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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What did you do in the climate wars Daddy?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why do some of us pile on the pounds, while others seem to get away with it? Hannah Devlin speaks to Dr Giles Yeo about some of the latest findings from the field of obesity research – from the role of our genes and how heritable our weight is, to how, as a society, we’ve become overweight and what we can do about it. Continue reading...

New approaches to disposing of the dead needed as graveyards and crematoria are almost fullFrom burials in pyramids to scattering ashes and even plastination, there has been no shortage of ideas about how to deal with human corpses.But with graveyards and crematoria almost full in Britain, the conundrum of what to do with the dead has resurfaced with new urgency. Now a leading public health expert has suggested the sides of motorways, cycle paths and even brownfield or former industrial sites could be transformed to house the dead. Continue reading...

The 50th anniversary of Apollo 11’s landing, on 20 July 1969, is being celebrated globally but giant leaps aren’t necessary for these ‘missions’ in the UKSeven metres in diameter, artist Luke Jerram’s spherical, internally lit lunar sculpture features detailed imagery of the moon’s surface from Nasa – each centimetre of the artwork representing about 5km of the moon. It was inspired by Bristolian Jerram noticing the huge tidal variation as he cycled over the Avon Cut each day. Accompanying the touring artwork is a surround-sound composition by Dan Jones (who has worked on musical scores for theatre, film and TV, including David Attenborough’s The Life of Mammals). Several moons are simultaneously touring the UK (including Dorchester, Armagh, Birmingham, Wakefield, Warrington and Derby), and beyond, installed at indoor and outdoor sites until the end of the year, with most venues organising an events programme alongside.

Melbourne-based Natasha van Zyl has treated 13 young adults with nerve transfer surgeryThirteen young adults who were paralysed in sporting or traffic accidents have had movement in their hands restored through pioneering nerve transfer surgery, enabling them to feed themselves, hold a drink, write and in some cases return to work.Natasha van Zyl, the Melbourne-based surgeon who leads a research programme that has given some people their lives back, said the patients were able to use their hands and extend their arms from the elbow. “Extending your elbow allows you to push a wheelchair better, helps you to transfer in and out of a car, reach out and do something in space in front of you, shake someone’s hand. Continue reading...

‘Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt’ now appears almost every year, forming largest record bloomIt weighs 20m tonnes, stretches from west Africa to the Gulf of Mexico, and washes up on beaches creating a malodorous stench. Now scientists say a vast swathe of brown seaweed could be becoming an annual occurrence.Researchers say the explosion in sargassum seaweed first materialised in 2011. But new research shows it has appeared almost every year since then, forming the largest bloom of macroalgae ever recorded. What’s more, the seaweed band – dubbed the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt – seems to be getting bigger. Continue reading...

That Brexit has put British pupils off studying languages is tragic – it’s not just great for your brain, it opens up whole new worldsMore than half the world’s people speak more than one language, and I am one of them: I speak English, Welsh, French and Italian, and wish that I could speak more.Being able to speak more than one language has opened up whole worlds of experience and understanding – so it is particularly saddening then to see reports that Brexit is putting British pupils off studying modern foreign languages at school. Some parents have even told teachers that it’s useless for their children to learn another language now that the UK is leaving the European Union. Continue reading...

This unsettling documentary focuses on an engineer from Nazi Germany who was a key player in America’s lunar programmeThis considered documentary blends archive, original interviews and reconstruction to track down an ugly, sticky thread from the great tapestry of self-congratulation that is forming around the 50-year anniversary of the first moon landing. Where a number of recent documentaries and dramatic features celebrate, however justly, the bravery, vision and scientific achievement of the Apollo 11 mission, writer-director Johnny Gogan’s collaboration with co-writer Nick Snow is a reminder that it was thanks to contributions from scientists smuggled out of Nazi Germany after the second world war that the Americans beat the Russians to the moon.In particular, this zeroes in on the story of Arthur Rudolph, who is played in flashbacks with enticing ambiguity by Jim Norton. Rudolph, an engineer, joined the Nazi party in 1931 and worked directly under the pioneering rocket scientist Wernher von Braun on the V-2, which was constructed using slave labour drawn from the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp. Along with Von Braun and others, Rudolph ended up in the US, playing a major role at Nasa in its early days. Continue reading...

