Finds from fourth-century wreck ‘perfectly preserved’ just 2m below the surface off one of Mallorca’s busiest beachesOne squally day or stormy night about 1,700 years ago, a boat carrying hundreds of amphorae of wine, olives, oil and garum – the fermented fish sauce that so delighted the ancient palate – came to grief during a stopover in Mallorca.The merchant vessel, probably at anchor in the Bay of Palma while en route from south-west Spain to Italy, was quickly swallowed by the waves and buried in the sands of the shallow seabed. Continue reading...
by Presented by Ian Sample with Dan Milmo, produced b on (#5WVY8)
Since Vladimir Putin’s bizarre televised address announcing a ‘military operation’, the Russia-Ukraine war has been rife with disinformation and propaganda. Last week, Facebook and Instagram blocked access to the Russian state media outlets RT and Sputnik across the European Union. In retaliation, Russia completely blocked access to Facebook and restricted access to Twitter. At the same time, misattributed videos purportedly showing nuclear weapons and Ukrainian fighter jets have been going viral.Ian Sample speaks to the Guardian’s global technology editor, Dan Milmo, about the ‘war myths’ propagated online, how the information war is being fought, and whose propaganda is having the biggest impactArchive: Sky News Continue reading...
by Denis Campbell Health policy editor on (#5WVSY)
People suffering debilitating cluster headaches say the active ingredient in magic mushrooms is a helpConservative drug reformers and leading psychiatrists are urging ministers to reclassify the psychedelic compound psilocybin so that researchers can explore its potential as a medicine.The same demand is being made by people suffering from cluster headaches – which involve severe pain that existing drugs do little to relieve – amid evidence that psilocybin can help reduce both the condition’s physical and mental impact. Continue reading...
Prospect of medical therapies that rewind clock for humans edges a little closerThe prospect of medical therapies that rewind the clock on the ageing process has edged a little closer after scientists safely rejuvenated tissues in middle-aged mice.Researchers in the US treated healthy animals with a form of gene therapy that refreshed older cells, making the animals more youthful according to biological markers that are used to measure the effects of ageing. Continue reading...
My wife, Milica “Misha” Brozović, who has died aged 84, was a leading figure in the medical field of haematology. She was deeply committed to caring for patients and their families dealing with inherited blood diseases such as sickle cell disease. Her work resulted in better treatment, information and screening services nationally for these patients.Born in Belgrade, Serbia, Misha was the daughter of Jelisaveta (nee Vuković) and Filip Vasić, chief scientist at the city’s Institute for the Economics of Investments. While at grammar school she decided to become a physician. Continue reading...
The solutions to today’s food problemsEarlier today I set you the following puzzles about dividing up food, inspired by the Lwów school of mathematics, a group of mathematicians who lived in the city that is now Lviv in the 1930s.1) Three friends each contribute £4 to buy a £12 ham. The first friend divides it into three parts, asserting the weights are equal. The second friend, distrustful of the first, reweighs the pieces and judges them to be worth £3, £4 and £5. The third, distrustful of them both, weighs the ham on their own scales, getting another result. Continue reading...
Worst effect on region linked to smell, while infected people typically scored lower on mental skills testThe first major study to compare brain scans of people before and after they catch Covid has revealed shrinkage and tissue damage in regions linked to smell and mental capacities months after subjects tested positive.It comes as the largest study to date of the genetics of Covid-19 identified 16 new genetic variants associated with severe illness, and named a number of existing drugs that could be repurposed to prevent patients from getting severely ill, some of which are already in clinical trials. Continue reading...
Researchers say algorithm that translates acoustic signatures could be developed to automatically monitor animal wellbeingNever mind trouncing humans at video games and the ancient pursuits of chess and Go. Researchers have now harnessed the power of artificial intelligence to infer how pigs are feeling on the basis of their grunts.Scientists believe that the AI pig translator – which turns oinks, snuffles, grunts and squeals into emotions – could be used to automatically monitor animal wellbeing and pave the way for better livestock treatment on farms and elsewhere. Continue reading...
