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Global heating blamed as summer and winter records tumble in 2019A series of high temperature records were broken in the UK in 2019 as a consequence of the climate crisis, the Met Office has said.The hottest temperature ever recorded in the UK was exceeded on 25 July in Cambridge, where the thermometer hit 38.7C (101F). The record for the hottest February day was also broken, with Kew Gardens in London recording 21.2C on the 26th. Continue reading...

Few things are more frustrating than re-running the same fight with your partner or family. Here’s how to resolve it once and for allIf you have been in a relationship for a year or more, you will know exactly what “that argument” is. It is the one that keeps going round and round, always ending where it started.“You never pick up your dirty clothes, even though you know it drives me crazy.” “You’re always late, even when I remind you how much it matters to me.” And so on. Continue reading...

Happy New Year from the Science Weekly team. There is no new episode this week as we all take a festive break. The team will be back with a new episode on Friday 10 January Continue reading...

Immunologist whose groundbreaking work helped provide the basis for organ transplantationLeslie Baruch Brent, who has died aged 94, was a PhD student at University College London when he co-authored the first of two groundbreaking papers. In 1953 he showed that immunological tolerance – the capacity to accept an unrelated tissue transplant – could be experimentally induced. This won lifelong fame for him and his two senior colleagues, Peter Medawar, the team leader, and Rupert Billingham, a postdoctoral researcher. They were nicknamed “the Holy Trinity” by American immunologists. We now take for granted that tissues and organs can be transplanted even if the recipient is genetically dissimilar and perpetually takes powerful drugs that suppress the immune response. This was unthinkable in the early 1950s.In the 40s Medawar had proved that “foreign” tissues are usually rapidly destroyed by the same immune system that also fights infections. Billingham, Brent and Medawar began their landmark experiments inspired by previous observations. The US immunogeneticist Ray Owen had shown in 1945 that dizygotic (fraternal) twin calves have red blood cell chimerism, the red blood cells of each mingling with others originating from their twin while in the womb. Owen postulated that precursor red cells must have been exchanged before birth, that the foreign cells had been accepted, and that they had established their own lineage. Continue reading...

Across the world, voters are falling prey to leaders who appeal to their worst instincts. Why?With every new year, I typically set aside some time to write down what I’m grateful for. Health, family, friends, books, jazz, my dog, among other things. This year I added something I’ve been taking for granted. It’s democracy.Like many of us, I have worried about the rising tide of rightwing populism, nationalism and polarisation across the world. Within just a few years, we’ve witnessed the election of Donald Trump in the US, the Brexit decision in the UK, the rise of Matteo Salvini in Italy, Victor Orbán in Hungary, the Freedom party in Austria and the Law and Justice party in Poland. The world’s largest democracy, India, is menaced by a newly virulent nationalism and xenophobia. Continue reading...

More than 127,000 sign up to learn while Open University launches Scots language courseAlmost double the number of people in Scotland who already speak Scottish Gaelic have signed up to learn the language on the popular free platform Duolingo in over a month, concluding a proliferation in courses, prizes and performance in Gaelic and Scots during 2019, as younger people in particular shrug off the “cultural cringe” associated with speaking indigenous languages.The Duolingo course, which was launched just before St Andrew’s Day on 30 November and looks likely to be the company’s fastest-growing course ever, has garnered more than 127,000 sign-ups – 80% from Scotland itself, compared with just over 58,000 people who reported themselves as Gaelic speakers in the 2011 Scottish census. Continue reading...

Culture can connect people on a level unlike anything else – if you’ve experienced it, you know what I meanAustralia must realise that an important step towards reconciliation is showing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students that they are valued and important, and that we believe in their future. Providing opportunities for professional experience, learning and networking is a crucial component of this. I have been lucky enough to be involved in a number of programs aimed at Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students, and they have changed my life (and my peers’ lives) immensely.Growing up on my small island home of Tasmania, in a school full of hundreds of kids, I was only ever aware of three or four other students who also identified as Indigenous. For a long time, I struggled with understanding and embracing my identity and culture due to not having a network of other Indigenous kids around me – something which is all too common among our young people, as a consequence of the stolen generation and enduring prejudice within society. Continue reading...

