‘Rapid acting’ esketamine was approved by the FDA to treat people who don’t respond to traditional psychiatric drugsExperts are cautiously optimistic a drug related to ketamine, recently approved by the US Food and Drug Administration, could be a “watershed” moment in the treatment of depression, and one of the first drugs to be a “rapid-acting” medicine to treat the chronic disease.The drug, called esketamine, will be sold under the brand name Spravato, and was approved to treat people with depression who don’t respond to traditional psychiatric drugs. Continue reading...

Smile mission could help reduce ‘space weather’ disruption to satellite servicesThe European Space Agency has given the go-ahead to plans for a spacecraft to study the magnetic interaction between the sun and the Earth.The mission, known as Smile (Solar wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer), will be conducted in collaboration with China. It will be a follow-on to their previous joint mission, known as Double Star/Tan Ce, which flew between 2003 and 2008 and also studied the sun-Earth connection. Continue reading...

Most accurate measurement yet includes stars, dust, gas, planets and black holeAstronomers have hauled the Milky Way on to a cosmic scale of sorts, and found that our galaxy has as much mass as 1.5tn suns, give or take a few.The measurement, the most accurate yet, covers all the stars and planets, dust and gas, and the supermassive black hole that sits at the centre. It alone comes in at 4m times more massive than the sun. Continue reading...

Monarch posted image of 1843 Charles Babbage letter to Prince Albert during Science Museum visit on ThursdayThe Queen has proved she is in touch with the touch screen by sharing her first Instagram post in the latest personal technological milestone of her lengthy reign.The 92-year-old monarch shared an archive image to the 4.6 million followers of @theRoyalFamily’s Instagram account during a visit to the Science Museum to formally open the new Smith Centre and summer exhibition, Top Secret. Continue reading...

In the second episode of Five Minute Masterminds, the author and broadcaster Timandra Harkness introduces big data, explaining how big it actually is, its impact on recent political elections and how it can change your life

Based on a nerve cell, the architect’s posthumous addition to London’s Blizard laboratory complex is so lovable, you almost want to give it a cuddleThrusting its bristly bottom out into the road, a curious spiny creature has landed in the backstreets of Whitechapel, London. Standing like an intergalactic porcupine, covered with long glowing quills that sway gently in the breeze, it is a startling thing to encounter in this unremarkable corner of hospital buildings and curry houses.This is the £2m Neuron Pod, one of the last posthumous works of architect Will Alsop, who proves that he is still eminently capable of making mischief from beyond the grave. The project marks the latest addition to Queen Mary University of London’s campus, an informal science learning space for the armies of schoolchildren who benefit from the teaching hospital’s lively education programme. It is a classroom, but not as we know it. Continue reading...

Christina Koch and Anne McClain to make history at International Space Station on 29 MarchThe first all-female spacewalk is to take place later this month, 35 years after a woman first took part in one.The US space agency Nasa said astronauts Christina Koch and Anne McClain will walk outside the International Space Station on 29 March on a mission to replace batteries installed last summer. Continue reading...

Study that analysed data from UK found men were more likely to develop heart conditionsMen might be at greater risk of developing heart failure, heart attacks or blood clots than women at least in part because they have higher levels of testosterone, scientists say.The team said the finding could help in the development of new treatments for heart disease. Continue reading...

‘Light pollution is making it increasingly hard to find a really dark night sky that lets you see the stars. It’s a shame for humanity’

A third of people put on low-calorie diet in trial stayed in remission after two yearsA third of people who went on a low-calorie diet to lose substantial amounts of weight reversed their type 2 diabetes and were still in remission two years later, a study on the long-term implications has found.The number of people with type 2 diabetes has been soaring on the back of the obesity epidemic sweeping the world. Two-thirds of adults in the UK are now overweight or obese. Continue reading...

Sports bodies want a biological criterion to indicate an athlete’s sex. But it’s mind-bogglingly more complicated than thatDebates are raging again over who should be allowed to compete in women’s sport. Take two recent examples that inflamed the internet. First the Sunday Times reported that the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) intended to classify women with higher natural testosterone as “biological males”– just as 800m runner Caster Semenya was headed to court to challenge IAAF regulations that would exclude her and others from competing owing to higher than typical testosterone levels. Then tennis great Martina Navratilova asserted that trans women “biologically, are still men”, and shouldn’t be allowed to compete in women’s events.Related: Proposed testosterone limit ’flawed’ and ‘hurtful’, say Caster Semenya’s lawyers Continue reading...