I’m a Covid researcher, but I’ve never tested positive. Studying variations in immune systems could lead to better vaccinesI’m one of the fortunate people who is yet to test positive for Covid. This is despite the fact that I work with live replicating Sars-CoV-2 (the virus that causes Covid) for my research, teach face-to-face at university, and have school-age children.My fully vaccinated healthy friends of the same age were not so lucky, and some have suffered from more than one case of Covid in the past couple of years. What does this reveal about my immune system?Dr Zania Stamataki is a senior lecturer and researcher in viral immunology at the University of Birmingham Continue reading...
When the city was a world centre of mathematical thoughtUPDATE: The solutions can be read hereLike many of you I’ve hardly been able to think about anything else these past ten days apart from the war in Ukraine. So today’s puzzles are a celebration of Lviv, Ukraine’s western city, which played an important role in the history of 20th century mathematics. During the 1930s, a remarkable group of scholars came up with new ideas, methods and theorems that helped shape the subject for decades.The Lwów school of mathematics – at that time, the city was in Poland – was a closely-knit circle of Polish mathematicians, including Stefan Banach, Stanisław Ulam and Hugo Steinhaus, who made important contributions to areas including set-theory, topology and analysis. Continue reading...
Having worked as an architect and photographer, run a bookshop and brought up four children, Bryony Harris has always sought new challenges. But becoming a therapist, she says, felt like coming homeAt 65, Bryony Harris withdrew her pension in a lump sum and enrolled on a psychotherapy course. “I like that I used my pension to train for a new career,” she says. Now, at 74, she has a thriving psychotherapy practice in Fredrikstad, Norway. “I just knew it was the right time, and I felt equipped to do it. It was the very best thing I ever did for myself.”The four-year course was on the coast of Denmark, where for a week a month Harris was “among sand dunes with this amazing empty wild beach right outside”. To get there, Harris drove for five hours through southern Norway. “It always felt like coming home,” she says. “I was a sponge, soaking up this stuff.”Tell us: has your life taken a new direction after the age of 60? Continue reading...
Prepare yourself for the challenge of seeing the planet with naked eyes in NovemberFor the second month in a row, we’re going to use the moon as a signpost as we limber up for the big November challenge of seeing planet Uranus with our naked eyes.The chart shows the view looking west-south-west from London at 1930 GMT on 7 March 2022. The moon will be a waxing crescent with just 26% of its visible surface illuminated. Continue reading...
Those with a positive attitude to life may lower their anxiety levels by avoiding argumentsPeople who have a rosy outlook on the world may live healthier, longer lives because they have fewer stressful events to cope with, new research suggests.Scientists found that while optimists reacted to, and recovered from, stressful situations in much the same way as pessimists, the optimists fared better emotionally because they had fewer stressful events in their daily lives. Continue reading...
Our ideas about males and females are wildly out of date, says zoologist Lucy Cooke. Here, she reveals some radical truths about the birds, the bees… and the bonobosLondon Zoo at half-term is a cheerful cacophony with blue macaws out-screaming six-year-olds, but in the relative calm of the lush spider “walkthrough” exhibit (apologies, arachnophobes), Lucy Cooke is happily absorbed. “Let’s see if we can see a big predatory female,” she says. We can: a gorgeously colourful golden orb weaver sits in the centre of her vast gold-tinted web, 125 times bigger than her tiny mate. “I didn’t realise that the majority of spiders are sexual cannibals, that the big spiders in the middle of webs were always female; males are basically wandering useless sacks of sperm,” Cooke says loudly in earshot of several harried-looking human fathers.This is a very Lucy Cooke observation: uncensored, pithily expressed and startlingly informative. There is plenty more of that in her new book, Bitch: A Revolutionary Guide to Sex, Evolution & the Female Animal, a dazzling, funny and elegantly angry demolition of our preconceptions about female behaviour and sex in the animal kingdom (queendom?). Continue reading...
A devastating fire in my studio forced me to approach painting and life in a new wayTwo weeks before the first lockdown I was in my studio putting the finishing touches to my most ambitious body of paintings to date. The studio was packed with hundreds of works of art. For the past four years I had been working with the Syrian writer Professor Ali Souleman and the documentary filmmaker Mark Jones. Ali lost his sight in a bomb blast in Syria in 1997 and we had been attempting to translate his experiences of war and displacement into a collection of paintings – to make the unseen seen. Ali and Mark were coming the very next day for an unveiling. The studio was overstuffed, no pause or resting place for the eye anywhere. It was, in hindsight, a self-portrait of a restless mind.I’ve always been driven by obsessive-compulsive tendencies: counting and control, endless tinkering, seeking a never-coming calm. A patch of work caught my eye. Could it be a bit more darkened and burnt? I felt an itch behind my eyelid, a twitching fidget. I should have waited until I could move the boxes. I couldn’t wait. I switched on the blowtorch and passed it over the surface. It would only take a moment. A moment was all it took. Continue reading...
