a further blow to the government’s efforts to make Britain an attractive place for research and investment after Brexit.The company decided to scrap the Orion-17 trial of its cholesterol-lowering drug Leqvio, involving 40,000 patients in partnership with NHS England. Continue reading...

Caffarelli, 74, takes top trophy for work on partial differential equations, the first winner from South AmericaFirst football, and now maths. Three months after Lionel Messi triumphed at the World Cup, an Argentinian has won the top international trophy in mathematics.Luis Caffarelli, 74, has received the Abel prize, an award presented by the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, for his work on partial differential equations, which are a type of equation involving continuous change that are used by scientists to model the natural world. Continue reading...

Study finds males, who can command a harem of up to 100 females, driven to gain weight as quickly as possible by foraging in areas full of predatorsExtreme polygamy may be driving male southern elephant seals to early deaths, new research suggests.A study of 14,000 southern elephant seals (Mirounga leonina) at Macquarie Island in the south-western Pacific, has found that while survival rates for males and females are roughly comparable for juveniles, male survival rapidly decreased after eight years of age, dropping to around a 50% survival rate, while female survival remained constant at 80%. Continue reading...

Research finds use of progestogen is associated with a 20-30% higher risk but this falls after no longer taking itAll types of hormonal contraceptives carry a small increased risk of breast cancer, according to research establishing a link with progestogen pills for the first time.The use of progestogen is associated with a 20-30% higher risk of breast cancer, data analysis by University of Oxford researchers has established. This builds on previous work showing that use of the combined contraceptive pill, which contains oestrogen and progestogen, is associated with a small increase in the risk of developing breast cancer that declines after stopping taking it. Continue reading...

Between 2020 and 2021 cases of Candida auris doubled, with symptoms including antibiotic-resistant high fever with chillsPotentially deadly fungal infections with Candida auris are spreading rapidly in US healthcare facilities, with cases nearly doubling between 2020 and 2021, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Monday.The number of cases rose by 44% to 476 in 2019, up from 330 in 2018, and subsequently by 59% to 756 in 2020 and by an additional 95% to 1,471 in 2021, the agency’s researchers reported on Monday in Annals of Internal Medicine. Continue reading...

Engineers show 3D printing’s potential by turning cartridges of paste and powder into cheesecakeIt was perhaps no surprise, when researchers set out to push the boundaries of 3D printing, that their attempts to rattle out cheesecakes were not immediately successful.The first trial started well enough, but as the printer gradually built up the dessert, squirting one layer and then the next, the creation began to slump before quietly collapsing into a gloopy heap. Continue reading...

Scientists know our gut influences our brain. So psychobiotic drugs that shift the composition of microbes in the gut may be able to help treat disorders such as anxiety and depressionIn a classic comic strip, most recently gracing the Beano, tiny characters called “numskulls” live in the head of a chap called Edd, controlling what he gets up to – often with hilarious results. It has run for decades, presumably because the idea that there could be critters within us capable of exerting a profound mental and physical influence seems pretty absurd.But it appears science is having the last laugh: in recent years the idea has spawned myriad research papers – except that instead of minuscule people at work inside one’s head, it is microbes in the gut that appear to be pulling the strings. Continue reading...

Previously unseen genomic samples suggest animals at Huanan market were potential sourceNewly released data from early in the Covid-19 pandemic has offered a crucial insight into the outbreak’s origins, suggesting that Covid-infected animals were present at a market in Wuhan and could have been a “potential source of human infections”.A pre-print report on Monday by a team of international researchers fleshed out analysis of previously unseen genomic samples collected by Chinese scientists at the Huanan market in Wuhan in the early days of the pandemic. Continue reading...

Madeleine Finlay speaks to Guardian West Coast reporter Maanvi Singh about the Biden administration’s approval of a controversial new oil drilling project on Alaska’s North Slope. She also hears from Kristen Monsell, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, which is part of a coalition that’s filing a lawsuit to challenge the decision.Clips: BBC, CBS, Rosemary Ahtuangaruak Continue reading...

