Having a few ‘green policies’ is no longer enough. Ask yourself: what will your next MP do to save the world?The government that wins the next election stands to govern for half of the decade that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says we have left to tackle the climate emergency. It will also oversee next year’s international conference on the climate crisis (COP 26) – the most important since the Paris Accord of 2015. We owe it to ourselves and to the world to make sure that climate is not a marginal issue at the election, whenever it comes.Yet maybe we don’t need to worry. We have largely enjoyed a broad “climate consensus” in this country: we believe in the science, most of us don’t indulge climate change deniers and there is agreement on the need to act. Not for us on this issue – at least so far – the culture wars of the US. Continue reading...

Whether for ancestry or health, millions of us are choosing to have our genetic fingerprints analysed by using direct-to-consumer kits from private companies. But can the results of these tests be trusted in a clinical setting? Senior doctors have called for a crackdown on home genetic-testing kits and this week, Hannah Devlin finds out why Continue reading...

Eysenck’s ‘cancer-prone’ personality theory had come under criticism for decades

The DNA test had found a man who had the same percentage match as me. I got a text: ‘You’re not going to believe this. He lives in Calgary, too’Having your hair cut is such an intimate thing, it’s almost like therapy. So, when I moved from Saskatchewan to Calgary in 2012, finding a good stylist was high on my to-do list. A friend recommended Troy and I liked him right away. After a quick consultation I said: “Just do whatever you like.” I know that’s unusual, but for some reason I trusted him instantly.Every six weeks I was back, and soon we were friends. When you’re talking about hair, ethnicity often comes up. I told Troy about my Jewish and First Nations heritage, but that I couldn’t be sure of the exact details because my dad had been adopted. Troy had questions about his background, too. He had discovered, aged six, that the man he believed to be his birth father wasn’t. Over the next six years it was a subject that we talked about often. Continue reading...

Project to record cultural, geological and environmental treasures at risk from climate crisisA project to produce detailed maps of all the land on Earth through laser scanning has been revealed by researchers who say action is needed now to preserve a record of the world’s cultural, environmental and geological treasures.Prof Chris Fisher, an archaeologist from Colorado State University, said he founded the Earth Archive as a response to the climate crisis. Continue reading...

Allendale, Northumberland: Fungi and leaf mould are all part of the recycling that makes my garden thriveAutumn is a rich, woodsy potpourri of scents as I rake leaves from the garden paths. Seeing them as a harvest rather than a nuisance, I lay the leaves over the shady border to rot down and improve the soil. Bulbs will push up through the leaf mould in spring. One path that I clear by hand has an eruption of hundreds of plump wood puffballs. There’s a strong fungal smell as I pull them up so their fruiting bodies can’t mature. It’s best to avoid breathing in the millions of dust-like spores that they produce, something that could be easily triggered from their ripe globes when trodden on.In the flower border, clusters of shaggy ink-caps burgeon up through the soil, forcing aside clods of mud. Their caps are smooth and creamy, supported by chunky stems, their sides flaking with curled overlapping layers, inspiring the alternative name of lawyer’s wig. Some have turned rusty orange on top and black and slimy underneath as they collapse back into the earth. The fungi and the leaf mould are all part of the recycling that makes my garden thrive. Continue reading...

Insect bites can be significantly cut using a cunning disguise, researchers findPainting a cow to look something like a zebra has been found to reduce fly bites by 50%.Researchers believe painting stripes on to cattle is a world-first and could become an environmentally friendly alternative to pesticides. Continue reading...

