Science | The Guardian

Will you make the cut?Today’s three challenges are from Han Dongkyu, a talented young puzzle designer from South Korea. The first two will warm you up for the third, which is probably the most stunning example of a dissection puzzle I have ever seen. Prepare to be awed – and have your brain twisted inside out.1. Librarian’s Nightmare Part I Continue reading...

Constellation represents boastful woman punished by Poseidon, and shares mythical roots with its neighboursThis week, search out the constellation Cassiopeia. For northern hemisphere observers it is going to be high in the sky throughout the coming winter months. Indeed, for much of the northern hemisphere, it is a circumpolar constellation visible all year round.For most southern hemisphere observers, the constellation is never visible. Only those in the southern tropics stand a chance of seeing the star pattern. It will appear low in the northern sky during this month. Continue reading...

As temperatures rise, one family hopes to establish the world’s northernmost coffee plantationFor more than 30 years the Morettino family had been trying to produce their own coffee on a small piece of land in Sicily. And for 30 years they had failed.But last spring 66 seedlings produced about 30kg of coffee, in a development that could turn the Italian island into the northernmost coffee plantation in the world. Continue reading...

Radio astronomer who won the Nobel prize for physics for his role in the discovery of pulsarsIn 1967, a team led by the radio astronomer Antony Hewish, who has died aged 97, discovered pulsars, rapidly pulsating radio sources that turned out to be due to rotating, magnetised neutron stars, the ultra-dense collapsed remnants of massive stars.This was one of the most exciting astronomical events of the second half of the 20th century: the precise timing of the pulses from these objects is more accurate than the best atomic clocks and has allowed precision tests of general relativity. Continue reading...

Fears the indoor socialising will spread virus in UK; Israel says people only eligible for green pass if they have received a booster jab. This live blog has closed – for the latest on the global Covid situation, please see our dedicated page

My father, Jim Townsley, who has died aged 85, was a gentle, generous and thoughtful man who spent his working life as an industrial chemist. In retirement, his aptitude for listening, understanding and supporting the emotional needs of others found expression through voluntary work as a trained counsellor.Born in Ilford, east London, to Jim Sr, a post office worker, and Gertrude (nee Knight), a housewife, Jim had a younger sister, Gill; she died in 2016. His earliest memories were of sheltering under the stairs, which were supposed to be the safest part of the house, whilst the Luftwaffe tried to hit the nearby Plessey electronics factory. Continue reading...

Surveys can help us understand how the pandemic is influenced by our choicesRecent queues for fuel have shown the consequences of abrupt changes in behaviour. Almost as sudden were the changes around the first lockdown in March 2020, when close meetings between people plummeted by about three-quarters. We know this through the CoMix contact survey from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), which has continued to ask UK adults about their “direct contacts”, that is any sort of skin-to-skin contact or anyone to whom at least a few words were exchanged in person. Can you remember how many such contacts you had yesterday?Pre-lockdown, people reported an average of 11 such meetings a day, but this fell to three afterwards and stayed low. Some warned of the dangers of “freedom day” on 19 July, with some mathematical modelling estimating more than 100,000 cases a day. But the CoMix survey shows there was no exuberant return to socialising and so no subsequent explosion of cases. Continue reading...

Inoculation programme must be stepped up before the onset of winter

Instead of trying to cosh nature into submission, our farmers should be improving the health of the soil and the diversity of their crops and animalsA quotation leapt to mind when reading “Gene editing ‘would allow us to create hardier farm breeds’ (News): “For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong” (HL Mencken). Application of magic bullet “solutions” has got our species into many disastrous situations, from Australian cane toad waves to an explosion in obesity linked to the prescription of low-fat diets.To support environmentally disastrous factory farming by modifying animals to resist one disease would only invite the spread of more pathogens that threaten humans and other animals. Continue reading...

European-Japanese probe swoops in to almost 200km above Sun’s nearest planet, photographing its pock-marked featuresThe European-Japanese BepiColombo spacecraft has sent back its first images of Mercury, as it swung by the solar system’s innermost planet while on a mission to deliver two probes into orbit in 2025.The mission made the first of six flybys of Mercury at 11.34pm GMT on Friday, using the planet’s gravity to slow the spacecraft down. Continue reading...

