Experts find men with more ‘masculine’ faces more likely to seem, and be, unfaithfulPhilandering men have unfaithfulness written all over their faces, according to research that suggests men and women are able to spot cheating chaps just by looking at them.Experts found men with more “masculine” faces were more likely to be thought to be unfaithful, and such men also self-reported more cheating or “poaching” of other men’s partners. Continue reading...

Flush of new beech leaves casts an early green glow across woodland floorsA heavenly green spectacle is spreading northwards across the country as trees open their new leaves. The delicate green of tree leaves in spring is remarkable and perhaps the greatest spectacle is the flush of new beech leaves that are so translucent they cast a green glow across woodland floors.This green colour comes from the chlorophyll pigment in the leaf chloroplasts, the tiny cell bodies that perform photosynthesis. As the young leaves are still developing their chloroplasts, the leaves tend to be a lighter green. The new leaves are also thinner, with fewer waxy or tough layers, making them more translucent. What’s more, the leaves look brighter because they tend to have fewer additional pigments other than chlorophyll, so the green colour can shine through more clearly. But this is only a passing phase before the leaves turn darker green as their chloroplasts mature and the leaves grow thicker and more opaque. Continue reading...

It could be yours for just $2.95m but the sale has drawn criticism from the scientific communityYou wouldn’t normally associate the world of dutiful natural history preservation with sporadic bursts of all-caps letters and exclamation points – or at least not until last month, when the fossil of an infant Tyrannosaurus rex, potentially the only in existence, went on sale on eBay for the “buy it now” price of $2.95m.The listing reads: “Most Likely the Only BABY T-Rex in the World! It has a 15 FOOT long Body and a 21” SKULL with Serrated Teeth! This Rex was very a very dangerous meat eater. It’s a RARE opportunity indeed to ever see a baby REX…” Continue reading...

Handwritten journals from 50s show how plastic problem has grown to global emergencyA trove of data showing when the Atlantic began choking with plastic has been uncovered in the handwritten logbooks of a little-known but doggedly persistent plankton study dating back to the middle of the last century.From fishing twine found in the ocean in the 50s, then a first carrier bag in 1965, it reflects how the marine refuse problem grew from small, largely ignored incidents to become a matter of global concern. Continue reading...

Physics head dismissed after criticising scientific research about climate change impact on the Great Barrier ReefJames Cook University is considering its legal options after the federal circuit court ruled it had unlawfully sacked a professor who had criticised scientific research about the climate change impact on the Great Barrier Reef.Peter Ridd, who was the head of the physics department at the institution from 2009 until 2016, took legal action against his dismissal. Continue reading...

Brontophonic sounds can give lightning a unique hiss, separate from the deep rumble of thunderWhat does lightning sound like? The obvious answer is in the boom of thunder: an explosion of expanding, superheated air. But there are more subtle and less understood noises associated with lightning, known as brontophonic sounds, which are heard far less frequently.Two features make these sounds distinguishable from thunder. One is that in contrast to the deep reverberation of thunder, brontophonic sounds sound like the hissing of a red-hot iron in water or the tearing of fabric. Continue reading...

Scientists study species that releases huge quantities of bodily fluids to plug nest holesWhile humans might change their locks to deal with intruders, a species of aphid opts for a communal sacrifice, releasing huge quantities of a sticky bodily fluid to plug holes in their nests.Researchers who studied the makeup of the fluid found the process for nest repair was similar to what happens when aphids are wounded, involving the release of substances that clot and form a scab. This means similar mechanisms underpin both individual immunity and so-called social immunity – when organisms work together to protect their communities from enemies and disease. Continue reading...

Research raises hope that triggers of individual tumours could be pinpointedFrom smoking to alcohol, air pollution to sunlight, a host of factors in our environment can cause cancer. Now scientists say they might be able to pinpoint the culprits for individual tumours.Experts say they have managed to link particular environmental triggers with specific genetic mutations that give rise to cancer, opening up the possibility that researchers could look for clues in a tumour to deduce what triggered its formation. Continue reading...