Institute of Economic Affairs has links to 14 members of Boris Johnson’s cabinet

Choreographer Jennifer Lacey explains why there is more modern art than movement in her new life-coaching pieceIn the basement of Nottingham Contemporary art gallery, Jennifer Lacey fans out a set of large homemade tarot cards. I pick a pink one, turn it over, and find an image of a baby chick beneath a pair of boob-like fried eggs. The artist Sarah Lucas immediately springs to mind but Lacey’s picture is actually a homage to Leigh Bowery, the outre superstar who was his own art object. Several portraits of Bowery hang a couple of floors above us, along with a video of him strolling through Manhattan’s Meatpacking District in a peanut bodysuit and one-shoulder floral dress. They are part of the exhibition Still Undead: Britain Beyond the Bauhaus, which explores the far-reaching influence of the Weimar art school. Lacey has drawn upon several of the artworks for her one-to-one performance, Extended Hermeneutics, which I’m experiencing over a cup of tea in the cafe.Lacey is an American choreographer who has been based in France since the start of the century. Presented by Nottingham’s biennial dance festival, Nottdance, Extended Hermeneutics is, well, not dance. She may end each 30-minute session with a short solo but for the main part she will act as life coach, psychologist and fortune-teller. The tarot cards are part of “a performance we’re doing together,” she tells me. “We’re asking the art.” The idea is to use artworks suggested by the cards to wrestle with a problem offered by the participant. Continue reading...

Research links human ability to regrow cartilage to molecules that help amphibians sprout new limbsContrary to popular opinion, humans can regrow cartilage in their joints, researchers have found. Experts hope the research could lead to new treatments for a common type of arthritis.Osteoarthritis, in which joints become painful and stiff, is the most common form of arthritis and is thought to cause pain in about 8.5 million people in the UK alone. It is caused by a breakdown in the cartilage that protects the ends of the bones, as well as the growth of new bone around the joint as the body tries to repair the damage. Continue reading...

A man’s worry seems to be hardwired – as if being fertile constitutes a meaningful measure of masculinityI read that tomatoes might be good for a fella’s sperm count. Sperm’s always been a worry for me, ever since the day of the 1978 FA Cup final. I’ll spare you the goriest of the details, but the long and, er, short of it is that I fell off my bike going to my nan and grandad’s house to watch the match and sustained serious injuries to my pudenda. Fifteen stitches were required to sew my boyhood up, but I made it home in time for kick off, which is all I cared about. I was only 11, after all.My parents had other worries. I don’t know whether some doctor at casualty at Corbett hospital in Stourbridge had said anything, but they were concerned about how my fertility might be affected. Mercifully, having begat two children 20 years later, all seemed to be in fair working order. And almost 20 years after that, I found myself doing a radio item about the National Sperm Bank. This involved having my own stuff analysed. Having breezily agreed to do this, I found myself in a small room in a fertility clinic in London trying to conjure up a sample, with a colleague called Steve standing outside holding a microphone. Continue reading...

John B Goodenough, M Stanley Whittingham and Akira Yoshino honoured for sparking a portable technology revolutionThe Nobel prize in chemistry has been awarded to three scientists for their work in developing lithium-ion batteries.John B Goodenough of the University of Texas at Austin, M Stanley Whittingham of Binghamton University and Akira Yoshino of Meijo University will receive equal shares of the 9m Swedish kronor (£74o,000) prize, which was announced by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm on Wednesday. Continue reading...

Fossil fuel giants have known the harm they do for decades. But they created a system that absolves them of responsibilityLet’s stop calling this the Sixth Great Extinction. Let’s start calling it what it is: the “first great extermination”. A recent essay by the environmental historian Justin McBrien argues that describing the current eradication of living systems (including human societies) as an extinction event makes this catastrophe sound like a passive accident.While we are all participants in the first great extermination, our responsibility is not evenly shared. The impacts of most of the world’s people are minimal. Even middle-class people in the rich world, whose effects are significant, are guided by a system of thought and action that is shaped in large part by corporations. Continue reading...