In 1985 the work research unit of the Department of Employment was disbanded and my father, Geoff White, stepped down after five years as director. A colleague wrote: “It is not often that one person can make a national and international contribution to such a worthy cause; the quality of working life in the UK will always be linked with the name of Geoff White.”Geoff, who has died aged 93, was an occupational psychologist, elected a fellow of the British Psychological Society in 1979. He contributed to various publications on organisational change, the quality of working life and work design, and advised organisations including the Greater London council, the Post Office and the Open University through significant change. Continue reading...

Environmental crisis clouding scientific objectivity about plants’ feelings, says botanistThe gardening gloves are off. Frustrated by more than a decade of research which claims to reveal intentions, feelings and even consciousness in plants, more traditionally minded botanists have finally snapped. Plants, they protest, are emphatically not conscious.The latest salvo in the plant consciousness wars has been fired by US, British and German biologists who argue that practitioners of “plant neurobiology” have become carried away with the admittedly impressive abilities of plants to sense and react to their environments. Continue reading...

Most common household cockroach able to develop ‘cross resistance’ to multiple types of chemicals, US study findsCockroaches have become harder to kill and could soon be “almost impossible” to control using pesticides alone, according to a study funded by the United States housing department.Researchers from Purdue University in Indiana spent six months trying to eradicate German cockroaches (Blattella germanica L.), one of the most common species of household cockroach in the US, Australia and Europe, from three low-rise apartment buildings in Illinois and Indiana. Continue reading...

Crook, County Durham: By chewing their way directly into the nectaries of flowers, the thieving insects circumvent the laborious pollination mechanismThe first hint that there were thieves in the garden appeared in the columbines. This plant’s common name is derived from the Latin columba, a dove, because its quintet of florets is reminiscent of an inward-facing circle of doves, with petals forming their wings and long nectar spurs resembling the birds’ necks and bowed heads.Holes had been chewed in every head. The culprits were a few nectar-robbing bumblebees. They should pollinate the flowers by hanging awkwardly underneath, showered with pollen while probing upwards into the nectar spurs with their long tongues. These ones had devised an easier route to a reward, by chewing a feeding hole in the top of each nectary: now they could forage 10 times faster. Continue reading...

Thousands gathered across Chile and Argentina to witness the only total solar eclipse for 2019. Northern Chile is known for clear skies and is being turned into a global astronomy hub

Best views were in the Atacama desert, where a total eclipse has not occurred since 1592

Commons’ health committee warns patients’ expectations are being disappointedHigh expectations among the public of the benefits of medicinal cannabis are being disappointed because doctors are unwilling to prescribe it in the knowledge that there is little evidence to stand up some of the claims, according to MPs.A House of Commons health select committee inquiry says the hopes of patients and families were raised when the government agreed to reschedule medicinal cannabis to make it more available in the light of “the distressing cases of Alfie Dingley and Billy Caldwell” – two children with severe epilepsy whose parents said only the drug gave them respite from seizures. Continue reading...

Scientists are trying to uncover the mystery of the regular geyser’s clockwork-like eruptionsWhy is Old Faithful so faithful? Roughly every 90 minutes this spectacular geyser in the Yellowstone national park spouts a plume of boiling water 40 metres into the air. In Victorian times people used to put their washing into it, discovering that cotton shirts survived the high-pressure wash, but woollens were torn to shreds. It is one of the most predictable geysers in the world, and yet relatively little is known about its underground plumbing.In 2016 scientists placed a dense network of seismometers around Old Faithful, and recorded her innermost gurglings over a two-day period (25 eruptions). Previously instruments placed in and around the geyser had provided a picture of the pipework down to around 20 metres’ depth, but the new data has probed right into the belly, to 80 metres’ depth. The results, which are published in Geophysical Research Letters, show how a tremor (most likely caused by hot steam condensing to liquid) drops rapidly to around 80 metres after each eruption, and then gradually travels up again to around 20 metres, before re-erupting. A bubble trap at around 20 metres’ depth appears to trigger the eruption. And because Old Faithful is far from other geysers there is little interference to this pattern, which explains why it stays so regular. Continue reading...