Study gives most advanced picture yet of DMT compound’s effect on advanced functions such as imaginationThe brew is so potent that practitioners report not only powerful hallucinations, but near-death experiences, contact with higher-dimensional beings, and life-transforming voyages through alternative realities. Often before throwing up, or having trouble at the other end.Now, scientists have gleaned deep insights of their own by monitoring the brain on DMT, or dimethyltryptamine, the psychedelic compound found in Psychotria viridis, the flowering shrub that is mashed up and boiled in the Amazonian drink, ayahuasca. Continue reading...

Astronomer says unusual sighting 99.9% certain to be due to burning space debris from International Space StationWeeks after a balloon, an “octagonal structure” and other flying objects put Americans on edge, the US is dealing with another mysterious phenomenon in the sky.On Friday night in Sacramento, St Patrick’s Day partiers spotted streaks of light blazing a path through the California night. A video posted to Instagram showed what looked like small fireworks or flying superheroes chasing each other along a trail. Continue reading...

The answer to today’s typing teaserEarlier today I set you the following puzzle, based on the idea that a monkey sat at a typewriter bashing random keys will eventually type out the complete works of Shakespeare. Here it is again with the solution.The magic word Continue reading...

Astronomers urge people to stand up to ‘big light’ industry amid unchecked brightening of night skyA ban on megaconstellations of low-altitude satellites – arrays such as Elon Musk’s Starlink – should be considered, astronomers have said, in an effort to reduce light pollution and preserve our ability to study the skies.In a series of papers and opinion pieces published in the journal Nature Astronomy, scientists have raised the alarm about the brightening night sky, with one team of experts calling for scientists to stand up to “big light” as they have to other fields, such as big tobacco and big oil, and bring in regulation. Continue reading...

Long-tailed macaques at risk of being killed, or laundered or re-trafficked if returned to Cambodia, animal welfare groups sayMore than a thousand Cambodian monkeys at the center of a US government investigation into wildlife trafficking are at risk of being killed or returned to their country of origin, laundered and re-trafficked, animal welfare groups say.The monkeys’ plight first came to light last year when the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) asked the animal rights organization Peta about finding a sanctuary for 360 monkeys. Born Free USA, and the US Department of Justice (DoJ) later joined the discussions and the number of monkeys increased to over 1,000 as talks progressed. Continue reading...

For many of us, it has been a cold and traumatic year. But, as one reader found, difficult times can lead to new and revolutionary ways of thinkingWalking into the NHS clinic where I work as a psychotherapist, I saw that the daffodils by the path had finally flowered. My heart lifted: new life; spring springing; winter ending. But the change in the seasons may bring little relief to those whom this longest and bleakest of winters has tipped into “survival mode”. These are people who have found themselves choosing between heating and eating, or who are stuck on a waiting list for vital healthcare, or who have caring responsibilities that leave them drained of energy for themselves. Others feel despairing and hopeless, reading endless catastrophic headlines about the climate emergency, the war in Ukraine, the cost of living crisis. All this is what you, our readers, wrote about when we invited you to tell us what living in survival mode means to you.When I asked reader Nicky Marchbank, 40, from Kent, what images this phrase brought to mind, I found her answer striking. She studied history at university, and what she associates with survival mode, she told me over Zoom, is “winter before the Industrial Revolution, because that is literally getting from one day to the next and not dying, isn’t it? These days, emotionally, we’ve managed to get there without the harsh winters, somehow.” Perhaps what many of us are experiencing at the moment is a kind of internal harsh winter: a frost that creeps into the mind and the body, freezing green shoots and hope, stunting growth. Not death, but not quite life either. Survival. Continue reading...

Go ape with your brainThe infinite monkey theorem states that if you let a monkey hit the keys of a typewriter at random an infinite amount of times, eventually the monkey will type out the entire works of Shakespeare.Today’s puzzle involves a monkey typing out something a little shorter. Continue reading...