John B Goodenough, M Stanley Whittingham and Akira Yoshino made laureates for development that sparked portable technology revolution• Report: chemistry Nobel given to lithium-ion battery researchers12.26pm BSTAnd there we leave the chemistry prize for another year. Huge congratulations go to John Goodenough, Stanley Whittingham and Akira Yoshino for the development of lithium-ion batteries.Here is my colleague Nicola Davis’s news story on the prize:Related: Nobel prize in chemistry awarded for work on lithium-ion batteries12.19pm BSTMore reaction from Royal Society President Venki Ramakrishnan:“Professor Goodenough’s contributions in the field of materials science have fundamentally shaped the technology we take for granted today. From powering the smartphone in your pocket, to his defining work on the properties of magnetism, these contributions have opened new avenues for scientific investigation and engineering. Continue reading...

New data shows how fossil fuel companies have driven climate crisis despite industry knowing dangers

James Peebles, Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz honoured for ‘improving our understanding of evolution of universe and Earth’s place in the cosmos’

Model from Eindhoven University will surround baby with fluid and deliver oxygen and nutrients via umbilical cordAttempts to create an artificial womb for premature babies have been given a boost by the award of a €2.9m (£2.6m) grant to develop a working prototype for use in clinics.The model, which is being developed by researchers at the Eindhoven University of Technology, would provide babies with artificial respiration. However, unlike current incubators the artificial womb would be similar to biological conditions, with the baby surrounded by fluids and receiving oxygen and nutrients through an artificial placenta that will connect to their umbilical cord. Continue reading...

James Peebles laid foundation for modern cosmology while Swiss pair found first exoplanetThree scientists have been awarded the 2019 Nobel prize in physics for groundbreaking discoveries about the evolution of the universe and the Earth’s place within it.James Peebles, from Canada, has been awarded half of the 9m Swedish kronor (£740,000) prize for his theoretical discoveries about the evolution of the universe. The Swiss astronomers Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz share the other half of the prize for their discovery of the first planet beyond our solar system. Continue reading...

Top scientists accuse Boris Johnson of sacrificing the UK’s research reputation – and billions of pounds in EU grantsTwo Nobel laureates and other top scientists are accusing Boris Johnson of destroying Britain’s global reputation by behaving “like a clown” and pursuing a no-deal Brexit that would leave UK science “dead” for years.The government has assured anxious academics it still has a clear ambition to join the European commission’s new €100bn (£89bn) research funding programme, Horizon Europe, after Brexit. But Robert-Jan Smits, the commission’s former director-general of research, says the UK has “zero chance” of negotiating associate membership after a no-deal divorce. Continue reading...

The gas giant has 82 moons, surpassing the 79 known to orbit its larger neighbourSaturn has taken over from Jupiter as host to the most moons in the solar system after astronomers spotted 20 more lumps of rock orbiting the ringed planet.It brings the number of Saturnian moons to 82, surpassing the 79 that are known to orbit Jupiter, its larger, inner neighbour. Continue reading...

New Attenborough series aims to be as influential as Blue Planet II was on plastic wasteA new BBC natural history series narrated by Sir David Attenborough airing later this month will have a conservationist message about the impact of the climate crisis at its heart.Seven Worlds, One Planet will show “where humankind is negatively and positively impacting the health of the planet”, the corporation said on Monday as Attenborough launched the new series at a premiere in London. Continue reading...

The answer to today’s money problemEarlier today I set you the following problem. It was a tricky one, and judging from the BTL comments the solution is eagerly awaited. Let me restate the problem before we get there. It concerns a game on a grid with an infinite number of rows and columns, and starts with three coins in the top left corner of the grid, as illustrated here. Continue reading...

William Kaelin, Sir Peter Ratcliffe and Gregg Semenza worked out how cells adapt to oxygen availabilityThree scientists have shared this year’s Nobel prize in physiology or medicine for discovering how the body responds to changes in oxygen levels, one of the most essential processes for life.William Kaelin Jr at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard University in Massachusetts, Sir Peter Ratcliffe at Oxford University and the Francis Crick Institute in London, and Gregg Semenza at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, worked out how cells sense falling oxygen levels and respond by making new blood cells and vessels. Continue reading...