Space programme seeks to bounce back after 2019 project ended with a crash landing on the lunar surfaceIndia plans to make a fresh attempt at an unmanned mission on the moon this year, the head of the country’s space programme has said, after a 2019 bid ended in a crash landing.Work was going “smoothly” on the Chandrayaan-3 mission to put a rover probe on the moon’s surface, Indian Space Research Organisation chairman K Sivan said. “We are targeting the launch for this year but it may spillover to next year,” Sivan said. Indian sources said authorities had set November as a provisional target for launch. Continue reading...

Research suggests tangles of tau could be used to predict how much shrinkage will occur and whereTangles of a protein found inside the brain cells of people with Alzheimer’s disease can be used to predict future brain shrinkage, research suggests.In healthy people, a protein called tau is important in supporting the internal structure of brain cells. However, in those with Alzheimer’s, chemical changes take place that cause the protein to form tangles that disrupt the cells. Such tangles have previously been linked to a loss of brain cells. Continue reading...

I am a climate scientist on holiday in the Blue Mountains, watching climate change in actionAfter years studying the climate, my work has brought me to Sydney where I’m studying the linkages between climate change and extreme weather events.Prior to beginning my sabbatical stay in Sydney, I took the opportunity this holiday season to vacation in Australia with my family. We went to see the Great Barrier Reef – one of the great wonders of this planet – while we still can. Subject to the twin assaults of warming-caused bleaching and ocean acidification, it will be gone in a matter of decades in the absence of a dramatic reduction in global carbon emissions. Continue reading...

Program developed by Google Health tested on mammograms of UK and US womenAn artificial intelligence program has been developed that is better at spotting breast cancer in mammograms than expert radiologists.The AI outperformed the specialists by detecting cancers that the radiologists missed in the images, while ignoring features they falsely flagged as possible tumours. Continue reading...

There are as many reasons for unpunctuality as there are habitually tardy people – and the underlying reasons can be complexSometimes, one of my psychotherapy clients will be late. “The tube got stuck; I do apologise.” If it happens once, I don’t treat it as significant. But some clients are perpetually late – perhaps just five or 10 minutes, but always – and out of breath when they get to the door. Then I am curious about what is behind their pattern of lateness, what it means and what purpose it serves.There are probably as many reasons for unpunctuality as there are habitually late people. Sometimes it seems unfathomable, but not always. One client remembered that his mother always spent so long in the bathroom that she made him late for school. She told him that it didn’t matter, and early people are uptight anyway. In his unconscious, being on time for things had got mixed up with being disloyal to his mother and therefore bad. Once he had found this narrative, he lost his compulsion for lateness. Continue reading...

We are living in a golden age and can defeat negativity, argue John Tierney and Roy F Baumeister in this complacent, reactionary bookWithout wishing to sound too Prince Andrew about this, there are hotels in New York where I won’t stay. One is called the Casablanca, and is extolled in this book as a fine example of how to stick it to the “power of bad”.By “bad”, the authors don’t mean moral or aesthetic bad, but what they call negativity bias. That bias means an unfortunate impression outweighs a good one; a financial loss is more painful than an equivalent gain; and that a hotel’s many five-star reviews on TripAdvisor have no clout over potential customers who have read the single one-star review – particularly if it mentions rats’ droppings in the bed. Continue reading...

Tests to study behaviour of flames in zero gravity suggest fires could be more dangerous on moon than EarthPlaying with fire can be dangerous and never more so than when confined in a space capsule floating 250 miles above the Earth. But in the past week astronauts onboard the International Space Station have intentionally lit a series of blazes in research designed to study the behaviour of flames in zero gravity.The scientists behind the experiment, called Confined Combustion, say it will help improve fire safety on the ISS and on future lunar missions by helping predict how a blaze might progress in low gravity conditions. Continue reading...

