Bristol study finds that for every five extra BMI units a woman’s risk of endometrial cancer increases by 88%Lifelong excess weight may almost double a woman’s risk of developing womb cancer, research suggests.Scientists and doctors have known for some time that being overweight or obese increases the risk of the disease. About one in three cases in the UK (34%) are linked to excess weight. Continue reading...

Psychology researchers say health-related conspiracy theories appeal to but do not satisfy a need to make sense of the world

According to WHO analysis, figure for country is more than 4 million and not official tally of 520,000India has been accused of attempting to delay an effort by the World Health Organization to revise the global death toll from Covid-19 after its calculations suggested that the country had undercounted its dead by an estimated 3.5 million.India’s official number of deaths from Covid is 520,000. But according to in-depth analysis and investigations into the data by WHO, the total is more than 4 million, which would be by far the highest country death toll in the world. Continue reading...

The solutions to today’s teasersEarlier today I set you the following puzzles, adapted from Math Games with Bad Drawings by Ben Orlin.1. Five nice dice Continue reading...

Beacon of Galaxy message could be sent into heart of Milky Way, where life is deemed most likely to exist“Even if the aliens are short, dour and sexually obsessed,” the late cosmologist Carl Sagan once mused, “if they’re here, I want to know about them.”Driven by the same mindset, a Nasa-led team of international scientists has developed a new message that it proposes to beam across the galaxy in the hope of making first contact with intelligent extraterrestrials. Continue reading...

Go figure, stick figure!UPDATE: The answers to today’s puzzles can be read here.Today’s puzzles begin with a low-fi version of Countdown: you roll five dice and using the basic arithmetical operations aim to get as close as possible to a target number.Then the questions get a bit trickier, and a bit more interesting. Continue reading...

Drug used to treat epilepsy and bipolar disorder is being given to pregnant women despite risks, data shows

Sodium valproate, associated with birth defects, reportedly being prescribed without proper warnings

What can the behaviour of apes teach us about sex and gender? A great deal, according to a new book by primatologist Frans de Waal – and his findings are already stirring controversySex and gender have come to represent one of the hottest fronts in the modern culture wars. Now, on to this bloody battlefield, calmly dodging banned books, anti-transgender laws and political doublespeak, strolls the distinguished Dutch-American primatologist Frans de Waal, brandishing nearly half a century’s worth of field notebooks and followed, metaphorically speaking, by an astonishingly diverse collection of primates.Given the world it enters, de Waal’s new book, Different: What Apes Can Teach Us About Gender, would arguably have failed if it didn’t stimulate debate. It seems safe from death by indifference, however, since it is dividing opinion even before it is published. Continue reading...

Scientists say the natural world has an important role to play in creating new drugs to fight the diseaseCancer care relies on complex therapies involving radioactive materials and sophisticated drugs and has come far from past remedies based on plants and herbs.However, scientists warn there is still a need to understand the botanical roots of tumour treatments – to maintain new sources of drugs and to ensure plant resources are not overexploited. The natural world still has a lot to teach us about tackling disease. Continue reading...

Director of network that processed millions of tests says smart diagnostics could tackle other major diseasesTwo years of mass Covid testing have paved the way for a revolution in how we diagnose other diseases, the founding director of the Lighthouse labs network has said.In his first interview since the pandemic began, Prof Chris Molloy said that people’s familiarity with using swabs for Covid tests meant that they could also discover and monitor their risk of other conditions, such as diabetes and heart disease. Continue reading...

The Australian physicist on why research is an investment, forgotten female scientists, and the impact of the Ukraine war on scienceBorn in Australia in 1984, Dr Suzie Sheehy is an accelerator physicist who runs research groups at the universities of Oxford and Melbourne, where she is developing new particle accelerators for applications in medicine. As a science communicator, she received the Lord Kelvin award in 2010 for presenting science to school and public audiences. Her first book is The Matter of Everything: Twelve Experiments that Changed Our World.How did you first become interested in physics?

