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...

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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...

Scientists find 257 prints that were preserved in wind-driven sand 80,000 years agoScientists have found hundreds of perfectly preserved footprints, providing evidence that Neanderthals walked the Normandy coast in France.The prints suggest a group of 10-13 individuals, mostly children and adolescents, were on the shoreline 80,000 years ago. Continue reading...

Scientists think devices could allow people to communicate telepathically or the paralysed to walk in the next decadesSociety must prepare for a technological revolution in which brain implants allow people to communicate by telepathy, download new skills, and brag about their holidays in “neural postcards”, leading scientists say.While such far-fetched applications remain fiction for now, research into brain implants and other neural devices is advancing so fast that the Royal Society has called for a “national investigation” into the technology. Continue reading...

The solution to today’s puzzleEarlier today I set you the following question:Let’s say that 1 in 10,000 people who present themselves at UK passport control have invalid passports, and let’s say that UK passport control is very good at detecting invalid passports. When presented with an invalid passport, an officer will pick this up 99 times out of 100. Travellers found with invalid documents are sent to a holding cell. Let’s also imagine that UK passport control will, out of caution, very occasionally send someone to the holding cell whose passport is perfectly valid. These “false positives” occur just 0.1 per cent of the time. Continue reading...

Forget trying to saw Debbie McGee in half – some conjurers are using their skills to help surgeons, refugee children and even imagine a better futureWhat image does the word “magic” conjure up? Paul Daniels sawing Debbie McGee in half, or Harry Potter chanting “Expecto patronum”? Or perhaps just a sweaty little man (they are almost always men) trying gamely to placate a party of sugar-high six-year-olds with balloons while their parents slip out the back?With its razzmatazz, secrecy and ritualised trickery, being a magician is not a calling most associate with a social conscience. But there is an intellectual dimension to magic that was already old the first time someone thought of putting an egg into a bag and then making it disappear (believed to be in the 16th century). Good magicians have always understood and exploited the psychological blind spots of their audience. In 1876, a magician known as Professor Hoffmann collected a series of articles he had written for a popular boys’ magazine into a book, Modern Magic, which explained how classic tricks were performed. “He believed young people should learn to perform magic because it would be useful in their professional lives and in the furtherance of the British empire,” one present-day acolyte, Will Houstoun, tells me. “Magic teaches you to stand in front of a room and talk, problem-solve, deceive and spot deception.” Continue reading...

Infected pigs found in two towns near capital Manila, as country becomes latest to be hit by diseaseThe Philippines has reported its first cases of African swine fever, becoming the latest country hit by the disease that has killed pigs from Slovakia to China, pushing up pork prices worldwide.The virus is not harmful to humans but causes haemorrhagic fever in pigs that almost always ends in death. There is no antidote or vaccine and the only known method to prevent the disease from spreading is a mass cull of affected livestock. Continue reading...

Show me your documents pleaseUPDATE: The solution is now up hereToday’s puzzle concerns passport control, the delegation of uniformed and often surly officers at ports and airports whose job it is to check your travel document is valid.Let’s say that 1 in 10,000 people who present themselves at UK passport control have invalid passports, and let’s say that UK passport control is pretty good at detecting invalid passports. When presented with an invalid passport, an officer will pick this up 99 times out of 100. Travellers found with invalid documents are sent to a holding cell. Let’s also imagine that UK passport control will, out of caution, very occasionally send someone to the holding cell whose passport is perfectly valid. These “false positives” occur just 0.1 per cent of the time. Continue reading...

I vowed to never tell anyone about my condition but I felt like a fraud. Then I realised that my story can help othersI can distinctly recall the overwhelming sense of shame that I felt, as I stared back at my 15-year-old self’s imperfect reflection in the dance school mirror. All I wanted was to be a musical theatre star. There I was, diligently standing in first position ready to jump, turn and kick my way into a career on the stage. Dance shoes, tights, maroon-coloured leotard and hair slickly tied back. However, all I could see in that mirror was my one breast. Just one. The right one. The left? Nothing. A hollow cave.Related: We’re deluged with images of ‘beauty’. No wonder so many of us feel so bad | Dawn Foster Continue reading...

