Emeritus professor Alan Bleakley and cancer patient Jacinta Elliott on the use of military metaphors, and Adrienne Betteley of Macmillan Cancer Support on end-of-life careIt is heartening to see a front-page article on the burden that the use of cancer war metaphors may place on patients (Cancer war metaphors may harm recovery, 10 August), but we should also note that such metaphors continue to place a burden on doctors and nurses, framing contemporary healthcare – dominated by medicine – as heroic, rather than pacific.Further, it is simply wrong for the researchers that you quote to say of the relationship between martial metaphors and their impact on patients that “nobody has actually studied it”. Particularly since Sam Vaisrub’s 1977 book Medicine’s Metaphors and Susan Sontag’s 1978 polemic Illness as Metaphor, studies have isolated differing effects of a wide-ranging typology of violence metaphors on patients by age, sex and demographics. Professor Elena Semino and colleagues at the University of Lancaster have been at the forefront of such research in the UK for many years. Global research in the field is summarised in my 2017 book Thinking With Metaphors in Medicine. Continue reading...

A hot room won’t usually kill you, but a hot planet will. If you feel sweaty, just imagine how your grandchildren are going to feelWe think of air conditioning as a “first world” luxury, but it’s really more of an American one. In Europe, fewer than 5% of households have air conditioning, according to the International Energy Agency, and even in hot regions like Africa, Latin America and the Middle East, only 8% of households have it. In the US, nearly 90% of households are air conditioned.In New York, where the summer reverberates with the hum of air conditioners, that percentage seems even higher. Along certain avenues, you walk in a sprinkle of condensation dripping from row after row of window units above, never quite sure if you’re supposed to be disgusted. In Queens, where I live, one of my neighbors runs their window unit almost all year long, cooling their apartment in winter against the steam radiator that the landlord keeps on full blast around the clock, and in summer against, well, the summer. The poor unit only gets a couple months of rest a year, in the spring and the fall, though even then the person often runs it in fan mode, probably because the sudden absence of the machine’s roar is so unnerving. Continue reading...

Porridge, loaves and sauces Egyptians and Romans consumed have become today’s cookbook crazeDuring a 1954 BBC documentary about Tollund Man, the mysterious body of a hanged man discovered in a peat bog in Denmark, the noted archaeologist Sir Mortimer Wheeler ate a reconstruction of the 2,000-year-old’s last meal. After tasting the porridge of barley, linseed and mustard seeds, he dabbed at his moustache and declared the mystery was solved: Tollund Man had killed himself rather than eat another spoonful.Food reconstruction has come a long way since then. Last week Seamus Blackley, a scientist more famous for creating the Xbox, baked a sourdough loaf using yeast cultured from scrapings off 4,500-year-old Egyptian pottery at his home in California. The results, said one of his collaborators, Dr Serena Love, an Egyptologist from the University of Queensland, were “tangy and delicious”. “I met Seamus for the first time today,” she said. “As soon as I walked in the door he gave me a plate of bread.” Blackley extracted samples from inside the ceramic pores of a clay pot from the Peabody Museum at Harvard University three weeks ago. Most are being examined by the third member of the team, Richard Bowman, a molecular biologist, but Blackley kept one to turn it into yeast to make bread. “Food puts you in touch with the humanity of the past,” Love said. “That’s a tactile thing, something that’s visceral – you can actually experience the ancients, with at least one of the actual ingredients.” Continue reading...

Scientific advances that prolong fertility can only be a benefit to many would-be mothersLet us imagine for a moment that we lived in a world where male fertility dropped off a cliff by the time men hit their mid 40s, leaving a group of men who wanted to have children but couldn’t. When would science have produced a fix?I am going to hazard a guess that it would have been quite some time ago. But it has taken until 2019 for a fledgling treatment to delay the menopause by up to 20 years to be offered to women, even though the idea has been around for almost two decades. Continue reading...

As studies of kinship show, many people were glad to escape the strains of close-knit livingIn the countdown to a possible no-deal exit from the EU, there are some who cling to an optimistic narrative that our community spirit will get us through. Indeed, recent experiences in Whaley Bridge lend some support to the idea that in a crisis community is revealed. The irony is that, in part, the whole Brexit project has been fed by an inchoate, but powerful, sense of nostalgia for community lost.There is nothing new about this longing for a past “golden age” of community. For at least two centuries, writers such as Coleridge, Ruskin and TS Eliot have compared their own fragmented, hedonistic and selfish times with an imagined earlier age of social harmony and “community” (indeed, a medievalist colleague assures me that, in the early eighth century, the ageing Bede took a similar view of developments in Anglo-Saxon England). Continue reading...

