Unprecedented feat reveals little-known Denisovans resembled Neanderthals but had ‘super-wide’ skullsOne of the most mysterious relatives in the human family has stepped out of the shadows after scientists used ancient DNA from a fossilised finger to reconstruct their appearance.The unprecedented feat, described as “exciting” and “extraordinary” by one leading researcher who was not involved in the work, shows that the Denisovans looked similar to the Neanderthals, but had wider heads and more protruding jaws. Continue reading...

Environmental activists Greta Thunberg and George Monbiot have helped produce a short film highlighting the need to protect, restore and use nature to tackle the climate crisis.Living ecosystems like forests, mangroves, swamps and seabeds can pull enormous quantities of carbon from the air and store them safely, but natural climate solutions currently receive only 2% of the funding spent on cutting emissions.The film’s director, Tom Mustill of Gripping Films, said: 'We tried to make the film have the tiniest environmental impact possible. We took trains to Sweden to interview Greta, charged our hybrid car at George’s house, used green energy to power the edit and recycled archive footage rather than shooting new.'

Tasmanian senator says Hitler would be ‘so proud’ after academic website announces it will not tolerate climate change denialThe Liberal senator Eric Abetz has compared the Conversation website to Hitler, Stalin and Mao, after it announced a zero-tolerance approach to climate change deniers.The academic news and analysis website has said it will remove comments and lock accounts that put forward those views, outraging the Tasmanian senator. Continue reading...

Strong civil society movements are needed to ramp up pace of change, says studyGreenhouse gas emissions could be halved in the next decade if a small number of current technologies and behavioural trends are ramped up and adopted more widely, researchers have found, saying strong civil society movements are needed to drive such change.Solar and wind power, now cheaper than fossil fuels in many regions, must be scaled up rapidly to replace coal-fired generation, and this alone could halve emissions from electricity generation by 2030, according to the Exponential Roadmap report from an international group of experts. Continue reading...

Eight-country poll shows people view climate crisis as priority over migration and terrorismA majority of the public recognise the climate crisis as an “emergency” and say politicians are failing to tackle the problem, backing the interests of big oil over the wellbeing of ordinary people, according to an eight-country poll.The survey, which comes before what is expected to be the world’s biggest climate demonstrations on Friday, found that climate breakdown is viewed as the most important issue facing the world, ahead of migration, terrorism and the global economy, in seven out of the eight countries surveyed. In the US it comes third behind terrorism and affordable healthcare. Continue reading...

Smashing of monster asteroid half a billion years ago thought to have caused mini ice ageAn enormous dust cloud that swept through the ancient solar system sent Earth into a mini ice age that sparked an explosion in primitive life on the planet, scientists say.The space dust was created when a monster asteroid was smashed to pieces in a violent collision somewhere between Mars and Jupiter nearly half a billion years ago. Continue reading...

C-section babies pick up more hospital bacteria than those born vaginally, research showsBabies born by caesarean section have different gut bacteria to those delivered vaginally, the most comprehensive study to date on the baby microbiome has found.The study showed that babies born vaginally pick up most of their initial dose of bacteria from their mother, while C-section babies have more bugs linked to hospital environments, including strains that demonstrate antimicrobial resistance. The findings could explain the higher prevalence of asthma, allergies and other immune conditions in babies born by caesarean. Continue reading...

Dire risk is compounded by climate crisis, urbanisation and lack of sanitation, says global monitoring boardIt sounds like an improbable fiction: a virulent flu pandemic, source unknown, spreads across the world in 36 hours, killing up to 80 million people, sparking panic, destabilising national security and slicing chunks off the world’s economy.But a group of prominent international experts has issued a stark warning: such a scenario is entirely plausible and efforts by governments to prepare for it are “grossly insufficient”. Continue reading...