A new generation of detectors will be many times better at tracking discharges of the dangerous greenhouse gasLast month, scientists working with data from Tropomi, a monitoring instrument onboard the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-5P satellite, published some startling findings. Writing in the journal Science, the team reported that it had found about 1,800 instances of huge releases of methane (more than 25 tonnes an hour) into the atmosphere in 2019 and 2020. Two-thirds of these were from oil and gas facilities, with the leaks concentrated over the largest oil and gas basins across the world, as well as major transmission pipelines, the team said.Launched in 2017, Tropomi has been a huge step forward for scientists researching methane, being the first instrument in space that can see plumes of methane emissions directly, says Lena Höglund-Isaksson, a methane researcher at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis . For example, the instrument led to the discovery of huge methane leaks in Turkmenistan that researchers were not aware of before, she says. Continue reading...
The US psychology professor talks about her new book on the experience of losing a loved one and the lessons we can learnMary-Frances O’Connor is an associate professor at the University of Arizona, where she leads the grief, loss and social stress (Glass) lab, investigating the effects of grief on the brain and the body.Why do humans grieve? One of the earliest things that we learn is that we’re all going to die, so when it happens, why is it such a shock?
by Hannah Devlin. Photographs: Paolo Woods. Captions: on (#5WSGT)
Zolgensma is a revolutionary gene therapy that can stop a deadly childhood condition called SMA in its tracks. It’s also one of the most expensive drugs in the worldElizabeth Wraige remembers the first time she delivered the diagnosis. “Parents feel as if they’ve been hit by a sledgehammer,” she says. Her patient, a baby boy, had been born tiny and perfect to overjoyed parents six months earlier. But they had begun to feel something was not right. He seemed floppy and was not moving normally. Tests showed he had spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), the most deadly genetic condition in children under two, in which a deficit of a crucial protein causes motor neurons to die, and the body slowly loses the ability to move. Babies with untreated type 1 SMA, the most severe form, will never sit, crawl or speak and are slowly robbed of the ability to move, swallow and breathe. Most die before they are two.“In that conversation, any hope that it was something that could be remedied was taken away,” says Wraige, a paediatric neurologist at Evelina London children’s hospital. “It was devastation.” She could offer only one shred of consolation: SMA, an incurable condition that affects one in 6,000-10,000 children, is at least not painful.Arnaud Robert and Paolo Woods write: Zach, who lives in the suburbs of Chicago, was born with SMA, and given Zolgensma in October 2019, when he was eight months old. His father’s trucking union funded the millions needed. Zach also takes a daily medication. Continue reading...
Our features have been obscured by masks, or viewed on screens, for months. We may never look at ourselves in the same way again, writes novelist Ruth OzekiLast April, I ran into a neighbour on the street. This was not a person I knew well, just someone I used to see from my window, walking masked around the neighbourhood during that first locked-down winter of the pandemic. But by spring 2021, the dangers seemed to be subsiding. People in our Massachusetts town were vaccinated and venturing outside unmasked, happy to stop and chat with anyone. It was a beautiful morning; the sunlight remaking the world so that everything looked a bit too bright and clear, as if racked into sudden and unsettling focus. And there was something unsettling about my neighbour, too. We were laughing and swapping lockdown stories, enjoying the in-person, face-to-face communion, when suddenly it struck me that it had been over a year since I’d seen a mouth belonging to someone other than my husband operating at close range.As mouths go, this one was quite ordinary, and a year earlier, I wouldn’t have given it a second thought. But masking had defamiliarised mouths, turning them into something strange. This mouth was so brazenly red, its lips rubbery and wet. Inside it, I could see teeth, gums, even a tongue, and all these parts were moving. The mouth did not look like it should belong to the man’s face; it was a body part, an orifice too intimate to be on display. I couldn’t stop staring. Continue reading...
by Hannah Devlin Science correspondent on (#5WRKZ)
Study of UK adults shows negative effects of alcohol consumption grow stronger with each additional drinkCutting back on the final drink of the evening could substantially improve brain health, scientists have said.A major study of more than 36,000 adults suggests that the negative effects of alcohol consumption grow stronger with each additional drink. So those who drink several units each day potentially have the most to gain by reducing their drinking. Continue reading...