Not telling your child that this hereditary condition is in the family can be devastating later onOn a lazy Sunday morning in May last year, Isobel Lloyd was at her boyfriend’s house, having coffee with his mum. The conversation had worked around to Lloyd’s grandma – her mother’s mother – who’d died in her 50s, when Lloyd was very young. Lloyd’s only memories of her had been hospice visits where her grandma lay bedbound, unable to talk or swallow, with no control over how her body moved. Lloyd had forgotten the name of her grandma’s disease, hadn’t thought about it in years. Like most 20-year-olds, she was future-focused – a student from Yorkshire, keen on her studies, in love with her boyfriend of four years.Sitting in his family kitchen, they began reeling off degenerative diseases. Motor neurone. Multiple sclerosis. Parkinson’s. Alzheimer’s. Then finally Huntington’s disease (HD). In a flash of recognition, Lloyd knew that was the one her grandma had. “It just clicked,” she says. “I Googled it on my phone – and that’s when I read that it was genetic. My mum had a 50% risk of getting it – and if she did, I had a 50% risk, too.” Continue reading...

The discovery that carbon atoms act as a marker of time of death transformed everything from biochemistry to oceanography – but the breakthrough nearly didn’t happenMartin Kamen had worked for three days and three nights without sleep. The US chemist was finishing off a project in which he and a colleague, Sam Ruben, had bombarded a piece of graphite with subatomic particles. The aim of their work was to create new forms of carbon, ones that might have practical uses.Exhausted, Kamen staggered out of his laboratory at Berkeley in California, having finished off the project in the early hours of 27 February 1940. He desperately needed a break. Rumpled, red eyed and with a three-day growth of beard, he looked a mess. Continue reading...

Populations of great freshwater species, from catfish to stingrays, have plunged by 97% since 1970Populations of the great beasts that once dominated the world’s rivers and lakes have crashed in the last 50 years, according to the first comprehensive study.Some freshwater megafauna have already been declared extinct, such as the Yangtze dolphin, and many more are now on the brink, from the Mekong giant catfish and stingray to India’s gharial crocodiles to the European sturgeon. Just three Chinese giant softshell turtles are known to survive and all are male. Across Europe, North Africa and Asia, populations have plunged by 97% since 1970. Continue reading...

Use of military terminology can make people more fearful and fatalistic, say psychologistsThe ubiquitous use of war metaphors when referring to cancer may do more harm than good, according to research into the psychological impact the phrases have on people’s views of the disease.Framing cancer in military terms made treatment seem more difficult and left people feeling more fatalistic about the illness, believing there was little they could do to reduce their risk, researchers found. Continue reading...

Society tries to shame us for growing old. But we should think of it as a rite of passage when our character comes throughThere is still sex in the city, beyond the age of 50. But it may come at a price that makes you wonder if it’s really worth it. Or at least, according to the writer behind the cult of Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte and Miranda.Candace Bushnell’s latest novel-cum-memoir returns once more to her favourite stamping ground, that tiny and exhausting pool of wealthy New York women who will do absolutely anything to stay in the game. Only now they’re older, spending their money not on cocktails but on face creams and fillers, all while debating the merits of undergoing vaginal laser surgery so that the naturally ageing insides of their bodies don’t give the lie to their artificially preserved exteriors. Continue reading...

During our summer break, we’re revisiting the archives. Today, Wildlife recordist Chris Watson begins a three-part journey into the sonic environment of the ocean, celebrating the sounds and songs of marine life and investigating the threat of noise pollutionFirst released: 03/05/2019Contrary to popular belief, and the writings of Jacques Cousteau, life beneath the ocean surface is not a silent world but a dense and rich sonic environment where sound plays a fundamental role in life.In episode one of this three-part series, pioneering nature sound recordist Chris Watson begins a journey inspired by his fascination with recording the songs and signals of life under the ocean surface. He will meet scientists examining the possible impacts of noise pollution from the likes of shipping noise and seismic explosions used in the search for oil and gas. He will also talk to sound artists trying to raise awareness of the issue through their art. Continue reading...

Extra thrust from reflective sail on tiny craft changed shape of its orbit by about 2km, scientists reportA crowdfunded spacecraft has successfully sailed on sunlight while in orbit around the Earth.LightSail 2 was launched in June by the space advocacy group the Planetary Society as a secondary payload on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket. Continue reading...

