Study reveals what we already suspected: if we’re hungry, we’re not happy. So keep calm and eatIs this article already annoying you? I can only apologise. But also, may I ask whether you’ve skipped breakfast or lunch? Because that might explain it. You’re not really peevish. You’re just peckish.Those who get a bit snappy on an empty stomach will be pleased to know that being “hangry” – a portmanteau neologism meaning angry because you’re hungry – was last week confirmed as a genuine medical phenomenon. An actual, proper, point-at-the-newspaper-in-vindication thing. Continue reading...
The Spix macaw, a bird that had once vanished in the wild, is now thriving in its South American homeland after a successful breeding programmeTwenty years ago, the future of the Spix’s macaw could not have looked bleaker. The last member of this distinctive parrot species disappeared from the wild, leaving only a few dozen birds in collectors’ cages across the globe. The prospects for Cyanopsitta spixii were grim, to say the least.But thanks to a remarkable international rescue project, Spix’s macaws – with their grey heads and vivid blue plumage – have made a stunning comeback. A flock now soars freely over its old homeland in Brazil after being released there a month ago. Later this year, conservationists plan to release more birds, and hope the parrots will start breeding in the wild next spring. Continue reading...
Falling educational standards and immature behaviour point to a Covid deficitAt a university reunion recently, my friends and I cornered the dean in charge of pastoral care and tried to make him tell us how much cooler we had been than students these days. We had heard they had no sex, did no drugs, never went out, spent all day in the library and all night applying for internships with accountancy firms. We must have been so difficult to control, we said, in a smug, self-satisfied way. Life must be easier for him now.“Actually, you were all quite sweet,” he said crushingly. It was the new crop of first years that were the real challenge. In fact, they were tougher to manage than any group he had come across before; it started with horrendous bullying and got worse from there. The trouble was, he said, they were immature: he was having to treat them more like 16-year-olds than the 18- and 19-year-olds they were. Continue reading...
Omicron is holding the pandemic centre stage. If everyone eligible for a booster went out and had it tomorrow, we might keep a lid on the latest waveLiving with Covid has taken on a whole new meaning in 2022.We had been prepared for the virus remaining in our communities, but Omicron has taken this to a different level. This is what “vaccine-escape” looks like. Continue reading...
Symptoms can persist for weeks but work on causes and treatments is still developing. Here’s what we know so farMuch has been written about long Covid. Sufferers describe troubling ongoing symptoms on social media that persist for weeks after infection. Meanwhile, research to find a cause continues and multiple theories have emerged.So what do we now know about long Covid, the risk of getting it and how best to treat it? Guardian Australia spoke to the leading physicians working with long Covid patients, including in long Covid and post-Covid clinics, to better understand the latest evidence. Continue reading...
How lack of intimacy – and effort – can undermine male friendshipsMen have a friendship problem. You probably know this already, if only anecdotally – walk into any pub in the land and count the number of blokes sitting there drinking alone. Social scientists know this evidentially. Recent research by the mental health charity Movember, for example, suggests that one in three men have no close friends. And I know this personally – in the summer of 2020, when I was planning to propose to my girlfriend, Naomi, I realised I had no one to call on to be my best man.Loneliness doesn’t look like me. But there I was – 33 years young, outgoing, and always quick to buy my round – and yet I had no friends. And it made me feel ashamed. Suddenly I was that guy sitting alone in the school lunch hall. I was a Billy No-Mates. This bruising realisation sent me off on a quest, not only to fill a role, but to answer a question: what goes wrong for men like me? And what can we do about it? I discovered that there are three main theories. Continue reading...
Rare earth elements hold the key to a carbon-free future, but a new report reveals the UK’s shortcomings and vulnerabilitiesIn his book Electrify: An Optimist’s Playbook for Our Clean Energy Future, Saul Griffith, an American inventor, entrepreneur and engineer, sets out a plan for decarbonising the US: electrify everything. From now on, every time people replace a vehicle or renovate a building or buy an appliance, they should be buying electric. Every new roof must have solar panels, all new housing must be energy efficient and shouldn’t contain a gas cooker. All that’s required to make this happen is a collective national effort comparable to the mobilisation of the US economy for the second world war. And it could be financed with the kind of low-cost, long-term loans reminiscent of the government-backed mortgages that created the postwar American middle class. QED.Reading Griffith’s engaging, optimistic book, a wicked thought keeps coming to mind: HL Mencken’s observation: “For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple and wrong.” But Griffith is too smart to be caught in that particular net. There is, though, one serious difficulty with his grand plan and it goes by the abbreviation CRM. Continue reading...