Researchers tap into self-regulatory methods such as setting goals and keeping a diarySetting daily meat reduction goals and keeping an online diary of intake helped frequent meat eaters to halve their consumption in just over nine weeks, a trial has found.The trial, by researchers at the University of Oxford’s Livestock, Environment and People (Leap) programme, also found the routine was popular with participants, who felt it supported them to change their diet. Continue reading...
Seven-step process to enable segments to work as a single mirror nears halfway pointNasa has completed three of the seven stages to bring the 18 hexagonal segments of the James Webb space telescope’s primary mirror into alignment.On 25 February, Nasa announced that the mirror segments were in place and their individual images stacking together. This means the separate images produced by the segments have been united to form a single image. Continue reading...
by Hannah Devlin Science correspondent on (#5WR21)
Description of ingredient as ‘ocean fish’ means owners are unwittingly giving their pets vulnerable species for dinnerPet food containing endangered sharks is being fed to cats and dogs by unwitting owners, a study has revealed.Scientists found that several brands contained endangered species but listed only vague ingredients such as “ocean fish”, meaning that consumers are often oblivious. Continue reading...
Bashanosaurus is thought to have lived about 168m years ago, according to study of fossils found in ChinaA dinosaur that sported spine-like plates along its back is one of the earliest stegosaurs yet discovered, fossil hunters have revealed, and they say the find could shed light on the evolution of some of the most famous dinosaurs to roam Earth.The stegosaur, which has been named Bashanosaurus primitivus in a nod to the ancient name of the region in China in which it was found in 2016 and its position on the stegosaur family tree, is thought to have lived about 168m years ago. Continue reading...
Spent rocket body believed to be part of Chinese Chang’e 5-T1 mission expected to hit lunar surface at 5,500mphIn an unprecedented display of cosmic littering, a wayward rocket body will crash into the far side of the moon on Friday marking the first time that a piece of space junk has accidentally struck the lunar surface.The spent rocket booster, believed to be part of the Chinese Chang’e 5-T1 mission which swung around the moon in 2014, is predicted to slam into the Hertzsprung crater at 12.25pm GMT, though the precise time and location are unclear. Continue reading...
After years in the wilderness, fungi are finally getting the attention they deserve from gardeners, scientists, designers and doctorsJoe Perkins, like most gardeners, has typically been more animated by what’s going on above the ground than below it. The quality of the soil was important, no question, but what was really going on down there felt mysterious and impenetrable. As for fungi, it usually meant one thing in a garden, and that wasn’t good news.“On a domestic level, our relationship and understanding of fungi in the past has very much been that it’s something about decay, it’s about disease, and it’s something that we don’t particularly want in our gardens,” says Perkins, a 45-year-old landscape architect based in Sussex, who won three awards at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show in 2019. “It’s fair to say that, as gardeners, we’ve not always fully understood – and I still don’t – the importance of these systems.” Continue reading...
by Presented and produced by Madeleine Finlay with Fi on (#5WPPX)
As Russia continues its invasion of Ukraine, gas prices remain high around the world. Europe is dependent on Russia for about 40% of its natural gas supplies, and despite the expansion of renewable energy over the past two decades, that dependency is increasing as countries shift to gas from dirtier coal. Putin’s attack on Ukraine has put this reliance into sharp focus as Europe considers how to respond.Madeleine Finlay speaks to our environment correspondent Fiona Harvey about how Putin has weaponised Russia’s fossil fuels, and how Europe could reshape its energy supplies for the future Continue reading...
This prolonged state of hypervigilance can be exhausting. Self-compassion is crucial – as is taking time away from doom-scrolling to stay connected to others and move your bodyWe can survive almost anything if we know it has an endpoint.Struggles that seem to stretch limitlessly into the distance hit harder. Ceaseless uncertainty can chip away at resilience. Continue reading...
