Science | The Guardian

Forget the spreadsheets and make it up as you go along – that’s the message of leaders from Elon Musk to Boris Johnson. But is acting on instinct really a good idea?There are, it seems, two types of “winging it” stories. First, there are the triumphant ones – the victories pulled, cheekily, improbably, from the jaws of defeat. Like the time a historian (who prefers to remain nameless) turned up to give a talk on one subject, only to discover her hosts were expecting, and had advertised, another. “I wrote the full thing – an hour-long show – in 10 panicked minutes,” she says. “At the end, a lady came up to congratulate me on how spontaneous my delivery was.”Then there is the other kind of winging it story – the kind that ends in ignominy. Remember the safeguarding minister, Rachel Maclean, tying herself in factually inaccurate knots when asked about stop-and-search powers? The Australian journalist Matt Doran, who interviewed Adele without listening to her album? Or the culture secretary, Nadine Dorries, claiming Channel 4 was publicly funded, then that Channel 5 had been privatised? Continue reading...

Remains of more than 140 people found at site in Buckinghamshire, along with trove of personal itemsAn Anglo-Saxon burial site containing the remains of more than 140 people interred with some of their most favoured objects, including jewellery, knives and even a personal grooming kit, has been discovered by archaeologists working on the HS2 route.The site, near Wendover, Buckinghamshire, contained a “stunning set of discoveries”, said the historian Dan Snow. “Traditionally, this period has been dismissed as a dark age. But archaeology has filled the gaps.” Continue reading...

Last week an engineer at Google claimed that an AI chatbot he worked with, known as LaMDA, had become ‘sentient’. Blake Lemoine published a transcript of his conversations with LaMDA that included responses about having feelings and fearing death. But could it really be conscious? AI researcher and author Kate Crawford speaks to Ian Sample about how LaMDA actually works, and why we shouldn’t worry about the inner life of software – for now.Archive: BBC News Continue reading...

Seeing natural event as hormone deficiency requiring treatment could increase women’s anxiety, say medicsDoctors have hit back at critics saying they are failing menopausal women, and said that treating menopause as a hormone deficiency that requires medical treatment could fuel negative expectations and make matters worse.Writing in the British Medical Journal they said there was an urgent need for a more realistic and balanced narrative which actively challenges the idea that menopause is synonymous with an inevitable decline in women’s health and wellbeing, and called for continued efforts to improve awareness about the symptoms and how to deal with them. Continue reading...

International team link spike in deaths at cemeteries in Kyrgyzstan in 1300s to start of plague pandemicResearchers believe they have solved the nearly 700-year-old mystery of the origins of the Black Death, the deadliest pandemic in recorded history, which swept through Europe, Asia and north Africa in the mid-14th century.At least tens of millions of people died when bubonic plague tore across the continents, probably by spreading along trade routes. Despite intense efforts to uncover the source of the outbreak, the lack of firm evidence has left the question open. Continue reading...

Scientists observed fewer cases of avian bronchitis and superior meat after chickens given cannabisIt all began when Ong-ard Panyachatiraksa, a farm owner in the north of Thailand who is licensed to grow medicinal cannabis, was wondering what to do with the many excess leaves he had amassed. He asked: could his brood of chickens benefit from the leftovers?

Urgent move to change name comes after scientists call it ‘inaccurate’ and ‘stigmatising’ as virus spreadsThe World Health Organization has said it will rename monkeypox to avoid discrimination and stigmatisation as the virus continues to spread among people in an unprecedented global outbreak of the disease.Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO’s director general, said the organisation was “working with partners and experts from around the world on changing the name of the monkeypox virus, its clades and the disease it causes”. Continue reading...

From a walk in the woods at night to exploring a ghostly derelict building or riding a bloodcurdling rollercoaster, can a dose of fear make you forget your everyday worries?

The moon reached its full stage on Tuesday, during a phenomenon known as a supermoon because of its proximity to Earth, and it is also called the strawberry moon because it is the full moon at strawberry harvest time Continue reading...