Developed over the course of five studies, the relationship sabotage scale is designed to give analytical rigour to a term more common in pop cultureDo you feel constantly criticised by your partner? Do you sometimes check their social media profiles? Will you admit to them if you know you’re wrong about something?If you strongly agree or disagree with some of these statements, you might find yourself with a high score on the Relationship Sabotage Scale.1. I get blamed unfairly for issues in my relationship.

Fears of mass exodus as abuse by patients skyrockets over blood tests, jabs and face-to-face consultations

There should be no guilt with cake, only romance – in the making, the display, the history… and, of course, the eatingThe Great British Bake Off is back! Sales of baking utensils skyrocket when the amateur baking show is on. It appears we’re all cake mad. But I’ve always been mad as a box of doughnuts for cake, long before the GBBO started. In fact, it’s one of my loves – not one of my vices.Cake and I are friends; we go back a long way. At school, we’d bake in home economics class and sell our creations in the tuck shop – 10p a fairy cake. The whole process felt like alchemy to me: the creaming of butter and sugar, then the eggs, all beaten into a frenzy of delight. That feeling of magic at my fingertips has not left – it is why I love to bake. It’s a good lesson in life: humble beginnings can have majestic ends. Like an ode to a lover, I feel emotional when writing about it. I can smell its perfume and the tantalising sensation of it touching my lips. Continue reading...

This thoughtful case for mounting a lifelong challenge to our own assumptions focuses on unconscious bias – but leaves overt prejudice largely unexaminedWe often think of bias as a problem that other people have. It’s harder to find someone willing to admit to it in themselves. That was what struck me reading American journalist Jessica Nordell’s thoughtful book, The End of Bias, which I picked up at the same time as being absorbed in the new reality TV series My Unorthodox Life. The show follows Julia Haart, a New Yorker who in her 40s left an ultra-Orthodox Jewish community to transform herself into a global fashion magnate. Her new life is remarkable, but her reflections on her old one are just as fascinating. Haart has spent decades asking herself why her world is the way it is, and the role she plays in making it that way. Today, she has no qualms about striding into her former Orthodox neighbourhood in shorts and a low-cut top, whatever people may think. It’s not as easy for others to make that leap, though.In one scene, Haart’s adult daughter, who has previously only worn skirts, in keeping with Haredi custom, reveals that her husband is nervous about her decision to try jeans for the first time. Haart’s response is that it isn’t a man’s business to decide what any woman wears. But, as her daughter patiently explains, if she is going to move away from some of the values with which she was raised, she would rather do it with the support of the man she loves – even if that means it takes a little longer. Continue reading...

We shuffle patients from cubicle to cubicle, hoping that we can squeeze just one more inI used to play a game with my children. How many ambulances are going to be waiting outside the emergency department today? I used to play it with my kids as I got a lift in for an early shift.“Three, Dad.” Continue reading...

After positive clinical trials for antiviral drug Molnupiravir, it joins other medicines that have shown promise

Governments need to develop more citizen forums for discussing options and making choices in open dialogue with experts, writes Prof Peter CalowThe answer to Philip Ball (Should scientists run the country?, 27 September) is that it is the process, not the people, that should run the country. Science gets things right, despite the biases of its practitioners, by requiring that it be evidence-based, but also that the evidence is repeatable to the satisfaction of the community of scientists. Even so, for complex problems typical of policymaking, the science rarely leads to one answer. What we discover from our observations are cause-effect options – for example, the adverse effects from different exposures to chemicals in the environment, greenhouse gases and viral infections.Making decisions about acceptable options, such as mandating lockdowns in the face of rising infections, is based on values. The science is silent on these. In a democracy, these should reflect the preferences of the public, not those of scientists. When the views of scientists dominate, they appear political and elitist. This kind of technocracy has turned people off and led to populist reactions in both the EU and the US. We surely need more transparency in this process, as Ball suggests, but in a participatory way. Continue reading...

If approved, Merck’s drug would be first simple oral medication shown to be effective against coronavirus

Satellite will capture agricultural productivity, forest health, water quality, coral reefs and glaciersNasa has launched the latest mission in a 50-year unbroken line of satellites that monitor the Earth’s surface.Landsat 9 lifted off atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Vandenberg’s space launch complex 3E at 19.12 BST (14.12 EDT) on 27 September. Continue reading...