Faecal transplants might help treat illnesses such as arthritis, diabetes and cancer. And one day it could be as simple as taking a pill made from a stranger’s poo. Our writer volunteers a sampleTo my fellow travellers, I’m sure the package I’m carrying looks like a lunchbox. Circular, and dark blue, with a Tupperware-style lid, it is precisely the kind of vessel you’d transport a soup or salad in. I’ve even sealed it inside a freezer bag, to contain any leaks. Or smells.I walk slowly and with care across Westminster Bridge, because any trip could prove disastrous. As I enter St Thomas’ Hospital and head for the infection department on the fifth floor, I realise the object I’m carrying is still warm, and, despite my preparations, I’m sure I can detect a faint whiff of something ripe, like camembert. Continue reading...

New moon will be the thinnest of all crescents with just 5% of its surface illuminatedA reward awaits those making their way home, or elsewhere, in the evening later this week. The chart shows the view looking due west from London at 18.50 GMT on Thursday 23 March. The tiny sliver of the new moon will sit between the brightly shining planets of Venus and Jupiter.The former will be high in the twilight sky and in “full bloom”, so to speak, for its spring apparition. The latter will be sinking ever closer to the sun, and hence will need to clear the western horizon to be visible. Continue reading...

Daylight helps to regulate hormones and the immune system. It’s good for sleep and can help with depression. So be glad of the extra daylight when the clocks go forwardIf we took away the walls, the ceilings, the street lights, the screens and allowed our senses to guide us, we might rise with the sun and sleep when it sets. Artificial lighting and blackout blinds allow us to choose our waking hours – but is it good for us to stay up late under the glow of electric bulbs then sleep in late? On Sunday 26 March the clocks spring forward as we switch to British summer time. Here’s why we should make the most of the extra daylight. Continue reading...

Effective treatment usually requires a holistic approach, yet those suffering often avoid seeking helpMany of us are familiar with the uncomfortable feeling of entering a cocktail party at which none of our friends are present. We sidle in awkwardly, imagine others might be wondering what we are doing there and find ourselves not sure where to stand or who to look at. We gaze intently at our prosecco and hope the floor will swallow us up. In most instances we can push through and engage with someone at the party, often ending up having a great time. However, our initial discomfort allows us a window into what it’s like to live with social anxiety disorder (Sad), a ubiquitous and crippling mental health condition.In a study involving thousands of participants aged 16-29 across different socioeconomic strata and from seven different countries, including Brazil, Russia, the United States and China, it was found that a staggering 36% met the threshold for Sad. While akin to shyness, Sad involves anxiety that is way more intense. It leads to the avoidance of social situations including work, family gatherings and even events the person believes they would enjoy if they did not feel so anxious. Research indicates Sad particularly afflicts young people. Explanations for this include neurocognitive changes in this age group as well as a developmental shift towards a focus on peer evaluation. One hypothesis for the apparent rise of Sad in the 21st century is the proliferation of social media and digital alternatives to face-to-face contact. Continue reading...

Science writer Marcus Chown breaks down the mysteries of the universe into manageable chunksTraits which enable organisms to compete successfully for scarce food resources and so survive to reproduce become more common with each successive generation Continue reading...

A new play explores the short life of Jeremiah Horrocks, whose astonishing discoveries ‘changed the way we see the universe’On a cloudy afternoon in England in 1639, 20-year-old Jeremiah Horrocks became the first person to accurately predict the transit of Venus and measure the distance from the Earth to the sun.His work proved, for the first time, that Earth is not at the centre of the universe, but revolves around the sun, refuting contemporary religious beliefs and laying the foundations for Isaac Newton’s groundbreaking work on gravity. Continue reading...

Thomas Hertog worked with cosmologist on a new book after he shared his doubts about A Brief History of TimeIn 2002 Thomas Hertog received an email summoning him to the office of his mentor Stephen Hawking. The young researcher rushed to Hawking’s room at Cambridge. “His eyes were radiant with excitement,” Hertog recalls.Typing on the computer-controlled voice system that allowed the cosmologist to communicate, Hawking announced: “I have changed my mind. My book, A Brief History of Time, is written from the wrong perspective.” Continue reading...