Efforts are underway to establish contact, days after communications were lost during failed landingThe lander module from India’s moon mission has been located on the lunar surface, the day after it lost contact with the space station, and efforts are underway to try to establish contact with it, the head of the nation’s space agency said.The cameras from the moon mission’s orbiter had located the lander, said K. Sivan, the chairman of the Indian Space and Research Organisation (ISRO) according to the Press Trust of India news agency. He added: “It must have been a hard landing.” Continue reading...

Chris Kraft obituary | Bristol view | Codeword puzzle | Agincourt | StarbucksIn your obituary of Chris Kraft, former director of Nasa’s flight operations and the Johnson Space Center (Journal, 3 September 2019), you state he oversaw the missions to the first space station, Skylab. The title of “first space station” properly goes to Salyut 1, launched by the Soviet Union in 1971. Skylab was the first space station to be launched and operated by the US. Of course, none of this detracts from Kraft’s other great achievements.

‘Secret sustainability’ is on the rise, with companies loath to talk about their ecological credentials. Why?There’s a factory in Asia that uses only a single litre of water to make a pair of jeans. That’s 346 litres less than Levi-Strauss estimated it took to make a pair of its jeans in 2015. Wouldn’t you love to buy your jeans from this amazingly innovative factory? Me too, but I don’t even know what it’s called.The manufacturer in question does not want to tell anyone about its groundbreaking water-conserving techniques – not even the companies it supplies. It is one of many practising “secret sustainability”, whereby innovations are silently enacted and kept from the rest of the industry. Continue reading...

I discovered deeds of great bravery – as well as things to be ashamed of. But learning about my ancestors’ remarkable achievements has given my own life more meaningWhen I started researching my mother’s family, I had no idea what I would find, or how the process would affect me. Would I meet interesting relatives? Would I discover unpleasant secrets? Above all, would answering the question “Who do you think you are?” be a positive experience? Growing up, I was told a lot about my father’s side, the Alexanders, who in the 1930s escaped Nazi Germany and came to England. Their stories have always stayed with me and inspired me to write two books: Hanns and Rudolf about my uncle Hanns who tracked down and captured the commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolf Höss, and The House by the Lake about my great-grandfather’s weekend house outside Berlin, which bore witness to the 20th century.History, and my personal connection to it, has always been important to me. I am strangely motivated to explore what happened before my time. When I hold artefacts from the past – whether it’s a crinkled birth certificate, a chipped but much-used cup or some well-thumbed love letter – I’m deeply moved. And so I return to my family’s stories, time and again. Continue reading...

With increasing evidence of its impact on mental health, scientists are pushing forward with breakthroughs on baldingHas there ever been more pressure to have a full and luscious head of hair? Whether it’s dating app snaps, Instagram selfies, or even that corporate headshot on LinkedIn, maintaining a youthful appearance has become a critical feature of modern life.Writing in his autobiography, the tennis player Andre Agassi described his hair loss as a young man as like losing “little pieces of my identity”. With such anxieties magnified by the digital world, it’s little wonder that the impact of male and female pattern baldness has been increasingly linked to various mental health conditions. Continue reading...

UK researchers fear being blocked from EU-wide testing of treatments for diseases including rare childhood cancersLeading medical researchers have warned that their efforts to find new cancer treatments are likely to suffer major setbacks if the UK leaves the EU without a deal.In particular they fear that researchers based in the UK would face legal restrictions on working with other EU member states on clinical trials carried out across several countries. Continue reading...

Prime minister Narendra Modi consoles scientists distraught as complex mission goes awryIndia’s attempt to land an unmanned craft on the moon’s uncharted south polar region appears to have gone awry, when communication with the landing vehicle was lost moments before touchdown.“Communications from lander to ground station was lost,” said Kailasavadivoo Sivan, chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation early on Saturday. Data was still being analysed, he told a room full of distraught scientists at the agency’s tracking centre in Bengaluru. Continue reading...

Salts used on Temple scroll are not common to Dead Sea region, researchers findThe Dead Sea scrolls have given up fresh secrets, with researchers saying they have identified a previously unknown technique used to prepare one of the most remarkable scrolls of the collection.Scientists say the study poses a puzzle, as the salts used on the writing layer of the Temple scroll are not common to the Dead Sea region. Continue reading...