Rainfall affects our mood, our propensity to commit crime and how hungry we feel – but why?It’s raining, it’s pouring, the old man is snoring. He bumped his head when he went to bed, and he couldn’t get up in the morning. This was possibly because in the absence of sunlight his body was still producing the hormone melatonin, which makes you sleepy. There are many ways that rainfall affects human behaviour. Why do crime levels drop when the heavens open? How much does rain really affect people’s moods and behaviour?In 2008 university researchers published a paper proposing that weak summer monsoons were influential in the downfall of three dynasties in ancient China. By analysing stalagmites from a cave, they were able to match periods of significantly decreased rainfall with periods of social upheaval and the demise of the Tang, Yuan and Ming dynasties. This is thought to be related to reduced rice cultivation.

Geologist Marcia Bjornerud encourages us to look at evolution through deep timeHow far ahead do your thoughts tend to stray? Tomorrow, next week, summer holidays? Perhaps some fleeting thoughts about the years ahead? But what if we stared deeper into the future? Reframing our thinking in this way would go a long way to saving the world, according to the geologist Marcia Bjornerud. In her mind-expanding book Timefulness she introduces us to “thinking like a rock” and seeing how our planet has evolved through deep time.Realising that dinosaurs dominated the planet for 180m years, while humans have been around for a mere 4m, suddenly puts a new spin on our “success”. Meanwhile, observing some of the major swings in Earth’s past climate, and the impact that these had on life, is both reassuring (the Earth looked after itself just fine and life evolved and came out the other side) and concerning (many species became extinct during these big changes). Continue reading...

Image shows part of Beresheet spacecraft with Earth in backgroundAn Israeli spacecraft on its maiden mission to the moon has sent its first selfie back to Earth, mission chiefs said on Tuesday.The image showing part of the Beresheet spacecraft with Earth in the background was beamed to mission control in Yehud, Israel – 23,360 miles (37,600km) away, the project’s lead partners said. Continue reading...

Chromosomes’ movement when the brain is resting allows cells to mend DNAErnest Hemingway prized sleep for good reason. Not one to dwell on rest and recuperation, the novelist saw snoozing as a form of damage limitation. “I love sleep,” he once said. “My life has the tendency to fall apart when I’m awake.”The author’s observation may be truer than he imagined. Scientists have discovered that broken DNA builds up in brain cells in the daytime and repair work reverses the damage only during sleep. Continue reading...

The Observer New Review offers you the chance to quiz the superstar physicist on time, space or anything in betweenCarlo Rovelli’s first popular science book, Seven Brief Lessons in Physics, has sold over a million copies since it was published in 2014. It has established him, alongside the likes of Stephen Hawking and Richard Feynman, as one of the great popularisers of theoretical physics.Related: 'There is no such thing as past or future': physicist Carlo Rovelli on changing how we think about time Continue reading...

The first known case of a functional cure for HIV happened 12 years ago, after US resident Timothy Brown received stem cell donations in Berlin. More recently, a patient in London received a bone marrow transplant from a virus-resistant donor and has been shown to be cleared of the virus Continue reading...

Extreme weather blamed for plunge in country’s olive harvest – the worst in 25 years – that could leave the country dependent on imports by AprilExtreme weather events have been the “main driver” of an olive harvest collapse that could leave Italy dependent on imports from April, a leading climate scientist has warned.A 57% plunge in the country’s olive harvest – the worst in 25 years – sparked protests by thousands of Italian farmers wearing gilet arancioni – orange vests – in Rome earlier this month. Continue reading...

I found something I never knew I wanted: fascinating mathematical concepts explained in a way that’s entertainingYouTube has long had a reputation as a hive of conspiracy theories, misinformation, and pseudoscience. All these accusations are, more or less, true — if you’re vulnerable to the wooing of Flat Earthers, anti-vaxxers, 9/11 truthers, the alt-right, and every other sort of lunatic fringe flourishing in 2018, they’re all there, waiting for you on YouTube.But as with all the other “platforms” that dominate the internet — Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, etc — YouTube is more than a morass of anti-scientific nutters. The site is also home to much of the web’s best and most compelling popular science content. Continue reading...

