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...

The researchers behind The Field Guide to Urban Plazas decided to study the public behaviour of human beings in New York City, an update on William H Whyte’s pioneering work from 1980, The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces. From ‘roosting’ to ‘schooling’, here are the patterns they found Continue reading...

Record temperatures in Europe and the US have reinforced the danger of global heating for many inhabitants. But others are and will be far worse hitWe tend to learn better from experience than from what we have simply been told. So for many in Europe, sleepless nights and suffocating buses or workplaces have helped to make real the threat posed by global heating. Now statistics are reinforcing the message. Last week the UK had the hottest day on record: 38.7C in Cambridge. New records were set in Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands in July, and June was the hottest month in US history. The Met Office says that the UK’s 10 hottest years on record have all been since 2002.Heatwaves naturally occur in summer, but they did not used to be so hot, or so frequent. Experts say that the UK’s sweltering weather last summer was made 30 times more likely by global heating. That link has sunk in: in a new survey, 77% believed the recent heatwave was partially or wholly caused by the climate crisis. As temperatures reach unprecedented levels, so does public concern about the environment. Continue reading...

We study disaster preparedness, and ‘climate change’ is far too mild to describe the existential threat we face

Researchers say tick-borne disease ‘is everywhere’ with 8,000 diagnoses likely in 2019

Rod Schoonover, who was an intelligence analyst for 10 years, said the Trump administration halted his report on global heatingA former senior government analyst has accused the Trump administration of “undercutting evidence” of the threat to national security from the climate crisis after his report on the issue was blocked by the White House.Rod Schoonover, who worked as an intelligence analyst for the federal government for 10 years before resigning earlier this month, submitted a written testimony on the “wide-ranging implications” of global heating over the next 20 years, for submission to the House intelligence committee last month. Continue reading...

Study funded by Facebook aims to improve communication with paralysed patientsWhen Stephen Hawking wanted to speak, he chose letters and words from a synthesiser screen controlled by twitches of a muscle in his cheek.But the painstaking process the cosmologist used might soon be bound for the dustbin. With a radical new approach, doctors have found a way to extract a person’s speech directly from their brain. Continue reading...

Lead scientist hopes findings raise awareness about proton-pump inhibitors’ side-effectsPrescription medicines to reduce stomach acid are associated with an increased risk of developing allergies, according to a study.The research suggests people prescribed proton-pump inhibitors (PPIs) are twice as likely to be prescribed anti-allergy drugs in future years. Continue reading...

The concept has changed the way we think about everything from autism to homelessness. But it has its drawbacksBlack and white thinking may die hard, yet never has society been quite as comfortable with the concept of the spectrum than the present.According to researchers at Merriam-Webster, use of the word “spectrum”, in a wide range of contexts, has grown dramatically within the current decade. Coined by Isaac Newton in 1672 to describe refractions of light, today referencing a “spectrum” is almost always shorthand for acknowledging a metaphorical range of nuances. Continue reading...

Authors call for cognitive behavioural therapy to be offered through GPsForget counting sheep and drinking warm milk, an effective way to tackle chronic insomnia is cognitive behavioural therapy, researchers have confirmed.The authors of a new study say that although the therapy is effective, it is not being used widely enough, with doctors having limited knowledge about it and patients lacking access. Continue reading...

National ‘green legacy’ initiative aims to reduce environmental degradationAbout 350m trees have been planted in a single day in Ethiopia, according to a government minister.The planting is part of a national “green legacy” initiative to grow 4bn trees in the country this summer by encouraging every citizen to plant at least 40 seedlings. Public offices have reportedly been shut down in order for civil servants to take part. Continue reading...

The solutions to today’s puzzlesEarlier today I set you these four Venn diagram teasers:1) For each of the regions marked A to D below, think of a fraction that could belong in it, or say that it is impossible. (Each circle represents the set of fractions described by its rule.) Continue reading...