I was heartbroken and angry but horse riding and medieval poetry revealed the quest I was onThis April, I will be older than my elder sister Nell. She died of cancer in December 2019. She was 46 when she died, two years older than me. This year I will be 47. Nell will always be 46. Writing “Nell died” still disturbs me as it did in the months after her death. She was my older sister. She wasn’t supposed to die. As little girls we learned to talk lying in beds beside one another. We sat in the same bath water, shared the same toothbrush, wore the same knickers, fought over the same toys.Her prognosis had been good. Days before her death, we were told she had years – maybe as many as 10 of them – to live. I didn’t think about death; I didn’t want to let it jinx anything by letting its shape enter my consciousness. Ten days later, I was in a hospital room with Nell and our father when a consultant knelt by her bed and told her she had a day to live. I wanted to tell death to stop, to block it from entering the room, to scream at death that I wasn’t ready for it to take her from me. But death when it comes, is unstoppable. So I stood by her bed with her as death came into the room and did its thing. Continue reading...

Remains found in the Rhône Valley, dating back 54,000 years, are earliest discovered outside AfricaIt is a weapon whose effectiveness was overtaken centuries ago by the gun and rifle. Yet the bow and arrow may deserve a prize place in the history of our species, say scientists. They believe archery could have been critical to Homo sapiens’ conquest of the planet, helping modern humans emerge from their African homeland tens of thousands of years ago.Early archers would have been able to kill their prey at a considerable distance while at the same time giving their diets a protein boost without endangering themselves, say researchers. It has also become clear that bow-and-arrow technology is ancient, with some of the oldest arrowheads traced to caves in South Africa and dated to around 64,000 years ago. Continue reading...

Volunteering to test new treatments can net up to £7,000 – enough to help offset the cost of living riseFancy a relaxing two-week getaway where you get your travel expenses paid, plus your own en suite room with all mod cons including a TV, PlayStation games console and free wifi? What’s more, it won’t cost you anything – in fact, they are so keen for you to come that you’ll be paid £4,200.If that sounds appealing, then you might want to think about booking a stay at FluCamp. However, as the name suggests, there’s a catch to this “holiday”: FluCamp runs residential clinical trials in the UK to test potential treatments for colds and flu. Continue reading...

Failure to recognise the need for a response could be a blunder we rue for decades to comeWhatever your standpoint on whether the pandemic is over, or what “living with the virus” should mean, it is clear some manifestation of Covid-19 will be with us for some time to come. Not least for the estimated 1.7 million people in the UK living with long Covid.And lest any who made a full and rapid recovery from infection still wonder whether long Covid might be a self-reported creation of the indolent, this is a now a large, well-documented, convergent cluster of clear physiological symptoms, and it is common to every part of the globe affected by Covid-19. Many sufferers of my acquaintance were keen cyclists, runners, skiers and dancers, but are now disabled and deprived of their former passions, while some are unable to resume their former professions. Doctors and scientists the world over now consider this a recognised part of the Sars-CoV-2 symptom profile.Danny Altmann is a professor of immunology at Imperial College London. He has contributed advice to the Cabinet Office, the all-party parliamentary group on long Covid and the EU Continue reading...

Test subjects from International Space Station may shed light on link between space travel and high incidence of painful conditionWhen astronauts travel into space they can expect some extraordinary new experiences. But they may also face a more mundane and potentially mission-ending one: kidney stones.According to Nasa, kidney stones have been reported more than 30 times by astronauts upon returning to earth. Now researchers are beginning to unpick why space travel is linked to the painful condition. Continue reading...

There is so much intelligence on this planet other than ours. Realising that will be key to adapting to climate breakdownFor the past couple of years, I’ve been working with researchers in northern Greece who are farming metal. In a remote, beautiful field, high in the Pindus mountains in Epirus, they are experimenting with a trio of shrubs known to scientists as “hyperaccumulators”: plants which have evolved the capacity to thrive in naturally metal-rich soils that are toxic to most other kinds of life. They do this by drawing the metal out of the ground and storing it in their leaves and stems, where it can be harvested like any other crop. As well as providing a source for rare metals – in this case nickel, although hyperaccumulators have been found for zinc, aluminium, cadmium and many other metals, including gold – these plants actively benefit the earth by remediating the soil, making it suitable for growing other crops, and by sequestering carbon in their roots. One day, they might supplant more destructive and polluting forms of mining.The three plants being tested in Greece – part of a network of research plots across Europe – are endemic to the region. Alyssum murale, which grows in low bushes topped by bunches of yellow flowers, is native to Albania and northern Greece; Leptoplax emarginata – taller and spindlier, with clusters of green leaves and white petals – is found only in Greece; and Bornmuellera tymphaea, the most efficient of the three, which straggles across the ground in a dense layer of white blossom, is found only on the slopes of the Pindus (its name comes from Mount Tymfi, one of the highest peaks of the range). Continue reading...