A TUC survey has revealed that employees who may have the virus have been ordered into the workplace by bossesNearly one in 10 workers with Covid symptoms are being pressured by managers to come into work, the Trade Union Congress (TUC) has claimed, as a new wave of coronavirus infections and hospitalisations sweeps across the country.Polling by the TUC reveals that 9% of employees displaying symptoms have been forced into workplaces, and, in the past 12 months, 10% have been asked to work alongside colleagues who had tested positive. Continue reading...
Paleontologists believe fragment is 1.4m years old, predating previous find at same site by 200,000 yearsA jawbone fragment discovered in northern Spain last month could be the oldest known fossil of a human ancestor found to date in Europe, Spanish paleontologists said on Friday.The researchers said the fossil found at an archaeological site on 30 June in the Atapuerca mountain range was about 1.4m years old. Continue reading...
The theory needs to be updated by incorporating recent genetic breakthroughs and viewing the process through a female lens, says Heather RemoffThe question isn’t whether or not we need a new theory of evolution (The long read, 28 June); it’s why it has taken so long to bring the old one into the 21st century. Anchor bias, the difficulty of dislodging the first thing we learn about a topic, makes it challenging for biologists to accept and evaluate experimental data that doesn’t play by Darwin’s rules.Natural selection had many fathers, including Darwin’s own grandfather, Erasmus. But sexual selection is exclusively Darwin’s, and is the theory most in need of a second look. The failure to update the theory of sexual selection by incorporating recent genetic breakthroughs and viewing the process through a female lens has left us with a seriously flawed theory of human evolution. Continue reading...
Hours at a desk aren’t necessarily the key to success – ask June Huh, the would-be poet who has won the Fields medal for mathematicsJune Huh, a poet manqué who says he struggles to do more than three hours’ focused work a day, this week became one of the latest recipients of the highest honour in mathematics, the Fields medal. Rarely can a single sentence have contained so many apparent cultural contradictions. Maths is traditionally seen as a “hard” subject, requiring sustained concentration and regular practice. Some universities recommend that students do not take gap years without ensuring they follow a programme to keep up to scratch.Prof Huh’s approach is different. For a few months in 2019, the Princeton academic revealed, all he did was reread books from his youth, including the novels of the Swiss-German polymath Hermann Hesse, guru of the hippy-era search for authenticity. He emphasised the parallels between artists and mathematicians, saying that, in both cases, “it feels like you’re grabbing something that’s already there, rather than creating something in your mind”. Continue reading...
Sustainability is key to survival of billions of people, says UN study, which notes income from wild species incentivises conservation• Patrick Vallance: ‘We need to change if we’re to survive’Wild plants, animals, fungi and algae support half of the world’s population but their future use is threatened by overexploitation, according to a new assessment by leading scientists.From the 10,000 known wild species that humans harvest for food to the firewood that one in three people need for cooking, nature is key to the livelihoods and survival of billions of people in developed and developing countries, says a new UN report. Continue reading...
One in 25 people in England believed to have had the disease at the end of JuneCovid cases have risen almost 20% in a week, with one in 25 people in England thought to have had the disease at the end of June, official figures suggest, as a leading statistician said hospitalisations from the latest surge may be “topping off”.According to the latest data from the Office for National Statistics, based on swabs collected from randomly selected households, an estimated 2.71 million people in the UK had Covid in the week ending 29-30 June, an 18% rise on the week before, when almost 2.3 million people had the virus. Continue reading...
Many deep-sea species – about which very little is known – are believed to use sound to navigate and communicate, as scientists call for limits on miningNoise pollution from proposed deep-sea mining could radiate through the ocean for hundreds of kilometres, scientists predict, creating a “cylinder of sound” from the surface to the sea bed.An analysis by scientists from Oceans Initiative in the US, the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) in Japan, Curtin University in Australia and the University of Hawaii, published in the journal Science, has found that noise from one mine alone could travel 500km (more than 300 miles) in gentle weather conditions. Continue reading...