It was a nostalgic journey to rediscover my family roots, but it was also great fun and reminded me how much I missed this beautiful landWhen I saw the sign saying “Sweden”, I cheered. I was alone in the car, but still I cheered. It was my brother’s car, a white Nissan Note I had managed to dent at a petrol station within an hour of driving off Le Shuttle. Nine hundred miles on, the Nissan and I had survived the deluge that had made the windscreen wipers squeak, the thundering trucks on the Autobahn and the stern young policeman at the Danish border who had made me feel sure I had a car full of hash. I was alive, intact and two hours away from the red wooden cabin where I spent every summer holiday of my childhood.As I cruised over the Swedish half of the Oresund Bridge, the car filled with the sound of Lisa Stansfield singing Someday (I’m Coming Back). I gasped and found my eyes pricking with tears. It took me a moment to realise I’d knocked a switch that flicked the sound from Swedish pop to the last CD my brother ever played in his car. It made me feel he was there in the car with me, and so were my parents and my sister, willing and cheering me along. Continue reading...

Discoveries that could help diabetics titled in honour of activist and journalist murdered in AmazonScientists in Brazil have found two new species of fermenting yeasts and named them after journalist Dom Phillips and activist Bruno Pereira, the two men murdered last year in the Amazon rainforest.The discovery came from four isolates of the Spathaspora species, according to a paper published in the International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology. Continue reading...

After centuries of distrust and disdain, mushrooms are having their moment. From sci-fi smash hits to drug trials, an emerging league of mycophiles are bringing fungi out of the shadows

From elephants to tigers, study reveals scale of damage to wildlife caused by transformation of wildernesses and human activityThe total weight of Earth’s wild land mammals – from elephants to bisons and from deer to tigers – is now less than 10% of the combined tonnage of men, women and children living on the planet.A study by scientists at Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science, published this month, concludes that wild land mammals alive today have a total mass of 22m tonnes. By comparison, humanity now weighs in at a total of around 390m tonnes. Continue reading...

I have seen enough to know that it’s going to alter our lives. Just think what AI tools could do when used by creative people in fashion or architectureThe recent flurry, or rather blizzard, of announcements of new variants of generative AI have brought a storm of hype and fright. OpenAI’s ChatGPT already appeared to be a gamechanger, but now this week’s new version, GPT-4, is another leap ahead. GPT-4 can generate enough text to write a book, code in every computer language, and – most remarkably – “understand” images.If your mind is not boggled by the potential of this, then you haven’t been paying attention. I have spent the past five years researching how artificial intelligence has been changing journalism around the world. I’ve seen how it can supercharge news media to gather, create and distribute content in much more efficient and effective ways. It is already the “next wave” of technological change. Now generative AI has moved potential progress up a gear or two. Continue reading...

Analysis of gene sequences by international team finds Covid-positive samples rich in raccoon dog DNANewly released genetic data gathered from a live food market in Wuhan has linked Covid-19 with raccoon dogs, adding weight to the theory that infected animals sold at the site started the coronavirus pandemic, researchers involved in the work say.Swabs collected from stalls at the Huanan seafood market in the two months after it was shut down on 1 January 2020 were previously found to contain both Covid and human DNA. When the findings were published last year, Chinese researchers stated that the samples contained no animal DNA. Continue reading...

Researchers believe UK prevalence of peanut allergies could fall by 77% if eaten from four to six months of agePeanut products such as puffed snacks and peanut butter should be given to children from four to six months of age to reduce the risk of them developing a peanut allergy, experts have said.Studies suggest the prevalence of peanut allergy among children in western countries has doubled in a decade. About one in 50 children in the UK have the condition, with about 13,000 infants developing a peanut allergy each year. The condition can be life-threatening and create a constant worry for parents and children who have to avoid exposure. Continue reading...

Raised in Hertfordshire and encouraged to think big from an early age, Fox is only second woman to hold the postWomen should never be afraid to ask questions, says Nicola Fox, Nasa’s new science chief and only the second woman to hold this position in the agency’s history. In her view, being curious and having a ton of questions are the hallmarks of a successful scientist – even if asking them can feel intimidating.“Sometimes you feel if you’re the only woman in the room that you probably shouldn’t speak up, because everybody might think you’re stupid. But I’ve worked really hard on trying to tell people that there are no stupid questions – most of the time if you speak up, at least 30% of the people in the room will have the same question and weren’t brave enough to ask it.” Continue reading...