Michelin-starred chefs see opportunities and creative challenge in catering for commercial space travelWhen a trio of paying customers and their astronaut chaperone were blasted off to the International Space Station, their voyage was touted as a milestone for the commercialisation of spaceflight.For the Michelin-starred Spanish chef José Andrés, however, the recently departed mission ushered in another – albeit more niche – breakthrough: the first time paella was sent into orbit. Continue reading...

The most soothing voice on the box tells an apocalyptic tale in Dinosaurs: The Final Day. Plus: a killer on the loose in Grantchester. Here’s what to watch this evening Continue reading...

Archaeological dig also finds body-shaped lead sarcophagus buried at the heart of the fire-ravaged monumentAn archaeological dig under Notre Dame Cathedral has uncovered an extraordinary treasure of statues, sculptures, tombs and pieces of an original rood screen dating back to the 13th century.The find included several ancient tombs from the middle ages and a body-shaped lead sarcophagus buried at the heart of the fire-ravaged monument under the floor of the transept crossing. Continue reading...

Medicines regulator says it is first in world to approve Valneva productA Covid-19 vaccine developed by the French pharmaceutical company Valneva has been given regulatory approval by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, bringing the total number of jabs approved for use in the UK to six.As the Covid pandemic swept the world, scientists began developing vaccines against it, with the Pfizer/BioNTech jab being the first in the UK to be authorised for emergency use by the MHRA in 2020. Since then the MHRA has approved the Moderna, Oxford/AstraZeneca, Janssen and Novavax vaccines, although, according to NHS England, Janssen and Novavax are not currently available. Continue reading...

To slow down a surge in Covid cases, last week Chinese authorities put Shanghai into lockdown. But with a population of 26 million there have been difficulties providing residents with basic necessities, and videos have appeared on social media showing protests and scrambles over food supplies. Now, authorities have begun easing the lockdown in some areas, despite reporting a record of more than 25,000 new Covid cases.Madeleine Finlay talks to the Guardian’s China affairs correspondent, Vincent Ni, about what’s been happening in Shanghai, whether the Omicron variant may spell the end of China’s zero-Covid policy, and what an alternative strategy could look like

Scientists believe specimen shows life existed earlier than is widely assumed – increasing chances of life elsewhereScientists believe they have found evidence of microbes that were thriving near hydrothermal vents on Earth’s surface just 300m years after the planet formed – the strongest evidence yet that life began far earlier than is widely assumed.If confirmed, it would suggest the conditions necessary for the emergence of life are relatively basic. Continue reading...

But goal of limiting global heating to 1.5C will fail without immediate action, scientists warnFor the first time the world is in a position to limit global heating to under 2C, according to the first in-depth analysis of the net zero pledges made by nations at the UN Cop26 climate summit in December.Before these pledges it was more than likely that at the peak of the climate crisis there would be a temperature rise above 2C, bringing more severe impacts for billions of people. Now it is more likely that the peak temperature rise will be about 1.9C. Continue reading...

Schools are encouraging students to use mental health chatbots to address a surge in depression and anxiety. Critics worry they’re a Band-Aid solution unsupported by evidenceFifteen-year-old Jordyne Lewis was stressed out.The high school sophomore from Harrisburg, North Carolina, was overwhelmed with schoolwork, never mind the uncertainty of living in a pandemic that has dragged on for two long years. Despite the challenges, she never turned to her school counselor or sought out a therapist. Continue reading...