Due to the climate crisis, within 30 years these coastal properties will be potentially unsalvageable, researchers saySea level rise will put about 200,000 coastal properties in England at risk within 30 years, new data suggests, as the climate crisis takes hold.These are the homes that may not end up being saved because it would be very expensive to try, by measures such as seawalls and other coastal defences. Some of the areas most at risk include North Somerset, Sedgemoor, Wyre, and Swale. Continue reading...

Study of triple vaccinated people also says Omicron infection does little to reduce chance of catching variant againPeople who caught Covid during the first wave of the pandemic get no boost to their immune response if they subsequently catch Omicron, a study of triple vaccinated people reports.Experts say that while three doses of a Covid jab help to protect individuals against severe outcomes should they catch Omicron, previous infections can affect their immune response. Continue reading...

Scientists spot extremely luminous object powered by supermassive black hole using Coonabarabran telescope

Photographer Craig Loechel hones his macro lenses on nature’s beauty to reveal details not normally seen by the naked eye Continue reading...

Differences between the UK and India in treating the blood-clotting disease highlight a global medical apartheidLike the Hindu deity Krishna, I was born with blue skin. My body bruised at the trauma of simply being held. And so the family arranged for a ritual to appease the gods. Haemophilia is a genetic blood disorder that makes it very hard for the body to stop bleeding. If your haemophilia is severe like mine, you bleed spontaneously, without an injury or known cause. A handshake once took me to A&E.To stop bleeding, you need clotting injections. In much of the developing world, these injections are available only to the chosen few. Multinational corporations, such as Pfizer and Baxter, make money selling drugs at high prices in low-income countries. Continue reading...

According to some estimates smoking causes one in 10 deaths worldwide. A lesser known side-effect of cigarettes is the damage they cause to our mental health. Yet, the rates of smoking among people with mental health conditions are much higher than the rest of the population.Last week, the UK government published the Khan review, an independent report looking at how England could become smoke free by 2030. One of the recommendations was to tackle the issue of mental health and smoking. Madeleine Finlay speaks to epidemiologist Dr Gemma Taylor about how significant this link is, what we can do to break it, and how to dispel the myth that smoking is a stress relieverArchive: Sky News Continue reading...

Shortening of telomeres accelerates ageing process, research shows – a ‘pernicious silent threat’

Scientists analysed footage from small video cameras with infrared night-vision attached to the animalsWhen they are in the deep, dark ocean, seals use their whiskers to track down their prey, a study has confirmed after observing the sea mammals in their natural habitat.It’s hard for light to penetrate the gloom of the ocean’s depths, and animals have come up with a variety of adaptations in order to live and hunt there. Whales and dolphins, for example, use echolocation – the art of sending out clicky noises into the water and listening to their echo as they bounce off possible prey, to locate them. But deep-diving seals who don’t have those same acoustic projectors must have evolutionarily learned to deploy another sensory technique. Continue reading...

The solution to today’s word puzzlesEarlier today I set you a bulging girdle of post-Wordle word puzzles. Here they are with the answers.1. Old horse Continue reading...

Measures such as improved ventilation would boost economy by helping prevent ill health, says reportMandating improved ventilation and other forms of disease control in public buildings could save the UK economy billions of pounds each year through the prevention of ill health and its societal impacts, according to a report.It is the first study to comprehensively evaluate the health, social and economic costs of airborne infections, including Covid. Even without a pandemic, seasonal respiratory diseases cost the UK about £8bn a year in disruption and sick days, said the report by the Royal Academy of Engineering and the Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers. In the event of another severe pandemic within the next 60 years, the societal cost could be as high as £23bn a year. Continue reading...