Man becomes second person in world to be cleared of virus after stem cell donationA London patient with HIV has become the second person ever to be free of the virus after a bone marrow transplant, raising hopes of a cure for Aids.More than a decade ago, Timothy Brown, the so-called Berlin patient who later went public, made history as the first person to be “cured” of HIV. Like the London patient, he had a bone marrow stem cell transplant to treat cancer. Continue reading...

The giants of the scientific publishing industry have made huge profits for decades. Now they are under threatScientific publishing has long been a licence to print money. Scientists need journals in which to publish their research, so they will supply the articles without monetary reward. Other scientists perform the skilled and specialised work of peer review also for free, because it is a central element in the acquisition of status and the production of scientific knowledge.With the content of papers secured for free, the publisher needs only find a market for its journal. Until this century, university libraries were not very price sensitive. Since academic careers depend on publication, the demand for scientific publications is unbounded except by the price that scholarly libraries can be forced to pay. Scientific publishers routinely report profit margins approaching 40% on their operations, at a time when the rest of the publishing industry is in an existential crisis. Continue reading...

The long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific conceptsMy hair and nails grow about a quarter as fast as my wife’s, so I wonder: is this because I have a slow metabolic rate? And if I have, is it a good or a bad thing?Peter Hanson, Exeter Continue reading...

A computer-generated artwork is going to auction at Sotheby’s – but will AI art have staying power?Mario Klingemann, a German artist who uses AI in his work, has radical views on creativity. “Humans are not original,” he says. “We only reinvent, make connections between things we have seen.” While humans can only build on what we have learned and what others have done before us, “machines can create from scratch”.It’s an interesting perspective. Setting aside whether or not human creativity is limited and indeed what precisely creativity is, it’s certainly true that artificial neural networks being developed today work out the rules as they go along, rather than being taught. AlphaGo, the AI that defeated the Korean go grandmaster Lee Sedol, was fed thousands of games, but no rules. It worked out how to play go entirely by itself. Continue reading...

This month Starwatch will trace the progress of the moon through its full cycle, starting this week with the new moon and waxing crescentFor the next four weeks, Starwatch will trace the moon’s phases across a full lunar month and point out the objects of interest that our nearest celestial neighbour passes along the way. New moon occurs this week on 6 March at 16:04 GMT. It is the moment when the moon lies between the sun and earth. We seldom see this because it takes place in the glare of the sun. Only when the line-up is precise does it become visible because it causes a total solar eclipse. This month, our first good chance to see the young moon comes on the evening of 8 March. It is very difficult to see a young moon within its first 24 hours but by sunset on Friday, it will be just over two days old. Even so, the moon will be extremely low in the sky and just 4% of its visible surface will be illuminated. The chart shows the view looking west at 18:30 GMT on that evening. Look out each subsequent evening to watch the crescent grow larger and the moon climb higher into the sky. On 11 March, it will pass Mars and be 23% illuminated. Continue reading...

High concentrations of the metal were detected in fluids passed through enFlow systemSeveral hospitals have withdrawn a widely used surgical device over fears that it could expose patients to dangerous levels of aluminium, the Guardian has learned.The device, called enFlow, is used to warm fluids to body temperature before they are infused into patients during surgery. But fluids passed through the device during tests were found to contain hundreds of times the recommended safe limit of aluminium. Continue reading...

Capsule is the first US-made, designed-for-crew spacecraft to dock in eight yearsSpaceX‘s new crew capsule has arrived at the International Space Station, completing its second milestone in just over a day.No one was onboard the Dragon capsule that launched on Saturday on its first test flight, only a dummy. Continue reading...

Following a successful launch on Saturday, the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule has docked at the at the International Space Station. The new US space capsule, designed to shuttle astronauts, is the first to dock in eight years

Incurable and increasingly prevalent, Alzheimer’s has long puzzled the research community. Now scientists believe the human body may be the best line of defenceHalf a million people in the UK are living with Alzheimer’s disease, the most common form of dementia. And while the risks generally increase with age, thousands are afflicted under the age of 65. Inheritable genetic conditions can lead to familial Alzheimer’s, which can afflict people as young as 30.There is no known cure. Some medications can reduce memory loss and aid concentration, but these merely alleviate the symptoms or boost the performance of those neurons in the brain that remain unaffected. They do nothing to stop or slow down the killing-off of brain cells by this neurodegenerative condition Continue reading...

