The solution to today’s puzzleEarlier today I set you the puzzle below, which is based on Gödel’s incompleteness theorem. As I discussed in the original post, this theorem is one of the most famous in maths and states that in any mathematical system there will always be true statements that cannot be proved.For example, in a formal mathematical setting, the statement ‘This sentence is unprovable” is both true and formally unprovable. When Gödel published his theorem in 1931 it up-ended the study of the foundations of mathematics and its consequences are still being felt today. Continue reading...
Dominic Cummings | Science | Prayers | MarmaladeThe Conservatives warned that if Jeremy Corbyn were elected prime minister he would take Britain back to the 1980s. With all the cheese and wine parties at Downing Street (Dominic Cummings makes new claim of party in No 10 garden in lockdown, 7 January), it seems as if Johnson is aiming for the 1970s.
Contrary to mythical depictions of the iconic steeds as towering beasts, most in England were less than 14.2 hands highIn films and literature they are usually depicted as hulking, foot-stomping, snorting beasts but a new study has claimed that the medieval warhorse was typically a much slighter, daintier animal.A team of archaeologists and historians searching for the truth about the steeds that carried knights into battle has concluded that most were probably only the size of a modern-day pony. Continue reading...
Access to vaccines, masks and tests will help us make the awkward transition from pandemic to endemicIn May 2020, we and other scientists predicted that many regions of the world might never reach the herd immunity threshold for Covid-19 – the point at which enough people are immune to infection that transmission begins to slow down.This remains true today, even as vaccines have become accessible in wealthy nations and many people have built up immunity through vaccinations, boosters and previous infections.Erin Mordecai is an associate professor of biology at Stanford University. Mallory Harris is a PhD candidate at Stanford University, where she studies infectious disease Continue reading...
The proof that rocked mathsIn 1931, the Austrian logician Kurt Gödel published his incompleteness theorem, a result widely considered one of the greatest intellectual achievements of modern times.The theorem states that in any reasonable mathematical system there will always be true statements that cannot be proved. The result was a huge shock to the mathematical community, where the prevailing view was an unshakeable optimism about the power and reach of their subject. It had been assumed that maths was “complete”, meaning that all mathematical statements are either provable or refutable. The 25-year-old Gödel demonstrated this was incorrect by constructing a true statement that was not provable. Maths, he announced, has its limits. Continue reading...
by Hannah Devlin Science correspondent on (#5TV5H)
Ichthyosaur about 10 metres long and dating back 180m years discovered at Rutland WaterA gigantic prehistoric “sea dragon” discovered in the Midlands has been described as one of the greatest finds in the history of British palaeontology.The ichthyosaur, which is about 180m years old with a skeleton measuring about 10 metres in length and a skull weighing about a tonne, is the largest and most complete fossil of its kind ever found in the UK. Joe Davis of the Leicestershire and Rutland Wildlife Trust discovered it during the routine draining of a lagoon island at the Rutland Water reservoir in February 2021. Continue reading...
Brineura, already given to children with life-limiting genetic disease, to be injected into back of eye in Great Ormond Street trialEight children born with a “devastating” genetic disease in England have become the first in the world to receive a pioneering treatment aimed at stopping them from going blind.Doctors at Great Ormond Street hospital in London are trialling a drug they believe may save the eyesight of the children who have CLN2-type Batten disease. Brineura, already successful in animals, is being administered to four boys and four girls on a compassionate use basis. Continue reading...
Self-help podcasts triumphantly brought to book, Raven Leilani’s insightful portrait of sex, race and the city, and Amitava Kumar does battle with fake newsJake Humphrey and Prof Damian Hughes
My life is a constant struggle against the primitive part of my brain – and the forces designed to exploit itI experience frequent, urgent cravings for very specific things and act on them immediately. As soon as I open my eyes I often know exactly what I want: to wear a particular little outfit, buy a sandwich of a certain heft and filling from this shop in this postcode, eat it (for instance) on a bench under a tree. It’s a shame that the place in me capable of conjuring these whims also regularly churns out other, much more boring urges, and occasionally dangerous ones too. My brain is a constant game of Hungry Hungry Hippos, my dopamine receptors snapping noisily at an alarming rate, urging me to do things that actually bring me very little pleasure at all. Why do I want things that don’t make me feel good? I’m at the mercy of my lizard brain and the mechanisms of society designed to exploit it.The concept of the three-tiered brain – a primitive reptilian brain nestled like a living fossil in the clay of our most recently evolved, superior brains, was proposed in the 1960s by the neuroscientist Paul MacLean. Its scientific credulity holds about as much significance to me as that of the astrology app that sends me notifications each morning – it just provides a structure for me to think about my habits and how to change them. In short, the reptilian brain is the most primitive part of the brain. I visualise it quite literally as the lizard-like baby from Eraserhead, mewling and requiring constant attention from the other parts of the brain, the parts that have evolved over 10m years to quieten its cries.Eli Goldstone is the author of Strange Heart Beating Continue reading...