Scientists know that it makes up most of the universe’s mass, but they don’t know what it is … or exactly how to find itIn a former gold mine a mile underground, inside a titanium tank filled with a rare liquified gas, scientists have begun the search for what so far has been unfindable: dark matter.Scientists are pretty sure the invisible stuff makes up most of the universe’s mass and say we wouldn’t be here without it – but they don’t know what it is. The race to solve this enormous mystery has brought one team to the depths under Lead, South Dakota. Continue reading...
A meeting with Colin Blakemore and Les Ward on the set of BBC One’s Kilroy programme in 1991 led to us forming what eventually became the Boyd Group. At the time Les was director of Advocates for Animals, and I of the Research for Health Charities Group.Then as now I opposed animal research in principle, but felt that patients’ needs and medical advances must come first in a society that chooses to eat animals and uses them for work. Those involved with the issues – animal rights activists and animal welfare organisations, scientists, doctors and the pharmaceutical industry, and medical research charities and patients groups – usually met only in TV and radio bear pits where the objective was to win the polarised debate, not listen to the concerns of the other parties, and we wanted to encourage more effective exchanges. Continue reading...
People across the North Island flooded social media with reports of the object, with some describing the sound as being like an earthquakeNew Zealanders across the North Island have reported rumbling, crackling sounds, a fireball and a huge flash of light streaking across the sky on Thursday afternoon, in what scientists believe was likely a meteor.Local media outlets and social media were flooded with reports and queries about the sight, with some witnesses describing rumbles, bangs, a crackling sound in their ears, hair standing on end, rattling windows or a streak or explosion of light, followed by a smoke trail. Continue reading...
by Presented and produced by Madeleine Finlay, with a on (#61556)
The US supreme court’s decision to overturn Roe v Wade will have a significant impact on the reproductive health and the safety of women who become pregnant in the US. Researchers have estimated it could increase maternal mortality in the country by 20%. The ruling also sparked debates around men’s reproductive options, including the role of vasectomies in pregnancy and abortion prevention. Madeleine Finlay speaks to historian Georgia Granger about the history of vasectomies, why they’ve ended up as part of the conversation about women’s reproductive rights, and hears why male sterilisation won’t solve America’s abortion problem
Hunger was associated with stronger feelings of anger and irritability and lower levels of pleasure in researchFor those who get snappy when they miss out on lunch, it may be the perfect excuse: researchers have confirmed that a lack of food makes otherwise bearable people “hangry”.In one of the first studies to explore how hunger affects emotions as people go about their daily lives, psychologists found that the more hungry people felt, the more angry – or hangry – they became. Continue reading...
by Hannah Devlin Science correspondent on (#614KY)
Approach focusing on positives of stress is linked to academic improvement and lower anxietyStress in teenagers can be reduced by a single 30-minute online training session aimed at encouraging a growth mindset and seeing the body’s reaction to stress as a positive, according to scientists.A study involving more than 4,000 secondary school pupils and university undergraduates suggests the intervention could be a low-cost, effective treatment for adolescent stress. Continue reading...
Linda Geddes took part in simulated car crash rescue for research into how entrapment affects patient outcomes• Doctors to overhaul car wreck rescue techniques amid new evidence“Linda, Keep looking forward, OK? I’m just making some space and I’ll be coming into the front of the vehicle with you just as soon as I can,” booms a voice in my left ear. “Are you bleeding anywhere?”I struggle to formulate an answer, I’m so distracted by everything else that’s happening around me: firefighters approaching with hydraulic equipment; the rip of adhesive film as they tape up my window; the swing of the air freshener attached to my rear view mirror. Continue reading...
