Discoveries near Saqqara necropolis shed light on ancient use of animals in worshipA rare discovery of mummified big cats, cobras and crocodiles has been unveiled by Egyptian authorities.Egyptologists are thrilled at the cache, which includes dozens of mummified cats, 75 wooden and bronze cat statues, mummified birds, and an enormous mummified beetle three to four times the normal size. Continue reading...

Activists call Cambridge Zero initiative a ‘PR stunt to divert attention from links to fossil fuel industry’Student activists at Cambridge have accused the university of attempting to greenwash its relationship with oil and gas firms by stealing their group’s name for a project led by an academic linked to the fossil fuel industry.Cambridge University is to launch its Cambridge Zero initiative at an event in London next week. The project’s website, which is already live, touts it as a “bold response to the world’s greatest challenge”. Continue reading...

Authoritarian populist leaders thrive on the fear of death – as we’ve been able to show in carefully controlled experimentsIn a recent experiment, American participants were asked: “Please describe the emotions that the thought of your own death arouses in you” and “Write down as specifically as you can what you think will happen to you physically as you die and once you are dead.” Moments later, those who had been asked to contemplate their mortality reported more negative attitudes towards immigrants, greater opposition to a mosque being built in their neighbourhood, and a greater likelihood of voting for Donald Trump for president.What could possibly explain these findings? Continue reading...

Vostochny cosmodrome at heart of claims of £132m worth of theft and illegal enrichment

The pick of the best flora and fauna photos from around the world, including foraging sparrows and a swimming beaver

Disruption will hamper efforts to unlock secrets of universe, say scientistsA flagship observatory that will map the heavens in spectacular detail and search the skies for asteroids on a collision course with Earth faces serious disruption from a new wave of satellites bound for space, the Guardian has learned.Astronomers on the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, a state-of-the-art observatory due to open in Chile next year, have discovered that its views of the night sky will be marred by thousands of highly reflective communications satellites being launched by SpaceX, Amazon and other firms. Continue reading...

Critics suspect hand of Project Blitz in draft passed by Ohio house which they fear could let students’ religious beliefs trump scienceAn Ohio state bill which could allow students’ religious beliefs to trump science-based facts is almost identical to model legislation backed by an evangelical, anti-gay Christian group.Related: Trump suggests he wants to be impeached and says 'I want a trial' – live Continue reading...

Requiring minimal amounts of sleep is sometimes seen as a badge of honour. But for many of us, being able to actually function is a different matter altogether. So why is it that some people seem to need more or less sleep? And what are some of the ramifications if we don’t get enough? Hannah Devlin speaks to two experts whose work is bringing new understanding to our sleeping behaviours Continue reading...

Can art advance science? Researchers on the hunt for extraterrestrial intelligence are using videos, music and more to go beyond the final frontierSince 1984, the scientific research institute SETI has worked with some of the brightest minds on our planet: astronomers, solar system dynamics experts, exoplanet detection specialists, astrochemists. All of them are on a mission to decode the universe’s mysteries – but has one area of expertise been overlooked?Jill Tarter thinks so. She’s the chair emeritus of SETI – whose name stands for “search for extraterrestrial intelligence” – and the inspiration for Jodie Foster’s character in the movie Contact. Tarter believes scientists should look to the art world to help solve some of their biggest problems. “Art gives people an opportunity to think about bigger-picture ideas or think about them in a new way,” she says. “It can make people think differently about who they are, where they are, or questions such as: where do we come from? Where are we going? Is there anybody else out there?” Continue reading...

