Plastic pollution has entered the fossil record, research shows

Users of Zao can now add themselves into the scenes of their favourite movies. But is our desire to insert ourselves into everything putting our privacy at risk?‘You oughta be in pictures,” goes the 1934 Rudy Vallée song. And, as of last week, pretty much anyone can be. The entry requirements for being a star fell dramatically thanks to the launch, in China, of a face-swapping app that can decant users into film and TV clips.Zao, which has quickly become China’s most downloaded free app, fuses the face in the original clip with your features. All that is required is a single selfie and the man or woman in the street is transformed into a star of the mobile screen, if not quite the silver one. In other words, anyone who yearns to be part of Titanic or Game of Thrones, The Big Bang Theory or the latest J-Pop sensation can now bypass the audition and go straight to the limelight without all that pesky hard work, talent and dedication. A whole new generation of synthetic movie idols could be unleashed upon the world: a Humphrey Bogus, a Phony Curtis, a Fake Dunaway. Continue reading...

London gallery intended as celebration of what it means to be human in 21st century

Factory farming sucks up money and pollutes rural communities in swing states like Iowa

Value of European agriculture could fall 16% in 30 years due to drought and higher rainfallAny advantages to European agriculture from a warming world will be outweighed by the losses from extreme events and environmental stress, leading to a probable large economic loss for farming in the next 30 years, research on the impacts of the climate crisis has found.While some have pointed to longer growing seasons and a wider range of crops becoming viable in northern Europe as benefits from temperature rises, the effects on rainfall and extreme conditions mean farming is already suffering. Continue reading...

Why didn’t a traffic-light scheme stop the recent fracking-induced tremors near Blackpool?In theory, the chances of your house being shaken by a fracking-related earthquake are incredibly slim. In the UK, a traffic-light system is designed to minimise the risk of larger quakes occurring, with fracking halted if a tremor of magnitude 0.5ML (local magnitude) or above is recorded. So last week’s 2.1- and 2.9-magnitude fracking-related tremors near Blackpool came as a surprise, given a “red-light” 1.55-magnitude quake had occurred the previous Wednesday, and fracking at Cuadrilla’s Preston New Road site had been suspended.“It suggests that the traffic-light scheme, even with what seemed like a conservative limit of [magnitude] 0.5, might not be appropriate,” says Stephen Hicks, a seismologist at Imperial College London. Trials in Finland have shown traffic-light schemes can help prevent quakes, so why didn’t it work on this occasion? Continue reading...

Nobody argues that science is perfect, but it has been an essential part of making us what we areThere will always be people who call for additional review or scrutiny of science when the results of a rigorous process don’t yield the outcomes they want. Effectively they want incontrovertible evidence, and anything less is unacceptable to them. Incontrovertible evidence is rare in science, so it is easy to pick some cherry and use it to seed controversy and delay action.History shows how effective the strategy has been. It also shows why the notion of the precautionary principle is so important. The principle requires that precautionary measures should be taken if the risk or threats of harm to (say) the environment are significant. It can mean taking action in the face of uncertainty. But when the available evidence is developed through a rigorous scientific process (and especially when it draws on multiple lines of evidence), suitable precautionary actions can be introduced with confidence. Continue reading...

ESA say its Aeolus Earth observation satellite fired thrusters to avoid crashThe European Space Agency has said it altered the trajectory of one of its observation satellites to avoid a collision with a craft operated by Elon Musk’s SpaceX.“@ESA’s Aeolus Earth observation satellite fired its thrusters, moving it off a collision course with a @SpaceX satellite in their Starlink constellation,” the agency’s Twitter account said. Continue reading...

Drink more water, say experts as they argue study proves need for curbs on consumption

US woman Eunice Foote only now receiving credit for first identifying greenhouse effectThis year marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Eunice Foote, a pioneer in climate research of whom few people have heard. She showed that water vapour and carbon dioxide helped to heat Earth’s atmosphere, and realised that when the atmosphere had higher levels of carbon dioxide it made the climate much warmer.

As a breast cancer survivor, I understand the grip of fear. But the best thing is to talk to a doctor then make your own choicesIt was hard to avoid the story, late last week: “Breast cancer risk from using HRT is twice what was thought,” it warned. I read it, because as someone who’s experienced breast cancer I’m always interested in the latest news about it.The new research doesn’t apply to me: I wasn’t taking HRT when I was diagnosed aged 51, and like most breast cancer survivors, HRT isn’t an option for me now. The latest news is about the risks being higher than previously believed, but researchers have long known there’s a link. In fact it would be remarkable if that wasn’t the case, since for so many women, me included, breast cancer is connected to hormones, which HRT is all about. Continue reading...