Distinguished chemist who helped to pioneer nuclear magnetic resonance – a new method of analysisRex Richards, who has died aged 96, was a scientist driven not only by a personal thirst for discovery but by the satisfaction of creating conditions in which others could flourish.He was practical and inventive, but having helped to pioneer the application of a new method of analysis – nuclear magnetic resonance, or NMR – to chemistry, biology and medicine, he devoted most of his energies to engineering the kinds of collaboration that would drive the subject forward. Continue reading...

When one partner in a relationship learns they are autistic, it can explain years of frustration and confusion. And, for many, the knowledge makes their bond stronger than everWhen their children were young, Karen and David took them to a noisy restaurant. Their two-year-old daughter was being loud and excitable, as toddlers tend to be, and David suddenly got up and walked out. There were many incidents like that during their first 12 years of marriage, which would often leave David feeling frustrated, and Karen sad, lonely and confused.Then, when their son was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) – the term now widely used for all autism diagnoses, including Asperger syndrome – it became clear that David had the condition, too. Eventually, he had a formal diagnosis. Their marriage is much happier. “I am now much better equipped to understand why I may find neurotypical relationships so confusing,” says David, “and it has been the foundation of improving my relationship with Karen.” Continue reading...

His linguistic intolerance suggests a personality that values order and obedience above allJacob Rees-Mogg must be in seventh heaven right now. His obsession with anachronistic rules and rituals finally has a professional justification. Boris Johnson has made him leader of the House of Commons, a British institution more steeped in arcane ritual than almost any other. He even has a bonus title, Lord President of the Council, complete, no doubt, with complicated modes of address. I’m sure he’s checked the entry in Debrett’s and will be correcting anyone who gets it wrong. Continue reading...

Where pictures and puzzles intersectUPDATE: Solutions now up hereJohn Venn – the British logician who around 1880 devised the ‘Venn diagram’ – celebrates his 185th birthday this week. Continue reading...

In 1994, Jeff Bezos founded Amazon, the company that has since made him the richest man in the world. Julia Carrie Wong charts the company’s success and controversies. Plus: Jim Waterson on why young people aren’t watching the news anymoreAmazon started out as a platform that sold books, but it quickly expanded to become the world’s largest e-commerce marketplace, as well as moving into cloud computing, digital streaming and AI. A third of the world’s cloud computing is controlled by Amazon.This expansion has not been without controversy – from working conditions within the Amazon fulfilment centres to recent protests over its involvement with US authorities’ deportation efforts. Julia Carrie Wong, Guardian US technology reporter, talks to India Rakusen about what drove Bezos to start Amazon, how it has managed to expand into so many other areas, and whether we should be concerned by how powerful it has become. Continue reading...

Now is the best time for those of us in the northern hemisphere to see the great star cloud that is our galaxy of 200 billion starsOne of the greatest sights you can see in the summer night sky from the northern hemisphere are the star clouds of the Milky Way rising up into the sky from the deep south. They reach up between the constellations Sagittarius, the archer, and Ophiuchus, the serpent bearer. The Milky Way is our galaxy, home to the sun’s 200 billion stellar siblings, with all of them arranged in a big disc that bulges towards the centre. Continue reading...

From drug trials that only use men to misconceptions about CPR, medicine’s gender inequalities can be matters of life or deathA study last week revealed that women in Australia are less likely than men to receive the recommended medicine for heart failure. In the UK, assumptions that heart failure is a “man’s disease” have also led to unequal care. Over the past 10 years, more than 8,000 British women have died as a result of this gender inequality. Continue reading...

When his wife became ill, Barney Norris found that growing his own food helped him through the traumaFor the past year I’ve kept an allotment. Taking it over in a state of disrepair, some years after the death of the previous tenant, I’ve cleared weeds, dug beds, planted apple trees, improvised panels for the greenhouse out of bits of transparent plastic conservatory roof, mowed grass and failed to fix the leak in the potting shed. In between all that, I’ve grown vegetables.I’ve always had an interest in gardening. My mother encouraged me and my brother and sister to keep a flower bed each when we were kids – mine, being in the shade next to where we buried the pets and underneath the tree house, never thrived, while my brother’s was an absolute suntrap and full of delicious-smelling lavender. We all helped with the veg beds in the back garden, watering inadequately and massacring slugs, which I’m not all that proud of, but must confess I enjoyed at the time. Continue reading...