This is the year to start taking happiness seriously. But how – and where do you find the time? Here are the tips and advice you need for a pleasure-filled yearThe last time I felt joy was at an event that would be many people’s vision of hell: a drunken Taylor Swift club-night singalong in the early hours of the morning a few weekends ago.I certainly experience joy, either as peaks of euphoria or in quiet, unexpected bursts. But as I go about my everyday business – sprinting to meet deadlines, standing in front of the open fridge – I wouldn’t say it looms large. Continue reading...

Steve has been around for eons, but has been mis-identified as aurora until nowHands up if you’ve ever seen Steve. No, not the chap living down the road, but Steve the winter sky phenomenon. First spotted by auroral photographers in 2016, “Steve” is a purple band of light, sometimes accompanied by green lines, nicknamed “picket-fences”.Although Steve shares similarities with auroras – the glowing coloured lights visible from high latitudes during winter months – latest research shows that Steve is something quite different. Analysing photos of Steve taken from different locations, and using the stars in the background as markers, scientists have shown that Steve sits at between 130km and 270km altitude, while the picket fence is between 95km and 150km. Continue reading...

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Scare stories abound but the evidence remains consistentThe past decade in British healthcare has been disappointing: improvements in life expectancy and neonatal mortality have stalled and public satisfaction with the NHS has fallen sharply.But one positive singled out in a recent review of healthcare developments was the rise of e-cigarettes use, which the article noted had given “tobacco cessation a boost at no cost to the public purse”. Continue reading...

He Jiankui was guilty of illegal practices in trying to alter the genetic makeup of twin girlsA Chinese court has sentenced He Jiankui, the scientist who sparked global controversy last year when he claimed to have created the world’s first “gene-edited” children, to three years in prison for violating medical regulations.He shocked the scientific community when he announced at a conference in Hong Kong that he had created genetically modified twin sisters, dubbed Lulu and Nana, and that a third child was on the way. Continue reading...

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More than a million cases were reported in south-east Asia last year with poorer households most at riskThe global toll of dengue fever is becoming well known, with rising temperatures contributing to severe outbreaks that made 2019 the worst year on record for the disease.In 1970 only nine countries faced severe dengue outbreaks. But the disease, which is spread by mosquitoes that can only survive in warm temperatures, is now seen in more than 100 countries. There are thought to be 390m infections each year Continue reading...

The solutions to today’s puzzlesEarlier today I set you the following problems:1) How can someone born in 2020 be older than someone born in 2019? Continue reading...

Discoveries by Natural History Museum in 2019 include lichen, snakes and extinct dinosaursMore than 400 new species previously unknown to science have been discovered in the past year by experts at the Natural History Museum.Species described and named for the first time in 2019 include 171 beetles found around the world, one of which was named in honour of the teenage environmental activist Greta Thunberg. Continue reading...

The new year deconstructed, and a prize challengeUPDATE: solutions and results now upIt’s almost the New Year, and – numerically speaking – I’m excited. Not only is twenty-twenty already a bona fide word in the dictionary, but once a month next year there will be a moment in the evening when the time is:20/20/20/20/2020 Continue reading...

Substance misuse is not a simple problem of brain chemistry. The most powerful influences lie outside our headsI used to think addiction was caused by screwy molecules in the brain, and would be cured by neuroscience. I began learning about how the brain works after I ended up in treatment for drug addiction in the mid-1980s, when hopes for neuroscientific cures were as overblown as the hairstyles.My own journey away from the destructive cycle of addiction has been sourced much more by factors outside my brain Continue reading...

The Quadrantids are unusual in that they originate not from a comet but from an asteroidSee in the new year with the Quadrantids meteor shower. Although the peak of the shower does not arrive until the night of 3-4 January, meteor activity can stretch for a couple of weeks around this point, lasting until 10 January. The peak of the Quadrantids can be spectacular but quick, lasting just a few hours most years. If you catch it though, on average you can expect to see some 100 meteors an hour. The meteors are usually faint however and only really visible from the northern hemisphere, because the radiant is located quite far in the northern sky. The chart shows the view looking north from London at midnight on the night of 3-4 January 2020. Continue reading...