Volunteers in Salvador’s favelas are collecting data on deadly infections and inequality to help campaign for better sanitationWearing crisp, white T-shirts and carrying tablets, the students fan out through Marechal Rondon – a bustling favela spread over hillsides and a valley in Brazil’s north-eastern city of Salvador. As they walk, they map blocked drains and piles of rubbish on their tablets. These are the “infection points” that attract the rats and mosquitoes which, in turn, spread diseases like leptospirosis and the Zika virus, both prevalent here.Student Alexandre Santos, 20, stops before a weigh-high tangle of wild plants overlooking a housing block. “We look at sewers, rubble, garbage. Now there is high vegetation,” Santos says, tapping in the data. “It goes straight into the data bank.” Continue reading...

A simple treatment to stave off the health problems of old age could be available in five to 12 years. Here’s how it would work

Purveyors of disinformation can be caught out by the particular words they use, according to new researchThe internet represents the biggest explosion of data in human history. There’s more out there, and more access to it than ever before. The information ecosystem is a bit like a tropical rainforest: luxuriant, dense and fiercely competitive. As such, it contains its fair share of predators and poisonous plants.Deliberately misleading articles, websites and social media posts can come about for lots of different reasons: they might be trying to influence elections or policies; they might represent a form of cyberwarfare between states; they might be aimed at raising someone’s profile and influence, or discrediting their opponents. Or they might simply be about making money, relying on the attention-grabbing nature of outrageous lies to generate ad revenue, as in the case of the “digital gold rush” that saw a small Macedonian town register more than 150 pro-Trump websites during the 2016 presidential race. Continue reading...

Research led by Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, will help crops resist global heatingThe discovery of a gene in barley responsible for drought resistance will help future-proof crops against some of the effects of climate change, scientists believe.Researchers spent nearly five years isolating the specific gene – HvMYB1 – from more than 39,000 genes in barley. Tests proved that plants in which the gene is more prominently expressed are better able to survive drought. Continue reading...

As the moon passes its first quarter phase this week, it will share the sky with the two largest planets in the Solar SystemAt the beginning of this week, keep a watch out for a young moon. The lunar month began on 30 August, and from tonight it should be relatively easy to see a thin crescent moon. It will appear low in the west shortly after sunset. Find an unobstructed western horizon, preferably on a hill, or the top of a building, and start looking as soon as the sun disappears below the horizon. As the week progresses, the moon becomes easier to spot as the crescent grows in size and it appears higher in the sky at dusk. On 5 September, the moon will pass close to the bright planet of Jupiter in the south-west. As the weekend begins, the moon will continue to grow, passing its “half moon” first quarter phase on 6 September. It then heads for a close encounter with Saturn on 6 and 7 September. The chart shows the positions of Jupiter, Saturn and the moon on 6 September, when the moon is partway between the two planets. Continue reading...

The medical community have known for a century that women are living in constant pain. They’ve done nothing about itIt’s frustrating to have questions that don’t get answered. It’s altogether disturbing to find out that those questions haven’t even been asked.When I was diagnosed with endometriosis at age 23, I didn’t know enough to ask the right questions. I assumed my gynaecologist had all the answers, and listened carefully to his thoughtful explanations. I thought I knew it all. Or at least that he knew it all. But I was wrong. Continue reading...

Staying alcohol-free at social events can be daunting, but be open to the new experience and own itThe most recent survey on adult drinking habits in Great Britain found that as of 2015, 29% of 16- to 24-year-olds do not drink alcohol – an increase of 18% from 2005. With so many young people abstaining from drinking altogether, there has concurrently been a rise in the “sober-curious” movement, as coined by author Ruby Warrington in her 2019 book of the same name. Continue reading...

An unusual astronaut is at the centre of a new exhibition of art and scientific artefacts designed to make us think about everything from our personal lives to the fate of humanity itself“It’s hard to think of a greater challenge to our future health than environmental breakdown,” says Clare Barlow, project curator of Wellcome Collection’s newest gallery. Opening on Thursday 5 September, Being Human is a new permanent exhibit that explores trust, hope and fear, identity and health in the 21st century through four sections: genetics, minds and bodies, infection and environmental breakdown.The space, which for 12 years housed Medicine Now, has been redesigned with reclaimed wood panelling and warm colours by the Turner prize-winning arts and architecture collective Assemble. The exhibition “explores our relationship with ourselves, with each other and with the world around us”, Barlow says. Each of the four sections asks a different question. “With minds and bodies the question is, why do we sometimes act like we value some lives more than others? With environmental breakdown, we ask why it’s so hard for us to act on climate change, when its effects are already here. And with that, the question of how we’re reacting to what’s being lost and how we see ourselves living in the future.” Continue reading...