David JK Evans says recent scientific discoveries should prompt people to focus their creative genius and protect our planet, not destroy itI applaud your editorial celebrating the importance in our human history of the discovery of Powehi and the evidence it demonstrates of our species’ creative genius (The first picture of a black hole is inspiring. So are the scientists who took it, 13 April). It is perfectly possible, if not highly likely, that we are the only entity between Earth and the heart of the Messier 87 galaxy, now known as Powehi, 55m light years away, to have the consciousness to know it for what it is. We are as good as alone with this discovery.This thought is breathtaking. The achievement is both inspiring and lonely. Can’t we focus our creative genius on arranging things here on our planet to ensure that we have a future of being able to appreciate our species’ greatest achievements in science, technology and the arts, and so to continue our creative intellectual journey, without destroying our only home?

Parrots do it, rats do it, and we do it partly for social reasons. But to learn more, I need the help of comedy fansThe American writer EB White famously said, “Analysing humour is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested and the frog dies of it.” But is the same true of analysing laughter?I am a brain scientist who studies laughter, and I find it quite interesting, not least because scientific analyses tell us that pretty much everything we humans think we know about laughter is wrong. We think laughter is primarily something we do when we find something funny, but in fact most laughter is produced for social reasons – we are 30 times more likely to laugh if there is someone else with us than when we are on our own. We all laugh much more often than we think we do – studies find an average of seven laughs per 10 minutes of conversation between strangers, and an average 10% of all of a conversation between friends. We think we are the only animals that laugh, but laughter has been described in other apes, parrots and even rats. Continue reading...

No one is coming to save us. Mass civil disobedience is essential to force a political responseHad we put as much effort into preventing environmental catastrophe as we’ve spent on making excuses for inaction, we would have solved it by now. Everywhere I look, I see people engaged in furious attempts to fend off the moral challenge it presents.The commonest current excuse is this: “I bet those protesters have phones/go on holiday/wear leather shoes.” In other words, we won’t listen to anyone who is not living naked in a barrel, subsisting only on murky water. Of course, if you are living naked in a barrel we will dismiss you too, because you’re a hippie weirdo. Every messenger, and every message they bear, is disqualified on the grounds of either impurity or purity. Continue reading...

The full moon is a starting point to locate two of the brightest stars in the sky – Arcturus in Boötes and Spica in VirgoThe moon becomes full this week and on 18 April it sits squarely in the constellation Virgo, the Virgin. The chart shows its location at 2200BST that night. With the moon as a guide, two of the brightest stars can be located and compared. Higher in the sky to the east is Arcturus in the constellation Boötes, the herdsman. Arcturus is the fourth brightest star in the sky. It shines with an orange light and is roughly 37 light years from Earth. It contains about the same mass as the sun but has expanded to about 25 times the Sun’s diameter. This is the behaviour of a star nearing the end of its life. In the expansion, the surface temperature has dropped to roughly 4,000C (about 2,000 degrees lower than the sun’s surface temperature). Lower in the sky, slightly to the west is Spica, the brightest star in Virgo and the seventeenth brightest star in the sky. It is 250 light years from Earth, and actually comprises two stars in orbit around each other. Both blaze with a brilliant white light because they have surface temperatures around 25,000C and 20,000C. They contain seven and eleven times more mass than the Sun, and are seven and four times larger than our star. Continue reading...

A manned giant six-engine aircraft with the world’s longest wingspan – surpassing Howard Hughes’s infamous Spruce Goose – took off from California on its first flight on Saturday. The twin-fuselage Stratolaunch jet lifted off from Mojave air and space port and climbed into the desert sky 70 miles north of Los Angeles. It successfully landed two hours later. The aircraft is designed to carry as many as three satellite-laden rockets under the centre of its enormous wing, which stretches 385ft, or 117 metresAirplane with world's longest wingspan takes flight, beating Spruce Goose record Continue reading...