Israeli company successfully cultures bovine cells on International Space StationLab-grown meat has been successfully cultured in space for the first time.The Israeli food technology startup Aleph Farms grew the meat on the International Space Station, 248 miles (399 km) away from any natural resources. Continue reading...

William G Kaelin, Sir Peter Ratcliffe and Gregg L Semenza share award for work on how cells adapt to oxygen availability

A pecuniary puzzleUPDATE: The solution is now up here.Today, we are going to play a game. It takes place on a grid with an infinite number of rows and columns, and it starts with three coins in the top left corner of the grid, as illustrated here. Continue reading...

The ceaseless banter we engage in unthinkingly often goes so much deeper than exchanging shallow pleasantries

Rorie Fulton on combating unwitting support for populists, and Richard Bryden on civic spaces that facilitate ‘reasoned conversation’George Monbiot makes a telling link between individuals’ affective state and the unwitting support we lend to demagogues (Journal, 3 October). In their fascinating book The Boy who was Raised as a Dog, Bruce Perry and Maia Szalavitz develop this notion of state-dependent functioning and apply it to organisations. In what feels like an increasingly apt commentary on events unfolding in the institutions of democracy both at home and abroad, Perry and Szalavitz write that “the more out of control the external situation is, the more controlling, reactive and oppressive the internally focused actions of [the] group will become”.Seeking to offer a path forward that will break this spiral, Monbiot rightly calls for us to restore the mental state that allows us to think. For each of us as individuals, what might this involve? In the language of Stephen Porges’s polyvagal theory, such a restoration entails moving from a state of dysregulation to one of regulation. This means making time in the day for activities of self-care that provide regulating sensory input. For some, this will include listening to their favourite music, doing half an hour’s yoga or going for a run, while for others it will be a cup of coffee and a piece of crunchy toast for breakfast, time spent outside, or a hot bath when the children have gone to bed. Continue reading...

Give up wanting to be liked, live with imposter syndrome and love what you do. Suzanne Moore advises aspiring female writersHow does a woman write? This woman is writing on her laptop in bed wearing her lipstick. She looks quite ridiculous. She is wishing the teenagers downstairs would make less noise and will go down periodically to shout at them and to get some biscuits, maybe some cheese, a small snack that she needs to sustain herself every other paragraph or so.This woman wishes she was like the young people she sees writing in cafés or on the bus, who seem to be able to write anywhere. She wishes she wasn’t so precious about peace and quiet and remembers she didn’t used to be. In fact, she used to sit next to a man in a newspaper office who was covered in nicotine patches, chewing nicotine gum and drinking double espressos until he vibrated. Still, she always met the deadline. He didn’t, so was in a constant state of torture. Continue reading...

Young people in the global south have been tackling the climate crisis for years. They should be celebrated tooRidhima Pandey was just nine years old in 2017 when she filed a lawsuit against the Indian government for failing to take action against climate change. Pandey’s fierce, astounding passion for the environment is not accidental. Her mother is a forestry guard and her father an environmental activist; and the whole family was displaced by the Uttarakhand floods of 2013, which claimed hundreds of lives.In Kenya Kaluki Paul Mutuku has been actively involved in conservation since college, where he was a member of an environmental awareness club, and has been a member of the African Youth Initiative on Climate Change since 2015. Raised in rural Kenya by a single mother, Mutuku’s vigorous activism, like Pandey’s, was inspired by the direct challenges his family (and wider community) faced from the effects of climate change: “Growing up, I witnessed mothers cover kilometres to fetch water,” he says. Continue reading...

An estimated 7 million people die every year from exposure to polluted air. Nicola Davis looks at the science behind air pollution and at the policies to tackle it Continue reading...

French patient’s breakthrough could lead to brain-controlled wheelchairs, say expertsA French man paralysed in a nightclub accident has walked again thanks to a brain-controlled exoskeleton, providing hope to tetraplegics seeking to regain movement.The patient trained for months, harnessing his brain signals to control a computer-simulated avatar to perform basic movements before using the robot device to walk. Scientists described the trial results as a breakthrough. Continue reading...