The Canadian writer made his name bringing intellectual sparkle to everyday subjects, and his new book - about how strangers interact with each other - is no exceptionIn the flesh, Malcolm Gladwell is exactly as I imagined him to be: engaging, polite, dauntingly cerebral and supremely self-assured in that way that the exceptionally gifted often are. At 55, there is still something of the sporty, if slightly gawky, teenager about him; his jeans and a lightweight hoody accentuate his height and wiry thinness. The signature afro has been tamed somewhat and, if anything, makes him look even younger. He is not big on small talk, and one senses that every hour in his working day is geared towards maximum efficiency.Gladwell’s new book is called Talking to Strangers and, here we are, two strangers, conversing over tea in a fashionable Covent Garden hotel about the difficulties that can sometimes arise when, as he puts it, “we are thrown into contact with people whose assumptions, perspectives and backgrounds are different from our own”. Like the previous bestselling books that made his name – The Tipping Point (2000), Blink (2005), Outliers (2008) – Talking to Strangers is essentially an exploration of human behaviour that also challenges much of our received wisdom about that behaviour and its motivations. Unlike them, though, it lacks a single iconoclastic, zeitgeist-defining idea, instead roaming far and wide to illustrate the problems, individual and collective, personal and ideological, that dog our interactions with others in our globalised, but increasingly atomised, culture. “Any element which disrupts the equilibrium between two strangers, whether it is alcohol or power or place, becomes problematic,” he tells me. “The book is really about those disruptive influences.” Continue reading...

Countries must join forces and sign a peace treaty or space will become a war-fighting domainThe thought of Donald Trump as space commander-in-chief, whizzing around the Milky Way, zapping alien invaders and conquering new worlds, is both comical and terrifying. Before they began exchanging love letters, the US president ridiculed his North Korean counterpart, Kim Jong-un, as “little rocket man”. With his relaunch last week of US space command (SpaceCom), terrestrial Trump has appropriated the title for himself.While this may be a big step for the man in the White House, it’s a giant leap backwards for mankind. Fresh from his bungled attempt to expand America’s frontiers by buying Greenland, Trump is now suggesting the US has a right to colonise outer space, treating it as a free-fire zone for unlimited superpower competition in “the next war-fighting domain”. Trump has watched too many repeats of Independence Day. The universe does not belong to America. Continue reading...

Taking time out is crucial. Don’t fill up your whole day and you can kickstart a new sense of rhythmMachines work well at a constant speed – and the faster the better. They are designed and built for it. Whether they are spinning cotton or crunching numbers, regular, repetitive actions are what they excel at. Increasingly, our world is designed by machines, for machines. Digital technology brings them ever more intimately into our lives. We hold our phones in the palm of our hand, but it is they that have us in their grasp. We adapt to machines and hold ourselves to their standards: people are judged by the speed with which they respond, not the quality of their response. We find ourselves in a state of “continuous partial attention” – rarely stopping, never fully present. Such ideas are being woven into our culture. “Always on” becomes something to boast of, or aspire to. The moral high ground belongs to those who get on with things, not those who “delay”.Most of us are busy most of the time, if not with work then with family, domestic tasks or our social networks – real and virtual. When I ask people how they are, they almost always answer “busy” or some variation of it. Busy-ness is high status. We feel we are being “sensible, logical, responsible, practical”. Ticking things off the “to do” list becomes a means of defining, or escaping ourselves. Faced with that anxiety we try to keep calm by carrying on, but what are we missing out on? Continue reading...

Asteroids and space debris could wreak untold devastation on the planetNext year, Nasa will launch what all involved hope will be the most impactful space mission to date. The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (Dart) is designed to smash headlong into its target. It’s an attempt to deflect an asteroid as a test of what to do if we spot a similar space rock on a collision course with our planet.It’s hardly news we want to hear at a time of so many domestic problems, but the threat from near-Earth asteroids is just one of a string of dangers that the planet and its technology are facing from space. Explosions on the sun create “space weather” that can play havoc with our satellites and other electrical systems, while the growing amount of space debris imperils the satellites that we all invisibly rely on. Continue reading...