US journalist Alice Robb, author of a new book about the science and life-changing potential of dreams, talks about her researchAlice Robb is an American science journalist who has written for the Washington Post and the New Republic. Her new book, Why We Dream, encourages us to rethink the importance of dreams and to become dream interpreters ourselves.Writing a book about dreams turned you into a “magnet for confessions”. Why are people compelled to talk about dreams?

We marvelled at the first image of an event horizon 55m light years away, but struggled to grasp its majesty and dimensionsA few years ago, during a period of insomnia, I briefly got into the habit of contributing to the online project Galaxy Zoo. I would log on to a website that presented, one after another, singular images of tens of thousands of galaxies observed by the Hubble telescope, each billions of light years away. There were so many of these images that cosmologists had opened them up to thousands of amateur volunteers to help narrow down the field of those galaxies that warranted closer study.Peering at my dimmed computer screen in the early hours, at catherine wheels of stars that perhaps no human eye had ever seen, I ticked the relevant boxes that would assist in classifying them – “elliptical or spiral?”; “smooth or fuzzy?” – and then paused for a while over the open-ended final question: “Is there anything odd in this image?” (An inquiry that always seemed to beg the reply: “You mean, beyond the fact that it is a rotating mass of incalculable solar systems that likely expired untold millions of years ago?”) Continue reading...

Last week scientists produced the first image of a black hole, shining a light on one of the universe’s great mysteriesThis week, scientists produced the first real image of a black hole, in a galaxy called Messier 87. The image is not a photograph but an image created by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) project. Using a network of eight ground-based telescopes across the world, the EHT collected data to produce the image. The black hole itself is unseeable, as it’s impossible for light to escape from it; what we can see is its event horizon. The EHT was also observing a black hole located at the centre of the Milky Way, but was unable to produce an image. While Messier 87 is further away, it was easier to observe, due to its larger size. Continue reading...

Whether it’s to the North Pole or across LA, walking is the fastest way to make more time for lifeAs a child growing up in 1970s Norway, with parents who didn’t own a car and loved to hike, Erling Kagge believes one of his first full sentences was: “How much further is it?”By his late teens, though, he’d begun to embrace his parents’ ethos. “By then, for me, walking wasn’t just getting from A to B,” he says. “It had a value in itself.” So much so that at 27, he walked to the North Pole and, less than three years later, became the first person to walk to the South Pole alone – a 50-day trek with no radio. A year later he climber Everest. Now 25 years on, a father of three and the head of one of Norway’s biggest publishing houses, most of Kagge’s walking is closer to home. He walks two miles to his Oslo office each morning, hikes in the woods at weekends and has spent many evenings exploring every neighbourhood of his city on foot. Continue reading...

Scientists warn of danger from dengue fever in hotter, wetter climate in northern latitudesInsect-borne diseases such as dengue fever, leishmaniasis and encephalitis are on the rise and are now threatening to spread into many areas of Europe, scientists have warned.Outbreaks of these illnesses are increasing because of climate change and the expansion of international travel and trade, the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases was told in Amsterdam on Saturday. Continue reading...

As Australia’s first trial for psychedelic therapy for terminally ill patients gets under way, a growing movement says it could also help other conditionsIn August 2016 I went to New York for the first time. On the second evening, as the sun slipped behind the building across the street, I was sitting on a long couch on the top floor of an old church. All around me instruments were scattered on the floor – singing bowls, tuning forks, rainsticks, Tibetan bells. At the foot of a wall carpeted completely in moss, dripping like the jungle in the baking heat, was a large bronze gong.On the table in front of me two small ceramic bowls contained a capsule of 125mg of pure MDMA and a chilli guacamole with three grams of powdered magic mushrooms stirred through it. I eyed them nervously. I was terrified that I was going to lose my mind but I was more scared that nothing would happen at all, that I was too broken for even this radical treatment. Continue reading...