In its crucial land and climate report, the IPCC irresponsibly understates the true carbon cost of our meat and dairy habitsIt’s a tragic missed opportunity. The new report on land by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) shies away from the big issues and fails to properly represent the science. As a result, it gives us few clues about how we might survive the century. Has it been nobbled? Was the fear of taking on the farming industry – alongside the oil and coal companies whose paid shills have attacked it so fiercely – too much to bear? At the moment, I have no idea. But what the panel has produced is pathetic.The problem is that it concentrates on just one of the two ways of counting the carbon costs of farming. The first way – the IPCC’s approach – could be described as farming’s current account. How much greenhouse gas does driving tractors, spreading fertiliser and raising livestock produce every year? According to the panel’s report, the answer is around 23% of the planet-heating gases we currently produce. But this fails miserably to capture the overall impact of food production. Continue reading...

Nasa’s first flight director who controlled the Apollo moon landingsThe engineer Chris Kraft, who has died aged 95, was Nasa’s first flight director, the man who shaped the team – and the control centre – at Cape Canaveral in Florida and, from 1963, in Houston, Texas. Kraft’s work spanned the era from Nasa’s first faltering manned missions during the space race of the 1960s to the space shuttle in the 80s.He was director of flight operations at Nasa when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin made their moon landing in Apollo 11 on 20 July 1969, and signed off with the Apollo 12 mission that November. He returned in 1970 to chair the crisis meeting as the crippled Apollo 13 limped back to Earth. Continue reading...

Previously undiscovered group of molecules found to be behind phenomenonThe secret behind the eerie glow of two shark species has been revealed in a study which sheds light on the origin and possible advantages of their fluorescent green bodies.Chain catsharks and swell sharks are deep-dwelling and live in the western Atlantic and eastern Pacific respectively, where they hide among rocks and rubble. While at first glance they appear to be in various shades of brown, recent studies have shown that under blue light they glow green. Crucially, only blue light penetrates the depths of the ocean. Continue reading...

Potential impacts of rise in vertical shear include longer, bumpier and dearer flightsThe climate crisis could be making transatlantic flights more bumpy, according to research into the impact of global heating on the jet stream.Jet streams are powerful currents of air at the altitudes which planes fly. . They result from the air temperature gradient between the poles and the tropics, and reach speeds of up to 250mph (400kmph). They also sometimes meander. Continue reading...

US study finds link between number of restaurants and higher BMI

Giant bird estimated to have weighed about 7kg has been named Heracles inexpectatusFossils of the largest parrot ever recorded have been found in New Zealand. Estimated to have weighed about 7kg (1.1st), it would have been more than twice as heavy as the kākāpo, previously the largest known parrot.Palaeontologists have named the new species Heracles inexpectatus to reflect its unusual size and strength and the unexpected nature of the discovery. Continue reading...

Scientists have observed up to 10cm of salt falling to sea floor every year since 1979Try swimming in the Dead Sea and you can’t help but float. This salt lake, bordered by Jordan, Israel and the West Bank, is nearly 10 times as salty as the oceans. In recent decades diversion of freshwater streams has made it even saltier, and since 1979 scientists have observed salt crystals “snowing” down, depositing up to 10cm on the sea floor every year. It’s the only place in the world where this happens and now scientists think they know why.During summer the Dead Sea separates into two layers: a warm super-salty layer sitting above a cooler less-salty layer. The research, published in Water Resources Research , shows that when small waves break this boundary they encourage salty fingers to penetrate into the lower layer. Warm water holds more salt than cool water, so as the fingers cool they produce salt crystals which then rain down on the sea floor. Continue reading...

Agriculture has become 48 times more toxic to insects in last 25 years as neonics are used on over 140 different types of crops

Experts call for urgent action to tackle ‘biggest health crisis of our time’Dementia is the biggest health crisis of our time, experts have said, as statistics show the condition was the primary cause of death in England and Wales last year.Almost one in eight people died from dementia and Alzheimer’s disease in 2018, with the proportion increasing for the fourth consecutive year – up from 12.7% in 2017 to 12.8% in 2018. There were 541,589 deaths registered in England and Wales last year, the highest total since 1999. Continue reading...

Scientists believe the Beresheet’s unusual cargo may be alive and well on the moonThe odds of finding life on the moon have suddenly rocketed skywards. But rather than elusive alien moonlings, the beings in question came from Earth and were spilled across the landscape when a spacecraft crashed into the surface.The Israeli Beresheet probe was meant to be the first private lander to touch down on the moon. And all was going smoothly until mission controllers lost contact in April as the robotic craft made its way down. Beyond all the technology that was lost in the crash, Beresheet had an unusual cargo: a few thousand tiny tardigrades, the toughest animals on Earth. Continue reading...