Joan’s Hole, Stourport-on-Severn, Worcestershire: An extended campfire yarn unfurls around some unusual-looking fungiFruit has just started falling in the damson orchard. We can’t help squashing those that lie on the narrow paths to the rusting shepherd’s hut that’s home for a few days. There’s no phone signal, no wifi, and we’ve eschewed the camp stove in favour of the outdoor fireplace. Smoke coiling into the evening air wards off the gnats and midges while the potatoes nestle in the embers.I’ve just started boiling the eggs when my son returns from the woodpile with an expression of blended revulsion and puzzlement, and holds out a log on which are arrayed what look at first glance like a row of large turds, though on closer inspection they are more like carbonised doughballs. They’re brittle and almost weightless and, cracked open, they reveal growth rings – matryoshka layers of charcoal and silver, ball within ball within ball. A copious dusting of spores escapes to coat fingers, clothes and the logs we’re perched on. Continue reading...

New space command reveals fears over vulnerability of superpowers’ satellitesDonald Trump’s declaration that space represents “the next warfighting domain” comes at a time when nervous superpowers are taking an idea that once belonged to the realms of fiction increasingly seriously.US military briefings leading to Trump’s formal announcement of a new, separate space command argued that “an emergent China and a resurgent Russia” have eroded what Washington traditionally believed was an arena it could dominate. Continue reading...

Experts produce clusters of enamel-like calcium phosphate to crack age-old problemScientists say they have finally cracked the problem of repairing tooth enamel.Though enamel is the hardest tissue in the body, it cannot self-repair. Now scientists have discovered a method by which its complex structure can be reproduced and the enamel essentially “grown” back. Continue reading...

Same sex attraction isn’t genetic. It’s humanThe argument that some behaviour is “in our genes” is distrusted by the left. Too often it is used to whitewash terrible injustices. Yet it cannot be entirely dismissed. Certain patterns of behaviour and thought, such as the faculty of language acquisition, are very clearly a part of our genetic inheritance as a species. The instinct for justice itself appears to arise spontaneously in small children. The escape from the idea that genes determine our fate is not to pretend that they have no influence, but to come to understand that they can have many different, often conflicting influences, even within the same people and certainly within populations. This is true both of their effects on behaviour and on bodies.Biology is a science that deals with variations. There is no one perfect type of a species. Diversity, in this sense, is not just something to aim at but something necessary for a population to flourish. The idea that natural selection works only on mutations is a deeply misleading oversimplification. It is much more likely to alter the proportions of an already existing mixture of genes. What is more, game theory shows that the balance of advantage will shift as a result of the shift in a gene’s frequency. With very few exceptions, such as the change that Noam Chomsky postulates makes possible the complexity of human syntax, few mutations are going to be so overwhelmingly advantageous that they drive out all other variants. More often, if any one variation becomes dominant, there will be an advantage for its opposite. “Normal” is thus a shifting, fuzzy category. Continue reading...

Below-inflation pay rises have left staff with 13% real-terms wage cut since 2010, says unionStaff at Science Museum sites across England have begun a 24-hour strike in protest over low pay.The action comes after the group’s directors refused to increase a below inflation 1.5% pay rise offered to more than 75% of staff this year. Continue reading...

Gender norms imprison us all, dictating our behaviour for fear of abuse – and that extends to who we sleep or fall in love withIt turns out that genetics is almost as complicated as love and sex. New research has shown that the long fabled “gay gene” does not exist; that a variety of different genes contribute to same-sex attraction, and that several other factors are in the mix too.For many LGBTQ people – myself included – the very notion of this study sets off big queer alarm bells, though it should be noted researchers worked closely with LGBTQ groups. As early as 1993, the Daily Mail – and mock it all you like, it’s one of the country’s main newspapers – published an article under the headline “Abortion hope after ‘gay genes’ findings”. In the age of supposed “designer babies”, what if the hatefully inclined chose to make sure their unborn child wasn’t gay or bisexual? Continue reading...

Do you know what noise a hungry sea anemone makes? Soundscape ecologist Bernie Krause does. Armed with over 5,000 hours of recordings, he takes Ian Sample on a journey through the natural world and demonstrates why sound is a powerful tool for conservationFirst broadcast on 15 June 2018Do you know what noise a hungry sea anemone makes? This is one of the 15,000 species that the soundscape ecologist Dr Bernie Krause has recorded. For half a century, Bernie has travelled the world recording the noise of nature. His collection is one of the oldest that exists and as a result it is a hugely valuable tool in documenting how we’ve changed our planet. For example, when Bernie returned to some sites, the environment has changed so dramatically that it had fallen silent.