Stratolaunch jet, brainchild of late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, may be used to launch small satellites into spaceA giant six-engine aircraft with the world’s longest wingspan – surpassing Howard Hughes’ infamous Spruce Goose – took off from California on its first flight on Saturday.The behemoth, twin-fuselage Stratolaunch jet lifted off from Mojave Air and Space Port and climbed into the desert sky 70 miles north of Los Angeles. It landed two hours later. Continue reading...

Lisel Heise runs for local grassroots group after realising her age ‘gives me the chance to say something’For most people, reaching 100 would be reason enough to put one’s feet up and take things easy, but Lisel Heise has other ideas.The German centenarian, a former sports teacher, has started a new chapter in her life by standing for election to the council in her home town of Kirchheimbolanden. Continue reading...

Her time in space gives her a singular perspective on the travails besetting the planetIn the manner of a droid desperately seeking a docking station, I am constantly searching for a leader who can offer me some direction and energy in the battle for the biosphere. Until now, there’s been something of a leadership void. Anyone who so much as uttered the words “climate change” might find me looking up at them, awaiting instruction.Now I feel like I can pick and choose. Perhaps it’s because people are competing with Greta Thunberg, the teenage agitator behind the climate strikes, but good adults are stepping into the limelight. Continue reading...

World’s first canine forensic reconstruction sheds light on lives of ancient communitiesThe head of a dog that lived on Orkney 4,500 years ago has been recreated in what experts believe is the world’s first canine forensic reconstruction.The dog had been domesticated in the Neolithic era on the Scottish island archipelago, but still carried wolf-like characteristics, standing about the size of a large collie, according to Historic Environment Scotland (HES) which jointly commissioned the reconstruction with the National Museum of Scotland. Continue reading...

Research suggests surgical delivery may make babies more prone to respiratory infectionsBabies delivered by caesarean section are slower to acquire certain types of “good bacteria” in their gut and have higher levels of potentially problematic bacteria than those born vaginally, researchers say.A study of more than 100 babies showed that those born vaginally had a very different make-up of their gut microbiome (clusters of gut microbes), potentially making caesarean babies more prone to respiratory infections. The differences were found to reduce as the babies grew older. Continue reading...

Scientists have shown us one of the mysteries of the universe, and the extraordinary power of human cooperation“If you work on something like theoretical physics, you feel like you’re trapped inside a room, and outside people don’t know,” the physicist Carlo Rovelli said recently. While the stereotype of a space scientist is of a loner out of step with the humdrum of everyday life, Mr Rovelli is not alone in believing that his life’s work is not just to find things out, but to communicate.This week’s first pictures of a black hole were a special moment for all those who believe that scientists’ role is not only to expand the sum of human knowledge, but to share it. Seeing is not always believing. But the fact that millions of us have seen the picture of the supermassive black hole at the heart of the Messier 87 galaxy, 55m light years away, is an undoubted step forward for humankind. Created using data gathered from eight telescopes in four continents, the fiery doughnut of red and gold with blackness at its centre has now been given a Hawaiian name: Powehi. Continue reading...

Bots are becoming an inevitable part of newsgathering. Two women are determined to prevent them becoming an inevitable part of warfare*although it’s a bit stilted in places