Mail-order tests promise an estimate of how well you’re ageing but the results can be just one more thing to worry aboutAt the end of last year, Jay Chan, a 30-year-old marine engineer, bought his mother a biological age test from Elysium, a New York-based biotech and health supplements start-up founded in 2014. The test was simple – it required only a saliva sample – and it helped that it was being offered for half off the usual $499 (£400) price.For fans of the self-described “longevity movement” like Chan, the concept of biological age is liberating. Rather than simply measure the passage of time, biological age aims to quantify the ageing of our body’s functions and even predict mortality. Many scientists and longevity advocates believe this information can not only help us understand our own ageing process, but can give us the power to change it. Continue reading...

The robotic spacecraft unravels the history of the our galaxy’s evolution – and could identify habitable regions of the Milky WayAstronomers have unveiled the most detailed survey of the Milky Way, revealing thousands of “starquakes” and stellar DNA, and helping to identify the most habitable corners of our home galaxy.The observations from the European Space Agency’s Gaia probe cover almost two billion stars – about 1% of the total number in the galaxy – and are allowing astronomers to reconstruct our home galaxy’s structure and find out how it has evolved over billions of years. Continue reading...

A spike in infections every three months seems to be the pattern, but the UK has the power to beat this if we act wiselyAs we move into summer, more than two years since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, the words “new wave” are probably the last thing anyone wants to hear. Yet it is true that recent UK data (as well as data from Florida and other places) indicates that sublineages of the Omicron variant, BA.4 and BA.5, are kicking off a new wave of cases. With the pandemic no longer dominating the news in the way it once did, it’s worth taking stock of where we are and what needs to be done.After all, these variations on Omicron are not more severe, but they do have the capacity to reinfect people, even those who have had a previous version of Omicron. This is further evidence that reaching “herd immunity” (where enough people are vaccinated or infected to stop further circulation) against Covid-19 is probably impossible.Prof Devi Sridhar is chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh Continue reading...

New word puzzlesUPDATE: You can read the answers hereWe all love Wordle. But don’t you also crave new challenges? Today’s column is a post-Wordle girdle, strapping tightly together four word-based puzzles, three of which were sent in by readers of this column.1. Old horse Continue reading...

Although not extremely bright, Hercules will cover a large area of sky this summerThe Hercules constellation is well placed for viewing from the northern hemisphere at this time of year. Although it does not have any really bright stars, the central four make a keystone shape that is easy to recognise.Hercules is also easy to spot because it covers a large area of sky; it is the fifth largest of the 88 modern constellations. The chart shows the view looking south from London at midnight tonight. Continue reading...

In the study at a zoo in Helsinki, white-faced sakis could trigger audio or visual stimuli on demandMonkeys given their own “primate-focused” versions of Spotify and Netflix were more likely to choose audio stimuli over screen time, a study has found.Researchers at the University of Glasgow and Aalto University in Finland set out to explore how a group of three white-faced saki monkeys at Korkeasaari zoo in Helsinki would respond to being able to trigger audio or visual stimuli on demand. Continue reading...

Researchers find that patterns of blood vessels in the retina could help identify those likely to experience cardiac problemsA simple non-invasive eye examination may be able to predict risk of heart attack when combined with other information, according to a study.Researchers found that combining information about the pattern of blood vessels in the retina with traditional clinical factors enabled them to better identify participants’ risk of an attack, compared with established models that only included demographic data. Continue reading...

Figuring out how to support a loved one – without getting so caught up that we end up struggling ourselves – can feel like walking a tightrope

Wengrow and his late co-author David Graeber caused a sensation with their revisionist view of humankind’s development. But then came the attacks…Last year a book called The Dawn of Everything announced that most of what we think we know about human history is wrong. Its co-authors, David Graeber and David Wengrow, took aim at the established story that has been repeated by brand writers such as Jared Diamond, Yuval Noah Harari and Steven Pinker – the one that says that for most of prehistory, we lived in small egalitarian bands of hunter-gatherers, and it was only with the agricultural revolution about 12,000 years ago that we adopted larger forms of social organisation leading to complex, hierarchical communities. All of that, they argue, is based on outdated information.In their bestselling books Collapse, Sapiens and The Better Angels of Our Nature, those authors drew heavily on archaeological and anthropological findings, although none of them are archaeologists or anthropologists. By contrast Graeber, who died two years ago, was thought by many to be one of the leading anthropologists of his generation. And co-author Wengrow is a well-respected archaeologist. Continue reading...