Over the past few hundred years in the UK all compass needles have pointed west of true northAt some point over the next two weeks, compasses at Greenwich will point true north for the first time in about 360 years.And for some parts of the UK, this may not happen for another 20 years. Either way, it is a once-in-a-lifetime event. Continue reading...

Donald Trump has said the newly formed US Space Command will 'defend America's vital interests in space, the next war-fighting domain'. Speaking at a ceremony in Washington, Trump said Space Command would protect US satellites orbiting the planet and detect missile launches abroad, and would be followed by the establishment of the Space Force, 'the sixth branch of the United States armed forces'. Creating a new military branch still requires congressional approval and the matter has met with skepticism from both Democrats and Republicans

Individual action can’t fight climate crisis. These Americans know we need a collective responseLast fall, as I landed in New Orleans, a seed of existential anxiety lodged itself deep in my gut. It was my fifth flight in just over a week. I was in the middle of a tour to promote a book on how coastal communities around the US were already responding to the climate crisis in surprising, often radical ways. Outside, the bayou shimmered below, the city itself barely distinguishable from the water that surrounds it. I could see the landscape that my air travel would play a role in diminishing – the additional CO2 in the atmosphere melting Arctic sea ice and Antarctic glaciers, causing sea levels to rise. What am I doing here? I wondered.Related: Welcome to the US, Greta. With your help we can save the planet and ourselves | Rebecca Solnit Continue reading...

Shutting parliament is the latest wheeze from the trigger-happy Vote Leavers in power. Don’t buy into their politics of divisionWhat did you feel? Maybe it was anger, fury, fear. Perhaps it was excitement, hope, a certain thrill. It is unlikely that you experienced the announcement of parliament’s prorogation in purely cerebral, intellectual terms: it is hard to remain numb in the face of such drama. We are emotional beings and the emotions we felt were entirely natural and human. There is nothing wrong with them.But in all likelihood, whatever you felt was precisely what you were expected to feel. For the people in No 10 care only that you felt something. And they will be delighted with their latest wheeze, which has already served its purpose: to create outrage and entrench opinion. The ferocity of the reaction is all part of the plan. It is time for those of us who are opposed to it to become smarter and wiser in how we deal with all this. Continue reading...

President detailed operations in ceremony, including defending against Chinese and Russian anti-satellite weapons, and promised space force will soon follow

Study prompts medicines regulator to advise all women using HRT to remain vigilantThe risk of breast cancer from using hormone replacement therapy is double what was previously thought, according to a major piece of research, which confirms that HRT is a direct cause of the cancer.The findings of the definitive study will cause concern among the 1 million women in the UK and millions more around the world who are using HRT. It finds that the longer women take it, the greater their risk, with the possibility that just one year is risk-free. It also finds that the risk does not go away as soon as women stop taking it, as had been previously assumed. Continue reading...

Many genetic variants each play role in homosexual behaviour, study findsA vast new study has quashed the idea that a single “gay gene” exists, scientists say, instead finding homosexual behaviour is influenced by a multitude of genetic variants which each have a tiny effect.The researchers compare the situation to factors determining a person’s height, in which multiple genetic and environmental factors play roles. Continue reading...

Astronauts will no longer be able to urinate on bus that picks them up for launchRussia has unveiled a new space suit but the design may have to be changed to continue a decades-old tradition – making a stop to pee on the way to the launch.The Sokol-M prototype suit was designed as a replacement for suits worn during launches to the International Space Station (ISS) on Soyuz spacecraft. Continue reading...

Experts believe the children were sacrificed by the Chimú culture to appease the El Niño phenomenonArchaeologists excavating what is thought to be the world’s largest child sacrifice site have unearthed the skeletons of 227 young victims in the coastal desert of northern Peru.Teams have been digging since last year at the sacrificial site in Huanchaco, a beachside tourist town close to Trujillo, Peru’s third largest city. Continue reading...

‘Iconic’ finding of 3.8m-year-old fossil in Ethiopia casts doubt on previous evolutionary theoryThe face of the oldest species that unambiguously sits on the human evolutionary tree has been revealed for the first time by the discovery of a 3.8 million-year-old skull in Ethiopia.The fossil belongs to an ancient hominin, Australopithecus anamensis, believed to be the direct ancestor of the famous “Lucy” species, Australopithecus afarensis. It dates back to a time when our ancestors were emerging from the trees to walk on two legs, but still had distinctly ape-like protruding faces, powerful jaws and small brains, and is the oldest-known member of the Australopithecus group. Continue reading...