Following the true story of scientist Henry Bates in the 1840s, this satisfying film uses Imax tech to provide astonishing wildlife detailIn places, this satisfying Imax edutainment brings forth happy memories of James Gray’s excellent The Lost City of Z. It’s a tribute to another overshadowed historical figure, that of Henry Walter Bates, the Leicester-born amateur scientist – and Alfred Wallace associate – who struck out for the Amazon in 1848, charged with collecting insects at threepence per bug, and in so doing indirectly gathered the evolutionary proofs that backed up Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. What Bates (embodied here by an engaging Calum Finlay) observed in these parts – when he wasn’t bleary-eyed from malaria – were “leaves that could fly, bird droppings that could walk”: ie those craftier critters whose predator-bamboozling camouflage was so well-developed they hadn’t previously been spotted. This is what scientists call “Batesian mimicry”.Director Mike Slee (who enjoyed a big Imax hit with the Judi Dench-narrated Bugs! in 2003) and screenwriters Carl Knutson and Wendy MacKeigan recognise that Bates’s fieldwork might itself pass usefully for Saturday morning matinee fare. Verdant Brazilian location work plunges us from the opening moments into a fully immersive jungle environment, complete with such adventure-movie staples as shipwrecks, hungry leopards and mischievous monkeys. Yet the team also find smart and invariably visual means of illustrating their human subject’s breakthroughs. When a chain of stereoscopic butterflies flutters across our field of vision, each insect bearing similar yet subtly distinct markings, it’s the 3D equivalent of a lightbulb moment: you feel you could literally grasp Bates’s working method. Continue reading...

Study finds substantial numbers of young people at risk of liver cancer, diabetes and heart attacksExperts are warning that high levels of fatty liver disease among young people, caused by being overweight, could signal a potential public health crisis.Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease is fairly common among older adults, detectable in about a quarter of the population. But a study has found that substantial numbers of 24-year-olds are also affected, putting them at risk of serious later health problems, such as liver cancer, type-2 diabetes and heart attacks. Continue reading...

Science Weekly teams up with the Chips with Everything podcast to examine the environmental price tag of our throwaway culture and explore how technology could help the clothing industry follow a more sustainable model. Graihagh Jackson and Jordan Erica Webber presentAs the days get lighter, Britons are likely to discard about 680m dresses, trousers, T-shirts and the like during the annual spring clean of our wardrobes. But at what cost?

Language professor in Hawaii comes up with name welcomed by scientists who captured first image of galactic phenomenonThe black hole that was depicted for the first time this week in in an image produced in a landmark experiment has been named by a language professor in Hawaii.University of Hawaii-Hilo Hawaiian professor Larry Kimura named the cosmic object Powehi, The Honolulu Star-Advertiser reported Thursday. Continue reading...

Bouman is a post-doctoral fellow at MIT whose algorithm led to an image of a supermassive black holeThis week, the world laid eyes on an image that previously it was thought was unseeable.Related: Black hole picture captured for first time in space breakthrough Continue reading...

Spacecraft crashes in to lunar surface after engine and communications breakdownAn Israeli spacecraft has crashed into the lunar surface, ending the first privately funded attempt to land on the moon.About the size of a washing machine, the 585kg (1,290lb) robotic lander experienced an engine and communication failure in the last seconds of touchdown. Continue reading...

Investigation on impact of life in space on human body could inform potential missions to MarsWhen Nasa set out to study identical twin astronauts – one orbiting in space for nearly a year, the other left behind on Earth – the outcome was uncertain. Would Scott Kelly return to Earth younger than his brother, Mark, as depicted in the film Interstellar?The answer, outlined in the most comprehensive investigation on the impact of life in space on the human body, is that there were apparently no substantial or lasting health changes. However, the findings reveal subtle biological effects caused by Scott’s 11-month residence in zero gravity at the International Space Station. Scientists say these could provide crucial information about the risks posed by future long distance missions to Mars and beyond. Continue reading...