Optimists have fewer strokes, sleep better and live longer than pessimists. But how do you change your outlook? By embracing your Best Possible Self, keeping a gratitude journal – and changing your narrativeI’ve been called many things in my life, but never an optimist. That was fine by me. I believed pessimists lived in a constant state of pleasant surprise: if you always expected the worst, things generally turned out better than you imagined. The only real problem with pessimism, I figured, was that too much of it could accidentally turn you into an optimist.But accidental optimism is not one of the known dangers of pessimism, a list that does include career impairment, poor health and early death. Optimism, by contrast, is associated with better sleep and lower levels of cardiovascular disease. One study this year claimed that people who describe themselves as optimists had 35% fewer strokes than those who didn’t. Another, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science last summer, found that compared with pessimists, the most optimistic subjects lived 11-15% longer lives on average. Continue reading...

PM suggests Australia could increase emissions without worsening current fire season, and says government finalising plans to crack down on environmental protestsScott Morrison has argued there is no direct link between Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions and the severity of fires ravaging the continent, even suggesting Australia could increase its emissions without making the current fire season worse.Under pressure due to a record season of early bushfires and the accusation by a coalition of former fire chiefs that the government has avoided the issue of climate change, Morrison said on Thursday there was no “credible scientific evidence” that cutting Australia’s emissions could reduce the severity of bushfires. Continue reading...

Military alliance ‘will not put weapons in orbit but has to protect interests of west’

Astronomers note record-breaking observation of highest energy ever measured from gamma ray burstsWhen gigantic stars run out of fuel they collapse under their own gravity and, in a last hurrah, send out a blast of light and matter in the most violent known explosions in the universe.Now astronomers have discovered that these cataclysmic events, known as gamma ray bursts, release roughly twice as much energy as previously thought. Continue reading...

Groundbreaking trial in US rapidly cools trauma victims with catastrophic injury to buy more time for surgeryDoctors have put humans into a state of suspended animation for the first time in a groundbreaking trial that aims to buy more time for surgeons to save seriously injured patients.The process involves rapidly cooling the brain to less than 10C by replacing the patient’s blood with ice-cold saline solution. Typically the solution is pumped directly into the aorta, the main artery that carries blood away from the heart to the rest of the body. Continue reading...

Cameras mounted on a satellite allow users to take ‘selfies from space’ – on a beach, at a festival or sports event and eventually from anywhere you fancy – if the skies are clearA growing number of authorities around the world may be banning selfies – most recently the Japanese city of Kyoto put the kibosh on the taking of photos in its geisha neighbourhood – but one company is hoping to cash in on people’s desire to capture memorable moments, by introducing “the world’s longest selfie stick”, in the form of an app that takes photos from space.Spelfie.com allows users to take a selfie at the exact time that a satellite camera captures their location from space. Users of the app click on the event they are attending, then, once they are at the venue, the app provides coordinates so the user knows precisely where to position themselves and at what time. They then take a photo of themselves at the moment the satellite is taking its photo and later the same day the app sends back the satellite image juxtaposed with the selfie to be viewed in its gallery. Spelfie spokesman Anthony Burr said that in future the images will be available within a matter of minutes rather than hours. Continue reading...

Disastrous global heating will soon become irrevocable – but despite politicians’ inaction millions are taking to the streets to fight the planet’s fever

Hollingside wood, Durham City: Earthstar toadstools puff out spores as cyclamen create floral fireworks

Researchers examined more than 100 studies on the impact of human-produced noiseNoise produced by human activities should be better regulated to protect wildlife, say the authors of a study exposing how sound pollution affects myriad creatures from fish to birds.Related: Seals are deafened in noisy shipping lanes, say scientists Continue reading...

It’s the latest trend in the world’s tech capital. But is it really possible to cut yourself off from everything in life that excites you – and can it be any good for you?They have done biohacking, clean sleeping and the keto diet, but now Silicon Valley types have coined a new health trend – dopamine fasting. It is thought that depriving yourself of the neurotransmitter, a chemical messenger that motivates us to do things, can help to reboot or rebalance the brain. Fasting might entail abstinence from technology, artificial light, food, drink, conversation, eye contact – essentially anything that an individual finds stimulating. But is there any sense to the fad?“Retreating from life probably makes life more interesting when you come back to it,” says David Nutt, director of the neuropsychopharmacology unit in the division of brain sciences at Imperial College London. “Monks have been doing it for thousands of years. Whether that has anything to do with dopamine is unclear.” Continue reading...

