Science | The Guardian

As a survey reveals that the over-50s are joining gyms and having sex, the reality is something rather more comfortableThe psychological challenges that arrive with your 50th birthday are rarely addressed in debates about Scotland’s health. To be honest, they’d all been pulsing and fermenting away for a few years before then anyway. Many of us choose to put them in one of those wee mental boxes that psychologists tell their patients to imagine when they want to dodge bad memories and negative vibes. We then mark it with big virtual red capital letters: “NOT TO BE OPENED UNTIL YOU’RE 50.” These little red flags range from twinges in your body’s fundamental areas to framing the appropriate reply when the barber asks you how you want your hair cut.The biggest mental and emotional challenge comes, though, when you realise that it can take up to three days for the effects of a hangover to subside. You find yourself having to think very carefully before you embark on one of the great and uncomplicated pleasures of being human: the afternoon bevvy session. Can I cancel the next day and perhaps the day after that? Can I get Bargain Hunt on catch-up? Is there enough mould-free cheese, breaded ham and white bread to see out a couple of days in the dark? Continue reading...

‘I hid from the truth about the domestic workers who ran my home, but finally I had to tell their story’The first time I paid another woman to clean my apartment, it felt like an experiment. I was 24, and I’d recently started a job as a national correspondent for a big newspaper. The assignment came with professional trappings and freedoms I’d never had before: a stylish office in a downtown skyscraper, a full-time research assistant, a travel budget that never seemed to run dry.It was a man who put me up to calling a house cleaner. I’d made the mistake of mentioning that I had to clean my house. He laughed. “Why are you doing your own cleaning? Hire somebody.” Continue reading...

University College London may rename buildings to cut links to promoters of eugenicsThey were some of Britain’s greatest scientific pioneers. Based at University College London, they developed the first fingerprinting methods, the use of statistics in health and genetics research, early birth-control science and many other key technologies of the Victorian and Edwardian eras.But now these trailblazers – who include Francis Galton and Marie Stopes – are under investigation. A committee of inquiry has been set up by UCL to probe their links with eugenic causes and to consider if buildings, lecture theatres and libraries named after them should be re-titled.“UCL has launched the inquiry to ensure that its historical links to eugenics are properly examined,” said a spokeswoman. Continue reading...

Medical experts hail ‘paradigm shift’ of implant that transmits video images directly to the visual cortex, bypassing the eye and optic nervePartial sight has been restored to six blind people via an implant that transmits video images directly to the brain.Some vision was made possible – with the participants’ eyes bypassed – by a video camera attached to glasses which sent footage to electrodes implanted in the visual cortex of the brain. Continue reading...

Esketamine could initially become available through private clinics but potential side effects raise concernsA ketamine-like drug that could be licensed in the UK as soon as November could transform treatment for severe depression, one of the country’s leading psychiatrists has said.The drug, called esketamine, which is administered through a nasal spray, would be one of the first “rapid acting” drugs for depression and the first drug in decades to target a new brain pathway. Continue reading...

Do you remember where you were when man first landed on the moon? We’d like to hear from youIt’s almost 50 years since US astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first person to set foot on the moon. As his words, “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind” beamed from radios and television sets, feelings of hope and wonderment spread globally.Teams from around the planet, from ground control to newsrooms and remote Australian satellite stations, brought the event to an estimated 600 million people worldwide. Grainy images from the Sea of Tranquility and headlines that echoed the inspiring messages adorned news stands the following day. Half a century on, the impact from the successful Apollo 11 mission still resonates, seeping into popular culture and inspiring new scientific and technological developments today. Continue reading...

Scientists reconstruct extinct species using fossils found in northern Mali from ancient seaway

From micro pigs to the doping dangers of a poppy seed bagel, life may be imitating the US sitcomWhen Jerry Seinfeld starts his UK tour, listen out for a science joke. From early on in his TV career, the comedian poked fun at science. In his 1981 HBO debut, he said of weather forecasts: “And then my favourite part, the satellite photo. This is really helpful. A photograph of the Earth from 10,000 miles away. Can you tell if you should take a sweater or not from that shot?”His eponymous 90s sitcom is also packed with nuanced references to science, with the storylines of some of the most famous episodes centred on it: George Costanza pretends to be a scientist in The Marine Biologist, while in The Abstinence he becomes a boffin after swearing off sex. In The Non-Fat Yogurt, Kramer has a romantic fling in a lab and inadvertently spoils an experiment testing whether the frozen snack is as healthy as it sounds. Continue reading...