From playing hard to thinking hard, a southpaw bias can have a major impact on performanceResearch published recently concluded that left-handed people were overrepresented in a database of 10,000 boxers and martial arts fighters and had a higher win percentage. This confirms the “fighter hypothesis”: that despite the costs of being left-handed the trait has survived because of a competitive advantage in combat. Continue reading...

An innovative drug may soon offer new ways to fight this cruel inherited condition Matt Ellison was seven when his father was diagnosed with Huntington’s disease. The condition – which is progressive, incurable and invariably fatal – took 15 years to kill John Ellison.The impact on Matt’s life was profound. His father, who had inherited the disease from his mother, found he could no longer concentrate enough to hold down his job as an engineer at Jaguar. Later he began to lose the power of movement and, eventually, lost his ability to speak. At his local school Matt was mocked because of his father’s odd, uncoordinated gait. The taunting got so bad that Matt stopped attending. “I stayed at home and helped Mum look after Dad,” he recalls. Continue reading...

Intravenous therapy has taken off via social media after star names led the way. But its effects are unknown, doctors warnMadonna does it. Rihanna’s done it. Katy Perry, Rita Ora and Gwyneth Paltrow have been known to dabble and while there are no clinical studies to prove the benefits of intravenous vitamin therapy, the celebrity wellness trend appears to have gone fully mass market.In a gleaming west London clinic, with plump leather recliners and a TV tuned to Netflix, Yassine Bendiabdallah explains the benefits of his IV treatments. Customers, mostly wealthy and mostly women, visit him for courses of injections promising an array of anti-ageing, anti-stress, brain-boosting, energy-restoring properties. His most popular is the NAD (nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide), which costs £500 and can take up to three hours to administer. “It causes an uncomfortable tightening in your head and chest,” he explains, “but that’s normal”. Continue reading...

SpaceX’s success, culminating in an undamaged splash down in the Atlantic, will surely see the start of manned flights in Dragon spaceshipsThe Crew Dragon spacecraft currently in orbit round the Earth has a single occupant, a test dummy called Ripley, named after the astronaut heroine of the film Alien. As human presences go, it is not much. Yet the spaceship’s flight represents a milestone in US manned spaceflight.Almost eight years since its last astronauts flew on the space shuttle Atlantis, the US is now on the threshold of returning astronauts to space. Success with SpaceX’s Crew Dragon this week, culminating in an undamaged splash down in the Atlantic on Friday, will surely see the start of manned flights in Dragon spaceships. Continue reading...

Launch brings US plans to resume sending people into space in own spacecraft closerAstronauts could be flying again from US soil as early as this summer after the flawless launch of SpaceX’s privately built Crew Dragon capsule opened “a new era in American excellence”, according to the head of the space agency Nasa.Related: Spacewatch: Nasa to launch new crewed craft in 2019 Continue reading...

The biologist talks about the contentious Crispr-Cas9 gene-editing technique, the merit of big pharma and the UK’s 100,000 Genomes ProjectA new technique to alter DNA is offering humans the ability to take control of food, disease and our own reproduction as never before. The workhorse of this technology is Crispr-Cas9, often described as a pair of “molecular scissors”, which can be directed to a specific part of a genome and used to make changes ranging from deactivating a gene to correcting a genetic typo or even inserting new genetic material.In her new book, Hacking the Code of Life, biologist Nessa Carey delves into the practicalities, ethics and controversies of the approach, including the recent claim that a Chinese researcher has applied the tool to human embryos, resulting in gene-edited babies who will pass their altered DNA on to following generations. Continue reading...

It’s a coercive and insidious form of psychological torture, but gaslighting can be recognised and stoppedGaslight was the play that made its writer Patrick Hamilton a very rich man. It opened in London in 1938 to exceptional reviews. Noël Coward was a fan. King George VI took his wife to see it. In 1940, it became a British film, followed four years later by the Hollywood version starring Ingrid Bergman. When domestic abuse was barely whispered, Hamilton shone a light on coercive control and marital manipulation. He caught it exactly.The play is set in the upper-class house of Jack and Bella. She tiptoes around him. He’s kind, then cold. He flirts with women, but when Bella objects, she’s told she “reads meanings into everything”. He hides her things so she questions her sanity. At night, he secretly visits the top floor of the house, turning up the lights, causing the downstairs lights to dim (hence the title). Continue reading...