An unprecedented trove of 8,000 bones presents archaeologists at a road dig with a prehistoric mysteryArchaeologists working near the site of an iron age home near Cambridge were perplexed when they uncovered a vast trove of frog skeletons. Quite why more than 8,000 bones had been piled up and preserved is a prehistoric mystery.They were all recovered from a single 14-metre-long ditch, right next to the site of an iron age roundhouse at Bar Hill, where there was a settlement during the middle and late iron age (400BC-AD43). The discovery was made by the Museum of London Archaeology (Mola) Headland Infrastructure, conducting excavations as part of the National Highways A14 Cambridge to Huntingdon road improvement scheme. Continue reading...

Feeling unmotivated, tired or discouraged? Sport scientists have tested the best methods for getting out of a slump and back to your personal bestFor most of my adult life, exercise was an ordeal. Even mild workouts felt gruelling and I left the gym in a fouler mood than when I’d arrived. The very idea of the runner’s high seemed like a cruel joke.As a science writer investigating the mind-body connection, however, I was surprised to discover many psychological tricks that can turn the pain into pleasure. Putting these simple tips to the test, I now happily burn between 6,000 and 7,000 calories a week with high-intensity interval training, 5km runs and yoga. What was once a torment is now the highlight of my day.The Expectation Effect: How Your Mindset Can Transform Your Life by David Robson is published by Canongate (£18.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply Continue reading...

It will deepen your connection to your confidante and may improve your situationIf you’ve ever kept a secret from a friend, a family member, or a romantic partner (and you have), then the chances are good that these same people have kept secrets from you. Not all of them, and not at every moment, but some of them some of the time.I can tell you with a fair degree of certainty that your loved ones’ secrets are about ambitions, beliefs, habits, deceptions, desires, discontents and violations of trust. In my research, I’ve asked more than 50,000 people about their secrets, and these are the themes that we often see. What I can also tell you is that as isolating as it can feel to have secrets, we are hardly alone in the ones that we keep. Continue reading...

Researcher says proboscis monkey may have mated with silver langur when unable to reach female of own speciesThe emergence of a “mystery monkey”, believed to be a rare hybrid of two distantly related primates, highlights the importance of protecting habit connectivity, according to a researcher who studied the animal.The female monkey first attracted attention in 2017, when photographs taken of it along the Kinabatangan River in Sabah, Malaysia, were uploaded to social media wildlife photography groups. Continue reading...

Expired products, cow milk, homemade formula – desperate parents are trying anything and everything to keep our babies fedI heard warnings about the formula shortage shortly after the mask mandate lifted in my town in North Carolina. My family was thrilled that life appeared to be going back to a semblance of normalcy, that my eight-month-old daughter could finally see people’s faces in public, that I could comfort her at the grocery store with a smile. Our hope was short-lived.The original formula recall announced by the FDA in February did not include the brand we used for our daughter, which made me assume that we would not be affected. As a first-time mom already concerned about keeping her baby safe during the pandemic, I didn’t need another thing to worry about. I thought that the government would step in before families had to go out of their way to find food. We noticed the large empty spaces on shelves at every store but remained optimistic that help would arrive soon. Yet the shelves only grew emptier.Anna Gazmarian’s memoir about mental health, southern culture, and evangelicalism is forthcoming from Simon & Schuster in October 2023 Continue reading...

