Preparatory drilling has allegedly damaged 6,000-year-old structure a mile from the stonesArchaeologists have accused Highways England of accidentally drilling a large hole through a 6,000-year-old structure near Stonehenge during preparatory work for a tunnel.The drilling, which is alleged to have taken place at Blick Mead, around a mile and a half from the world-famous neolithic ring of stones, has enraged archaeologists, who say engineers have dug a three-metre-deep hole (10ft) through a man-made platform of flint and animal bone. Continue reading...
Australian researchers have a new way to increase desire in the northern corroboree frogAustralian researchers are applying a sex hormone to the skin of the critically endangered northern corroboree frog in a world-first treatment to encourage females to accept less desirable mates in captivity.A trial conducted by the University of Wollongong and Taronga zoo found that, by administering the hormone to both a male and female frog before pairing them off, researchers could increase the chance that they would accept their allocated partner from about 22% to 100%. Continue reading...
Clinical trials of pig organs in humans could begin in as little as three years, say researchersThe transplantation of pig organs into humans is a step closer to becoming a reality after researchers showed the organs can function long-term in baboons.The transplanting of organs from one species to another, known as xenotransplantation, has been the subject of research for many years. Proponents say it could help get around a shortage of human organs. Continue reading...
The Royal Society’s annual photography competition celebrates ‘the power of photography to capture science in its many forms’ Continue reading...
The humanities subjects do not benefit from the research excellence framework. They need a better systemThe government’s research excellence framework (Ref) is perhaps the ultimate in bureaucratic exercises. It aims every seven years to assess, department by department, every “research active†academic in the UK. The aim is laudable: to ensure that a stream of research funding (known as QR) is distributed to universities fairly and transparently. But for the humanities, the Ref does nothing but harm.Few would quarrel with the principle of a system of assessment for the humanities based on reading and judging work submitted, rather than one using citation indexes and other bibliometric data. But the scale of the task makes meaningful or honest assessment impossible. There are too few assessors to provide competent, specialised judgement on the range of work submitted. The workload imposed on them requires superhuman capacities: along with their normal teaching and research, panel members must read the equivalent of a full-length book every day for nine months. Continue reading...
Missive that calls the Bible ‘a collection of primitive legends’ was expected to fetch only half that muchA handwritten missive by Albert Einstein known as the “God letter†fetched almost $3m at auction on Tuesday.Christie’s auction house in New York stated on Tuesday afternoon that the letter, including the buyer’s premium, fetched $2.89m under the hammer. That was almost twice the expected amount. Continue reading...
Patient in Brazil who had been born without uterus gives birth to baby girlA woman in Brazil has successfully given birth after receiving a womb from a dead donor, the first time such a procedure has been successful.While researchers in countries including Sweden and the US have previously succeeded in transplanting wombs from living donors into women who have gone on to give birth, experts said the latest development was a significant advance. Continue reading...
A Chinese scientist has produced twins using the powerful gene-editing technology. This is pointless, dangerous and unethicalThe Crispr/Cas9 technique of editing DNA is, by the standards of earlier methods, astonishingly quick and easy. It is not entirely reliable or accurate, but it places enormous potential power in the hands of ordinary scientists. It is also internationally widespread, and beyond the control of any single nation now. So reckless and unethical experiments were only to be expected; nonetheless, last week’s announcement by a Chinese scientist that he had altered the germlines of twin girls to modify a gene involved in the transmission of HIV was a profoundly worrying one, for several reasons.The most important is that there is no medical reason for what he did. There is a vitally important difference between editing the genes which are present in a body and those which are present in sperm or eggs. With the first kind of modifications, the effects die with the bearer. With the second, they are passed, like mutations, down into future generations. Of course such mutations might in theory be entirely beneficial. But scientists don’t at the moment have nearly enough knowledge to judge whether this is true or even probable in practice. They’d need to know at least how any particular modified gene will perform over a lifetime, and, ideally, what effects it might have in subsequent generations. Continue reading...
The controversial gene-editing breakthrough claimed by Dr He Jiankui may be a pivotal moment in human development, says Doug ClarkThere have been many 2001: A Space Odyssey Monoliths in mankind’s history: the wheel, the development of agriculture, the internal combustion engine. Not all of these, however, have been physical. There have been several such step-changes in our thinking, our ethics and morals. The Christian church has fought against many of these. Galileo was only one of the most famous victims of such.I suspect that Dr He Jiankui’s work on gene editing in the Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen will turn out to be one of these Monolith moments (Scientist broke law creating gene-edited girls, China says, 30 November). Pioneers, particularly in the life sciences, will always run the risk of surpassing man’s moral and ethical evolution.
Inexpensive procedure shows whether patient has cancerous cells in the body, but does not reveal where or how serious it isScientists have developed a universal cancer test that can detect traces of the disease in a patient’s bloodstream.The cheap and simple test uses a colour-changing fluid to reveal the presence of malignant cells anywhere in the body and provides results in less than 10 minutes. Continue reading...
Researchers say similar protein to royalactin in humans builds up ‘self-renewal’ stem cellsIt is the mysterious substance that turns worker honeybees into queens and fills the shelves of health food shops which tout its unverified powers to fend off ageing, improve fertility and reinvigorate the immune system.Whether royal jelly has genuine health benefits for humans is a matter for more research, but in a study scientists have cracked one of the most enduring puzzles surrounding the milky gloop: the secret behind its queen-maker magic. Continue reading...