Have you ever been caught out online and subscribed to something you didn’t mean to? Ian Sample has and so he tasked Jordan Erica Webber with finding out how companies play on our psyches to pinch our pennies and what we can do about it Continue reading...

If successful, India will become fourth country to soft-land on moon after Russia, US and ChinaIndia is making final preparations for the launch this Sunday of the Chandrayaan 2 moon mission. The spacecraft will take two months to cruise to the moon. Following its arrival, it will manoeuvre into a circular orbit just 62 miles (100km) above the lunar surface. It will then deploy the Vikram lander early in September.This will be India’s first attempt at a soft landing on the moon. If successful, it will make the country the fourth to achieve such a feat, after Russia, the US and China. Continue reading...

Pluribus wins 12-day session of Texas hold’em against some of the world’s best human playersRack up another win for the machines. An artificial intelligence called Pluribus has emerged victorious from a marathon 12-day poker session during which it played five human professionals at a time.Over 10,000 hands of no-limit Texas hold’em, the most popular form of the game, Pluribus won a virtual $48,000 (£38,000), beating five elite players who were selected each day from a pool who agreed to take on the program. All of the pros had previously won more than $1m playing the game. Continue reading...

Salford team explores sound qualities of ancient Wiltshire monument using 1:12 replica based on data from scansA diminutive model of Stonehenge could help crack the acoustic secrets of the ancient site, according to scientists who have built a version of the megaliths at a 12th of their size.The team say the 1:12 model, with a stone circle spanning 2.6 metres, has an edge over other replicas of Stonhenge, such as the full-scale one near Maryhill,Washington, for being based on laser scan data. The data collected by Historic England allowed the team to produce a highly accurate representation. Continue reading...

Ancient bird’s foot is so distinctive palaeontologists declare it a new speciesThe fossilised remains of a bizarre, ancient bird that had middle toes longer than its lower legs have been found in a lump of amber from Myanmar.The elongated toe resembles those seen on lemurs and tree-climbing lizards, and suggests an unusual lifestyle for some of the earliest birds that lived alongside the dinosaurs, researchers said. Continue reading...

Research showing goats can communicate emotion by bleating should help us build empathy with our fellow animalsWicksteed Park in Kettering is not known for its miracles, but on that day, it was if a holy statue was weeping blood. Within minutes of the incredible event beginning, a great crowd coalesced. The elderly and infirm got out of their chairs. Children were put on shoulders. There were gasps. There was awe. I can tell you what happened but you may prefer to sit down first. Because two weeks ago, almost to the day, a goat in this small-town theme park climbed a tree in its enclosure. “But … goats can’t climb trees,” came the murmurs from the crowd. “What is it doing?” they asked, with confused astonishment. I watched with great delight. These people clearly had an idea of what a goat is and what a goat does and were being met with a new reality where goats could also happily climb trees, a behaviour goats regularly employ in the wild to find the juiciest leaves. To the people of Kettering, who were not aware of tree-climbing goats, it was as if they were looking at a flying monkey.Related: Goats can distinguish emotions from each other's calls – study Continue reading...

Unmanned craft – about the size of a large refrigerator – plans to collect ground samples, some 300 million kilometres from EarthA Japanese spacecraft has successfully landed on a distant asteroid where it hopes to collect samples that could shed light on the evolution of the solar system.Scientists at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (Jaxa) observing the landing from a control room on the southern island of Tanegashima applauded and made “V” for victory signs after the Hayabusa2 probe landed on the asteroid on Thursday morning local time. Continue reading...

President makes remarks as he announces a government plan to tackle kidney diseaseDonald Trump surprised the medical community on Wednesday afternoon, when he claimed “the kidney has a very special place in the heart”.Speaking as he announced a government plan to tackle kidney disease, Trump went on an extended riff about the efforts of specialists. Continue reading...