Defeating the climate crisis is just the beginning of the struggle – and tough political choices will have to be made

It’s feasible to flood space with flotillas of small satellites – but do we really want to?Changing economics and advancing miniaturisation now enable flotillas of small satellites to be launched into space – up to a hundred on a single rocket. These microsatellites are already being deployed, by companies such as Planet Lab in California, to survey every point on the Earth every day, with sharp enough images to study building sites, road traffic, land use and so forth.But a bigger leap is now in the offing. Elon Musk’s company SpaceX envisages the “Starlink” project. This entails launching up to 40,000 spacecraft into orbit in order to create a network that will enhance global broadband communication. Other companies, such as Amazon, say they have similar plans. Continue reading...

Searching for the missing pieces in his family brought poet and author Michael Rosen closer to the horror of warEvery time the poet Michael Rosen found out something new about what happened to his Jewish relatives during the Holocaust, he would send a round-robin email to his extended family. “My research brought me face to face with the destiny of Jews in Europe, seen through the prism of my own family.” Suddenly, he could imagine the “very real” journeys his relatives had taken, the places they’d hidden, the fear and hope they’d felt. “Because of the kind of person I am, I wanted to tell that story.”The result is his latest book, The Missing, which will be published next week. A mixture of poetry and prose, it retraces Rosen’s journey as he searches for information about his European relatives who went “missing” before his birth in 1946. Continue reading...

Scientists reach remote Thwaites glacier, vanishing at increasing rate, for missionAn international team of scientists has reached the Thwaites glacier in Antarctica and is preparing to drill through more than half a kilometre of ice into the dark waters beneath.The 600-metre deep borehole will allow researchers to lower down a torpedo-shaped robotic submarine that will explore the underside of the ice shelf to better understand why it is melting so fast. Continue reading...

Ancient building found 100 miles west of Cancùn estimated to be more than 1,000 years oldArchaeologists in Mexico have uncovered the remains of a vast Mayan palace over 1,000 years old in an ancient city about 100 miles west of the tourist hotspot of Cancún.The building in Kulubá is 55 metres long, 15 metres wide and six metres high, and appears to have been made up of six rooms, said Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History. Continue reading...

Happy Christmas from the Science Weekly team. There is no new episode this week as we all take a festive break. The team will be back with a new episode on Friday 10 January Continue reading...

Previous problems appear to have been ironed out in craft’s essential landing equipmentGround tests designed to validate the deployment of the parachutes that will be used on the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Mars lander next year have started well at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. ESA’s ExoMars 2020 mission consists of the UK-built Rosalind Franklin rover, which will look for signs of past or present life, and the Russian Kazachok surface platform, which will monitor the local environment at the landing site. Continue reading...

People gathered across parts of Asia and the Middle East to watch a rare annular solar eclipse, also known as a ring of fire. The phenomenon, when the moon covers the centre of the sun, giving the appearance of a shining ring, was first visible above Saudi Arabia, travelling towards southern India, over northern Sri Lanka and ending up above the Pacific OceanRare ‘ring of fire’ solar eclipse – in pictures Continue reading...

Over the holiday period the Guardian’s leader column examines the challenges of the future by fathoming out the present. Today we look at the changing shape of car cultureLewis Hamilton’s recent declaration of support for climate action attracted derision as well as plaudits. “I like fuel. Can I say that? I don’t like electric stuff,” was the deliberately provocative response from a fellow Formula One driver, Max Verstappen. But the sport is officially on Mr Hamilton’s side. In November it announced a net-zero carbon target of 2030.In planning to eliminate most of the carbon emissions for which it is responsible, and offset the rest, F1 is part of a growing movement. The most recent round of United Nations climate negotiations may have ended in disappointment. But the past 12 months have undeniably seen a global surge in public awareness and activism on climate issues. Even Jeremy Clarkson, the television presenter and anti-environmental journalist, admitted the danger of global heating in a public statement last month. While filming a journey from Cambodia to Vietnam for his TV show, The Grand Tour, he saw for himself the impact of water shortages on a dried-up riverbed and admitted to being alarmed. Continue reading...