Once the novelty of a 3D tour inside a patient’s frozen shoulder has worn off, this is a tedious show that doesn’t even bother to ask key questionsSocial media is currently infested with people professing to be “empaths” who are suffering cruelly (with no apparent discount for it being remotely and, uh, imaginatively) through the crisis in Ukraine. It is sickening to watch, not least because it clothes narcissism in one of humanity’s finer qualities. The ability to put oneself in another’s shoes and stand there, looking out alertly and intelligently from that point of view, marks us out from the beasts as surely as language.The ability to empathise on camera without appearing inauthentic and being emetic is a refinement of such a gift, and one without which many human interest programmes become unwatchable. That Your Body Uncovered With Kate Garraway (BBC Two) succeeds at all is down to her genuine interest in people and ability to say the right thing with the right degree of sentiment. The whole thing is heightened, of course, by the knowledge of what she is going through at home, caring for her husband Derek Draper. He has been incapacitated – possibly long-term – by the after-effects of Covid and, as she put it in a recent interview, she has been learning to love him in a different way. Continue reading...
Once the novelty of a 3D tour inside a patient’s frozen shoulder has worn off, this is a tedious show that doesn’t even bother to ask key questionsSocial media is currently infested with people professing to be “empaths” who are suffering cruelly (with no apparent discount for it being remotely and, uh, imaginatively) through the crisis in Ukraine. It is sickening to watch, not least because it clothes narcissism in one of humanity’s finer qualities. The ability to put oneself in another’s shoes and stand there, looking out alertly and intelligently from that point of view, marks us out from the beasts as surely as language.The ability to empathise on camera without appearing inauthentic and being emetic is a refinement of such a gift, and one without which many human interest programmes become unwatchable. That Your Body Uncovered With Kate Garraway (BBC Two) succeeds at all is down to her genuine interest in people and ability to say the right thing with the right degree of sentiment. The whole thing is heightened, of course, by the knowledge of what she is going through at home, caring for her husband Derek Draper. He has been incapacitated – possibly long-term – by the after-effects of Covid and, as she put it in a recent interview, she has been learning to love him in a different way. Continue reading...
Space junk to smash into the far side of the moon at 5,800mph on Friday and it may take weeks, even months, to confirm the impactThe moon is about to get walloped by 3 tons of space junk, a punch that will carve out a crater that could fit several semi-tractor-trailers.The leftover rocket will smash into the far side of the moon at 5,800mph (9,300km/h) on Friday, away from telescopes’ prying eyes. It may take weeks, even months, to confirm the impact through satellite images. Continue reading...
Dr Megan Mooney is suing Texas governor Greg Abbott to stop his classification of gender-affirming care as ‘child abuse’On 22 February, the Texas governor, Greg Abbott, and state attorney general, Ken Paxton, released guidance to the state’s child protection services (CPS) classifying the provision of gender-affirming care to transgender adolescents as child abuse. The guidance threatened criminal penalties for licensed professionals, such as doctors, nurses and teachers, who fail to report suspicions of such “abuse” to the state. The policy’s implementation would also mean potentially removing trans kids from supportive parents and putting them in the state’s foster system.Considered the standard of care for transgender youth by the major medical associations in the US, gender-affirming care can include medical interventions such as puberty blockers and hormone replacement therapies. (US medical guidelines do not recommend genital surgeries for youth under 18.) Continue reading...
Change in screening programme could come as result of dramatic reductions in cervical cancerThe HPV vaccine is leading to such dramatic reductions in cervical cancer that those who receive it may only need one smear test in their lives, according to a leading cancer prevention scientist.The academic director of King’s Clinical Trials Unit, Prof Peter Sasieni, said the screening programme – which currently needs to be performed every three to five years – could soon change due to the encouraging results from the new HPV vaccine. Continue reading...
Researchers have a new view of HR 6819: two stars, one of them a ‘vampire’Astronomers who thought they had discovered a black hole on our cosmic doorstep have said they were mistaken, instead revealing they have found a two-star system involving a stellar “vampire”.The system, known as HR 6819 in the constellation Telescopium, was in the headlines in 2020 when researchers announced it contained a black hole. At just 1,000 light years from Earth, it was the closest yet found to our planet. Continue reading...