Two-year-old has had brain surgery to treat spasms, raising hopes for other childrenA two year-old girl from Glasgow has become the youngest person in the world to undergo brain surgery that doctors say could help limit severe disability among children afflicted by uncontrollable body movements.Viktoria Kaftanikaite was just 32 months old when she had deep brain stimulation (DBS) to treat a condition called dystonia, which caused her arms and legs to flail about and her mouth to twitch constantly while she was awake. Continue reading...

Nearly 80% of cities to undergo dramatic and potentially disastrous changes, study findsLondon will have a similar climate in three decades’ time to that of Barcelona today, according to research – but if that seems enticing, a warning: the change could be accompanied by severe drought.Madrid will feel like present-day Marrakech by 2050, and Stockholm like Budapest, according to a report on the likely impacts of the climate crisis. Around the world, cities that are currently in temperate or cold zones in the northern hemisphere will resemble cities more than 600 miles (1,000km) closer to the equator, with damaging effects on health and infrastructure. Continue reading...

The closer the prospect of disaster becomes, the less the government manages to doThe difference between speed limits and speed cameras is that speed cameras work. They arouse fear and frustration, but they are in the end obeyed. Speed limits, on the other hand, are generally treated as moralistic exhortations which no one ought to take literally. The distinction between exhortation and enforcement is fundamental to understanding what governments intend when they announce a policy; and the latest report to parliament of the government’s Committee on Climate Change makes it clear that the government’s commitment to mitigating the effects of the climate emergency is still very much at the stage of announcing speed limits: targets and exhortations without any enforcement or real effects on behaviour. As a result, there is a smashup coming. A global rise of 4C in mean temperature is equivalent to the entire rise in temperature since the last ice age, and whereas the preceding rise was spread out over 10,000 years, this one will be a compressed into a century.The committee’s language is remarkably blunt: “Targets do not themselves reduce emissions”, the report says – any more than speed limit signs make drivers slow down – but even the targets are badly placed; “There are no areas where the government is planning properly”; and, from the former chairman of the Conservative party, Lord Deben, “the whole thing is run by the government like Dad’s Army … this ramshackle system … doesn’t begin to face the issues. It is a real threat to the population.” Continue reading...

Virgin Galactic | Headlines | Women’s tennis | Saw joke | Bull run | IzalI was surprised to find no mention in your report (Floating into space: Branson reveals plans to list Virgin Galactic on stock exchange, 10 July) of the environmental costs of using a huge aircraft and a rocket ship to give super-rich clients a few minutes in space. How many hard-working families do we need to persuade to give up their annual holiday in the sun to offset the carbon footprint of one of Branson’s flights of fancy?

Remains discovered on Mani peninsula could rewrite history of Homo sapiens in EurasiaA broken skull chiselled from a lump of rock in a cave in Greece is the oldest modern human fossil ever found outside Africa, researchers claim.The partial skull was discovered in the Apidima cave on the Mani peninsula of the southern Peloponnese and has been dated to be at least 210,000 years old. Continue reading...

This retelling of the Neil Armstrong story has been eclipsed by superior studies of his historic lunar missionThis Neil Armstrong documentary feels like unrequired viewing coming so soon after two cracking moon landing movies: Damien Chazelle’s First Man, a character study correcting the myth of Armstrong as a surly recluse, and Apollo 11, the thrilling documentary made with colour footage of the mission found at the back of a filing cabinet at Nasa. By contrast with the latter film, Armstrong looks made for TV, filled with good ol’ boys from Nasa – elderly white men every one of them, who you suspect are still pining for the days of American life when men were men and women waited by the phone in headscarves.Armstrong was an Ohio farm boy who grew up obsessed with airplanes and got his pilot’s licence before he could drive. He flew fighter planes in the Korean war; it gave him character and backbone, he said. It also acquainted him with death. As a civilian test pilot and later on Project Apollo, he risked his life and lost colleagues. Tragically, his daughter Karen died from a brain tumour, aged two. The film features upsetting home movie footage of Karen at home, her balance impaired, desperately unwell. Watching it, you realise how Chazelle prettified her illness in First Man. Continue reading...