Last year, the government announced plans to ban remote-control collars – but even a dog-owning minister is using one. So what is the truth about these training aids?Is it cruel to give your pet electric shocks? Just little ones? The work and pensions secretary, Thérèse Coffey, has come under fire for using one on her beagle-pug cross, Lola, which reportedly kept trying to attack other dogs. She spoke to Steve Andrews, a Suffolk dog trainer, who recommended an electric collar to help control Lola’s behaviour. This seemed to work, and Andrews has since asked Coffey to help to overturn the government’s plans for a ban on remote-control collars. Awkwardly, the plans were announced by Michael Gove last year, when Coffey was a minister in his department.“Thérèse’s dog responds on setting 11 [out of 100],” Andrews told the Eastern Daily Press. “She felt what that was like and could feel nothing … This is not cruel. Thérèse and her family are dog lovers doing the best for their pet.” Continue reading...

Sticky-tentacled species returns to boglands but introducing meat-eating varieties is not without riskThe great sundew (Drosera anglica) is a carnivorous plant with leaves covered in red tentacles that ooze sticky slime to kill and digest insects, giving the plant extra nutrition in the boglands where it grows.It was once common in England but was almost wiped out as wetlands and peat bogs were drained or dug up, but a project is reintroducing the plant in restored bogland in north-west England, using cuttings from native plants. Continue reading...

Here, let me try. The sun is very, very hotWhen I was an undergrad learning geology, the maxim that was thumped into me wasn’t how to build a mine or drill for oil and gas, it was simply: “The present is the key to the past.” The thing that took a while to accept was that the past was really, really, long.It’s hard to comprehend the scale of geologic time: the timespan for continents to crash together and rip apart, for tiny sea creatures to live, die and condense into kilometres of limestone, or streams to carve epic canyons carrying mountains to the sea. We use comparisons our minds can grasp, such as if all cosmological time was the length of string or compressed into a single year (humans beings appear in the final six hours). Continue reading...

Research finds black carbon breathed by mothers can cross into unborn childrenAir pollution particles have been found on the foetal side of placentas, indicating that unborn babies are directly exposed to the black carbon produced by motor traffic and fuel burning.The research is the first study to show the placental barrier can be penetrated by particles breathed in by the mother. It found thousands of the tiny particles per cubic millimetre of tissue in every placenta analysed. Continue reading...

A new study suggests that people seek instant gratification when they have an empty stomach – which means they are more likely to settle for lessName: Empty stomach stupidity syndrome.Age: As old as the first missed breakfast. Continue reading...

New York forum aims to ‘restore’ the climate by reducing atmospheric levels of carbon to those of a century agoA new effort to rally governments and corporations behind technologies that suck greenhouse gases from the atmosphere to help stave off disastrous global heating will be launched at the United Nations on Tuesday.The first annual Global Climate Restoration Forum, held in New York, aims to spur international support for emerging and sometimes controversial methods to claw back planet-warming gases after they have been emitted from power plants, cars, trucks and aircraft. Continue reading...

Facility know as Vector is one of only two sites holding virus, and also houses Ebola samplesA gas explosion has sparked a fire at a Russian laboratory complex stockpiling viruses ranging from smallpox to Ebola, authorities have said.The State Research Centre of Virology and Biotechnology denied that the fire had exposed the public to the pathogens stored inside, some of the deadliest on Earth. Continue reading...

US study finds Christians are willing to pay for prayers – but atheists will pay to avoid themAll things have a price – and if not, economists will find one. Researchers have calculated the going rate for thoughts and prayers offered in hard times.Rather than settling on one price for all, the study found the value of a compassionate gesture depended overwhelmingly on a person’s beliefs. While Christian participants were willing to part with money to receive thoughts and prayers from others, the idea made nonbelievers baulk. Instead of shelling out to receive the gestures, on average they were willing to pay to avoid them. Continue reading...

Night and day will be of equal length at the end of this week as the sun crosses the celestial equator from north to southThe September equinox takes place this week. Occurring on 23 September, it marks the end of summer and the beginning of autumn for the northern hemisphere and is called the autumnal equinox at northern latitudes. In the southern hemisphere, the situation is reversed and the moment marks the end of winter and the beginning of spring. The equinox is defined as the place in the sky where the sun’s path, called the ecliptic, crosses the celestial equator, which is the projection of Earth’s equator up into the sky. This crossing occurs in Virgo and the sun will cross this point at 0850 BST on 23 September, as shown in the chart. At this moment, the sun will be moving from the northern sky into the southern sky. On this day around the world, everywhere will experience an almost even split of 12 hours day and 12 hours night. After this, the days shorten at northern latitudes and lengthen in the southern hemisphere. The next equinox will take place at 0350 GMT on 20 March 2020. Continue reading...