Operations stopped in Chinese cities of Shanghai and Kunshan as global supply chains feel pinch of Beijing's zero-Covid measuresKey iPhone maker Pegatron has halted operations at two subsidiaries in the Chinese cities of Shanghai and Kunshan, as global supply chains feel the pinch of Beijing’s strict zero-Covid measures.The business hub of Shanghai has become the heart of China’s biggest Covid-19 outbreak since the virus surfaced more than two years ago. Continue reading...

Scientists find that as video quality deteriorates, people speak louder and alter gestures to compensateFrom frozen screens to the oblivious person on mute, the trials and tribulations of video calls became familiar challenges as the pandemic forced workers to communicate from their kitchen tables, makeshift offices and boxroom desks.Now scientists have revealed why we often end up raising our voices at our colleagues: as video quality deteriorates, we speak louder and alter our gestures in an attempt to compensate. Continue reading...

UV filters absorbed by Posidonia oceanica may have damaging effects on ecosystems, scientists warnChemicals found in sunscreen lotions are accumulating in Mediterranean seagrass, a study has found.Scientists discovered ultraviolet filters in the stems of Posidonia oceanica, a seagrass species found on the coast of Mallorca and endemic to the Mediterranean Sea. Continue reading...

Research shows effects of compound found in magic mushrooms can be seen weeks after treatmentThe psychedelic compound found in magic mushrooms helps to open up depressed people’s brains and make them less fixed in negative thinking patterns, research suggests.According to the findings, psilocybin makes the brain more flexible, working differently to regular antidepressants, even weeks after use. Researchers say the findings indicate that psilocybin could be a viable alternative to depression treatments. Continue reading...

The virus is now embedded in our world. But there are steps we can take to keep it at bay while we continue to live our livesWhat do I wish I had known in early 2020? Other than to buy shares in toilet paper, Zoom and vaccine companies, I wish I had known that a safe and effective vaccine against severe disease and death from Covid-19 would arrive within a year – and that reinfection would nevertheless become a major issue in managing the disease. These two facts would have shifted the UK government’s response, and allowed for a more unified scientific front in advising them.At the very beginning of the pandemic, several governments – including in Sweden, Netherlands and the UK – believed the best path through this crisis was to allow a controlled spread of infections through the population, especially the young and healthy, in order to reach some static state against the virus. The idea was that “the herd” who got infected would protect a more vulnerable minority.Prof Devi Sridhar is chair of global public health at the University of EdinburghJoin Devi Sridhar for a Guardian Live online event on Monday 25 April. She will talk to Nicola Davis about Covid-19 and the lessons we can learn from our handling of the pandemic. Book here Continue reading...

Last week’s IPCC report gives the world just 30 months to get greenhouse gas emissions falling. Beyond that, we’ll have missed our chance of limiting global heating to 1.5C and protecting our planet from the most serious impacts of climate change. As the window closes, some scientists feel like writing reports and publishing papers is no longer enough, and researchers around the world are leaving their desks and labs to take action on the streets.Madeleine Finlay meets scientists protesting at Shell HQ in London and speaks to the conservationist Dr Charlie Gardner about civil disobedience – and why he thinks it’s the only option left

As a format it’s slow, encourages hype, and is difficult to correct. A radical overhaul of publishing could make science betterWhen was the last time you saw a scientific paper? A physical one, I mean. An older academic in my previous university department used to keep all his scientific journals in recycled cornflakes boxes. On entering his office, you’d be greeted by a wall of Kellogg’s roosters, occupying shelf upon shelf, on packets containing various issues of Journal of Experimental Psychology, Psychophysiology, Journal of Neuropsychology, and the like. It was an odd sight, but there was method to it: if you didn’t keep your journals organised, how could you be expected to find the particular paper you were looking for?The time for cornflakes boxes has passed: now we have the internet. Having been printed on paper since the very first scientific journal was inaugurated in 1665, the overwhelming majority of research is now submitted, reviewed and read online. During the pandemic, it was often devoured on social media, an essential part of the unfolding story of Covid-19. Hard copies of journals are increasingly viewed as curiosities – or not viewed at all. Continue reading...