Daniel Freedman, Peter van Nieuwenhuizen and Sergio Ferrara developed landmark theory in 1970sThe most lucrative prize in science has been awarded to three researchers for a landmark theory that married particle physics with Einstein’s description of gravity, and proposed a candidate for the mysterious cosmic goo known as dark matter to boot.Daniel Freedman, Peter van Nieuwenhuizen and Sergio Ferrara, from the US, the Netherlands and Italy respectively, developed “supergravity” in the 1970s, a mathematical feat that wrapped Einstein’s general relativity into a speculative theory of all the known particles in the universe. Continue reading...

The long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific conceptsCould you be charged on Earth for killing someone in outer space? There is no sovereignty up there …Peter Martin, Continue reading...

Mindfulness may have become a tool of capitalism, but if it works, does it matter?In a frequently quoted passage, the American professor of medicine Jon Kabat-Zinn defines mindfulness as “a way of being in a wise and purposeful relationship with one’s experience… cultivated by systematically exercising one’s capacity for paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment and non-judgmentally”. It sounds harmless enough. But San Francisco-based academic Ronald Purser thinks not. He has written a strident polemic attacking the secular mindfulness movement.Forty years ago, Kabat-Zinn set about distilling Buddhist wisdom into a framework that could address modern concerns. He originally designed a short course for people suffering from chronic physical pain. These programmes have since been extended to treat a wide range of cases including depression, addiction and workplace stress. They have been adopted in schools, businesses, criminal justice systems, in the US military, the NHS and UK parliament. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you are likely to have encountered them. Continue reading...

The technology can also be used to identify poisons as well as to monitor riversBeing palmed off with a young whisky when expecting an 18-year-old single malt can be a glass-half-empty moment. But now scientists have developed an “artificial tongue” that might make such skulduggery a thing of the past.The team, based in Scotland, say their device can be used to tell apart a host of single malts – a move they say might help in the fight against counterfeit products. Continue reading...

Researchers find usage boosts positive feelings towards women and LGBT peopleMore than 100 failures litter the battleground that is the hunt for an English gender-neutral singular pronoun. From thon, ip and hiser to hem, ons and lers, the discarded terms have piled up since the mid-19th century.But the quest for the right word is not in vain, a new study suggests. Using a gender-neutral pronoun, it found, reduces mental biases that favour men, and boosts positive feelings towards women and LGBT people. Continue reading...

Scientists say bones formerly identified as Massospondylus are from a different speciesFossil hunters have discovered a new species of dinosaur that has been hidden in plain sight in a South African museum collection for 30 years.The fossilised bones had been misidentified as a peculiar specimen of Massospondylus, one of the first named dinosaurs. Continue reading...

Suffolk site reopens enhanced with 27-metre ship sculpture, seventh-century treasures and immersive exhibitionsEighty years ago this summer, a beautifully situated if unusually lumpy field in Suffolk became, briefly, the site of an archaeological sensation.An immense Anglo-Saxon ship burial had been uncovered, loaded with some of the most astonishing gold and jewelled artefacts ever found. But the looming outbreak of war in July and August 1939 meant that Sutton Hoo’s greatest treasures were hastily dug out of the ground and packed off to anonymous safety in a London tube station, later to become some of the most iconic exhibits of the British Museum. Continue reading...

Our largest planet and the red supergiant are close together in the south-eastern sky, joined on Wednesday evening by the moonThere is an interesting trio of celestial objects to look out for on the evening of 8 August. The mighty planet Jupiter is currently close to the red giant star Antares in the constellation Scorpius. On 8 August, this pair will be joined by the moon. The chart shows the view looking south-south-east at 22:00 BST that evening. The moon will be on the fringes of Libra, the scales, preparing for a very close pass to Jupiter one night later. Giving the close pass an added aspect is the proximity of the beautiful red star Antares, a star so large that if it were to replace the sun in our solar system, its surface would be somewhere between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Looking further to the south, pale Saturn will be nestled in Sagittarius, the archer. There is also a dawn treat for early risers. Mercury will reach its further distance from the Sun in the morning sky this week. Watch out for a bright, steady “star” low in the brightening eastern sky. Continue reading...