Clinical trial on joint flu, Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccinations reported only mild to moderate side-effects

There was also a rise in prescriptions for ivermectin being filled, despite no evidence either drug is effective against the virusThe amount of hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin dispensed from Australian pharmacies increased significantly in 2020 as the Covid pandemic took hold, according to new research.Analysis of six publicly subsidised drugs – including hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, corticosteroids and the common antibiotic azithromycin – found Covid-related changes in prescription patterns in Australia. Continue reading...

Shares of Oxford Nanopore close up 44%, giving co-founder paper fortune of £63m

Last week, supermodel Linda Evangelista posted on her Instagram page describing undergoing a procedure called CoolSculpting, claiming it has left her ‘permanently deformed’. With this, which is also known as cryolipolysis, and other non-surgical cosmetic treatments on the rise, particularly among younger people, Madeleine Finlay investigates how these procedures work and how risky they really are Continue reading...

David Spiegelhalter and Anthony Masters delve into the detail behind the data and explore the true human cost of the pandemicAlong with successive waves of infection, the coronavirus pandemic has provided us with a tsunami of data and graphs. Thanks to the Public Health England dashboard and websites such as Our World in Data, every internet user can access accurate and timely information on Covid cases, deaths, hospitalisations and vaccines, broken down by age, gender and location.However, while this wealth of information can be immensely valuable, it can also cause problems. Taken out of context and spun in a misleading way, raw coronavirus numbers can be a source of disinformation, which through social media can spread as efficiently as the virus itself. A simple fact, such as the median age of coronavirus victims (83) actually exceeding UK life expectancy at birth (81) can lead to governments and the public not taking Covid as seriously as they should. (Having lived to 83, one would ordinarily expect to live longer still – what matters is life expectancy conditional on having reached this age.) Continue reading...

Discovery along with another species enhances island’s reputation as Europe’s best place to find dinosaursThe fossilised remains of a dinosaur, nicknamed “the horned crocodile-faced hell heron”, have been unearthed on the Isle of Wight.The 125m-year-old predator had a 9 metre-long body, powerful claws, a gigantic skull covered in horns and bumps, and long crocodile-like teeth. The fearsome creature lived on the fringes of ancient floodplains where it would have lain in wait for aquatic prey, research suggests. Continue reading...

With the pandemic not yet over, experts analyse risks of catching the virus

The wealth of the Tesla boss and would-be space coloniser has overtaken that of his Amazon rival. How does he plan to celebrate? By being as puerile as possible

AI has taken the place of astrology as humans have worked through the millennia for knowledge of when it will rain

Discovery of DNA modifications raises hope of treatment for disorders that particularly afflict twinsThe medical mystery of what causes some twins to be born identical may have been solved by scientists in the Netherlands, raising hopes for treatment of congenital disorders that disproportionately afflict them.Identical twins form after a fertilised egg, called a zygote, splits into two embryos sharing exactly the same genes. The reason for the split is unknown. Continue reading...

Authors from Carl Jung to Aldous Huxley and Susan Blackmore explore the deep mysteries of what it means to be a personDo you know what sort of animal you are? It’s rather important to know. If you call yourself a humanist, for instance, don’t you need some idea of what a human is so that you can make sure your behaviour accords with your ethics? If you think that humans are just a little lower than the angels, as the Judaeo-Christian tradition says, shouldn’t you know how much lower, so you can be appropriately aspirational but not frustrated or cocky?And then there’s the problem of personal identity. When you say “I love you”, or “I‘m afraid”, how confident are you about wielding that mighty and mysterious pronoun? Are you as confident as modern neuroscientists that “you” are just the chemical events that happen in your brain? Does that explanation satisfy you? Continue reading...

Yes rockets are exciting but what are you eight years old?

Government removes costs and red tape in go-ahead for more trials of gene edited cropsThe prospect of genetically modified foods being grown and sold in the UK has come a step closer after changes to farming regulations that will allow field trials of gene edited crops in England.Companies or research organisations wishing to conduct field trials will still have to notify the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the government announced on Wednesday, but existing costs and red tape will be removed so more trials are likely to go ahead. Continue reading...