An intolerance to manufactured scents can lead to migraines, respiratory issues and long-term sick leave. So should they be banned in public spaces?If you flew abroad this summer, you probably passed through an airport’s duty-free perfume section. Perhaps you paused to spritz yourself with an expensive scent you had no intention of buying, before making the obligatory trip to WH Smith for overpriced crisps and bottles of water.For most people, the wafting odours of perfume counters are not a problem. But, for some, the trip through duty free is a choking, cloying experience. Continue reading...

As a GP, I know opioids have their place. But we shouldn’t be complacent about a US-style crisis happening in BritainGrowing concern about the prescription of drugs that cause dependence has been backed up by a recent report from Public Health England (PHE). The agency discovered that in 2017-18, 13% of adults in England received at least one prescription for opioids such as morphine or oxycodone (although this represented a slight downturn in prescribing after a long upward trend). Other drug classes were implicated too, with 25% of adults prescribed one or more of the following drugs: benzodiazepines (such as Valium), z-drugs (sleeping pills such as Zopiclone), gabapentinoids (gabapentin or pregabalin, prescribed for neuropathic pain) or antidepressants.The fear is that the UK is following in the footsteps of the US, where overprescribing is said to have led to a full-blown “opioid crisis”. But where does this leave those who live with severe or chronic pain and are dependent on opioids to function day-to-day? GPs, like me, and pain specialists need lots of time and a toolbox of interventions to properly treat those who suffer. But in the current cash- and time-poor environment, is it any wonder that they dole out prescriptions instead? Continue reading...

Major CBS News poll released as part of Covering Climate Now, a collaboration of more than 250 news outlets around the world to strengthen coverage of the climate story

I thought dementia was all about losing myself, but I have found sides to me I never knew I hadIt was at work where I noticed my first symptoms. I was a non-clinical team leader training matrons and sisters in the art of electronic rostering. My girls called me a workaholic. My brilliant memory, the thing I relied on most, started letting me down badly. Simple words failed me in meetings, the names of colleagues I’d worked with for years were suddenly a mystery. I used to take long runs by the river to unwind, but my brain stopped communicating with my legs and I started having falls. I knew somehow that things were not right, but when I finally went to the doctors it took a long time to get the diagnosis. Initially my symptoms were dismissed as age or stress related (I was 58), but I was persistent and knew how the system worked. When I finally received the diagnosis, in 2014, it was devastating but it was also, bizarrely, a relief. It finally put an end to all the uncertainties which meant I could now start planning my life with this new, unexpected label attached.I was determined to choose a positive path. The very nature of my diagnosis signalled the loss of the old me – my memories, my tastes, my abilities, my plans I took for granted – but, more importantly, it signalled the birth of the new me, a new chance. Many find it hard to believe, but I feel I’ve gained more than I’ve lost. Continue reading...

A major new Radio 4 series breaks down the barriers between art and science, while a revival of Joe Egg is a timely epitaph for Peter NicholsArts people, and I very much include myself, get bewildered by science. I try to listen to Radio 4’s The Life Scientific, but am often lost, while even Melvyn Bragg not long ago admitted to me that he at times struggles with science topics on his stellar In Our Time.To help remedy this, on 23 September Radio 4 kicks off a 20-part series, The Art of Innovation, exploring and, it’s hoped, breaking down barriers between the arts and science, with an accompanying exhibition at London’s Science Museum and a book. Continue reading...

Researchers are building a picture of palorchestids, which had tapir-like skulls and large scimitar-like clawsThe “strange” anatomy of a family of giant marsupials that roamed eastern Australia and Tasmania for much of the past 25m years has been revealed in a new study.Scientists had already figured out that palorchestids had tapir-like skulls and large “scimitar-like claws”, but little was known about the limbs of one of the “strangest marsupial lineages to have existed”, according to the paper published by a group of Australian researchers. Continue reading...

Alexander von Humboldt “was one of the last people to hold essentially all scientific knowledge in one head”Happy Birthday, Alexander von Humboldt. Tomorrow marks 250 years since the birth of the Prussian polymath, whose travels and observations laid the foundation for modern meteorological measuring.Related: Alexander von Humboldt on the loss of his meteorological instruments Continue reading...