Operation could benefit thousands of women who experience serious health issuesA medical procedure that aims to allow women to delay the menopause for up to 20 years has been launched by IVF specialists in Britain.Doctors claim the operation could benefit thousands of women who experience serious health problems, such as heart conditions and bone-weakening osteoporosis, that are brought on by the menopause. Continue reading...

Cutting carbon from transport and energy ‘not enough’ IPCC findsAttempts to solve the climate crisis by cutting carbon emissions from only cars, factories and power plants are doomed to failure, scientists will warn this week.A leaked draft of a report on climate change and land use, which is now being debated in Geneva by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), states that it will be impossible to keep global temperatures at safe levels unless there is also a transformation in the way the world produces food and manages land. Continue reading...

It’s time to stop being mealy-mouthed about this. No more silent passes to climate science deniersOver the past couple of weeks things have been happening on the climate change front but, unfortunately, little is changing in parliament, where the government’s direct action policy has continued to be an utter failure and a Queensland LNP MP suggested in his first speech in the House of Representatives that schools should teach both sides of the climate change debate in school – to prevent them being “brainwashed with extreme left or right ideologies”.Related: Greta Thunberg hits back at Andrew Bolt for 'deeply disturbing' column Continue reading...

The cardiologist on why we should take heart disease more seriously, advances in treatment and how you really can die from a broken heartHaider Warraich is a cardiologist at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina. His medical training began in his native Pakistan, and this autumn he will join the faculty of Brigham and Women’s hospital at Harvard Medical School and the VA Boston (Department of Veterans Affairs medical facilities). In his book State of the Heart, he looks at the history, science and future of cardiac disease, and argues that it has become an overlooked condition.People are more likely to survive a heart attack today, but heart disease is still the biggest killer worldwide. Why is that?

As well as joys, challenges and unusual pets she brought fresh insights to our homeAbout five years ago a friend at my son’s school, a girl of 14 I’d only met once before (and liked very much, with her big eyes and cheeky smile) got herself into something of a crisis, and as a result of a breakdown in her home life, came to live with us. I hadn’t been looking to add another child to the family. We had our son at home, also 14, and my older son, aged 25, from a previous relationship was finally moving out. Suddenly, at 52, right when I thought I was done with mothering, I had a brand new teenage daughter.The social workers asked me the most prying questions Continue reading...

It’s not just his destructive Brexit stance, his values are entirely opposed to oursThe Daily Express is calling it “the Boris effect”. Johnson’s election has reportedly caused a “record jump” in the polls for the Conservative party, with the Telegraph gleefully reporting that its prized former columnist has received the largest bounce of any Conservative leader in the past two decades.Though Tory hopes were dented by the party’s defeat in Thursday’s Brecon and Radnorshire by-election, supporters still believe Johnson is capable of winning a general election – which could happen within months. Continue reading...

Researchers reprogrammed human cells before injecting them in the monkey embryoEfforts to create human-animal chimeras have rebooted an ethical debate after reports emerged that scientists have produced monkey embryos containing human cells.A chimera is an organism whose cells come from two or more “individuals”, with recent work looking at combinations from different species. The word comes from a beast from Greek mythology which was said to be part lion, part goat and part snake. Continue reading...

Castle Howard, North Yorkshire: A trick of the light evokes the prehistoric shaman’s powerWhen the Wild Hunt erupts from the pages of Susan Cooper’s magnificent novel The Dark Is Rising, the throng is led by the towering, antlered figurehead of Herne the Hunter. It’s cacophonous, end-of-days stuff – enough to leave any 10-year-old wild-eyed. I next encountered Herne in shamanic guise, swathed in dry ice mist and spookily backlit in the 1984 TV series Robin of Sherwood. With the words, “Nothing’s forgotten, nothing is ever forgotten,” he took firm root in my teenage psyche.There’s not a whiff of dry ice today. The woods are warm and flickering with butterflies. And yet before my very eyes, an antlered form is emerging, larger than life, from the forest floor, with a metre-long head and a spark of life dancing in the huge dark eye. Continue reading...

Being socially active in 50s and 60s linked to lower risk of illness later in life, researchers say

Pew survey shows rise in confidence that scientists will act in public’s interestScientists have topped a survey of trusted professions, with adults in the US more confident that they act in the public’s best interests than employees from any other line of work studied.The survey found that confidence in scientists has risen markedly since 2016 and more than half of American adults believe the specialists should be actively involved in policy decisions surrounding scientific matters. Continue reading...