Health professionals to give 600,000 children aged 10-11 free vaccine against winter fluEvery primary school child in England is to be offered vaccination against winter flu in an attempt to safeguard them and their family from the virus, the health service has announced, promising no shortage of vaccines regardless of the Brexit outcome.This year’s flu vaccination campaign will be the biggest ever, with 25 million people offered vaccines free, including 600,000 school children aged 10-11. Children are considered “super-spreaders”, liable to infect others in their family and a danger to the elderly. All children aged two to 11 will be offered the nasal spray vaccine in the coming weeks. Continue reading...

Artemis project aims to create a ‘sustained’ human presence on the moon by 2028There can be no doubt that Nasa is serious about trying to land astronauts on the moon by 2024.Even though the Artemis programme has yet to be fully funded, Nasa has issued a call to US companies for a lunar landing spacecraft that will place the first woman and the next man on the moon’s surface. The call has been sent out in draft form twice already this year, allowing private companies to comment and help Nasa shape the request. Now those companies have until 1 November to submit their finished proposals. From these, two companies will be contracted to provide the landers. Continue reading...

Quarter of mammals and nearly half of birds assessed are at risk of extinction, says State of Nature reportPopulations of the UK’s most important wildlife have plummeted by an average of 60% since 1970, according to the most comprehensive analysis to date.The State of Nature report also found that the area inhabited by officially designated “priority species” has shrunk by 27%. The species are those deemed most important and threatened, and include hedgehogs, hares and bats, many birds such as the willow tit and the turtle dove, and insects such as the high brown fritillary butterfly. Continue reading...

Observations reveal cluster of galaxies about 12bn light years away linked by gas filamentsThe cosmic web, a vast, mysterious structure that links up far-flung galaxies, has been observed directly for the first time.The observations reveal that an ancient cluster of galaxies about 12bn light years away in the constellation of Aquarius are linked together by a network of faint gas filaments. The existence of the cosmic web is central to current theories of how galaxies first formed following the big bang, but until now evidence for it had remained largely circumstantial. Continue reading...

We can’t solve all life’s problems with a motivational mantra. Sometimes it seems like a misguided use of energyAt the theatre on Saturday night, I watched Diana Nyad, the long-distance swimmer, ignite an audience for over an hour. She recounted her record-breaking 111-mile swim from Cuba to Florida at the age of 64 after several failed attempts, and in the face of killer sharks, deadly jellyfish and huge waves. It was like listening to a one-woman version of the Iliad, an almost too perfect literalisation of inspirational metaphor. The subtitle of the show was “never, ever give up”, a well-worn sentiment that in Nyad’s hands was made thrillingly new.Related: What did Hillary Clinton mean it was 'gutsy' to stay with Bill? It's complicated | Jean Hannah Edelstein Continue reading...

Pterosaur had four-metre wingspan, lived about 90m years ago and was capable of crossing continentsIn the heart of Queensland, palaeontologists have found the fossilised partial skeleton of a new pterosaur species capable of flying across continents.The pterosaur, with a four-metre wingspan, may have lived about 90m years ago. Continue reading...

My dominatrix life coach isn’t afraid to hurt my feelings – she’s brutally honest and has no time for my excusesI love therapy, but I didn’t love my therapist. She was young, like me, and new – the best I could find with my cheap insurance. I was her first real client, she was thrilled, I was broke and depressed.Over the course of our six months together, we often sat through extended periods of silence, each of us desperately searching for something to say. Other times, I rambled about how pointless my life felt, the crushing guilt and fear of abandonment that follows me everywhere, and ill-timed thirst traps, just to fill the space. I did my best to entertain her with overshares and regrettable sex stories from my life as a sad yet charming bisexual, and for a while, that was fine, until I ran out of stories and we fell back into silence. I left our sessions feeling worse than I did when I arrived. Continue reading...