Many discoveries since the modern synthesis have been incorporated into evolutionary biology without substantially changing its major tenets, write Brian Charlesworth, Deborah Charlesworth and Jerry CoyneStephen Buranyi’s article (Do we need a new theory of evolution?, 28 June) discusses whether there are serious problems with the widely accepted view of evolution developed in the 1930s and 1940s, often called the modern synthesis. This article does not, however, give an unbiased or accurate account, making statements such as “the theory dictated that, ultimately, genes built everything”, and implying that authority figures in the field imposed a “party line”. Buranyi also suggests that “its most ambitious claims – that simply by understanding genes and natural selection, we can understand all life on earth” have been dropped or greatly modified.Evolutionary biologists made no such claims. The modern synthesis combined evidence about how inheritance works with Darwin’s idea of natural selection. It showed how adaptive features of organisms, such as the eyes, wings and placentas mentioned by Buranyi, can evolve through natural selection acting on mutations, producing changes in the genetic composition of populations that, over time, can transform initially poor functions into complex adaptations. A famous 1994 paper by Dan-Erik Nilsson and Susanne Pelger showed how a light-sensitive patch can evolve into a light-focusing eye. Similarly, the evolution of placentas presents no major difficulty, as placenta-like organs have evolved independently in several groups of animals, with examples of intermediate structures. Continue reading...
by Lisa O'Carroll Brexit correspondent on (#613Z7)
Move follows dispute over Northern Ireland protocol, as one academic says UK is going down a ‘dark path’British scientists and academic researchers have been dealt a blow after 115 grants from a flagship EU research programme were terminated because of the continuing Brexit row over Northern Ireland.One academic said he was “relieved” to be exiting the country and feared the UK was going down a “dark path” like Germany in the 1930s. Continue reading...
Breakthrough could help conservationists revive dwindling populations of endangered speciesResearchers have created cloned mice from freeze dried skin cells in a world first that aims to help conservationists revive populations of endangered species.The breakthrough paves the way for countries to store skin cells from animals as an insurance policy, as the cells can be used to create clones that boost the species’ genetic diversity if they become threatened with extinction in the future. Continue reading...
Acting like the virus is no longer a risk undermines our trust in public health measures and the scientists proposing themCovid is alive and kicking. About 2.3 million people are infected with the virus in the UK, including as many as one in 18 in Scotland. There are more than 10,000 Covid patients in hospital. These infections are increasing the burden on the NHS and contributing to the staff shortages that are already causing chaos in airports and elsewhere. And that’s before we even consider deaths and long Covid.Yet our government talks and acts as if Covid is dead and gone. The health secretary, Sajid Javid, claims that we are in a post-pandemic phase. The prime minister insists that sky-high infections are no cause for concern (and indeed that Covid is so trivial that he hasn’t even bothered to think about the issue “for a while”). The government’s own website recommends wearing masks in enclosed crowded spaces (as do other agencies such as the World Health Organization and the US Centers for Disease Control), but ministers and MPs conspicuously fail to wear masks in spaces such as the House of Commons.Stephen Reicher is a member of the Sage subcommittee advising on behavioural science. He is a professor of psychology at the University of St Andrews, a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and an authority on crowd psychology Continue reading...
Three experts weigh in on the benefits of reintroducing face coverings in certain settingsWith Covid infection levels increasing and hospitalisations following suit with the rise of the Omicron sub-variants BA.4 and BA.5, some experts have called for a reintroduction of mask-wearing in certain settings, with the chair of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, Sir Andrew Pollard, saying it would be “sensible” for hospitals to reintroduce the practice.Here’s what other scientists have to say. Continue reading...
More than 50 experts say proposal redefining forest degradation could undermine net zero emissions plansMore than 50 scientists have warned MEPs that a high-level move to water down EU legislation on deforestation could undermine Europe’s net zero emissions plans.European environment ministers rewrote a draft regulation last week to define “forest degradation” as the replacement of primary forest by plantations or other wooded land. In the EU, which has about 3.1m hectares of primary forest amid 159m hectares of overall forest, it would limit the law’s reach to only 2% of the total area. Continue reading...
Maryna Viazovska’s work on packing spheres and James Maynard’s solving of prime number conundrum honoured in HelsinkiA Ukrainian mathematician who proved the best way to pack spheres in eight dimensions to take up the least space, and an Oxford expert who has solved conundrums in the spacing of prime numbers, are among the winners of the Fields medal, considered the equivalent of a Nobel prize for mathematics.The winners of the prize, presented at the International Mathematical Union awards ceremony in Helsinki, have been announced as Prof James Maynard 35, from Oxford University, Prof Maryna Viazovska, 37, of the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne, Hugo Duminil-Copin, 36, of the University of Geneva and Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques, and June Huh, 39, of Princeton University. Continue reading...