RATs are not infallible, but a few tips and tricks will help you get the most out of them

Testing people in their 50s could identify individuals at risk of poor balance later in life, study findsSimple cognitive tests in midlife could predict the likelihood of falling in later life, one of the most common causes of injury and death, new research suggests.Poor levels of word memory, verbal fluency, processing speed and cognitive ability in our 50s are early indicators of worsening balance in later life, a condition that increases the risk of falls, injury and death, researchers from University College London have found. Continue reading...

After an ectopic pregnancy that ruptured, Georgina Scull spoke to people around the world facing death – and discovered the regrets they want us all to learn fromI’m not sure I ever fully appreciated my life until I nearly lost it. In fact, I’m sure I didn’t. On the surface everything was good. I was married and living overseas with our two-year-old daughter. There was food on the table and a roof over our heads, but it felt as if I was drifting – constantly waiting for my real life to start. And then, at 37, I had an ectopic pregnancy, which ruptured and I nearly died.That was 10 years ago. It should have been the start of my second chance. The jolt to get me going. But, I’m afraid it wasn’t. I was alive, but I still wasn’t really living. I still seemed to be stuck in all the things I hadn’t done over the years, rather than enjoying all the things that I did. As the days and weeks passed, my regrets just grew. Continue reading...

Substance marketed online to ease range of joint and liver conditions, and to promote wellbeing, should not be usedA dietary supplement sold in the UK could be toxic and should not be used until it has been shown to be safe, an international group of biologists has warned.The team, from Manchester and Kyoto universities, reported last week that the supplement – known as SAMe – can break down inside the body into substances that cause a wide range of medical problems, including kidney and liver damage Continue reading...

A tiny smudge on the space telescope turned out to be starlight from Earendel, almost 13 billion years old – revealing evidence of the universe in its infancyEarendel – “morning star” in Old English – is among the first stars to exist in our universe, born less than one billion years after the Big Bang. And the Hubble space telescope has just performed the remarkable feat of detecting light from it.Mostly, the telescope gives us images of nearby galaxies in intricate detail, but those of distant galaxies are very murky indeed. Astronomer Brian Welch and his team, from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, discovered the star while hunting for hints of the earliest galaxies. These galaxies are very hard to see, and the team chose to examine a selection of images from the Hubble looking for clues. Continue reading...

Bid to fill underground visitor centre in complex with artefacts not even dug up yet shocks archaeologistsNo one in the column of tourists making their way to York Minster along the city wall even glances at Northern House. The slab of beige 1960s architecture is not a building that provokes much passion.But the layers of mud beneath it are a different matter. A plan to demolish Northern House to unearth the centuries of history below and create a new Roman-themed visitor centre, hotel and apartments has caused a row among archaeologists. Continue reading...

Electrical problem triggers global safety alert on 2,000 Philips machinesTwo thousand ventilators being used in UK hospitals are at risk of suddenly shutting down due to electrical faults that have led to a global safety alert.Hospitals have been ordered to source replacement ventilators after Philips Respironics said its breathing support devices could suddenly stop working, in some cases without activating a warning alarm. Continue reading...

Team rides SpaceX-launched Falcon 9 rocket on flight hailed as commercial milestoneThe first all-private team of astronauts sent to the International Space Station arrived safely on Saturday to begin a week-long mission hailed as a milestone in commercial spaceflight.The rendezvous came about 21 hours after the four-man team representing Houston-based startup company Axiom Space lifted off on Friday from Nasa’s Kennedy Space Center, riding a SpaceX-launched Falcon 9 rocket. Continue reading...

The mathematician and author talks about the exploitation of our feelings, cancel culture, and why she believes JK Rowling is an example of ‘punching-down shame’Cathy O’Neil is a writer, a mathematician and author of the bestselling Weapons of Math Destruction, which won the Euler book prize. Her latest book is The Shame Machine: Who Profits in the New Age of Humiliation, which looks at the ways shame is manufactured and exploited in a range of industries, including prisons, welfare systems and social media, for coercive and commercial purposes. She argues that a common intention is to shift responsibility for social problems from institutions to individuals.This is a very different book to your previous one. What made you decide to write about the subject of shame?