All the Spiranthes on the Japanese mainland were thought to be a single species, but in fact there are twoIn Japan, a country with a rich and ancient history of horticulture, it is nowadays extremely rare for a new plant species to be identified. But the latest one has been growing under their noses, and it is exceptionally beautiful.Spiranthes hachijoensis, whose rosy pink petals bear a striking resemblance to glasswork, can be found in common environments such as lawns and parks, and even in private gardens and on balconies, and yet until now it had not been named. That is because until now it was believed that all the Spiranthes on the Japanese mainland were a single species, when in fact there are two. Continue reading...

Exclusive: rare purple organism preys on trapdoor spider in behaviour reminiscent of its ‘zombie’ relatives that feature in apocalyptic TV show The Last of UsScientists believe they have discovered a new parasitic fungus which preys on trapdoor spiders in Brazil’s Atlantic rainforest.The rare organism, which is purple, belongs to a group of fungi that infect invertebrates and take over the host. A closeup image shows the fungus wrapped around the body of a trapdoor spider, poking out of the burrow from which the arachnid grabs insects. Continue reading...

No matter how bad I feel, I have to remind myself that the treatment is working to reduce my tumourNausea, diarrhoea, joint pain, fatigue, hair loss – the list of side-effects for most cancer drugs reads like symptoms of many illnesses in their own right. Before I had this disease, I would have considered making a GP appointment if I’d been suffering just some of the problems that I later came to just write off as simply the downside of being cured. The problem with all the side-effects the drugs have caused is that as they pile up, you can lose sight of why you are taking them.It’s not as if you’re not warned that chemotherapy has its downsides. Before I started my treatment for breast cancer, the oncologist went through a long list of the things that I could experience as side-effects. It covered most of an A4 sheet of paper, and she appeared to have ticked every suggested problem as possible from the one or several of the cocktail of drugs I was going to be on.Hilary Osborne is the Guardian’s money and consumer editor Continue reading...

Microreactor programme will develop technology to provide power for humans living and working on moonRolls-Royce has received funding from the UK Space Agency to develop a nuclear reactor for a moon base.The project will look into how nuclear power could be used to support a future base on the moon for astronauts. Continue reading...

Mutation likely to have come from a founder individual from the island who lived at least 250 years agoOne in a hundred people with Orkney heritage have a gene mutation that increases the risk of breast and ovarian cancer, according to a study.Researchers spotted the gene variant repeatedly in women from the archipelago off the north-eastern coast of Scotland who had the cancers, and clinical genealogy showed that patients with the variant had family roots tracing back to the island of Westray. Continue reading...

Public finally able to see 3D remains of plesiosaur discovered on Lyme Regis beach 16 years agoAt first when Raffle the dog began scratching at something on the beach at Lyme Regis, Tracey Barclay thought he had probably found a boring old stick or stone.But when she looked closer, Barclay realised Raffle had happened upon something much more interesting – the remains of a plesiosaur, a marine reptile that swam off modern day Dorset 200m years ago. Continue reading...

Satellite launch company hunts for funding lifeline following failed attempt from UK soilVirgin Orbit has paused its operations and furloughed its workforce as it hunts for a funding lifeline.The satellite launch company, based in California, will put all work on hold for at least a week with just a skeleton team remaining at work. Continue reading...

Ian Sample speaks to Guardian science correspondent Hannah Devlin about the latest developments and debates about gene editing to emerge from a summit at the Francis Crick Institute in London. The summit heard from the first person with sickle cell disease to be treated with a technique known as Crispr. He also hears from Prof Claire Booth about ensuring these cutting edge treatments are made available to everyone who needs themClips: Francis Crick Institute, BBC News Continue reading...

Outfits for planned lunar expedition more streamlined and flexible than Apollo suits, and a better fit for womenThe big, puffy white moonsuits worn by Neil Armstrong and his fellow Apollo astronauts a half-century ago are out of fashion. Lunar haute couture now calls for something more form-fitting and comfortable for men and women.Nasa on Wednesday unveiled the first prototype for a newly designed next-generation spacesuit specially tailored and accessorised for the first astronauts expected to venture back to the moon’s surface in the next few years. Continue reading...