The space archaeologist on her GlobalXplorer project, deterring looters and what ancient Egypt reveals about our futureAmerican space archaeologist Sarah Parcak uses satellites orbiting high above the Earth to find clues about what is concealed beneath our feet. Her work has been the focus of BBC documentaries on Egypt, ancient Rome and the Vikings. In 2016 she won the $1m TED prize to build a website where anyone can help make discoveries using space archaeology. Now the professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham has a new book: Archaeology from Space: How the Future Shapes Our Past.What is space archaeology?

Speaking in Melbourne, the journalist who has become synonymous with the conversation on psychedelics explains why it’s complicatedTo some, Michael Pollan is the game changer of the psychedelic conversation; to others, who have concerns, the gatekeeper.The journalist’s sixth book, How to Change Your Mind, topped the New York Times bestseller list and took a broad view of the history, culture and scientific research around psychedelics. Continue reading...

Huge blazes in Greenland, Siberia and Alaska are producing plumes of smoke that can be seen from spaceThe Arctic is suffering its worst wildfire season on record, with huge blazes in Greenland, Siberia and Alaska producing plumes of smoke that can be seen from space.The Arctic region has recorded its hottest June ever. Since the start of that month, more than 100 wildfires have burned in the Arctic circle. In Russia, 11 of 49 regions are experiencing wildfires. Continue reading...

Whistleblowers and groups tracking agency decisions say administration is ignoring science and censoring expertiseThe Trump administration is disregarding science and expertise across a wide range of government work, as documented by whistleblowers and groups tracking agency decisions.Trump officials are censoring warnings about the climate crisis, moving critical agencies out of Washington and enacting far-reaching changes in what facts regulators can consider when they choose between industry and the public good. Continue reading...

The Met Office team on a south Atlantic island reveal the extreme lengths they go to in order to forecast the weatherAt 11.15am on a blustery spring morning, Lori Bennett stands on an exposed bluff on the remote south Atlantic island of St Helena, holding a gigantic, wobbling balloon. The wind is roaring, waves are churning up a swell and the sea air is charged with industrial hydrogen pumped from a nearby outhouse and used for blowing up the inflatable.The Met Office station manager, born in Northern Ireland and now living half a world away from his friends and family in Swindon, is a picture of calm in a drab boiler suit, old ski goggles and a flash hood he jokingly calls his “Star Wars outfit”. Moments later, he prepares to let the weather balloon slip from his fingers. Swinging it around, so that it lifts straight up rather than floating across the weather station car park, he is soon watching it jiggle steadily upwards before it disappears into the clouds. Continue reading...

Misconceptions about the technology and lack of consultation with local communities may have boosted conspiracy theoriesWhen Tonia Antoniazzi stood up in the House of Commons to talk about the risks of 5G, she admitted that “initiating a conversation … has had members of my own team and family telling me that it is all made up.” But the Labour MP was undeterred, securing a debate in parliament and the support of a handful of Labour and SNP colleagues to ask about the “unintended consequences” of the latest upgrade to the nation’s mobile phone network.The government’s response – that there was no evidence of any risk, and that it anticipated “no negative effects on public health” – was, Antoniazzi said, “far from reassuring”. Continue reading...

Creator of Gaia theory recalls how it nearly had another name and says the age of AI is nighJames Lovelock has spent a lifetime pondering the forces that shape Earth. It was a pursuit that brought about his most famous creation: a view of the world where life maintains the conditions for life, which he niftily named Gaia theory.The hypothesis, as it was back then, was wholeheartedly embraced by the fledgling green movement of the 1970s. But for Lovelock, who turned 100 on Friday, more pressing threats to the planet come from nature, not humans. In particular, he’s worried about asteroids. Continue reading...