Angela Saini’s book Superior showed me our misconceptions about race and science arise from a habit of the mindIt has been common for several years now to assert that science shows the concept of race has no biological basis, and that we must see it instead as a social construct. That case was argued, for example, by Kenan Malik in his 2008 book Strange Fruit, and it is presented, too, in Angela Saini’s Superior (which I reviewed for the Guardian in July), a popular choice on many “books of the year” lists.I used to be sceptical about this claim. I have all the liberal lefty’s revulsion at racism, but I couldn’t help thinking: “If we insist that race is not biologically determined, won’t that just confuse people, given that it is so blindingly obvious that characteristic markers of race are inherited?” The usual argument is that genomics has identified no clusters of gene variants specific to conventional racial groupings: there is more genetic variation within such groups than between them. But doesn’t that insist on a definition of race that most people simply won’t recognise? Isn’t it better to say that yes, race has a biological basis – but the relevant bodily features are a trivial part of what makes us us? Continue reading...

Attacks and scepticism are on the rise, even as leaps are made in fields from gene editing and AI to interplanetary explorationThe 2010s were the decade in which we were reminded that science is just a method, like the rhythm method. And just like the rhythm method, it can be more or less rigorously applied, sabotaged, overrated, underrated and ignored. If you don’t treat it with respect, you may not get the optimal result, but that’s not the method’s fault.That may be where the similarities end, because when it’s done well, science is very effective, and this decade furnished its fair share of breakthroughs to make us gasp. Physicists detected phenomena that were predicted decades ago – gravitational waves, the Higgs boson particle – indicating that they have been on broadly the right track in their understanding of how the universe works. Astronomers added awe-inspiring detail. Nasa probes found towering ice mountains on Pluto and organic chemistry – the stuff of life – on Mars and a moon of Saturn. And who could forget the exoplanets – those planets orbiting distant stars? Thousands of them were discovered in just the past 10 years. No wonder science fiction is booming. Continue reading...

Researchers aim to recreate intense emotional experience astronauts reported on seeing Earth from space for the first time

Annular solar eclipse, in which the moon does not completely cover the sun as it transits across the star’s face, was seen from Asia to the Middle East Continue reading...

Firm is recruiting artificial intelligence specialists and developing new genomics labGlaxoSmithKline is ramping up its use of artificial intelligence and recruiting 80 AI specialists by the end of 2020 as it turns to cutting-edge computing to develop medicines of the future.However, the UK’s largest drugmaker by revenue is struggling to hire enough AI researchers and engineers from areas such as Silicon Valley and is looking to former employees in academia, the US Navy and the music industry to fill positions in the new team. They will be spread across London, Heidelberg, San Francisco, Philadelphia and Boston. Continue reading...

Over the holiday period the Guardian’s leader column examines the challenges of the future by fathoming out the present. Today we look at the struggle for the soul of Christianity“There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” These words, written by Saint Paul 2,000 years ago, are central to the Christian faith. They speak of a vocation for the universal and point to an ethic of social justice and solidarity. The Christian tradition’s account of the humble circumstances of the birth of Jesus, represented in the nativity scene, is in the same spirit, identifying Christ with the marginal, the maligned and the poor.It has therefore, for many Christians, been depressing to witness the faith of their churches being used to justify the abandonment of such principles in Europe, Donald Trump’s America and beyond. For liberally minded Christians, 2019 was the latest in a succession of anni horribiles, during which a cultural appropriation of their religion did service for aggressive nationalism, xenophobia, homophobia and anti-environmentalism. Continue reading...