My friend Toni Slabas, who has died aged 70, was an internationally renowned plant biochemist. He came from humble beginnings and quietly made a positive impact on the lives of many others.At Durham University, where he was professor of plant sciences from 1990 to 2013, Toni established a world-leading group in plant biochemistry with a particular interest in seed oil production and cell wall biochemistry. He set up a spin-out company, Creative Gene Technology, developing new technologies to improve crop yields, and sat on various UK government advisory committees, as well as acting as scientific adviser to plant biotechnology companies globally. He was also a committed teacher of undergraduate and postgraduate students, many now eminent scientists in their own right. Continue reading...

Readers respond to Adrian Chiles’s report of his struggle to create compost from his organic waste using a wormeryAlong with, no doubt, many other vermophiles, I’d like to reassure Adrian Chiles that wormeries do work and that his worms will handsomely reward his efforts if he persists (The worm has turned – but where’s my compost?, G2, 12 September). Having decided that a wormery would be a good way of recycling vegetable matter in my small back yard, I too had a catastrophic false start, involving some drowned worms and the wrong sort of smelly decomposition, but with the help of a new batch of worms, I discovered the importance of incorporating dry material into the worms’ diet.Torn-up egg boxes are particularly good, and I don’t need a shredder to dispose of details from bank statements when my worms are hungry. For years now, my wriggly little friends have been providing me with small amounts of compost and, more usefully, enough of a miraculously effective liquid plant feed to provide a copious supply to me and all my gardening friends. What’s more, whatever I feed to my worms isn’t going to landfill. Hang in there, Adrian. Be good to your worms, and they’ll be good to you.

Prof Arne Akbar, president of the British Society for Immunology, says compulsory vaccination is a blunt tool which could increase health inequities and alienate parents. Plus Prof Helen Stokes-Lampard and others call for a funded postnatal medical appointment at six to eight weeks specifically to assess new mothers’ physical and mental healthThe recent drop in childhood vaccination uptake is a cause of concern for all of us, as your article rightly points out (No MMR should mean no school place, say GPs, 9 September), with only 87.2% of children in England receiving two doses of the MMR vaccine by age five. However, the factors that have led to this are complex and multifactorial. In such a situation, which has the potential to significantly affect our nation’s health, our policy decisions must be guided by evidence.Compulsory vaccination is a blunt tool and there is no current evidence that it would increase the UK’s immunisation rate, but rather concerns that it could increase current health inequities and alienate parents with questions on vaccination. However, there are lots of other actions that the government can take to positively influence vaccine uptake, many of which were outlined in the No 10’s recent announcement, such as strengthening the role of local immunisation coordinators, promoting catch-up vaccinations and improving information provision on vaccination. Continue reading...

Scientists say Milky Way’s Sagittarius A* has been more active in recent monthsUnseeable and inescapable, black holes already rank among the more sinister phenomena out in the cosmos. So it may come as disconcerting news that the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way appears to be growing hungrier.Astronomers monitoring the colossal object, called Sagittarius A*, found that in the past year it appears to have consumed nearby matter at an unprecedented rate. Continue reading...

As scientists at University College London announce the discovery of water in the atmosphere of a potentially habitable ‘super Earth’, Ian Sample explores our prospects for finding life beyond our own planet Continue reading...

GPs would miss fewer diagnoses if ‘camouflaging’ was better understood, say researchersWomen may not be diagnosed with autism as frequently as men because they are better at hiding the common signs of the condition, according to new research.Some autistic people use strategies to hide traits associated with the condition during social interactions, a phenomenon called social camouflaging. Scientists involved in the study say raising awareness of camouflaging among doctors could help reduce the number of missed autism diagnoses. Continue reading...