An uncrewed SpaceX spacecraft launched as planned from Nasa’s Kennedy Space Centre in Florida on Saturday, on top of a Falcon 9 rocket and carrying a dummy pilot. The successful launch brings US plans to resume sending people into space in its own spacecraft closer

I have always had an ‘inner bastard’, but doing standup has made it worseAs a comedian, you are often subject to criticism: partly because comedy is so subjective and partly because social media means that any idiot with an internet connection has a direct line to you. Sometimes, the criticism can be imaginative as well as insulting, but most of the time it’s stuff like: “So you’re supposed to be a comedian?” or: “You’re about as funny as herpes,” or: “I hope you die in a fire.”I don’t mind any of this, really; it’s part and parcel of a job in the public eye. (At the same time, to be clear, I think all of these people are scum.) What I do object to is my inner voice – my harshest critic, and impossible to turn off. I like to be fairly relaxed about my work – in fact, in my life, I consider myself a member of the church of “passionate indifference”. And yet the inner bastard is ever present. Continue reading...

The February heat was unnatural. I used to find wild weather exciting, but now it evokes the apocalypse of climate changeThere was a time on these temperate islands when freak weather thrilled us with its bouts of exceptional heat, wind, rain or snow. Unless you were at sea in a gale, fear was a rare emotion. Even in 1987, when the so-called Great Storm hurtled through southern England and northern France on a night in mid-October, it was possible to be more awed than afraid. Crashing branches and tumbling slates woke people, but when they turned to each other in bed it was to exclaim about the wind’s strength – “Would you just listen to that!” – rather than to see it as a portent of something larger or more terrible. Thirty-odd years later, most of the people who lived through the Great Storm remember it mainly because a BBC weatherman got the forecast wrong.In England, the wind gusted at 120mph that night, and at least 22 people were killed on both sides of the Channel. But unless you were among the bereaved, or had a tall oak fall through the roof, nobody felt anxiety or despair. There was no prevailing gloom. Continue reading...

Weather rather than pirates caused majority of sinkings, says culture ministry teamThe treacherous waters of the Americas had their first taste of Spanish timber on Christmas Day 1492, when Christopher Columbus’ flagship, the Santa María, sank off the coast of what is now Haiti.Over the following four centuries, as Spain’s maritime empire swelled, peaked and collapsed, the waves on which it was built devoured hundreds of ships and thousands of people, swallowing gold, silver and emeralds and scattering spices, mercury and cochineal to the currents. Continue reading...

Nicola Davis bids a fond farewell to the Mars rover Opportunity after Nasa declared the mission finally over, 15 years after the vehicle landed on the red planet.On 25 January 2004, a robot rover crashed through the atmosphere of Mars and bounced to a standstill on the surface of the red planet. The moment was greeted with scenes of jubilation as Nasa scientists celebrated the successful landing of their second rover, named Opportunity.The Opportunity rover far surpassed original expectations. It managed to send data back to Earth for nearly 15 years, significantly longer than the three months it was supposed to survive. Continue reading...

These painkillers don’t work against chronic pain. The UK must find alternatives to help sufferers in deprived areasPeople in Blackpool are twice as likely as the inhabitants of Wokingham to die before they are 70. A recent paper which measured the distribution of opioids not by the number of prescriptions, but in equivalent units of morphine, found that NHS prescriptions of opioid painkillers have been generally rising in England and Wales, but have risen most in the north of England and more in poorer areas. Blackpool, again, tops the list. In part this is because poverty is correlated with chronic physical pain: both men and women in the lowest income quartile report suffering chronic pain at rates much higher than those in the top quartile. That, in turn, reflects that fact that hard physical labour and unemployment are both bad for health in the long term.But the prevalence of pain can’t entirely account for the pattern of prescription. Many forms of chronic pain do not respond well to opioids. For lower back pain the Nice recommendation is not to treat it at all, except perhaps with ibuprofen, exercise and massage. It will go away on its own, or it will not. Figures suggest that only one opioid prescription in eight was written out for cancer pain in 2014. The others were written for conditions where is it much less obvious that they are the best possible treatment. Continue reading...

Research suggests link between disrupted sleep cycles and unbalanced metabolismHaving a good lie-in at the weekend might not make up for sleep loss during the working week, research suggests.Scientists have previously found that a lack of sleep increases the risk of obesity and diabetes. However, it was not clear whether sleeping more on the weekend could balance the books and prevent such an uptick. Continue reading...