Teeth sized between 0.1mm to 3mm discovered in lower jaw of boy during surgery in ChennaiA seven-year-old boy who had suffered occasional toothache was found to have 526 teeth inside his jaw, according to surgeons in India.The hundreds of teeth were found inside a sac that was nestled in the molar region of his lower jaw, following surgery carried out at the Saveetha dental college and hospital in Chennai. Continue reading...

Scientists say July at least equalled and may have beaten hottest month on recordThe record-breaking heatwave that roasted Europe last month was a one-in-a-thousand-year event made up to 100 times more likely by human-driven climate change, scientists have calculated.Around the globe, July at least equalled and may have surpassed the hottest month on record, according to data from the World Meteorological Organization. This followed the warmest June on record. Continue reading...

US scientists say their blood test can be 94% effective in spotting those at risk of the illnessA blood test that can detect signs of Alzheimer’s as much as 20 years before the disease begins to have a debilitating effect has been developed by researchers in the US.Scientists at the Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis in Missouri believe the test can identify changes in the brain suggestive of Alzheimer’s with 94% accuracy, while being much cheaper and simpler than a PET brain scan. Continue reading...

The rage inducing, sober reality of it, you could do it but you won’t

Mass extinctions, carbon emissions and freak storms will feature at a festival where artists are finding new ways to raise the alarm‘I no longer think of this as a technological problem. I don’t think of it as a political problem.” Alanna Mitchell is assessing the climate emergency. “I think of it as a cultural problem.” The Canadian journalist and playwright believes the arts play a key role in transforming public opinion. “That’s the way humans understand the world,” insists Mitchell. “We understand it in terms of narrative.”Some of the most successful environmental activism has used theatrical or artistic gestures to capture imaginations. Think of Extinction Rebellion’s dramatic funeral marches, or Liberate Tate’s oil spill installations. At the Edinburgh festival this month, theatre-makers are bringing the crisis to the fore, from drawing the links between colonialism and the changing climate in Kiinalik: These Sharp Tools to Tom Bailey’s meditation on the sixth mass extinction in Vigil. Continue reading...

We revisit the archive as Ian Sample looks at why some people continue to deny anthropogenic global heating, despite the scientific evidence. Could better communication be the key? And what tips can scientists and journalists take from political campaigns? Continue reading...

Langstone, Hampshire: Potential mates can detect the emergence of an adult vapourer moth from miles awayIt was impossible to miss the rusty tussock moth (Orgyia antiqua) caterpillar foraging on my raspberry bush. Its body was dotted with orangey-red pinacula, wart-like growths sprouting clusters of pale lemon hairs. It had two bristly black antler-like protrusions at the front of its head, and a tail-like projection from its rear. Along its back four sulphur-yellow dorsal tufts stood proud, like the bristles of an interdental toothbrush. Measuring it at 25mm in length, I could tell it was a female, as males reach a maximum of about 15mm.These caterpillars are polyphagous, feeding on a wide range of deciduous trees and shrubs, so I potted up a selection of raspberry, blueberry, hazel and birch, and introduced her to a rearing cage. After five days of feasting, she stopped eating and spun a cocoon on the underside of a hazel leaf. Over the course of a week I squinted through the web of silken threads, watching the silhouette of her larval body melting and morphing into adult form. Continue reading...

Our galaxy is like a distorted disc, study based on Cepheid stars confirmsThe most detailed three-dimensional map yet of the Milky Way has been revealed, showing that our galaxy is not a flat disc but has a “warped” shape like a fascinator hat or a vinyl record that has been left in the sun.“The stars 60,000 light years away from the Milky Way’s centre are as far as 4,500 [light years] above or below the galactic plane – this is a big percentage,” said Dr Dorota Skowron of the University of Warsaw, first author of the latest research. Continue reading...

My friend Robert Young, who has died aged 83, was a psychotherapist, writer and academic, the author of influential books on Darwin, psychoanalysis and the history of ideas. A brave man of the left, he founded several journals of radical inquiry into science and psychoanalysis, and became a book publisher.Born and raised in Dallas, Texas, Bob was the son of Harold Young, who worked for a cotton filtering machinery company, and his wife, Suzanne (nee Jamison). At Highland Park high school and in the surrounding community, he rubbed shoulders with oil barons’ offspring, whose social attitudes repelled him. Continue reading...

Public Health England says latest death was one of nine cases previously confirmedA sixth person has died after eating pre-packaged sandwiches and salads linked to a listeria outbreak, Public Health England (PHE) has said.The latest death was one of the nine cases previously confirmed and PHE said there had been no new cases linked to the outbreak. Continue reading...