This documentary on the pleasurable highs and puritanical prejudices around cannabis use was lively and educational – even when its presenter got the munchiesIt is the best and the worst time to have a documentary that requires you to balance two contradictory thoughts in your head; we are out of practice. We are a bit too mono, in everything, these days. But the latest instalment of the flagship science show Horizon, presented by the wisely chosen Javid Abdelmoneim – a doctor who wears his intelligence lightly and always looks to take the audience with him – encourages us to do so.In Cannabis: Medical Miracle or Dangerous Drug? (BBC Two), Abdelmoneim disentangles the facts-so-far from the myths that have grown up around cannabis – and, since legislation changed last year, the over-the-counter products that contain it – with a view to discovering where he, as a doctor, should stand. Continue reading...

Average consumption down nearly a quarter since 2011, researchers find

As the Indian government loosens its prescription opioid laws after decades of lobbying, the cash-fed healthcare system is ripe for misuseIn the crowded waiting room of Dr Sunil Sagar’s clinic, in the working-class neighborhood of Bhagwanpur Khera, a toddler breathes from a nebulizer. The patients sit, motionless, but there is somehow tremendous noise. The clinic is a squat cement building draped in wires, a red cross on the door. Sagar sits behind a desk in a small, open room, as a squad of assistants escort patients to him. Continue reading...

In a system stacked against women, we must direct our harshest judgment at people and institutions who remain silent

Exclusive: Panel head Ian Chubb compares ‘roadshow of Dr Ridd’ to tobacco industry strategy defending smokingAn expert panel led by the former chief scientist Ian Chubb has warned ministers that controversial scientist Peter Ridd is misrepresenting robust science about the plight of the Great Barrier Reef, and compared his claims to the strategy used by the tobacco industry to raise doubt about the impact of smoking.The warning, in a letter to the federal environment minister, Sussan Ley, and the Queensland premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, follows Ridd launching a lecture tour in which he has repeated his claim that farmland pollution does not significantly damage the natural wonder. Continue reading...

From new employee entitlements to soap opera storylines, older women’s health needs a bigger profileConnected as it is with ageing, it is not surprising that the menopause has a bad reputation. Even for women who have generally found their periods to be a nuisance, the cessation of the monthly cycle of egg production often comes as a shock. As well as the psychological impact of what used to euphemistically be called “the change”, the menopause brings with it symptoms for which a lot of women find themselves alarmingly unprepared – as many readers told us when we invited them to share their stories.These symptoms include the heavy or irregular bleeding that often precedes the cessation of menstruation, hot flushes and night sweats, an increased risk of osteoporosis (brittle bones), disrupted sleep, anxiety, vaginal dryness and reduced sex drive. Given all this, and the fact that millions of women are going through the menopause at any one time (around 1 million women in the UK take hormone replacement therapy, although four in five do not medicate), it is remarkable the extent to which the taboo surrounding the menopause remains untouched. Even as other aspects of female reproductive health have become more widely discussed, the menopause has been stuck on the shelf. Continue reading...

Coprolite reveals felines in southern Andes had roundworm 17,000 years ago, long before humans got thereThe compact, gnarled and knobbly specimen looks like a root of ginger. In fact, it’s 17,000-year-old puma poo, and it contains the oldest parasite DNA yet recorded.The team of researchers behind the discovery say the finding not only confirms that the felines were prowling around the Andes towards the end of the last ice age, but reveals that they were infested with roundworm long before humans and their animals turned up. Continue reading...

Research claims people who ‘look on the bright side’ stand better chance of reaching 85Seeing the glass as half full may mean a longer life, according to research suggesting that optimists not only live longer in general, but have a better chance of reaching 85 or older.It is not the first time optimism has been linked to health benefits. People of an upbeat disposition have previously been found to have a lower risk of heart conditions and premature death. Researchers now say it could also play a role in living a long life. Continue reading...

The solution to today’s puzzleEarlier today I set you this puzzle:You are in a big city where all the streets go in one of two perpendicular directions. You take your car from its parking place and drive on a tour of the city such that you do not pass through the same intersection twice and return back to where you started. If you made 100 left turns, how many right turns did you make? Continue reading...