Schools, bodies, relationships – this quest to be outstanding can be damaging, even to people who really are outstandingWe live in a society obsessed with being exceptional. Whether it is as workers, parents, students, lovers or cooks, we are expected to be outstanding. We must strive to be the best employee, craft an outstanding body, have an amazing relationship, all while being exceptionally happy. Even the most ordinary institutions also are expected to be nothing less than excellent. Companies want to be “world class”, schools have become “academies of excellence”, and humble local GP surgeries strive to be “outstanding”. Being good enough is seen as simply not good enough.Our quest to be excellent has many positive consequences, but it also can be damaging. Lionising excellence can create huge inequalities. When high performers are showered with rewards, the great mass of us who are average miss out. This can spark resentment in those who feel that they don’t measure up. But the obsession with being exceptional does just harm the great mass of average people. It can also do damage to people at the top as well. Continue reading...

Reishi, boletus, cordyceps and lion’s mane may sound like something you would take to clear up a patch of eczema – but now the fungi are appearing in snacksMy barista hands over a cup filled with grey-tinged milk and a few tiny pieces of fungus bobbing around in it. “Enjoy,” he says with a beaming smile. Enjoy might not be the first thing that springs to mind, but it might be time to get onboard as, over the past year or so, adding a handful of mushrooms to your hot drink, chocolate or energy bar has become an increasingly normal thing for people to do.Reishi, boletus, cordyceps and lion’s mane sound less like mushrooms and more like things you reluctantly take as a last ditch attempt to clear up a patch of eczema – and, indeed, high claims have been made for their supposed health benefits. Most sellers talk up their products’ antibacterial, antiviral and immune-enhancing properties, but don’t go so big on the fact that, say, cordyceps are parasitic fungi that grow on insects (mmmm, is that my stomach rumbling?). Continue reading...

Boy and girl, now four, are only the second case of ‘sesquizygotic’ twins recordedA pair of twins have stunned researchers after it emerged that they are neither identical nor fraternal – but something in between.The team say the boy and girl, now four years old, are the second case of semi-identical twins ever recorded, and the first to be spotted while the mother was pregnant. Continue reading...

Scientists develop GM strain that can produce cannabinoid compounds with addition of sugarScientists in California have developed a strain of yeast that can be used to brew cannabis extract rather than beer.With just the addition of sugar, the genetically modified yeast fermented to produce pure cannabinoid compounds including mind-altering THC and the non-psychoactive CBD, which is used medically to treat conditions including chronic pain and childhood epilepsy. Continue reading...

Scientists have studied the active brains of adolescents with psychopathic traits, and have consistently found particular structural abnormalities, writes Sally LlewellynVincent Lambe says he wants his film Detainment to open a conversation (‘I was told James Bulger’s killers were evil’, G2, 22 February). He also refers to “trauma and troubled childhoods” leading to children committing horrendous acts.In fact the conversation is already well under way among some neuroscientists. Enabled by the advent of brain MRI scans, these scientists have studied the active brains of adolescents with psychopathic traits, and have consistently found particular structural abnormalities. Continue reading...

The government’s ‘serious shortage protocols’ are a real danger to the British public’s health – and may be illegal

To create the year’s first must-see documentary, director Todd Douglas Miller worked with Nasa to restore fascinating unseen footage from 1969A man sips a beer, eyeing the horizon from a Florida parking lot. Nasa techs sit in a lobby as headlines blare of Ted Kennedy’s car crash in Chappaquiddick. They’re two of the many striking details – ordinary, recognizable moments amid one of humankind’s most extraordinary achievements – restored to full vitality in Apollo 11, an all-primary source documentary, meticulously restored. The 93-minute documentary, released for a limited time in the US on Imax before a wider release, and to be shown in museums later this year, captures the first moon mission and its spectators in the visceral, wide-lens color of cinema epics – an achievement in historical preservation that hinged on the discovery of long-unopened boxes idling in archives.Related: Apollo 11 review – eye-opening documentary is a five-star triumph Continue reading...

Along with owning too much stuff, we also pile unreasonable demands on our time. It’s time to limit our focusesThere’s growing evidence that a cluttered home or workplace is a stressful one. A recent DePaul University study found that physical clutter is linked with procrastination and, in turn, lower life satisfaction. Other research shows that clutter is associated with elevated levels of the stress hormone cortisol.“We have taken our wants and been told they are needs,” Joseph Ferrari, the lead author in the DePaul study, recently told the New York Times. Continue reading...