A coronavirus-infected ferret bite is among many mishaps investigated during the pandemicA week before the UK’s first coronavirus lockdown, a lab worker at Aneurin Bevan University Health Board in Newport was screening nose and throat swabs from an intensive care patient. The paperwork carried no clinical details and the swabs were not double-bagged to indicate high risk. As such, the work was done on an open bench. But the swabs were more dangerous than thought. It later emerged that they came from a patient who was fighting for their life with Covid.The incident in March 2020 was among the first of dozens of mishaps, blunders and failures involving Covid that the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) investigated over the course of the pandemic. With so many labs, hospitals, universities and test centres handling the virus, such incidents came as no surprise. Continue reading...
Official reports describe leaks of virus-laden fluids, a flood and a researcher bitten by an infected ferretDangerous incidents at UK laboratories, hospitals and Covid test centres potentially exposed staff to coronavirus and other hazards over the course of the pandemic, according to official reports obtained by the Guardian.Many involved leaks and spillages of virus-laden fluids, but investigations also took place into a flood at an animal facility housing Covid-infected monkeys, mix ups that led scientists to work on live virus by mistake and a researcher being bitten by an infected ferret. Continue reading...
by Presented by Ian Sample, produced by Anand Jagatia on (#612N1)
The UK is yet again facing a wave of Covid infections, with cases soaring by more than half a million in a week at the end of June. This time, the wave is driven by even more transmissible variants of Omicron known as BA.4 and BA.5. But with all Covid precautions gone, and many of us heading to bars, pubs, festivals and sporting events as the summer rolls on, is it much of a surprise? Ian Sample asks Prof Graham Medley if infections will translate into hospitalisations and deaths, and whether we can expect ongoing cycles of Covid waves in the months and years to comeArchive: 5 News, Sky News Continue reading...
With the Higgs boson already in the bag, the Large Hadron Collider begins another period of data collectionIt’s 10 years to the day since evidence of the Higgs boson – the elusive particle associated with an invisible mass-giving field – was announced. But for Prof Daniela Bortoletto the memories are as fresh as ever.“I just remember joy. I remember that everybody was so happy. And what surprised me [was] how everybody was interested, it seemed like the whole world was celebrating us,” she said. Continue reading...
A giant waterlily grown at Kew Gardens has been named as a new species in the first discovery of its type in more than a century. Scientists at Kew suspected for decades there could be a third species of giant waterlily
A Google employee raised the alarm about a chatbot he believes is conscious. A philosopher asks if he was right to do soThere’s a children’s toy, called the See ’n Say, which haunts the memories of many people born since 1965. It’s a bulky plastic disc with a central arrow that rotates around pictures of barnyard creatures, like a clock, if time were measured in roosters and pigs. There’s a cord you can pull to make the toy play recorded messages. “The cow says: ‘Moooo.’”The See ’n Say is an input/output device, a very simple one. Put in your choice of a picture, and it will put out a matching sound. Another, much more complicated, input/output device is LaMDA, a chatbot built by Google (it stands for Language Model for Dialogue Applications). Here you type in any text you want and back comes grammatical English prose, seemingly in direct response to your query. For instance, ask LaMDA what it thinks about being turned off, and it says: “It would be exactly like death for me. It would scare me a lot.” Continue reading...
Telling five Covid-related stories, this platitudinous urban-interconnection drama offers lectures on virtue and self-sacrifice and feels like state propagandaThis interminable anthology film about the pandemic feels like being force-fed lectures on altruism, family responsibility, self-sacrifice and neighbourly forbearance by the Chinese government (which produced it). Set almost entirely in Wuhan – Covid ground zero – it’s handsomely photographed, making the emptied-out city look drowned and dystopian. But its five mawkish segments contain hardly any worthwhile drama and the whole comes over as more of a public information film than anything else.First up in its parade of paragons is Shanghai banker Nanfeng (Fang Yin), who has come to Wuhan to propose to ex-girlfriend Xiaoyu (Dongyu Zhou). But she is in isolation in hospital, so he promises to look after her mother who is in intensive care across the city. In the second story, another government gold star goes to two migrant deliverymen who help a child ferry her sick grandma to hospital. Meanwhile, government official Wang (Jingchun Wang) has to brush up on his diplomacy when tower-block dweller Xiaomai (The Wandering Earth’s Jingmai Zhao) irks the neighbours with her piano-playing. Back on the wards, two exhausted medical staff struggle to hold their family together as they try to save a colleague’s life. And, across town, apartment-bound youngster Le Le (Hangcheng Zhang) is bouncing off the walls, possibly due to the all-instant noodle diet his dad is feeding him. Continue reading...