Nonpartisan taskforce of ex-government officials reports ‘almost weekly violations’ of norms meant to safeguard objective researchThe treatment of science by the Trump administration has hit a “crisis point” where research findings are manipulated for political gain, special interests are given improper influence and scientists are targeted for ideological reasons, a nonpartisan taskforce of former government officials has warned.Safeguards meant to ensure that government research is objective and fully available to the public have been “steadily weakening” under recent administrations and are now at a nadir under Trump, according to a report released on Thursday by the National Task Force on Rule of Law and Democracy. Continue reading...

Floating boom finally retains debris from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, creator saysA huge floating device designed by Dutch scientists to clean up an island of rubbish in the Pacific Ocean that is three times the size of France has successfully picked up plastic from the high seas for the first time.Boyan Slat, the creator of the Ocean Cleanup project, tweeted that the 600 metre-long (2,000ft) free-floating boom had captured and retained debris from what is known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Continue reading...

Mangrove monitoring trip to remote coast finds shocking impact of two cyclones across hundreds of kilometresA cascade of impacts including rising sea levels, heatwaves and back-to-back tropical cyclones has created 400km of dead and badly damaged mangroves in the Gulf of Carpentaria, a scientific monitoring trip has discovered.Prof Norman Duke, of James Cook University, spent 10 days monitoring 2,000km of coastline from a helicopter, as well as conducting land-based checks at 32 estuaries along the coastline between Weipa, Queensland, and Cape Barrow in the Northern Territory. Continue reading...

Francis Galton is rightly criticised for advancing this immoral, racist non-science. But remember, his ideas were mainstreamHow should we remember historical figures who we know have done terrible things? It’s a dilemma we face more often, as universities and public institutions critically examine their histories, reassessing the past with 21st-century eyes. And over the last year, University College London has been in the midst of a historical inquiry into its role as the institutional birthplace of eugenics – the debunked “science” that claimed that by selectively breeding humans we could improve racial quality.We tend to associate eugenics with Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, but it was in fact developed in London. Its founder was Francis Galton, who established a laboratory at UCL in 1904. Already, some students and staff have called on the university to rename its Galton lecture theatre. Continue reading...

The language of violence and outrage is dominating our discourse. To defeat it, we must learn not to respond in kindIs this democracy’s death spiral? Are we, in this country and others, falling into a lethal cycle of fury and reaction, that blocks the reasoned conversation on which civic life depends?Related: The Guardian view on language in politics: playing with fire | Editorial Continue reading...

US scientists say it may be possible to decipher words using new x-ray technique

Body of 150 non-experts to explore ways of cutting carbon emissions by 40% before 2030A sample group of 150 French citizens — from unemployed people to pensioners and factory workers — will this week begin advising the French president Emmanuel Macron on how France can cut carbon emissions to tackle the climate emergency.

Trial using rats showed the drug metformin repaired nerve damage caused by the diseaseScientists have raised hopes of a new treatment for multiple sclerosis after animal studies showed a common diabetes drug can repair nerve damage caused by the disease.The effect of the drug was so striking that doctors in Cambridge are now planning a clinical trial of MS patients next year. Continue reading...

Initiative aims to improve the animals’ feeding efficiency and reduce methane emissionsScientists are working to breed sheep that produce less greenhouse gases in order to reduce their impact on the environment.The Grass to Gas initiative will combine international scientific and industry expertise to measure two major factors affecting the environmental consequences of the livestock – feed efficiency and methane emissions. Continue reading...

Poison fire coral, the only known fungus whose toxins are absorbed through the skin, found on the outskirts of CairnsOne of the world’s deadliest species of fungus, previously thought native to Japan and Korea, has been found by a photographer on the outskirts of Cairns in northern Australia.Scientists say the discovery of poison fire coral in a pocket of rainforest in Redlynch, a Cairns suburb, indicates the fungus likely occurs naturally in other parts of Australia and south-east Asia. Continue reading...