The Science Weekly team are taking a bit of a break so we’ll be revisiting some of our favourite shows from the archive. Including this one from 2017, when Nicola Davis looked at why so many women with autism are misdiagnosed and how this issue resonates with broader ideas of neurodiversity. We also hear from a listener about how this episode affected her life. Continue reading...

Nasa bypasses normal tender process to help meet White House directive of landing humans on moon by 2024

As he celebrates his centennial birthday, the scientist continues to rewrite our futureJames Lovelock, the scientist and writer, is 100 years old on Friday and remains a combination of environmental Cassandra and Old Testament prophet. Unlike them, though, he changes his mind about what the future holds. Foolish consistency, Emerson wrote, is the hobgoblin of little minds, and Dr Lovelock’s mind is not little. More than 10 years before the record high July temperatures, Dr Lovelock flatly told the Guardian that 80% of human life on Earth would perish by 2100 because of the climate emergency. He imagined a dystopian end of humanity where “the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable” by the end of the 21st century.As a scientist (his first letter to Nature was published in 1945, on the subject of writing on petri dishes), Dr Lovelock’s life has been studded with insight. He invented an electron capture detector that could pick up minute traces of pollutants – such as the pesticides that spurred Rachel Carson to write the 1962 book Silent Spring. At home he built instruments that ended up on Mars, helping Nasa to establish that the red planet was lifeless. Continue reading...

Football-sized object landed in paddy in Bihar state after ‘fireball’ came down from skyA suspected meteorite crashed into the middle of a rice field in eastern India, authorities say.The object the size of a football landed with a thud in a paddy field in Madhubani district in Bihar state on Monday, startling farmers and sending up clouds of smoke. Continue reading...

Amid concerns over two-tier health system, new scheme will read volunteers’ DNA for freeGovernment plans to sell DNA sequencing to healthy people on condition that they share their results for medical research have been scrapped amid concerns it would create an inequitable two-tier health system.Matt Hancock, who survived Boris Johnson’s cabinet makeover to keep his job as health secretary, announced the “genomic volunteers” plan in January, which included a paid-for option that would be offered to healthy people in England to boost medical knowledge and uncover new treatments. Continue reading...

I was a climate scientist in a climate-denying administration – and it cost me my jobThe Trump administration’s hostility towards climate science is not new. Interior climate staffer Joel Clement’s reassignment and the blocking of intelligence aide Rod Schoonover’s climate testimony, which forced both federal employees to resign in protest, are just two of the innumerable examples. These attempts to suppress climate science can manifest themselves in many ways. It starts with burying important climate reports and becomes something more insidious like stopping climate scientists from doing their jobs. In February 2019, I lost my job because I was a climate scientist in a climate-denying administration. And yet my story is no longer unique.Related: The world is literally on fire – so why is it business as usual for politicians? | Arwa Mahdawi Continue reading...

Church Preen, Shropshire: The tree in the graveyard has been rejuvenating itself for centuries. But the law needs to do more to protect such living monumentsEvening sunlight reaches through the dark branches of the yew tree, animating sinuous shapes moving through its hulk like conjugal creatures. A bell chimes the quarter hour, but time means nothing here. A sign at the foot of the trunk reads: “This Yew Tree is believed to have been planted [in] approx 457 AD and thought to be the oldest tree in Europe.”The Church Preen yew is one of Shropshire’s most celebrated trees but, although at least 1,500 years old, it is probably not the oldest yew. It stands in the graveyard above a church that was once part of Wenlock’s 12th-century abbey; it has been suggested that the tree was a sacred legacy of local pre-Christian culture Christianised by the siting of a chapel beneath it in Saxon times. Continue reading...

Man whose arm was amputated after accident can hold delicate objects such as grapes and eggsA man who lost his hand 17 years ago has been given the sense of touch through a brain-controlled robotic prosthetic.Keven Walgamott, whose arm was amputated below the elbow after an accident, can now feel 119 different touch sensations through the prosthetic as if it were his own limb. Continue reading...