First Direct Arena, Leeds

Short-termism has hampered investment in equipment and staffing that could help the NHS keep people alive

László Francsics has been named the overall winner in the Royal Observatory Greenwich’s Insight Investment Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2019 competition, for his composition showing the 35 phases of January’s total lunar eclipse. Other winners include a panorama of the aurora borealis over the Lofoten Islands in Norway by Nicolai Brügger, an atmospheric image of the photographer Ben Bush with his dog Floyd surrounded by the galactic core of the Milky Way, and a sequence of images of Mars that follows the progress of the great global dust storm by Andy Casely

Government’s assurances that there are no health problems are misleading, say food policy expertsThe government has misunderstood the science on the safety of chlorinated chicken, a group of senior food policy experts has said.It has also failed to give watertight commitments that it would not be sold here after a no-deal Brexit, they warn. Continue reading...

Rodents enjoyed being found by humans and would hide again to keep the game goingThe next time you see a rat darting for cover, consider this: it might just want to have a playful game of hide-and-seek.A group of neuroscientists in Germany spent several weeks hanging out with rodents in a small room filled with boxes, and found the animals were surprisingly adept at the childhood game – even without being given food as a reward. Continue reading...

Nappy-changing machine and saliva calculation also triumph in annual science prizeThere comes a time in a scientist’s life when the surest route to global fame involves a bevy of naked French postmen with thermometers taped to their testicles.At least that is the case for Roger Mieusset, a fertility specialist at the University of Toulouse, whose unlikely studies have earned him one of the most coveted awards in academia: an Ig Nobel prize. Continue reading...

Noah Hawley’s intriguing film, based on a true story, is about the effects on those who go to space of coming back to Earth’s quotidian realityAstronaut movies about the “classic” era, such as Ron Howard’s Apollo 13 or Damien Chazelle’s First Man, have men in buzzcuts doing the heroism up above while the womenfolk are relegated to gathering anxiously around TV sets back on Earth. More contemporary stories, such as Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity, give women a more active role – and in its ironic and offbeat way, this new movie is another such. It comes from Noah Hawley, the much-admired showrunner of the TV shows Fargo and Legion, now making his feature directing debut. He has worked with screenwriters Brian C Brown and Elliott Di Giuseppi on this fictional version of one of the strangest tales in Nasa history: a tale of sexual tension in space, and what happens when spacemen and spacewomen have to come to terms with the existential boringness of life back on Earth.It is a witty, intriguing film in many ways, seductively shot by British cinematographer Polly Morgan. I suspect Hawley has taken some inspiration from Sam Mendes’s American Beauty, with its eerie suburban moodscape. But I also feel the film is unsure of how much to disturb its audience, unsure whether to pursue the chaos and embarrassment of a bungled, noir-ish crime and an unsightly psychological disorder, or to contrive something more emollient: to finesse some sympathy and even heroism for the story’s troubled female lead. Continue reading...

As a new world with life-sustaining qualities is discovered, Prof Chandra Wickramasinghe discusses the likelihood that life has taken rootYour report that water vapour, perhaps even rain, has been detected in a planet in the so-called Goldilocks zone of a distant star is of no surprise because water is a common stable molecule that is found throughout the universe (Discovery of water raises hopes of life on faraway super-Earth, 12 September).Whether this planet harbours life or not depends on how hugely improbable the startup of life really is, not just on Earth but anywhere in the cosmos. Continue reading...

Researchers believe pair might have been siblings, cousins or soldiers who died togetherThe “Lovers of Modena”, a pair of skeletons so called because they were buried hand-in-hand, were both men, researchers have found.The bones, from between the 4th and 6th century AD, were found in a cemetery in 2009 near Modena in northern Italy. Continue reading...

Patients live longer if they do not take antibiotics in month before immunotherapyTaking antibiotics in the month before starting immunotherapy dramatically reduces a cancer patient’s chances of survival, according to a small but groundbreaking study.Scientists at Imperial College London believe antibiotics strip out helpful bacteria from the gut, which weakens the immune system. This appears to make it less likely that immunotherapy drugs will boost the body’s cancer-fighting capability. Continue reading...