Indian Ocean dipole events, linked to bushfires and floods, are becoming stronger and more frequent, scientists sayGlobal heating is “supercharging” an increasingly dangerous climate mechanism in the Indian Ocean that has played a role in disasters this year including bushfires in Australia and floods in Africa.Scientists and humanitarian officials say this year’s record Indian Ocean dipole, as the phenomenon is known, threatens to reappear more regularly and in a more extreme form as sea surface temperatures rise. Continue reading...

Fear of clusters of holes and cracks, called trypophobia, may be evolutionary in origin. But as details are shared, it is becoming a social contagion. By Chrissie GilesJulia was around 11 years old the first time it happened. She let herself into her dad’s apartment in Malmö, Sweden, dropped her schoolbag and flopped on to the sofa. She switched on the TV and turned to her favourite channel in time for the cartoons. The screen filled up with a cartoon man with a huge head. On his chin, in place of skin or a beard were huge cracks. Suddenly, she felt like she was going to throw up in disgust. She screwed up her eyes and fumbled for the button to turn off the TV.Every few months or so after this, she would see something that she just could not bear. Something that made her feel utterly disgusted and terrified. Sometimes it was cracks, but other times it was patterns of holes or dots, or scenes from nature programmes showing things such as groups of barnacles. She would shake, pour with sweat and end up lying on the floor in tears. One time, she was chatting on the phone when she saw something so awful she threw her mobile across the room. No one else she knew seemed to have this strange reaction. What was going on? Continue reading...

Medical team say people’s unexplained breathlessness could be down to bedding dustAs winter approaches it might be tempting to curl up under a thick feather duvet, but experts have warned it might lead to more than just warm toes.Doctors have reported a case of “feather duvet lung” – a lung inflammation caused by breathing in dust from the feathers in bedding – and have called for medical professionals to be on the alert if patients turn up with unexplained breathlessness. Continue reading...

Windfarms could be able to generate more energy due to phenomenon, says reportThe global climate crisis could lead to more renewable electricity being generated by spurring faster wind speeds for the world’s growing number of windfarms, according to research.Scientists have discovered that the world’s shifting ocean circulation patterns may have triggered a rapid increase in wind speeds over the last 10 years. Continue reading...

Psychopharmacologist who started a clinic for people addicted to tranquillisers and wrote a manual on how to quit them safelyOne day in the early 1980s a distressed patient went to see the doctor Heather Ashton at her pharmacology clinic in the Royal Victoria hospital, Newcastle upon Tyne.The patient had been given the tranquilliser Ativan (lorazepam) to relax her muscles before an operation and now feared she was addicted to the drug. Ashton listened to her patient and many others like her, studied their problems scientifically, and concluded that addiction to benzodiazepine tranquillisers was a serious problem, associated with severe withdrawal symptoms. The manual she went on to write on how to quit benzodiazepines safely now provides the basis for practice all over the world. Continue reading...

The solutions to today’s puzzlesEarlier today I set you the following four questions:1. Mrs Smith has two children. The eldest one is a boy. What’s the chance that both are boys. Continue reading...

Spray-on surface could prevent bacteria building up and reduce household water useThe toilet brush need never leave its holder again. Scientists have created a super-slippery coating that helps usher excrement on its way without leaving traces behind.The spray-on coating, which is slipperier than Teflon, reduces adhesion of even tenacious faeces by up to 90%, tests suggest, so far less water is needed to flush them away and leave the toilet clean. Continue reading...

A probability paradoxUPDATE: The solutions, and poll results are now upHere are four questions. They sound very similar. But be careful. They are not.1. Mrs Smith has two children. The eldest one is a boy. What’s the chance that both are boys? Continue reading...