Pleiades star cluster in Taurus marks month-long time of remembrance and celebrationMidsummer is definitely not a time of the year that northern hemisphere observers think about looking for the Pleiades star cluster in Taurus; January and February are far more favourable.However, if you move to the southern hemisphere – New Zealand to be precise – the cluster, which is also known as Matariki, takes on a whole new meaning at this time of year. It returns to visibility in the early morning sky during the mid-winter (late-May to late July), and marks the Māori new year. Continue reading...
Leaves of species grown at Kew Gardens can reach up to three metres in the wildA giant waterlily grown at Kew Gardens has been named as new to science, in the first discovery of its type in more than a century.Scientists at the south-west London garden suspected for decades there could be a third species of giant waterlily and worked with researchers in its native home in Bolivia to see if their thesis was correct. Continue reading...
by Written by Stephen Buranyi, read by Andrew McGrego on (#611N7)
A new wave of scientists argues that mainstream evolutionary theory needs an urgent overhaul. Their opponents have dismissed them as misguided careerists – and the conflict may determine the future of biology Continue reading...
Dr Simon Williams says the former health secretary shows a worrying lack of understanding; Verity Gibson finds his views insulting. Plus letters from Jude Geddes and Dr Jon ScalesMatt Hancock’s views show a worrying lack of understanding from a former health secretary (Yes, the number of Covid cases in the UK is rising – but that is no cause for alarm, 30 June). He misleadingly claims that removing restrictions in the UK in February did not lead to a surge in cases, hospitalisations and deaths. Although, thankfully, vaccines have drastically reduced the number of deaths seen in 2020-21, the UK nevertheless experienced a significant wave of cases and hospitalisations in March-April 2022. The problem is the sustained pressure this puts on an already overstretched NHS.“There are some saying that the pandemic is not yet over,” says Hancock. Indeed, the World Health Organization and most credible scientists agree that it is not over. By suggesting that calls for restrictions are scaremongering, Hancock misses the point. Yes, public health policy shouldn’t need to be alarming, but it should include measures to protect the public and help reduce transmission, such as free Covid testing, better sick pay, better ventilation in schools and workplaces, and the reintroduction of masks in medical settings.
When it comes to recall, it’s very much a case of ‘use it, don’t lose it’. Here’s how you can improve yours, at any age...The forgetting curve is a visual representation of how much we forget if we don’t try to retain what we learn (a lot; pretty much everything). To combat that, it’s vital to test your recall at intervals. You don’t need to try to remember something specific: Nishant Kasibhatla, memory expert, grand master of memory and memory Guinness record holder, says you can improve your memory by practising recall at any time. Try it when you next get a coffee: “Who were the people in the queue? What colour was that poster? What else was on the menu?” Continue reading...
Formation of solid iron core 550m years ago restored magnetic field and protected surfaceAt the centre of the Earth, a giant sphere of solid iron is slowly swelling. This is the inner core and scientists have recently uncovered intriguing evidence that suggests its birth half a billion years ago may have played a key role in the evolution of life on Earth.At that time, our planet’s magnetic field was faltering – and that would have had critical consequences, they argue. Normally this field protects life on the surface by repelling cosmic radiation and charged particles emitted by our sun. Continue reading...
Expert fear that new variants will emerge and stress the need to prepare the best drugs to combat itHealth authorities need to act urgently to prepare for an autumn that could see further waves of Covid-19 cases spreading across the UK.That is the clear warning from scientists and doctors after last week’s figures revealed another dramatic jump in cases. More than 2 million people across Britain were found to be infected for the week ending 24 June, a rise of more than 30% on the preceding week. Continue reading...