Recent experiments highlight potential of some rocks to lock in more carbon than previously thoughtIn the not too distant future we’re probably going to have to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, to address the climate emergency. Most carbon capture and storage methods involve injecting gaseous or dissolved carbon dioxide into underground reservoirs, but there is always a niggling worry that it could leak out again. The alternative is carbon mineralisation: a chemical reaction where the carbon from carbon dioxide is locked into a mineral.Carbon mineralisation happens naturally during rock weathering and stores carbon safely for thousands of years, but until now its potential was thought to be limited because mineralisation clogs up the pores in a rock, blocking entry and preventing further reactions. However, recent experiments indicate that in some rocks (such as olivine) the crystals created during the process of mineralisation expand the rock and force new cracks to appear, which create fresh surfaces and enhance the rock’s carbon storage capacity. Continue reading...
The study of fossils and prehistoric species is exploitative of local communities, says international teamThe public image of palaeontologists as dusty, but rather affable academics, could be due an update. The study of ancient life is a hotbed of unethical and inequitable scientific practices rooted in colonialism, which strip poorer countries of their fossil heritage, and devalue the contributions of local researchers, scientists say.Writing in the journal Royal Society Open Science, an international team of palaeontologists argue that there has been a steady drain of plesiosaurs, pterosaurs, prehistoric spiders, and other fossils from poorer countries into foreign repositories or local private collections – despite laws and regulations introduced to try to conserve their heritage. Continue reading...
Frontline NHS staff will no longer require vaccination as Sajid Javid also drops requirement for care workersMandatory Covid jabs for health and social care workers in England will be scrapped on 15 March, Sajid Javid has said, as he confirmed staff will no longer be required by law to get vaccinated.The rules came into force for care home staff in November, and had been due to be introduced for frontline NHS and wider social care staff in regulated settings from 1 April. Continue reading...
by Presented by Ian Sample with Damian Carrington, pr on (#5WM72)
A new report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has given humanity a stark warning: without immediate and rapid action on climate breakdown, a liveable and sustainable future for all is at risk. The assessment, which is based on 34,000 studies, documents the ‘widespread and pervasive’ impacts on people and the natural world, and analyses how humanity can adapt.It also offers a small piece of good news – a liveable future remains within grasp. But the window of opportunity for action is ‘brief and rapidly closing’. Ian Sample speaks to environment editor Damian Carrington about the IPCC’s findings and how fast humanity needs to actArchive: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Continue reading...
Space agency says Northrop Grumman and SpaceX could assist after Russia raises prospect of pulling out over sanctions punishing its invasion of Ukraine
Experts say there is enough variation in samples to argue there was also a Tyrannosaurus imperator and a reginaWith its immense size, dagger-like teeth and sharp claws, Tyrannosaurus rex was a fearsome predator that once terrorised North America. Now researchers studying its fossils have suggested the beast may not have been the only tyrannosaurus species.Experts studying remains thought to belong to T rex have suggested their variation shows evidence of not one species but three. Continue reading...
Researchers say it is unlikely that the variant found in deer could bypass vaccines, but urge better monitoring of Covid in animalsCanadian researchers believe they have found the first-ever instance of a deer passing the coronavirus to a human, warning that broader surveillance of wildlife is needed to prevent further mutations from developing and spreading undetected.In a paper published last week, but not yet peer reviewed, scientists say at least one case of Covid-19 in humans can be traced to a strain of the virus found in hunted deer. Continue reading...
Gemini constellation is well placed at this time of year from northern hemisphereThe constellation of Gemini, the twins, is well placed at this time of year from the northern hemisphere. It sits to the south-west of Orion, the hunter, in-between Cancer, the crab, and Auriga, the charioteer.The chart shows the view looking south from London at 2100 GMT on Monday night. Continue reading...
HS2 may have been controversial, but it has also given rise to the biggest archaeological excavation in British history. With more than 100 digs, entire lost towns have been unearthed along the route – radically changing our understanding of the ancient pastThe green fields and woods of rural Northamptonshire look as apparently immutable as much of the British countryside. Next to the remote farm of Blackgrounds, however, a thin layer of innocuous green pasture has been peeled back. Below the surface is revealed a cobbled Roman road, walls, wells, pathways and shops: a bustling, prosperous international settlement long lost to memory.The town, its people and stories are emerging because it is part of the biggest-ever archaeological excavation in British history. It is one of more than 100 digs and investigations along the 134 miles of the HS2 high-speed rail route being built between London and Birmingham. Part of £900m of “enabling works” for the much-criticised project. Continue reading...