Stress and emotional tension tends to be associated with distress – but a form called ‘eustress’ can be healthy and productiveStress has become a defining feature of the 21st century, contributing to the mental-health crisis, fuelling a boom in mindfulness apps and even, science has suggested, affecting unborn children. But it is not always the villain it is made out to be. Psychologists are keen to arm us with the knowledge that some stress can be good, healthy and productive. This type is known as “eustress” and without it, they say, our lives would be dull and meaningless.“Stress has got such a bad rap,” says Daniela Kaufer, a neuroscientist at the University of California, Berkeley. “There’s this perception that stress is always bad for the brain, but that’s not true. Your stress response is crucial to your survival. It elevates your performance, is super-important for alertness and prepares you to adapt to the next thing that comes along.” Continue reading...

In the 1950s, photojournalist Lennart Nilsson set out to capture the earliest stages of existence. His foetus images seized the public imagination – and sparked a controversy that has raged ever sinceIn April 1965, Life magazine put a photograph called Foetus 18 Weeks on its cover and caused a sensation. The issue was a spectacular success, the fastest-selling copy in Life’s entire history. In full colour and crystal clear detail, the picture showed a foetus in its amniotic sac, with its umbilical cord winding off to the placenta. The unborn child, floating in a seemingly cosmic backdrop, appears vulnerable yet serene. Its eyes are closed and its tiny, perfectly formed fists are clutched to its chest.Capturing that most universal of subjects, our own creation, Foetus 18 Weeks was one of the 20th century’s great photographs, as emotive as it was technically impressive, even by today’s standards. And its impact was enormous, growing into something its creator struggled to control, as the image was hijacked by the fledgling anti-abortion movement. Continue reading...

Toxic air contributes to health conditions such as asthma, cancer and stroke, say expertsFive people die each week in Bristol as a result of high levels of air pollution, a study has revealed.Researchers at King’s College London examined the combined impact of PM2.5, which is mainly from domestic wood and coal burning and industrial combustion and nitrogen dioxide, which mainly comes from older polluting vehicles. Continue reading...

New research sheds light on the parlous lot of women during the Industrial RevolutionThe women of the 19th-century urban poor were at it. Sneaking around, getting some. That, anyway, is the conclusion drawn from some recently reported DNA research, published in the journal Current Biology.The authors of the paper compared the Y chromosomes of 513 pairs of men who supposedly share a common ancestor to determine the prevalence of what they called “extra-pair paternity” over the past 500 years – in other words, the number of times in the men’s family trees that the father named on the birth certificate wasn’t the same as the man who supplied the sperm. Continue reading...

Exploring the therapeutic benefits of magic mushrooms at a ceremony in AmsterdamI’m at a weekend retreat in a converted church near Amsterdam. There is soft, celestial music playing and I’m sipping fresh herbal tea while discussing my hopes and fears for tomorrow’s “ceremony”, which is retreat parlance for a psychedelic trip. Consuming the truffle parts of magic mushrooms is permitted in the Netherlands and my nine fellow guests and I will be eating a variety called Dragon’s Dynamite. We’re not taking recreational drugs, but rather using psychedelics as self-exploratory and therapeutic “plant medicine”. Welcome to the age of the psychedelic retreat.Synthesis opened its doors in April 2018. It was co-founded by Martijn Schirp, a former poker player who found salvation through psychedelics. “I had my first mushroom trip nine years ago and that changed my life,” he says. “I was walking through this forest and it was so peaceful, it was like a fairy tale. I felt this huge self-critical voice lift off me.” He believes he’d still be estranged from his father if it wasn’t for the perspective psychedelics have given him. His entrepreneurial mind saw that what was missing was a retreat with “medical supervision, private one-to-one coaching and professional standards in a modern context”. Continue reading...