A new documentary profiles the Nobel-winning, harmonica-slinging scientist behind one of the biggest modern breakthroughs in cancer treatmentJim Allison doesn’t quite fit the archetype of the studious, buttoned-up scientist: with a full beard and long hair, the most gravelly of Texas drawls and a history of ripping a harmonica on stage with Willie Nelson, Allison seems more like a longstanding Grateful Dead fan than game-changer in the quest to cure cancer.The music-loving, 71-year-old scientist, long a renegade in the field of cancer research, is perhaps an unlikely prism through which to view the world of cutting-edge medicine. But the internationally renowned researcher has fundamentally shifted the trajectory of cancer treatment – an achievement covered in the new documentary Jim Allison: Breakthrough, by film-maker Bill Haney, which traces the arc of Allison’s iconoclastic career from a childhood marred by loss from cancer in rural Texas to a Nobel prize in medicine, along with Tasuku Honjo of Japan in 2018. Continue reading...

Chimpanzees seen clapping, tapping and swaying along to piano rhythms in a music boothAkira stands up and sways about. Pal is big on clapping. Ai is into tapping her foot, while Gon bangs and slaps the walls.Not the latest teen band sensation, but a spectacle far more impressive: the moves of a group of chimpanzees that scientists believe shed light on the prehistoric origins of human dancing. Continue reading...

Ram Dass promoted LSD as path to enlightenment before undergoing spiritual rebirth detailed in the influential book Be Here Now

Fossil found in Canada suggests pair were curled up together in a den when they diedFossil hunters say they have unearthed the earliest evidence yet of four-limbed vertebrates looking after their young, after discovering the entwined remains of two lizard-like creatures preserved in an ancient plant stump.The fossil found in Nova Scotia, Canada, is thought to be the remains of an adult and young of a newly identified species of varanopid. Continue reading...

Poll after poll shows that people now want action. But at the international level progress is being deliberately stymied

The “evening star” blazes near the south-west horizon, joined by a tiny crescent moonVenus continues to shine brightly as the “evening star” this week. It is the third brightest celestial object in the sky, beaten only by the sun and the moon. A good south-western horizon will be needed as the planet is not very high in the sky at the moment, but it is well worth searching for. Seen blazing brilliantly through the sunset sky, Venus is a breathtaking sight. Adding to the beauty, this week the planet is joined by another jewel of the twilight sky: a very thin crescent moon. This will be tricky to spot: the moon will be low in the sky and only 6.3% of its surface will be illuminated from earth. The chart shows the view looking towards the south-west from London on 28 December at 17:00 GMT. A day later, the moon will have moved to the other side of Venus, and so be higher in the sky. By this time, 12% of its surface will be illuminated, and both factors will make it easier to spot. Continue reading...

From the first image of a black hole to a detailed survey of sea ice in the Arctic, scientists pick the breakthrough moments that defined the yearWas 2019 the year people finally started to listen to climate scientists on global heating? The previous year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had laid out the monumental challenge of limiting warming to 1.5C. Global CO2 emissions would need to halve within 12 years, and reach zero around 2050. But emissions are still rising, while UN summits make tiny steps towards agreeing how to reduce them. The “emissions gap” between target and reality grows ever wider – and becomes ever harder to close. Continue reading...

Aborted flight threatens to derail the company’s efforts to launch astronauts on behalf of Nasa next yearBoeing safely landed its crew capsule in the New Mexico desert Sunday after an aborted flight to the international space station that threatened to derail the company’s effort to launch astronauts on behalf of Nasa next year.The Starliner un-manned spacecraft descended into the US army’s White Sands Missile Range in the predawn darkness, ending a two-day demonstration that should have lasted more than a week. Continue reading...

Jeremy Farrar, a world expert on diseases, tells of the fight against the deadly virus that spread fear this decade – and how to prepare for the health battles to comeJeremy Farrar, head of the Wellcome Trust, has a straightforward view about the way doctors and scientists tackled the current Ebola epidemic in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. “In four or five years, we have taken a disease that was absolutely terrifying and which had an enormously high death rate – more than 80% – and we have turned it, potentially, into something that is preventable and treatable.”The fact this has been done in a nation in the middle of a civil war is “simply miraculous”, added Farrar, a world expert on emerging diseases. “It is a truly phenomenal achievement. If you do not celebrate that, you cannot celebrate anything else.” Continue reading...