From archaeologists to office workers, people feel the need to accompany hard work with a grunt. But why do they do it?When the umpire at Wimbledon calls out “quiet, please”, a religious hush falls over the court. The only things that break the silence are the gentle pop of a bouncing tennis ball, the faint murmur of the crowd, and the passionate grunting of the players.Related: What can science tell us about grunting in tennis? Continue reading...

The Guardian photographer Christopher Thomond went to the opening events at the 161st Great Yorkshire show in Harrogate, a three-day showcase of British farming and the countryside Continue reading...

It all started with a man called Bill Kaysing and his pamphlet about ‘America’s $30bn swindle’ ...It took 400,000 Nasa employees and contractors to put Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon in 1969 – but only one man to spread the idea that it was all a hoax. His name was Bill Kaysing.It began as “a hunch, an intuition”, before turning into “a true conviction” – that the US lacked the technical prowess to make it to the moon (or, at least, to the moon and back). Kaysing had actually contributed to the US space programme, albeit tenuously: between 1956 and 1963, he was an employee of Rocketdyne, a company that helped to design the Saturn V rocket engines. In 1976, he self-published a pamphlet called We Never Went to the Moon: America’s Thirty Billion Dollar Swindle, which sought evidence for his conviction by means of grainy photocopies and ludicrous theories. Yet somehow he established a few perennials that are kept alive to this day in Hollywood movies and Fox News documentaries, Reddit forums and YouTube channels. Continue reading...

In Namibia a country of meat-lovers, vital expertise is needed to stop livestock spreading diseasesWreathed in barbecue smoke, Vetjaera Haakuria gestures at the men butchering meat and cooking it over hot coals behind his back. “What have you learned about the risks of eating this?” he asks his young audience, spotless in their white lab coats. “It might contain drug residues, right? And what about diseases?”It’s nearly noon in Windhoek, Namibia’s capital, and the market is preparing grilled meat – known locally as kapana – for the lunchtime rush. Everyone comes here, from construction workers to members of parliament. Namibians love to eat meat, and he is no exception: his tribe, the Herero, traditionally eat nothing else. Continue reading...

Splitting a firm’s audit and consulting functions has merit but only large penalties will affect proper change

The way we walk is very efficient, but runners’ bent-arm bias is not so straightforwardIt is a question that perhaps only a scientist would ask and try to answer: why do we walk with straight arms but run with them bent?Months after the conundrum struck Andrew Yegian as he strolled across campus at Harvard, he has part of the answer. Continue reading...

Animals can distinguish between happy and sad calls and have different reactionsThey are known for gobbling socks from washing lines and for their fearsome headbutting capabilities but the rich emotional life of goats may have been underestimated.Scientists have found that goats are able to distinguish emotions from each other’s calls and also respond to the feelings of their peers, a phenomenon known as emotional contagion. Continue reading...

It’s hard not to wonder how things like jobs and relationships might have turned out differently had I been medicated all alongIn retrospect, the signs were there all along. Difficulty concentrating, especially on things that didn’t interest me. Awful short-term memory. A complete inability to keep track of time. Lack of emotional self-control. And so on.Nevertheless, it took 40 years before someone realised that I might have ADHD. That person was my psychologist, who I started seeing after a particularly rough patch in life involving a relationship breakup, the loss of both parents, and losing the job that had kept me in New York for most of the 2010s. Back in Australia, with a lack of both direction and motivation, I found that it was harder than ever to concentrate – less than ideal for a writer who’s found himself newly marooned in the self-directed world of freelancing. Continue reading...

GCSE science | Carry On films | Apt surnames | Clueless crosswords | Not enough womenThe idea that a state school can “scrap” GCSE chemistry because “the lab is expensive to maintain” (Letters, 8 July) is mistaken. All state secondary schools in England are required to teach science (biology, chemistry and physics) as a core subject leading to a national qualification. All three science subjects must be studied. Maybe the writer, like me, is remembering those days 50 years ago when my grammar school allowed students to just take biology on the grounds that it was easy!

Researchers say one invention could solve two problems for people lacking basic resourcesA device that can produce electricity from sunlight while simultaneously purifying water has been produced by researchers, an invention they say could solve two problems in one stroke.The researchers say the device is not only a source of green energy but also offers an alternative to current technologies for purifying water. These, they add, often consume large amounts of electricity and require infrastructure beyond the reach of many communities that lack basic access to safe drinking water – a situation thought to affect more than 780 million people worldwide. Continue reading...