Evolutionary genetic changes in the brain are at the root of severe mental disorders, Professor Sir Michael Owen to tell this year’s Darwin lectureMajor psychological disorders such as schizophrenia will continue to affect humans because men and women are continually generating genetic mutations that disrupt brain development.This will be the key conclusion of Professor Sir Michael Owen, director of Cardiff University’s centre for neuropsychiatric genetics and genomics, when he gives the annual Darwin Lecture at the Royal Society of Medicine this week. Understanding such conditions at an evolutionary level will be crucial to developing treatments, Owen believes. Continue reading...

Blood vessel function found to improve within a month if tobacco replaced with e-cigarettesSwitching from tobacco cigarettes to vaping improves blood vessel function within one month, researchers have found, in a study they say supports the use of electronic cigarettes as a tool to quit smoking.E-cigarettes have becoming a booming business, with the number of people who vape growing rapidly. According to a 2017 report by Ernst and Young, 2.2 million Britons use e-cigarettes, an increase of 55% over three years. Continue reading...

Soaring prices likely as potatoes rot in sodden fields and farmers struggle to sow wheatThe price of crisps and chips are expected to rise in the new year as the flooding in northern England hits the supply of winter vegetables such as potatoes, cauliflowers and cabbages.Official data released on Friday revealed a “great deal of uncertainty” around the fate of a 10th of the country’s potato crop as farmers count the cost of the deluge that has overwhelmed parts of South Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and the Midlands. Continue reading...

Muff Busters exhibition begins in Camden in hope of tackling myths on ‘taboo’ body partsIn a bright indoor space in Camden’s Stables Market, a giant tampon is flanked by giant menstrual cups. Illustrations of female genitalia are dotted around the walls and some underwear is in a glass case.This is the world’s first vagina museum dedicated to gynaecological anatomy, which opens this weekend in north-west London. Continue reading...

New research raises hopes of oral vaccine for dogs, the chief source of transmission to humansResearchers have discovered a way to stop rabies from shutting down critical responses in the immune system, a breakthrough that could pave the way for new tools to fight the deadly disease.Rabies kills almost 60,000 people each year, mostly affecting poor and rural communities. Continue reading...

Callum Roberts is a British oceanographer, author and one of the world’s leading marine biologists. Sitting down with Ian Sample, Callum talks about his journey into exploring marine habitats, his subsequent work observing the world’s coral reefs and how, despite the urgent threat posed to the majority of these densely populated habitats, he still maintains an almost unswerving optimism for the future of his profession and of coral reefs in general Continue reading...

US corporation says its lunar lander concept would reduce ‘complexity and risk’ of Nasa missionThe American aerospace corporation Boeing has proposed a lunar lander to Nasa that it claims would reduce the “complexity and risk” of returning astronauts to the surface of the moon in 2024. Nasa’s original plan was that astronauts would launch from Earth and dock with a space station in lunar orbit before transferring to a lander. It even awarded the first contracts to build the Lunar Gateway in May.Boeing’s lander concept would bypass the Lunar Gateway station, allowing astronauts arriving from Earth direct access to the moon’s surface. The concept is similar to the Apollo lunar landing missions of the 1960s. Boeing says its lander would still be capable of docking with the Lunar Gateway if needed. Continue reading...

Illegitimacy more likely over past 500 years among urban poor, say geneticistsThe Romans had a phrase that summed it up nicely: mater semper certa est, pater semper incertus est. The mother is always certain, the father is always uncertain.Now, researchers have found that some people have more reason to doubt their fathers than others, or at least have had over the past half millennium. Continue reading...

My friend Davina Wynne-Jones has died a few weeks after celebrating her 70th birthday at Herbs for Healing, the field in Gloucestershire where she had her home and business, and where she created an Eden bursting with purpose and abundance, growing and supplying medicinal herbs.Daughter of the garden designer Rosemary Verey, Davina grew up at Barnsley House, near Cirencester, Gloucestershire. She found her mother’s gardens both magical and inspirational. Plants remained an obsession all her life. She once said: “I never get bored. They are nature, healing and beauty; the whole plant has a magic that gets lost in pharmaceutical research.” Continue reading...