Ethnobiologist who became an authority on the medical use of tropical plants but was accused of trying to exploit Amazon tribesAs a long-standing supporter of the rights of indigenous peoples, Conrad Gorinsky, who has died aged 83, was the inspiration behind the creation of the campaigning human rights organisation Survival International and, unwittingly, one of the catalysts for the introduction of the UN’s Convention on Biodiversity, which attempted to protect the interests of those with traditional knowledge of the properties of plants.Born of part-Amerindian ancestry, on the northern edge of the Amazonian rainforest in Guyana, South America, Gorinsky used the medical training he received in Britain to isolate the active constituent both of the nut of the greenheart tree, which he called rupununine, and of the barbasco bush, which he christened cuaniol. Hoping that both chemicals would be of use in developing new medicines, he filed for patents and began to make contact with drug companies. Continue reading...

Researchers looked at 12-month-olds’ vocalisations, gestures and gazes, and at how caregivers respondedBabies who frequently communicate with their caregivers using eye contact and vocalisations at the age of one are more likely to develop greater language skills by the time they reach two, according to new research.Scientists say the findings should encourage parents to pay close attention to babies’ attempts to communicate before they can use words, and to respond to them. In the study, researchers looked at 11- and 12-month-old babies’ vocalisations, gestures and gaze behaviours, and at how their caregivers responded to them. “These have never been looked at together in the same analysis before,” said Dr Ed Donnellan, from the University of Sheffield, the lead author on the study. Continue reading...

Big improvement in past two decades fails to close gap with likes of Australia and Canada

But humans would not fare well on planet K2-18b despite wispy clouds and huge red sunA faraway planet in the constellation of Leo has been named the most habitable known world beyond the solar system after astronomers detected water vapour in its atmosphere.It is the first time a planet in its star’s “Goldilocks zone” – where the temperature is neither too hot nor too cold for liquid water to exist – has been found to bear the life-sustaining substance in the blanket of gases that surround it. Continue reading...

Are these lessons on ‘the stranger problem’ and how to engage with other people anything more than statements of the obvious?Believe it or not, people aren’t totally transparent to one another. Liars can seem honest, spies can seem loyal, nervous people can seem guilty. People’s facial expressions are not a reliable guide to what they are thinking. Or, to put it in Hamlet’s words, one may smile, and smile, and be a villain. Makes you think, doesn’t it?If any of this is surprising to you, then you are in exalted company, because it also surprises Malcolm Gladwell, whose job it is to be puzzled by banalities and then replace them, after a great pseudo-intellectual circumambulation, with banalities. Gladwell affects to find it baffling how we can get people we don’t know so wrong. So he calls it “the stranger problem”, and pretends that it explains everything. Continue reading...

Hormone is critical treatment for those experiencing reduced libido in midlife, say expertsThe lack of availability of testosterone for postmenopausal women in the UK is morally wrong, an expert has said.The criticism comes after a taskforce brought together by the International Menopause Society (IMS) found testosterone could help women with hypoactive sexual desire dysfunction (HSDD), asignificantly reduced interest in sex after menopause. Continue reading...

Inspirational quotes of dubious provenance are just one of the ways in which social media sells a warped vision of ‘living fully’You’ve seen them before, because they are all over Instagram: the captions urging you to embrace your expansion, whatever that means, slow down to savor the moment, and hustle like you’re Beyoncé – all at once.“Start visualizing what you want, then say no to anything that isn’t it,” reads one. Another: “Buy the plane ticket, quit the job, plan the trip, wander into the unknown, open your heart, take the leap.” Continue reading...

Scientists find first evidence of an animal using stomach sounds to communicateAngry crabs harbour a secret weapon to deter their enemies and ward off predators when their claws are busy in combat, scientists say.Ghost crabs, named for their sand-pale bodies and nocturnal antics, use teeth in their stomachs to “growl” at aggressors, leaving their claws free for attacking manoeuvres and general waving about. Continue reading...

Scientists in UK identify growing trend that threatens to leave patients untreatableBacteria are increasingly developing ways of resisting antibiotics, threatening a future in which patients could become untreatable, doctors have warned.Over the last decade scientists in the UK studying samples from patients have identified 19 new mechanisms of antibiotic resistance. Continue reading...

Vote-weary public decide against planetary poll should ETs contact EarthIn the event that aliens ever contact Earth, the British public is clear on one thing: do not hold a referendum to decide what to do next.The option to hold a planetary vote on how to respond to inquiring extraterrestrials ranked bottom in a poll of 2,000 Britons asked how humanity’s reaction should be determined. Continue reading...