Barbara Wagstaff and Mercie Lack’s photographs of 1939 excavation left in plastic bag at National TrustIt was 12 years ago that conservator Anita Bools first laid eyes on photographs which had been left in a plastic bag at the reception of the National Trust site Sutton Hoo by a mystery donor.She remembered they were laid out on tables for her to see and decide how important they might be. “It was one of those moments you get prickles down the back of your neck. I thought ‘my goodness … this is the genuine thing’. It almost felt like the archaeological discovery itself.” Continue reading...

Study finds the intelligent endangered alpine parrot can be trained to use electronic devices with their tongues

Results of two studies may explain why some people develop diabetes after catching the virus

Global analysis of indoor and outdoor pollution also finds link to low birth weightAir pollution is likely to have been responsible for up to 6 million premature births and 3 million underweight babies worldwide every year, research shows.The analysis, which combines the results of multiple scientific studies, is the first to calculate the total global burden of outdoor and indoor air pollution combined. Continue reading...

Less is known about women’s health than men’s – that’s because research on the former is underfunded, says Silvia HummelJessica Nordell raises several important issues facing women and people from ethnic minorities in accessing quality healthcare (The bias that blinds: why some people get dangerously different medical care, The long read, 21 September). Another important factor is that less is known about women’s health than men’s. A recent analysis of the US National Institutes of Health expenditure (by far the largest funder of health research in the world) concluded that the “NIH applies a disproportionate share of its resources to diseases that affect primarily men, at the expense of those that primarily affect women”. The biggest losers? ME/chronic fatigue syndrome and migraine, funded respectively at 6% and 7% commensurate with the disease burden on patients.Unless metrics relating to discrepancies between the treatment of men and women in all aspects of healthcare are monitored, and those responsible held to account, women will continue to suffer unnecessarily poor health.

Whether atomic priesthoods, 50ft concrete spikes or burying astronauts in concrete, humanity’s attempts to keep free from infection are examined in Until Proven SafeIn January 2020, just a few days before the first Covid-19-infected passengers landed in the United States on a flight from Wuhan, preparations were already being made in a converted car park in Omaha, Nebraska. By complete coincidence, after a decade of planning, the country’s first National Quarantine Unit opened its doors here on the eve of a global pandemic.The timing couldn’t have been better. The need for such a place had been mooted ever since 9/11, followed by a series of anthrax attacks and Sars, all of which had raised fears in Congress over the prospect of bioterrorism and the increasing global threat of infectious diseases. Located roughly equidistant from both coasts, the city of Omaha declared itself to be the ideal place for isolating people potentially infected with deadly contagions, and received almost $20m from the US department of health to establish a state-of-the-art federal quarantine facility. Featuring negative-pressure en suite rooms kitted out with mini-fridges, TVs and exercise bikes, it was like a high-security, wipe-clean hotel. There was only one problem: it had just 20 beds. Continue reading...

As Britain begins its commitment to take in 20,000 people fleeing Afghanistan, we look at the psychological impacts of trying to start again in a new country. Many asylum seekers and refugees have had to flee their homes in extremely distressing circumstances. A lucky few make it to a safe country such as the UK – but what happens next?Anand Jagatia speaks to Afraa, who was forcibly displaced from Syria with her family, and Prof Rachel Tribe, an occupational psychologist who works with asylum seekers and refugeesArchive: BBC Continue reading...

Data also finds smokers more likely to die from disease compared with those who have never smoked

Scientists found dangerous levels of MDMA in nearby River Whitelake after the festivalScientists have found what they called environmentally damaging levels of illegal drugs in the river running through Glastonbury festival owing to public urination on the site.Researchers measured levels of illegal drugs in the river before, during and after the last Glastonbury festival, in 2019, comparing levels upstream and downstream of the event. Continue reading...