Meet the footballing bees, optimistic pigs and alien-like octopuses that are shaking up how we think about mindsHow do you spot an optimistic pig? This isn’t the setup for a punchline; the question is genuine, and in the answer lies much that is revealing about our attitudes to other minds – to minds, that is, that are not human. If the notion of an optimistic (or for that matter a pessimistic) pig sounds vaguely comical, it is because we scarcely know how to think about other minds except in relation to our own.Here is how you spot an optimistic pig: you train the pig to associate a particular sound – a note played on a glockenspiel, say – with a treat, such as an apple. When the note sounds, an apple falls through a hatch so the pig can eat it. But another sound – a dog-clicker, say – signals nothing so nice. If the pig approaches the hatch on hearing the clicker, all it gets is a plastic bag rustled in its face. Continue reading...

Emma Thompson is right – more women are missing out on orgasms. Why?Hollywood sex scenes tend to follow a predictable formula: hot, passionate and rarely anything short of euphoric. So the basis of Emma Thompson’s new film, Good Luck To You, Leo Grande, in which she plays a widowed teacher who hires a male escort in the hope of having her first orgasm late in life, is seen as truly boundary-pushing.But while films do not tend to depict women looking tense, frustrated or simply a bit bored during sex, evidence suggests that in real-life many women share the experience of Thompson’s character. “Fifteen percent of women have never had an orgasm,” Thompson told ITV’s Lorraine Kelly, in a publicity interview this week, a figure that experts say is “plausible”. Continue reading...

This week, Marina Hyde on what’s next for the Tory party after Hannibal Johnson wins his confidence vote (01m14s), Hadley Freeman talks to singer Pete Doherty in Normandy (09m25s), and Joanna Moorhead advises on ways to make life’s hardest decisions (38m52s). Continue reading...

The wreck of a Royal Navy warship that sank in 1682 while carrying the future King James Stuart has been identified off the coast of Norfolk. The wreckage of HMS Gloucester was actually found in 2007 by two brothers, Julian and Lincoln Barnwell, following a four-year search that covered an area of more than 5,000 nautical miles. It is only now that its discovery can be made public. The HMS Gloucester was originally built in 1652 for the English navy, and participated in battles during the Anglo-Spanish war of 1654 to 1660 and the second and third Anglo-Dutch war. In 1682, the ship was wrecked after it collided with a sandbar, with up to 250 people dying as a result

UK could be entering third Covid wave this year but trend represents ‘small increase’ in positive testsThe UK may be entering its third wave of coronavirus this year, researchers warn, as official figures show infections are on the rise again in England and Northern Ireland.The Office for National Statistics said its latest analysis of swabs from households across Britain revealed a mixed picture with a “small increase” in positive tests in England and Northern Ireland, while the trend in Wales and Scotland remained unclear. Continue reading...

Dr Sean Kang, a cognitive psychologist, says the information is still there, but it’s tucked away in long-term memoryEver thought about a book you’ve read, and had no recollection of the plot? Or followed a recommendation to watch a TV show, only to find you’ve already seen it? We live in an age of mass content, with TV, books and films consumed at some of the highest levels in recent years. Could this be wreaking havoc with our ability to remember them? I asked Dr Sean Kang, a cognitive psychologist who specialises in memory: why do I keep forgetting the books I’ve read?I did English at uni and it’s embarrassing how often a former classmate will mention a book I have no recollection of. My theory is it’s because I’m a journalist, and dealing with words all day is doing something to my brain.

A gadget-rich programme says it will find out how you react to foods and teach you to eat the best onesFor decades, dietary advice has been notoriously faddy, swinging from the low-fat, high-carb guidance of the 1980s and 1990s to the low-carb or intermittent fasting diets recommended in more recent years.But one programme claims to be different: it promises to test how your individual body responds to different foods, and then teach you to eat the right ones for your biology. Continue reading...

WHO report has said origins of virus are still unknown and recommended further investigationChina has repeated its assertion the theory that the Covid-19 pandemic began with a leak from a Chinese laboratory is “a politically motivated lie”, after the World Health Organization (WHO) recommended continued investigations this week.“The lab leak theory is totally a lie concocted by anti-China forces for political purposes, which has nothing to do with science,” the Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said at a daily briefing on Friday. Continue reading...