Group received lottery funds while promoting unproven treatmentsA British autism charity that received hundreds of thousands of pounds in national lottery funding has links to the anti-vaccine movement and is being jointly run by a campaigner who likened the Covid-19 jab rollout to a Nazi war crime.Thinking Autism also promoted unproven autism treatments in testimonials on its website and directed families to clinicians linked to the disgraced former doctor Andrew Wakefield, an investigation has found. Continue reading...

Most of rare isotope of helium found on mid-ocean ridges dates to big bang, providing clue to planet’s formationA rare isotope of helium, bubbling up along mid-ocean ridges, is proving to be a vital clue to our planet’s origins.Just 2kg of helium-3 – enough to fill a balloon the size of your desk – leaks out of the Earth each year. Very little of this rare isotope is produced on the Earth’s surface today, and most of it dates to the big bang, where it would have been incorporated into planets as they grew out of the dust and debris spinning around the early sun. Continue reading...

Crew of four on way to space station in mission hailed by Nasa as putting ‘commercial business up in space’A SpaceX rocket ship has blasted off carrying the first all-private astronaut team ever launched to the International Space Station (ISS), a flight hailed by industry executives and Nasa as a milestone in the commercialisation of spaceflight.The team of four selected by Houston-based startup Axiom Space Inc for its debut spaceflight and orbital science mission lifted off on Friday morning from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Continue reading...

Supporters of climbing therapy say it can help people focus on the here and now and provide relief from the whirlwind of modern lifeWhenever he’s stressed out, physicist Forrest Sheldon likes to defy the laws of gravity. He ditches his equations and enters a vertical world. A junior fellow at the London Institute for Mathematical Sciences, he credits climbing with getting him out of his head. “I go to the climbing gym,” he says with a smile, “and everything melts away.”Sheldon climbs three times a week, each session clocking in at a strenuous three hours. The practice has become essential to his well-being. As he puts it: “No matter what happened today, I’ll go climbing and I’ll have fun. And I’ll feel better after.” Continue reading...

With each new find, such as the dinosaur leg recently unearthed in North Dakota, scientists build a more colourful picture of the ancient reptilesAlthough they became extinct 66m years ago, dinosaurs are always news. The latest manifestation of that is the media shower generated by the discovery of the perfectly preserved leg, including remnants of skin, of a dinosaur in North Dakota.It is suggested that this dinosaur, discovered at the Tanis fossil site, died on the very day the asteroid that caused the mass extinction of all the dinosaurs struck the Earth. It sounds almost too good to be true, but should make for a fascinating TV documentary next week, Dinosaurs: The Final Days, presented by Sir David Attenborough, naturally.Dr Dave Hone is a senior lecturer at Queen Mary University of London, specialising in dinosaurs and pterosaurs. He blogs at Archosaur Musings, and presents the Terrible Lizards podcast. His latest book is The Future of Dinosaurs Continue reading...

Exclusive: Pathologists find what is believed to be the first evidence of the infection in the planet’s longest-lived vertebrate speciesA stranded Greenland shark found off the coast of Cornwall died from meningitis, according to a postmortem, providing what is believed to be the first evidence of the disease in the species.The 4-metre long shark, thought to be about 100 years old, was first discovered by a dog walker on 13 March on a beach near Penzance but was washed back into the sea before it could be properly examined. After a two-day search it was discovered floating in the water off Newlyn harbour beach by a tourist boat and a postmortem was carried out. Continue reading...

Gama aims to show that solar sails can revolutionise access to deep spaceThe French aerospace company Gama has raised €2m to deploy a solar sail in space.Solar sails require no engines to move. Instead, they are pushed around by the pressure of sunlight. The angle of the sail determines the direction of motion. Continue reading...

New measurement of fundamental particle of physics after decade-long study challenges theoretical rulebook in scientific ‘mystery’After a decade of meticulous measurements, scientists have announced that a fundamental particle – the W boson – has a significantly greater mass than theorised, shaking the foundations of our understanding of how the universe works.Those foundations are grounded by the standard model of particle physics, which is the best theory scientists have to describe the most basic building blocks of the universe, and what forces govern them. Continue reading...