How the Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker became one of the world’s most contentious thinkersOn a recent afternoon, Steven Pinker, the cognitive psychologist and bestselling author of upbeat books about human progress, was sitting in his summer home on Cape Cod, thinking about Bill Gates. Pinker was gearing up to record a radio series on critical thinking for the BBC, and he wanted the world’s fourth richest man to join him for an episode on the climate emergency. “People tend to approach challenges in one of two ways – as problem-solving or as conflict,” Pinker, who appreciates the force of a tidy dichotomy, said. “You can think of it as Bill versus Greta. And I’m very much in Bill’s camp.”A few weeks earlier, Gates had been photographed in Manhattan carrying a copy of Pinker’s soon to be published 12th book, Rationality, which inspired the BBC series. “We sent it to his people,” Pinker said. Pinker is an avid promoter of his own work, and for the past 25 years he has had a great deal to promote. Since the 1990s, he has written a string of popular books on language, the mind and human behaviour, but in the past decade, he has become best known for his counterintuitive take on the state of the world. In the shadow of the financial crisis, while other authors were writing books about how society was profoundly broken, Pinker took the opposite tack, arguing that things were, in fact, better than ever. Continue reading...

Researchers find space in Gorham’s Cave complex that has been closed off for at least 40,000 yearsResearchers excavating a cave network on the Rock of Gibraltar have discovered a new chamber, sealed off from the world for at least 40,000 years, that could shed light on the culture and customs of the Neanderthals who occupied the area for a thousand centuries.In 2012, experts began examining Vanguard Cave, part of the Gorham’s Cave complex, to determine its true dimensions and to see whether it contained passages and chambers that had been plugged by sand. Continue reading...

Study prompts experts to call for nutrition to be included in public health strategiesChildren who eat five or more portions of fruit and vegetables a day have the best mental health, according to the first study of its kind.Higher intake is associated with better mental wellbeing among secondary school pupils, and a nutritious breakfast and lunch is linked to emotional wellbeing in pupils across all ages, the research shows. Continue reading...

Study shows people with normal BMI can achieve remission of type 2 diabetes by losing 10-15% weightPeople risk developing type 2 diabetes if they can no longer fit into the jeans they were wearing when they were 21, according to one of the world’s leading experts on the disease.And if people discovered they could no longer fit into the same-sized trousers then they were “carrying too much fat”, Prof Roy Taylor, from Newcastle University, said. Continue reading...

My friend Quentin Bone, who has died aged 89, was an outstanding marine zoologist whose publications on how fish swim made him a leader in this field while still in his 30s.His 1966 paper comparing and contrasting details of fine structure, innervation and performance of the two very different sorts of muscle that drive a fish through water, became a citation classic. His jointly authored Biology of Fishes (1982) is now in its third edition.

American astronomer, leading asteroid hunter and co-discoverer of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, which crashed into JupiterCarolyn Shoemaker was a housewife with no science degree when, aged 51, she started searching for comets and asteroids with her astrogeologist husband, Gene Shoemaker. By the time of her death at the age of 92 from a fall, she had established herself as one of the leading hunters of such bodies of her generation.She found a total of 32 comets and, according to the IAU Minor Planet Center, 377 asteroids, of which 160 were her sole discoveries. Among the comets was one of the most famous of all time, Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, which crashed into Jupiter in a spectacular display in 1994. Continue reading...

UK and China are racing to develop forms of the super-strength technology that has potential aerospace and weaponry usesA large shed on an unassuming industrial estate beside Swansea’s River Tawe does not at first glance seem vital to the UK’s national security. The facility, run by a small company called Perpetuus , sits beside a mortuary and a parcel depot.Earlier this month, the company, which makes graphene – a “wonder material” made of a single layer of carbon atoms – grabbed the attention of the government, which said it would investigate a possible takeover involving a Chinese academic, in a highly unusual move that startled industry observers. Continue reading...

One of the largest mining operations ever seen on Earth aims to despoil an ocean we are only barely beginning to understandA short bureaucratic note from a brutally degraded microstate in the South Pacific to a little-known institution in the Caribbean is about to change the world. Few people are aware of its potential consequences, but the impacts are certain to be far-reaching. The only question is whether that change will be to the detriment of the global environment or the benefit of international governance.In late June, the island republic of Nauru informed the International Seabed Authority (ISA) based in Kingston, Jamaica of its intention to start mining the seabed in two years’ time via a subsidiary of a Canadian firm, The Metals Company (TMC, until recently known as DeepGreen). Innocuous as it sounds, this note was a starting gun for a resource race on the planet’s last vast frontier: the abyssal plains that stretch between continental shelves deep below the oceans. Continue reading...

A third dose of the vaccine provides significant protection, but that should not mean those who are unvaccinated go without