by Robin McKie Observer science editor on (#5TTFX)
New DNA research by London-based scientists hopes to find cure for rapidly spreading conditionsMore and more people around the world are suffering because their immune systems can no longer tell the difference between healthy cells and invading micro-organisms. Disease defences that once protected them are instead attacking their tissue and organs.Major international research efforts are being made to fight this trend – including an initiative at London’s Francis Crick Institute, where two world experts, James Lee and Carola Vinuesa, have set up separate research groups to help pinpoint the precise causes of autoimmune disease, as these conditions are known. Continue reading...
‘Time machine’ will allow astronomers to study the beginning of the universe shortly after the Big BangNasa engineers have completed the final unfolding of the huge primary mirror of the agency’s James Webb space telescope. The manoeuvre was the final step of the $10bn observatory’s two-week deployment phase that began with its launch on Christmas Day.The telescope, which has already travelled more than 600,000 miles across space, is the largest, most powerful space telescope ever built and had to be folded up tightly so it would fit inside its Ariane 5 launch rocket. Continue reading...
Amid a hectic life, meditation can help make you happier and healthierJillian Lavender, a much-sought-after meditation teacher and author of a new book Why Meditate?, is on a mission to eliminate stress from people’s lives – not to manage it, or cope with, but to get rid of it. Altogether.“People talk about stress as something we have to learn to live with, particularly anxiety,” she says. “Actually we can do something about stress.” She believes we need to change our mindset around what she sees as one of the greatest causes of suffering today. There is no such thing as “good stress”, she says. “People are tired, exhausted and stressed. And they compensate for that by all sorts of behaviours and habits. I want to bring us into a normal state, a balanced state that is healthy.” Continue reading...
Likely to contain dozens of undiscovered species, the site is so well-preserved that the contents of fish stomachs and breathing apparatus of spiders can be seenThe Australian paleontologist Matthew McCurry was digging for Jurassic fossils when a farmer dropped by with news of something he’d seen in his paddock – a fossilised leaf in a piece of hard brown rock.Fossil leaves are not usually anything to write home about, but the spot was close, so McCurry and his colleague Michael Frese went to take a look. Continue reading...
Palaeontologists from the Australian Museum have made a remarkable discovery outside of a small town in New South Wales, Australia. Encased in the hard brown rocks of McGrath's Flat are the inhabitants of a rainforest that existed about 15 million years ago.Thousands of fossils have been revealed – from flowering plants to fruits and seeds, insects, spiders, pollen and fish Continue reading...
by Hannah Devlin Science correspondent on (#5TS54)
After missteps and controversy, the quick and easy tests are well on way to becoming part of daily lifeOnce obscure diagnostic devices, lateral flow tests have had a rocky path to mainstream use, but some experts now view their rise to ubiquity as a “heroic” step in the fight against Covid-19 and say they could be here to stay.As the first wave of Covid crashed down in early 2020 and governments scrambled to secure PPE, ventilators and reagents for laboratory testing, behind the scenes some had already foreseen a role for the pregnancy test-style kits. Continue reading...
At pioneering facility in London, researchers use wearable tech to see how toddlers’ brains developWith her Mickey Mouse backpack, coloured Duplo blocks and disarmingly cute smile, Serena could be any young child constructing a toy house for an imaginary character – were it not for the wires and nodules sticking out of her head. But Serena is a pint-sized pioneer at the cutting edge of research into the enduring mystery of what makes toddlers tick. She is among the first children to be studied at the world’s first dedicated ToddlerLab – a multimillion-pound effort to get inside the heads of toddlers.Young children do and say the most extraordinary things, and in neurological terms, they are extraordinary creatures. “The change in between two and five years of age is pretty spectacular: there’s a lot going on in terms of brain development and cognitive development,” said Prof Natasha Kirkham, a reader in developmental psychology at the Birkbeck Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development (CBCD) in London, home to the Wohl Wolfson ToddlerLab. Continue reading...