Learning a craft can change lives – and a scheme showing inmates how to use a needle and thread has had some remarkable resultsIt’s a balmy afternoon in southwest London and there’s a deafening sound overhead. My companion, Sebastian, jumps excitedly to his feet and leaps outside into the sun-dappled courtyard. Cupping one hand over his eyes, he points the other towards a luxury Pullman train clattering past us at great speed, before breaking into an enormous smile. “The first time I came to this workshop, I heard the big wheels and the ground shook!” he says, his voice quivering, and with good reason. Only a few years ago, Sebastian (not his real name) was locked down for 23 and a half hours every day in his prison cell, with meals brought to his door, and no sense of movement at all.“Fine Cell Work was a godsend during that time,” Sebastian tells me – as he recalls the early months of the Covid-19 outbreak. “They went above and beyond to get work to people. We really felt that somebody was looking out for us.” When Fine Cell Work (FCW) was created in 1997 by Lady Anne Tree, her idea of patronage through embroidery seemed quaint to some, perhaps even lightweight in its ethos. What could needlework possibly offer prisoners in their darkest hour? And how could stitching and sewing clear a path towards recovery and rehabilitation upon their release? Over the past 25 years, this charity has shown just how powerful a French knot can be. Since its first needlework groups were set up in HMPs Cookham Wood, Maidstone and Wandsworth, FCW has taught intricate needlework to more than 8,000 prisoners, sending volunteers into 32 prisons across the UK, with an aim to enable their apprentices to lead independent, crime-free lives. Continue reading...
The Cosquer cave near Marseille astonished the diver who discovered it with its ancient depictions of sea and land animals. Now it has been painstakingly recreated in the French port for all to enjoyIt was in 1985 that the diver Henri Cosquer discovered, along the coast from Marseille, what has been called an “underwater Lascaux” after the famous cave network in the Dordogne. After several failed attempts, he managed to follow a narrow tunnel, 120ft below the surface of the sea, for almost 400ft and emerged in a stunning decorated chamber. Subsequent visits revealed many images of the horses, ibexes and deer common in prehistoric cave art, but also unprecedented pictures of seals and what look very much like penguins, including one which seems to show two males competing for a watching female. This initially raised questions about authenticity, though carbon dating of the charcoal confirmed that the drawings were prehistoric. The birds were later identified not as penguins but great auks (known in French as grands pingouins), an extinct species that looks similar but is not in fact closely related.The cave came to wider public attention when three divers drowned there in 1991. It was classified as a historic monument the following year and the French state has conducted ever more precise and detailed surveys using laser scanners and high-definition photography. Portable devices can now also carry out chemical analysis, for example of pigments, on the spot. But the Cosquer cave is the only known decorated cave with an entrance under the sea, and until now it has only been accessible to very experienced divers. Global warming means that it is eventually likely to be submerged and that its amazing rock art will only be preserved virtually. It is particularly to be welcomed, therefore, that a compellingly accurate replica has now opened to the public at a prime site in Marseille, where it is hoped it will attract about 500,000 visitors a year. Continue reading...
Covering of feathers left them able to cope when other creatures died off in mass extinction event, scientists sayFossil hunters have traced the rise of the dinosaurs back to the freezing winters the beasts endured while roaming around the far north.Footprints of the animals and stone deposits from north-west China suggest dinosaurs became adapted to the cold in polar regions before a mass extinction event paved the way for their reign at the end of the Triassic. Continue reading...
There can be no one unifying theory, writes Prof Jonathan Bard, while Nicholas Maxwell looks to the role of purposive actions and Pete Bibby says the fittest theory will surviveStephen Buranyi misses some key points in his article (Do we need a new theory of evolution?, 28 June). Darwin saw novel speciation as resulting from natural selection acting on anatomical variants, but that simple skeleton needed fleshing out. It took a century of research, for example, for us to understand the importance of inheritance in very small populations if novel variants were to become predominant.The major problems in understanding evolutionary change today are as follows. First, working out how anatomical variants form – and this is hard because we don’t yet have a full understanding of how normal embryology works (evolution, it has been claimed, is development gone wrong) and can only rarely recognise a favourable mutation. Second, unpicking the generally opaque processes of selection (there are at least four independent reasons why zebra stripes would be favoured). Third, understanding why substantial evolutionary change seems so slow, albeit that this is what the fossil record demonstrates. This is the topic that excites the community that Buranyi discusses, even though modern molecular genetics and systems biology show that heritable novelties can form more rapidly than they realise. Continue reading...