Psychologist who believed in listening to patients, and could express complex ideas with brilliant simplicityDorothy Rowe, who has died aged 88, was one of the earliest figures in psychology to build a bridge between the sometimes arcane world of clinical practice and the general public. Coming to prominence in the 1980s, particularly with her book Depression: The Way Out of Your Prison, she made a career around the principle of listening to the patient in matters of mental illness rather than simply seeing them as problems to be solved – often by drugs or ECT, what Dorothy called “the equivalent of blood-letting”.Dorothy’s thinking centred on the idea that depression was not so much an illness as a crisis of meaning that could be addressed by rethinking the ideas that underpinned the so-called illness. This crisis was not necessarily to be found in childhood, or trauma – as Freud might have suggested – but simply in the necessity for all of us to build our own subjective mental models, which we then might insist were absolute reality, however high the price might be psychologically. She was highly sceptical of drugs such as Prozac, which she considered little better than placebos. For Dorothy, every case was different, and required careful attention. Continue reading...

Dale Chihuly shipped in 32 installations which go on display across London siteThere are wildly coloured, alien-looking spheres in the brushed gravel of Kew’s Japanese garden while in the Victorian temperate house a 10-metre abstract glass sculpture hangs from the ceiling.Elsewhere, yellow glass spikes poke upwards among the brunfelsia australis, (yesterday, today and tomorrow trees), while red reed-like structures rise up among fuschias and salvia. Continue reading...

This stunning scientific feat shows what humanity can achieve when we’re co-operating not attacking each other“The gates of hell, the end of space and time.” That was how black holes were described at the press conference in Brussels where the first ever photograph of one was revealed to an excited audience. And this black hole, a super-massive object at the centre of the galaxy Messier 87 (M87), really is a monster. Everything unfortunate enough to get too close to it falls in and never emerges again, including light itself. It’s the point at which every physical law of the known universe collapses. Perhaps it is the closest thing there is to hell: it is an abyss, a moment of oblivion.Related: Black hole picture captured for first time in space breakthrough Continue reading...

Experimental IVF, which involves extra egg from female donor, criticised by UK expertsA baby with DNA from three people has been born in Greece following a controversial fertility treatment.The baby boy, weighing 2.9kg (6lb), was born on Tuesday and both he and his mother, who is 32, are said to be in good health. Continue reading...

Millions of people in the UK have trouble sleeping, and Guardian reporter Leah Green is one of them. Like many insomniacs, she has tried all the home remedies, sleep hygiene techniques and gadgets designed to cure her sleep problems. She finds out why it is so difficult to conquer insomnia, and why good treatment is so hard to come byFor more information about treating insomnia:

Hopes of new treatments after research uncovers genes essential to disease’s survivalResearchers working with a revolutionary gene editing tool have discovered thousands of genes that are essential for the survival of cancer cells, holding out the prospect of major advances in treatment.Scientists from the Wellcome Sanger Institute in Cambridgeshire worked with the Crispr/Cas9 system to disrupt every gene within 30 different types of cancer. Continue reading...

Photographs from history that capture humanity’s exploration of the heavens Continue reading...

Scientists working on the Event Horizon Telescope project have produced an image of the "unseeable", capturing the world's first picture of a black hole. It took nearly two years for 200 researchers and a network of eight radio telescopes spanning the globe to make the breakthrough, which was previously thought impossible

Homo luzonensis fossils found in Luzon island cave, dating back up to 67,000 yearsA new species of ancient human, thought to have been under 4ft tall and adapted to climbing trees, has been discovered in the Philippines, providing a twist in the story of human evolution.The specimen, named Homo luzonensis, was excavated from Callao cave on Luzon island in the northern Philippines and has been dated to 50,000-67,000 years ago – when our own ancestors and the Neanderthals were spreading across Europe and into Asia. Continue reading...

Network of eight radio telescopes around the world records revolutionary imageAstronomers have captured the first image of a black hole, heralding a revolution in our understanding of the universe’s most enigmatic objects.The picture shows a halo of dust and gas, tracing the outline of a colossal black hole, at the heart of the Messier 87 galaxy, 55m light years from Earth. Continue reading...