Prevalence in UK study twice as high as thought, putting them at higher risk of health issuesTwice as many men carry an extra sex chromosome as previously thought, according to researchers who called for more genetic testing to identify people at greater risk of related medical problems.Research on more than 200,000 men enrolled with the UK Biobank suggests that about one in 500 in the general population has an extra X or Y chromosome, double the number found in earlier work, though only a fraction are likely to be aware of it. Continue reading...

Something about this has triggered past feelings for both of you. The key is to unlock the roots of these feelingsI recently moved in with my boyfriend of just over a year. We were both clear from the outset we really value our personal space, and needed a bedroom each.Since we moved in together, it’s become clear that we have very different feelings about spending the night together. My boyfriend doesn’t want to spend more than two nights a week together. For me, the optimum number of nights apart is two or three a week, max. Continue reading...

At least 16 recipients of prestigious ERC grants making plans to reject UK offer and move their labs abroadThe UK is facing an exodus of star scientists, with at least 16 recipients of prestigious European grants making plans to move their labs abroad as the UK remains frozen out of the EU’s flagship science programme.Britain’s participation in Horizon Europe has been caught in the crosshairs of the dispute over Brexit in Northern Ireland, meaning that 143 UK-based recipients of European Research Council fellowships this week faced a deadline of either relinquishing their grant or transferring it to an institute in an eligible country. Continue reading...

HMS Gloucester could be the ‘most historic maritime discovery since the raising of the Marie Rose’The wreck of a Royal Navy warship which sank in 1682 while carrying the future king James Stuart has been identified off the coast of Norfolk.The wreckage of HMS Gloucester was actually found in 2007 by two brothers, Julian and Lincoln Barnwell, alongside their late father and two friends, following a four-year search which covered an area of more than 5,000 nautical miles. Continue reading...

Faced with a devastating diagnosis, Morris responds by doing all she can to improve the odds of survival for her, and othersIn 2016 Jessica Morris was on an annual hiking weekend with friends in upstate New York when she started to feel all wrong. Being out of breath was nothing new since she was in her mid-50s, and exercise had never been her thing. What was her thing, though, was talking – and now, weirdly, she couldn’t do that either. The words were all bunched up in her head and refused to launch themselves on to her tongue. The next thing she remembered was waking up in an ambulance, her face twisted into a permanent grin, which was strange, since she wasn’t feeling remotely happy.Within days Morris was diagnosed with a brain tumour, a glioblastoma. GBM typically rips through patients in 14 months, leaving only 5% alive at the end of five years. It is the disease that took the lives of the MP Tessa Jowell, Senator John McCain and Beau Biden, the president’s son. And, when Morris gets a definitive diagnosis, she knows that it is the one that will take her off, too: “in a nanosecond, my life had gone from one of smooth, predictable joy to one of unimaginable terror”. Continue reading...

What’s gone is gone, but don’t waste time worrying about that.

Both cities back on high alert, with new lockdowns in Shanghai , and the shutdown of entertainment venues in Beijing

Exclusive: Study finds people have ‘astonishing’ levels of compounds thought to disrupt hormonesA cocktail of chemical pollutants measured in people’s bodies has been linked to falling semen quality by new research.Chemicals such as bisphenols and dioxins are thought to interfere with hormones and damage sperm quality, and the study found combinations of these compounds are present at “astonishing” levels, up to 100 times those considered safe. Continue reading...

The space agency’s mission chief said scientific community may see it as ‘selling out’ with study expected to begin this fallNasa is launching a study of UFOs as part of a new push toward high-risk, high-impact science.The space agency announced on Thursday that it was setting up an independent team to see how much information is publicly available on the matter and how much more is needed to understand the unexplained sightings. The experts will also consider how best to use all this information in the future. Continue reading...