Cairo calls on international police agency to find head sold to unknown buyer for £4.7mEgypt is planning to sue over the sale at Christie’s auction house in London of a 3,000-year-old Tutankhamun sculpture that may have been looted from a Luxor temple – and has called on Interpol to intervene.The 28.5cm brown quartzite head was part of a statue of the ancient god Amun with the facial features of the young pharaoh Tutankhamun, who ruled Egypt between 1333BC and 1323BC. Similar statues were carved for the Temple of Karnak in the city of Thebes, now Luxor. Continue reading...

Thwaites glacier is likely to thaw and trigger 50cm sea level rise, US study suggestsAntarctica faces a tipping point where glacial melting will accelerate and become irreversible even if global heating eases, research suggests.A Nasa-funded study found instability in the Thwaites glacier meant there would probably come a point when it was impossible to stop it flowing into the sea and triggering a 50cm sea level rise. Other Antarctic glaciers were likely to be similarly unstable. Continue reading...

Deal will help fund venture until its spaceships can operate commercially and make profitThe billionaire space race has reached a new frontier after Sir Richard Branson announced plans to list Virgin Galactic as a public company on the New York stock exchange.The Virgin tycoon is vying with SpaceX, founded by Tesla chief executive Elon Musk, and Blue Origin, owned by Amazon boss Jeff Bezos, to be the first business to provide commercial passenger flights in space. Continue reading...

What did you do in the climate wars Daddy?

COin bedrooms and offices may affect cognition and cause kidney and bone problems

A sulphur-crested cockatoo named Snowball garnered YouTube fame and headlines a decade ago for his uncanny ability to dance to the beat of the Backstreet Boys. Now, researchers reporting in Current Biology are back with evidence that Snowball is not limited in his dance moves. Despite a lack of dance training, videos show, Snowball responds to music with diverse and spontaneous movements using various parts of his body Continue reading...

New study of Snowball the prancing parrot points to bird at peak of his creative powers

Mandla Maseko, a DJ who won the chance to be the first black African in space, has died in a motorbike accidentA South African man who won the chance to be the first black African in space has died in a motorbike crash before turning his dream into reality.Mandla Maseko, a part-time DJ and candidate officer with the South African air force, was nicknamed “Afronaut” after landing a coveted seat to fly 103km (64 miles) into space in 2013 in a competition organised by a US-based space academy. Continue reading...

This week the planet is in opposition – its closest to Earth all year

Sperm counts in western men are falling, and nobody is sure why. But relax – because help is here, with everything from home-testing kits to sperm-freezingLads, lads, lads, hate to interrupt, but how’s your ejaculate? Would you struggle to fill half a teaspoon? And your concentration, please: are we talking 20m-plus little swimmers a millilitre? And how’s that motility? Are your spermatozoa wagging their flagella as if they can’t wait to get to that ovum – or listlessly floating around like dead tadpoles in a poorly executed classroom experiment? It’s not that embarrassing, surely?If you are hoping to fertilise a human egg someday and haven’t given much thought to these matters … well, Big Sperm reckons it is time you did. A wave of tech startups, such as ExSeed, Yo, Trak and Legacy, are offering next-generation home sperm-testing technology and – in some cases – sperm-freezing services. And even if British men aren’t quite ready to start comparing their fertility concerns yet, these are clearly lurking at the back of many minds. Continue reading...

Unesco recognises Cheshire home of Lovell telescope for contribution to astronomical researchJodrell Bank Observatory in Cheshire, which has been at the forefront of astronomical research for decades, has been added to the Unesco world heritage list.The observatory, which is owned by the University of Manchester, joins historic sites such as Stonehenge, Machu Picchu, the Great Wall of China and the Taj Mahal on the list. Continue reading...