Tommy Cooper’s fez and Paul Daniels’ saw-in-half box part of display at Wellcome CollectionTommy Cooper’s fez, a gorilla mask used by Derren Brown and a wooden box and saw that Paul Daniels used to saw Debbie McGee in half have gone on display at a museum best known for exploring science and medicine.“It is so macabre,” said artist AR Hopwood of the saw-in-half box. “It looks like a torture device. There are no foot holes and no head hole so it would have needed an extraordinary feat of dexterity by the female assistant. Unless they were really sawn in half.” Continue reading...

Ian Paterson scandal prompts call for more oversight of safety in private hospitalsThe leader of the Royal College of Surgeons of England is calling for private hospitals to be encouraged to publish information on their safety to prevent another scandal like the one involving jailed breast cancer surgeon Ian Paterson.“The surgical community was deeply shocked by the case of Ian Paterson, the surgeon convicted of intentionally wounding patients by carrying out unnecessary breast surgery operations,” said Prof Derek Alderson, president of the organisation. Continue reading...

Medical students in Oregon made the discovery only after the death of Rose Marie BentleyRose Marie Bentley was an avid swimmer, raised five children, helped her husband run a feed store and lived to 99. It was only after she died that medical students discovered that all her internal organs, except for her heart, were in the wrong place.The discovery of the rare condition, which was presented this week to a conference of anatomists, was astounding — especially because Bentley had lived so long. People with the condition known as situs inversus with levocardia often have life-threatening cardiac ailments and other abnormalities, according to Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU). Continue reading...

Michelle Pfeiffer’s new line claims to be free of so-called ‘toxic’ substances. But what are they? Here’s what you need to know about your favourite scentsThe world is, we seem to be warned by so many articles, full of chemicals that may give us cancer, nerve damage and maybe worse. Now perfume is feared as potential poison.And so comes the idea of “clean perfume” – much like clean eating, or clean beauty, certain ingredients are left out because it is purported they are bad for us. The actor Michelle Pfeiffer is leading the charge, launching a perfume line called Henry Rose that, she claims, will be free of “toxic” substances. Continue reading...

Leading Brexiter voice Peter Oborne has done a U-turn, showing that even locked-in beliefs have a tipping point“It’s nearly three years since I, along with 17. 4 million other Britons, voted for Brexit. Today I have to admit that the Brexit project has gone sour.” So began the Daily Mail columnist Peter Oborne’s widely shared piece on why he changed his mind about Brexit. The article stood out because it was a rare example of someone changing their mind and admitting to it in public.All too often we get locked into our beliefs. We seem incapable of changing our mind, no matter how compelling the evidence is that we are wrong. An extreme example of this was uncovered in 1956, by the American social psychologist Leon Festinger and his colleagues. They studied a cult that believed planet Earth would be destroyed by a great flood on 21 December 1954. Its followers also believed a select group of true believers would be saved when an alien spaceship arrived to collect them. At midnight on the allocated date, the members of the cult gathered and prepared to be saved by aliens. When the end of the world didn’t come, and the aliens didn’t arrive, they were stunned. Instead of dropping their precious beliefs they revised them. Their leader told them that the god of Earth had decided to give Earth a second chance. These cult members show us the lengths people will go to preserve their beliefs when faced with overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Continue reading...

If emissions continue to rise at current rate, ice will have all but disappeared from Europe’s Alpine valleys by end of centuryTwo-thirds of the ice in the glaciers of the Alps is doomed to melt by the end of the century as climate change forces up temperatures, a study has found.Half of the ice in the mountain chain’s 4,000 glaciers will be gone by 2050 due to global warming already baked in by past emissions, the research shows. After that, even if carbon emissions have plummeted to zero, two-thirds of the ice will still have melted by 2100. Continue reading...

Women living with crippling pain experience average eight- to nine-year diagnostic delayAfter allocating $4.7m in 2018 towards a national action plan to tackle endometriosis, the health minister on Tuesday announced a further $10m towards researching and raising awareness about the crippling and chronic menstrual condition.Related: Endometriosis action plan follows decades of lobbying – and suffering Continue reading...