Lancet Countdown tracks impacts of global heating covering disease, wildfires and malnutritionThe climate crisis will determine the lifelong health of today’s children, doctors have warned, noting that global heating was already causing harm.Children are especially vulnerable and the global team of researchers say rising temperatures mean the bacteria causing deadly diarrhoea will thrive while poorer crop yields could lead to more malnutrition. Continue reading...

DNA analysis helps work out origin of nearly 6 million mummified ibisesAn ancient Egyptian mystery has been solved, according to researchers, who say they have cracked the conundrum of where millions of mummified birds came from.Pharaohs and members of the nobility were often mummified, but the practice was not reserved for humans – cats, crocodiles, mice and mongooses are among the mummified animals that have been found. Continue reading...

Dramatic shift from wet to dry climate could have caused crop failure in Neo-Assyrian empireThe Neo-Assyrian empire was a mighty superpower that dominated the near east for 300 years before its dramatic collapse. Now researchers say they have a novel theory for what was behind its rise and fall: climate change.The empire emerged in about 912BC and grew to stretch from the Mediterranean down to Egypt and out to the Persian Gulf. Continue reading...

Unlike Star Wars projection, 3D technology whips polystyrene bead round at high speedIt may not rival the technology found in a galaxy far, far away, but everyone has to start somewhere. Researchers in Sussex have built a device that displays 3D animated objects that can talk and interact with onlookers.A demonstration of the display showed a butterfly flapping its wings, a countdown spelled out by numbers hanging in the air, and a rotating, multicoloured planet Earth. Beyond interactive digital signs and animations, scientists want to use it to visualise and even feel data. Continue reading...

The meet-cute is neatly postponed in this entertaining story of two next-door neighbours, both seeing therapists and looking for loveMuch like the process of psychotherapy, patience is required for results while watching this modestly entertaining slow-burn Parisian romance from Cédric Klapisch, who pulls off a neat trick by bumping the meet-cute to the end of the film.What happens before his protagonists clap eyes on each other is a kind of emotional spring clean. Both of them, a man and woman in their early 30s, are struggling with anxiety and stress; they find their way to therapy and sift through their secrets and problems, and then, when they are emotionally shipshape … bang! Cupid strikes. It’s a nice idea – but the delay doesn’t do much for dramatic tension, and Klapisch’s shallow observations about loneliness and atomisation in the city don’t help. Continue reading...

Astronomers say S5-HVs1 ventured close to supermassive black hole before being ejectedAstronomers have spotted a star heading out of the Milky Way at more than 6m km/h (3.7m mph), or 1,700km per second, after an encounter with the supermassive black hole at the centre of the galaxy.The star is moving so fast that in about 100m years it will exit the Milky Way and spend the rest of its life sailing alone through intergalactic space. Although it was predicted 30 years ago that black holes could fling stars out of the galaxy at phenomenal speeds, it is the first time that such an event has been recorded. Continue reading...

Authorities working to contain outbreak of disease that is worse than bubonic plagueTwo people in China have been diagnosed with plague, the latest cases of a disease more commonly associated with historical catastrophe.Plague is caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis and can arise in three forms – a lung infection, known as pneumonic plague; a blood infection, known as septicemic plague; and a form that affects the lymph nodes, called bubonic plague. Continue reading...

The night sky above the US midwest was illuminated by a meteor on 11 November. The fireball was caught on video streaking past the Gateway Arch in St Louis, Missouri. There were more than 100 reported sightings across nine US states Continue reading...

Exclusive: tiny particles produced by motor traffic can invade the brain and carry carcinogensNew research has linked air pollution nanoparticles to brain cancer for the first time.The ultra-fine particles (UFPs) are produced by fuel burning, particularly in diesel vehicles, and higher exposures significantly increase people’s chances of getting the deadly cancer. Previous work has shown that nanoparticles can get into the brain and that they can carry carcinogenic chemicals. Continue reading...