Glacier at Kebnekaise’s summit has shrunk amid soaring Arctic temperatures, say scientistsRelated: Climate emergency to blame for heather crisis – National TrustThe mountain peak known to Swedes as their country’s highest can no longer lay claim to the title due to global heating, scientists have confirmed, as the glacier at its summit shrinks amid soaring Arctic temperatures. Continue reading...

EU-backed research projects were slashed after the country voted to curb immigration in 2014. The UK should take noteSwitzerland has been touted as a model for the UK, post-Brexit. It is an independent state that determines its own laws, controls its own borders, and through its status as an associated country has access to many key elements of EU membership – including the institution’s leading science and research programmes.Related: Brexit 'may bar UK scientists from €100bn EU research fund' Continue reading...

As Chinese spending on pets increases by up to 27% year on year, a Beijing firm has created its first cloned kitten Continue reading...

Our profession has been great at raising awareness. But this alone won’t succeed against the might of the oil and gas lobbyistsAs scientists, we tend to operate under an unspoken assumption – that our job is to provide the world with factual information, and if we do so our leaders will use it to make wise decisions. But what if that assumption is wrong? For decades, conservation scientists like us have been telling the world that species and ecosystems are disappearing, and that their loss will have devastating impacts on humanity. Meanwhile, climate scientists have been warning that the continued burning of fossil fuels and destruction of natural carbon sinks, such as forests and peatlands, will lead to catastrophic planetary heating.We have collectively written tens of thousands of peer-reviewed papers, and shared our findings with policymakers and the public. And, on the face of it, we seem to have done a pretty good job: after all, we all know about the environmental and climate crises, don’t we? Continue reading...

Ian Sample visits Professor Richard Reynolds at the MS Society tissue bank to hear how research on brains of patients who died with multiple sclerosis is leading to novel insights and new treatments Continue reading...

Langstone Mill, Hampshire: Instead of moving on in the spring, some of these striking birds stayed on to breedIn February 2017, I expressed my hope that the cattle egrets overwintering around Warblington would be tempted to stay on and breed. For the past couple of years the small winter flock has dispersed in spring, the birds presumably migrating south to breeding colonies in continental Europe, but this year they lingered on well past their usual late-February departure date.At the beginning of June five birds appeared at the Langstone Mill Pond heronry, sporting peach-coloured nuptial plumes on their backs, breasts and crowns, and two-toned bills, coral-red at the base and egg-yolk-orange at the tip. After a few days it was clear that they had begun to prospect disused little egret nests, and soon up to 10 adults had been seen in the area. Continue reading...

The writer Malcolm Gladwell examines our interactions with strangers and what can happen when they go wrong, and Daniel Boffey on the view from Brussels of a chaotic week in British politicsMalcolm Gladwell, the author of five bestselling books, is known for weaving news events, anecdotes and scientific studies together to understand why we behave in the way we do. In his most recent work, he looks at what happens when interactions with strangers go wrong.Rachel Humphreys talks to Gladwell about why human beings are so bad at reading one another and examines some high-profile cases of interactions between strangers that had catastrophic consequences. Continue reading...

European Space Agency’s ExoMars rover arrives in France for final tests before next year’s missionThe European Space Agency’s ExoMars rover has arrived in France for final tests before being prepared for its mission next year.Named Rosalind Franklin after the English chemist, the rover is designed to determine whether there has ever been life on Mars. It will also better understand the history of water on the red planet. Continue reading...

Otago University researchers confirm the loch contains no monster – or dinosaur – DNA

A new study has found that lefties’ brains could be associated with better verbal skills, among other talents. I always knew I was special

Hundreds of researchers share Breakthrough prize in fundamental physicsAn international collaboration that captured the first image of a black hole, a cosmic plughole from which nothing that enters can ever escape, has won the most lucrative prize in physics.Hundreds of researchers on the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) team will share the $3m Breakthrough prize in fundamental physics for their image of the monster black hole at the heart of Messier 87, a galaxy 55m light years from Earth. Continue reading...

Research shows eavesdropping more widespread and broader than originally thoughtSquirrels eavesdrop on the chatter of songbirds to work out whether the appearance of a predator is cause for alarm, researchers have found.Animals including squirrels have previously been found to tune in to cries of alarm from other creatures, while some take note of “all-clear” signals from another species with which they co-exist to assess danger. Continue reading...