Maximiliano Herrera, watcher of extreme weather, says last year likely to be in top five or six hottest in historyMore than 400 weather stations around the world beat their all-time highest temperature records in 2021, according to a climatologist who has been compiling weather records for over 30 years.Maximiliano Herrera keeps track of extreme weather around the world, and publishes an annual list of records broken in the previous year. He and many other climatologists and meteorologists who follow these issues closely expect that 2021 will probably not be the hottest year in history (Noaa and Nasa will publish their results in the next few days). Continue reading...
The saola is so elusive that no biologist has seen one in the wild. Now they are racing to find it, so they can save itWeighing 80-100kg and sporting long straight horns, white spots on its face and large facial scent glands, the saola does not sound like an animal that would be hard to spot. But it was not until 1992 that this elusive creature was discovered, becoming the first large mammal new to science in more than 50 years.Nicknamed the “Asian unicorn”, the saola continues to be elusive. They have never been seen by a biologist in the wild and have been camera-trapped only a handful of times. There are reports of villagers trying to keep them in captivity but they have died after a few weeks, probably due to the wrong diet. Continue reading...
Biden wants to extend the operation of the ISS to 2030 before replacing it – will Russia approve?The deadline for the decommissioning of the International Space Station (ISS) is worryingly close, and there is a danger that the commercial replacements the US was hoping for will not be ready to launch in time.With that in mind, on New Year’s Eve, Nasa announced that the Biden-Harris administration wanted to extend the operation of the ISS by six years to 2030. Continue reading...
Experts describe data from first study of its kind as shocking and warn of ‘rapidly growing threat’The number of adults living with dementia worldwide is on course to nearly triple to 153 million by 2050, according to the first study of its kind.Experts described the data as shocking and said it was clear that dementia presented “a major and rapidly growing threat to future health and social care systems” in every community, country and continent. Continue reading...
Level increased regardless of health but virus ‘picks on’ those already at risk of illness or deathBritain’s first wave of coronavirus raised the risk of death by more than 40% for most adults regardless of their underlying health and other factors, research suggests.Scientists examined medical records for nearly 10 million people aged 40 and over and found that, whatever a person’s risk of dying before the pandemic, it rose 1.43 times on average as the virus spread between March and May 2020. Continue reading...
Animals thought to have developed the illness about 200 years ago after bacterial infections gained resistance to natural antibioticsHedgehogs have been harbouring a type of the MRSA superbug since long before the use of antibiotics in humans and livestock, research suggests.Scientists have found evidence of the superbug arising in nature well before the use of the drugs, which have traditionally been blamed for its emergence. Continue reading...
Cases of people infected at same time with both viruses have been reported in some countriesLevels of flu remain low in the UK despite Covid cases rising considerably over Christmas and the new year, official data shows.The Omicron variant of coronavirus has spread rapidly around the UK, leading to a sharp rise in infections and, subsequently, hospitalisations. According to figures from the Office for National Statistics released on Wednesday, one in 15 people in England had Covid in the week ending 31 December, rising to one in 10 in London. Continue reading...
US biologist and champion of biodiversity who specialised in the study of ants and was regarded as a modern-day Charles DarwinWhen the naturalist Edward O Wilson was a boy of seven, the dorsal spine of a fish that he was reeling in near his home in Mobile, Alabama, damaged his right eye. He lost the sight of that eye and subsequently suffered partial hearing loss in his teens. These disabilities led Wilson, a passionate naturalist from an early age, to focus on small organisms, particularly ants, that he could study at close range.Observing their tiny worlds led him to a global vision of the importance of biological diversity in the survival of species including our own. Wilson, who has died aged 92, has been called a modern Charles Darwin for his influence as both a close observer and a unifying theorist. He was also a campaigner whose humane and elegant writings were among the first in recent times to argue that we have a moral duty to value other species, not only for their own sake but also for the sake of future human generations. Continue reading...
by Damian Carrington Environment editor on (#5TQEZ)
Hundreds of new species include pink voodoo lily and an ylang-ylang tree named after Leonardo DiCaprioA ghost orchid that grows in complete darkness, an insect-trapping tobacco plant and an “exploding firework” flower are among the new species named by scientists in the last year. The species range from a voodoo lily from Cameroon to a rare tooth fungus unearthed near London, UK.A new tree from the ylang-ylang family is the first to be named in 2022 and is being named after the actor and environmentalist Leonardo DiCaprio. He campaigned to revoke a logging concession which threatened the African tree, which features glossy yellow flowers on its trunk. Continue reading...