Searing heat shows crisis is ‘here and now’, say scientists, and worse than predictedThe record-breaking heatwave that struck France and other European nations in June was made at least five – and possibly 100 – times more likely by climate change, scientists have calculated.Such heatwaves are also about 4C hotter than a century ago, the researchers say. Furthermore, the heatwaves hitting Europe are more frequent and more severe than climate models have predicted. Continue reading...

To mark the 50th anniversary of the moon landings, an interactive collection of the sounds of space and the history of space travel has been launched by global sound project Cities and Memory. The project, called Space is the Place, combines 80 recordings from Nasa and the European Space Agency for the first time with reimagined, remixed interpretations of those space sounds, all designed to answer the question ‘what does space travel sound like?’ Continue reading...

It’s half a century since the first known HIV-related death and two patients appear to have been cured of the virus. What does this mean for the 37 million still living with it?Nobody knew what killed Robert Rayford. The African American boy was just 15 years old when he presented at St Louis city hospital in late 1968, but the medical team drew a blank.Unexplained swelling in Rayford’s genitalia soon spread throughout his body. Chlamydia bacteria, usually localised at the point of entry, coursed through his bloodstream. A small purple lesion on the inside of his thigh signalled cancer, but of a form usually found in elderly Ashkenazi Jews and Italians, not teenage black boys who had never left Missouri. Continue reading...

Projects headed by UK universities have fallen sharply since Brexit voteBritish researchers say they are being shut out of bids for major European research partnerships, or asked to keep a low profile, because of fears that the threat of a no-deal Brexit could contaminate chances of success.An analysis by University College London of the latest EU research funding data shows that UCL and eight other Russell Group universities were running around 50 big European research collaborations a year in 2016, but only 20 in 2018. Continue reading...

Research says brain ‘de-individuates’ other groups, while scientists say findings could help tackle racial biasThe common perception that people from other racial groups look alike is rooted in the way human brains process what they see, researchers say.It has long been known that people find it easier to tell apart members of their own race than those of a different race. But the mechanism behind this has been the topic of much research. Continue reading...

Reports released after FoI request criticise Prof David Latchman’s ‘recklessness’A lab run by one of Britain’s foremost academics published fraudulent scientific papers for more than a decade, according to investigators.Work at Prof David Latchman’s laboratory at UCL Institute of Child Health came under scrutiny from senior academics after an anonymous whistleblower alleged that dozens of papers from the lab were doctored. Continue reading...

The answers to today’s puzzlesEarlier today I set you the following puzzles.1) Ashleigh Barty and Naomi Osaka are playing a set of tennis. In the last eight points, Barty has served seven aces and Osaka has served one. What’s the score? Continue reading...

Record temperatures are being recorded as warnings pile up. It’s vital action is taken against climate breakdown nowSeveral French temperature records were broken on 28 June during this historic heatwave, including the highest temperature ever recorded in the country since records began – 45.9C. The previous high was set during the 2003 heatwave, which was the most significant episode in France’s meteorological history until now.Saharan air has engulfed the country. On 20 June, while meteorologists were discussing the projections of the American global forecast system model, a map with a disturbing resemblance to Munch’s painting The Scream came to my attention. Within a few days, the media spotted this comparison and the image went viral. In 15 years of model observation I had never seen such high temperatures predicted for France, especially in June. The forecast, made more than a week in advance, proved correct: records were not just broken, they were smashed. Continue reading...

The UK market for cannabidiol, a compound found in cannabis, will soon be worth £1bn. But consumers are being connedRoll up, roll up, ladies and gentleman, and gather around. Do you, your loved one – or family pet – suffer from any of the following conditions? Cancer, epilepsy, diabetes, arthritis, anxiety, menstrual cramps, insomnia, dry skin, psychosis, Alzheimer’s, dementia, anger, depression, ADHD, Crohn’s and IBS, PTSD, opiate addiction, Parkinson’s, pain of any kind, migraine, or canine uptightness? Then it’s your lucky day.Related: CBD: a marijuana miracle or just another health fad? Continue reading...

Standard therapies were not working. But once I discovered the role of the brain in physical pain, I began to mendChronic pain is an ongoing epidemic. It debilitates around 28 million adults in the UK alone. Yet society seems to have grown comfortable with there being no cure. Perhaps this is because we have been searching for the wrong type of answer, in the wrong place.I should begin by briefly explaining my own experience of chronic pain and what, seemingly against the odds, has helped me find relief. Continue reading...