Developing countries must prepare now for profound impact, disaster representative saysClimate crisis disasters are happening at the rate of one a week, though most draw little international attention and work is urgently needed to prepare developing countries for the profound impacts, the UN has warned.Catastrophes such as cyclones Idai and Kenneth in Mozambique and the drought afflicting India make headlines around the world. But large numbers of “lower impact events” that are causing death, displacement and suffering are occurring much faster than predicted, said Mami Mizutori, the UN secretary-general’s special representative on disaster risk reduction. “This is not about the future, this is about today.” Continue reading...

The doctor, geneticist and author talks about his new book on the future of our relationship with medicineEric Topol is an American cardiologist and geneticist – among his many roles he is founder and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute in California. He has previously published two books on the potential for big data and tech to transform medicine, with his third, Deep Medicine, looking at the role that artificial intelligence might play. He has served on the advisory boards of many healthcare companies, and last year published a report into how the NHS needs to change if it is to embrace digital advances.Your field is cardiology – what makes you tick as a doctor?

As Saturn’s moon Titan becomes Nasa’s latest destination, we look at other probes the agency is boldly sending forthAs announced last month, Nasa is sending a drone named the Dragonfly to explore Saturn’s largest moon, Titan. Part of their New Frontiers programme to explore the solar system’s biochemical relationships, the Dragonfly is scheduled to launch in 2026 and arrive at the icy moon in 2034. Development costs have peaked at $850m. Titan has “all the ingredients for life”, says Lori Glaze, director of Nasa’s planetary science division. Continue reading...

As the 50th anniversary of the first Apollo landing approaches, a host of countries are undertaking lunar missions. What’s behind the new space race?At 2.51am on Monday 15 July, engineers at India’s national spaceport at Sriharikota will blast their Chandrayaan-2 probe into orbit around the Earth. It will be the most ambitious space mission the nation has attempted. For several days, the four-tonne spacecraft will be manoeuvred above our planet before a final injection burn of its engines will send it hurtling towards its destination: the moon.Exactly 50 years after the astronauts of Apollo 11 made their historic voyage to the Sea of Tranquillity, Chandrayaan-2 will repeat that journey – though on a slightly different trajectory. After the robot craft enters lunar orbit, it will gently drop a lander, named Vikram, on to the moon’s surface near its south pole. A robot rover, Pragyan, will then be dispatched and, for the next two weeks, trundle across the local terrain, analysing the chemical composition of soil and rocks. Continue reading...

If the word is spread too thinly, it will cease to be such a powerful tool to educate and empower womenAll women need the term “gaslighting”. Well, all people really. Rebecca Humphries didn’t even realise that she needed it until she was cheated on by the comedian Seann Walsh in the 2018 Strictly Come Dancing scandal.She’d had suspicions but, as she wrote at the time, Walsh “aggressively and repeatedly called me psycho/nuts/mental, as he had done countless times… when I’ve questioned his inappropriate and hurtful behaviour”. When her friend mentioned gaslighting, it was a relief to know that there was a term to describe her experience. Humphries, who has just spoken at the House of Commons about coercive control, says that single word gave her the vindication and courage she needed. Continue reading...

I was nervous about inheriting a family condition – which helped me understand our brains and the direction lives takeOne stifling day at the beginning of the long, hot summer of 2018, I sat in the waiting room at my GP’s surgery. Outside it was dazzlingly bright, but inside the fluorescent lights were still humming. A buoyant doctor strode out and called my name. I took hold of my two-year-old son’s hand and we followed her down the corridor into a small room where she took a sample of my blood. The vial contained thousands of white blood cells. Hidden inside each one was my DNA, the 3.2bn-lettered code unique to every human being that is the blueprint for life.My son and I were at hospital because my father had been diagnosed with haemochromatosis, an inherited condition in which iron levels slowly build up in the body. Eventually the excess iron begins to damage internal organs and, if left untreated, it can lead to heart disease, diabetes and cirrhosis of the liver. Thankfully, in my father’s case, the organ damage was not too far advanced, but because the condition had gone undiagnosed for decades he now has to undergo weekly bloodlettings. This treatment, while intrusive, means he is otherwise in good health. A happy outcome for him and those of us who love him. Continue reading...

This month sees the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission, landing the first man on the moon. As the Observer’s science editor Robin McKie looks ahead to the future of manned spaceflight, we look back at how, in 1969, mankind viewed that giant leap Continue reading...