Dogs react differently to speech and non-speech when listening to human voices, say researchersDogs may appear to have selective hearing when it comes to commands but research suggests they are paying attention to human chit-chat.Researchers – who arranged for headphone-wearing dogs to listen to excerpts from the novella The Little Prince – revealed the brains of our canine companions can tell the difference between speech and non-speech when listening to human voices, and show different responses to speech in an unfamiliar language. Continue reading...
by Presented and produced by Madeleine Finlay with Ia on (#5TQ83)
On Wednesday, 194,747 daily confirmed Covid cases were reported for the whole of the UK. But this doesn’t include all the people who have caught the virus for the second, or even third time. In fact, official figures for England, Scotland and Northern Ireland don’t include those who have had Covid before, despite warnings from scientists that up to 15% of Omicron cases could be reinfections. Madeleine Finlay speaks to the Guardian’s science editor Ian Sample about why reinfections are so high for Omicron, what these cases could tell us, and how it could affect public health measures in the future Continue reading...
Guardian readers respond to John Harris’s piece on understanding the reasons behind vaccine hesitancyJohn Harris may be correct to frame the avoidance of vaccination by a significant portion of the UK population as the consequence of mistrust in authority or government (Understanding, not judgment, should shape our response to those who remain unjabbed, 2 January). However, I and many millions of others do not trust this government at all, but we still accepted vaccination. Social factors may explain the existence of vaccine avoidance, but they do not justify it. Under UK laws, no degree of inequality allows a car driver to transfer to the right side of the road in protest against a mistrusted government.True freedom is the liberty from being harmed by others, regardless of whether those actions are deliberately harmful. The freedom to “innocently” spread disease is not a fundamental right. The enormous human cost of supporting unvaccinated and seriously ill patients in hospital is having a direct impact on all our lives. It is time to take the moral high ground: celebrate the vaccinators and publicly avow that vaccination is good, that being vaccinated is a public duty and that failure to comply by any citizen without adequate medical reasons is a dereliction of that public duty.
Three screenings at this year’s Göteborg festival will ‘transform the audience’s state of mind’ with a live hypnotist on stageThe Göteborg film festival is no stranger to stunts. It has previously featured screenings for a single audience member at a North Sea lighthouse, as well as “coffin screenings” in which lucky viewers were interred inside a sarcophagus to enhance their sensory empathy.This year, festival directors are planning to put the entire audience under by hiring a hypnotist for three gala screenings. Ahead of Swedish premieres for Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Memoria, Shirin Neshat’s Land of Dreams and Christian Tafdrup’s Speak No Evil, a hypnotist will appear on stage to “transform the audience’s state of mind in accordance with the mood and theme of the film”. Continue reading...
by Jessica Murray Midlands correspondent on (#5TP61)
British Army physiotherapist ‘Polar Preet’ skied 700 miles across Antarctica in 40 days, five days ahead of schedulePreet Chandi, thought to be the first woman of colour to complete a solo crossing on Antarctica, has finished her expedition to the south pole almost a week ahead of schedule.Chandi or “Polar Preet”, endured temperatures of -50C as she skied 700 miles across Antarctica in 40 days, seven hours and three minutes, narrowly missing out on setting a new world record by a woman for the trek. Continue reading...
Contrary to what Charles Darwin once argued, emotions enhance our process of reasoning and aid decision-makingCharles Darwin created the most successful theory in the history of biology: the theory of evolution. He was also responsible for another grand theory: the theory of emotion, which dominated his field for more than a century. That theory was dead wrong.The most important tenet of his theory was that the mind consists of two competing forces, the rational and the emotional. He believed emotions played a constructive role in the lives of non-human animals, but in humans emotions were a vestige whose usefulness had been largely superseded by the evolution of reason.Leonard Mlodinow is a physicist and author of EMOTIONAL: The New Thinking about Feelings Continue reading...
Remains of some of the 163 children at Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo to be examined using X-rayThe 200-year-old secrets of the child mummies of the Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo in northern Sicily are to be revealed by a British-led team of scientists using X-ray technology.Dr Kirsty Squires, of Staffordshire University, will head a first attempt to tell the stories of some of the 163 children whose remains lie within the corridors and crypts of the famous underground tomb. Continue reading...
Study finds test works on people with concerning signs such as unexplained weight loss or fatigueScientists have developed a blood test that could help detect cancer in people with nonspecific symptoms such as unexplained weight loss or fatigue.If validated, the test could enable cancer patients to be identified earlier, when they are more likely to respond to treatment, and help flag up who could benefit from early access to drugs designed to tackle metastatic cancer. The test can also tell if the disease has spread. Continue reading...
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