The discoveries were made at a 19th-century burial site at New Covent Garden marketNews reports and social media anxiety may make us feel that life is tough in Britain today but the extraordinary findings of a new archaeological excavation have provided a salutary reminder that, a couple of centuries ago, it was so much worse.Archaeologists who worked on an early 19th-century burial site at the New Covent Garden market in south-west London where about 100 bodies were found have said that they contain evidence of arduous working conditions, a noxious environment, endemic diseases, physical deformities, malnutrition and deadly violence. Continue reading...
Violent aversion to self-praise is wired into British cultural DNA, yet the evidence points to the beneficial effects of patting our own backs once in a whileLook at you! Reading a newspaper site rather than staring, bovine, at pap snaps of Rihanna on a beach, or endless updates on the possible contents of a royal womb. You’re smart, and discerning. Did you make your own lunch today? That is both thrifty and healthy behaviour. Got to work on time? You are a rockstar of time-management. But you don’t need me to tell you that.Experts are increasingly coming to believe that paying ourselves compliments can be as rewarding as hearing them from someone else. Giving ourselves a pat on the back in the privacy of our own heads lowers our stress level, leads to positive habit formation and increases our self-esteem. Now, I know what you’re thinking (I’m good at anticipating negative responses): “What California nonsense is this?†It sounds like the barefooted spaff of a self-satisfied yoga teacher, or the behaviour of a puffed-up blowtard who crushes it in finance, has bleeding palms from high-fiving mirrors all day, and whom no one likes. Violent aversion to self-praise is wired into British cultural DNA. It’s hard enough receiving compliments from someone else. A friend will pay offhand praise to something we are wearing, and we immediately start digging around for the receipt to prove it was on sale and we haven’t turned into Louis XIV, and would still be wearing our old jacket but the council said it had to be knocked down. We are deeply suspicious of feeling good about ourselves, and this is holding us back. Continue reading...
Leading scientist hopes drug trials in DRC could lessen the impact of deadly virusEbola could be transformed from a terrifying disease into something that can be managed at home if drug trials in the Democratic Republic of the Congo are successful, a leading scientist believes.Four experimental drugs are starting to be used as part of a groundbreaking trial under extremely difficult conditions in an outbreak in conflict-ridden eastern DRC. Continue reading...
Some cancers have had no new drugs licensed since 2000, according to Institute of Cancer Research reportCancer patients are missing out on innovative new drugs, with red tape covering clinical trials and licensing among the factors to blame, according to a report by the UK’s Institute of Cancer Research.Children’s cancers have received little in the way of new treatments, a finding the authors put down to drug companies failing to invest in these rare conditions and using regulatory loopholes to avoid conducting the necessary clinical trials. Continue reading...
Archaeologists say man who died 500 years ago may have been a mudlark or fishermanHe was found lying on his front, head twisted to the side. One arm was bent above his head, suggesting he had fallen – or perhaps had been pushed – to his death in the river more than five centuries ago.But aside from his puzzling position, the skeleton discovered this year near the shore of the Thames in London was notable for another, very particular reason. Though his clothes had long since decayed, on the man’s feet were a pair of remarkably well preserved – and extremely rare – knee-high leather boots. Might they hold clues, archaeologists wondered, to who the man was and, just possibly, how he died? Continue reading...
The solution to today’s puzzleEarlier today I set you the following puzzle: Aboriginal groups are divided into subgroups, called “skins.†Your skin is determined at birth, based on your parents’ skins, and it does not change in your lifetime. Your skin will determine certain social rules, such as who you are allowed to marry.The Warlpiri, who live northwest of Alice Springs, divide themselves into eight skins, according to the rules in the diagram below. Yes, it’s complicated! The skins are numbered 1 to 8. The horizontal rows indicate marriage correspondences, while the arrows point from mother to child. (All the marriages here are between men and women, and we can assume no divorces or half-siblings or step children.). Continue reading...
The long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific conceptsWhy is “having baggage†always seen as a bad thing? Isn’t it possible to have good baggage?Jane Brennan, Manchester Continue reading...
There was an exodus of climate experts from the White House after the 2016 election – but they still turn up to UN talksIn a hallway beneath the UN climate change headquarters in Bonn, Germany, Sue Biniaz leans on a table, scribbling some thoughts on a piece of paper.It’s May 2018, three years after representatives from nearly 200 countries convened in France in an extraordinary display of international unity and agreed to keep global warming below 2C and to pursue a tougher target of 1.5C. Continue reading...
Provided you have a clear western horizon, this week is a good time to see the crescent moon and the ochre spot of SaturnBetween 8 and 10 December, the young moon will be close to the planet Saturn in the evening sky just after sunset. It will be a tough challenge to see this pair together but a beautiful sight if you manage it. Saturn is currently moving closer to the sun and will disappear into its glare by the end of the month. To prepare for your observation, find an unobstructed western horizon and wait for the sun to set. On these days, the sun will set at 15:52 GMT from London, 15:50 GMT from Manchester and 15:33 GMT from Inverness. Begin your search 45 minutes after this time, as Saturn and the moon will set about one and a half hours after the sun. The chart shows the view at 16:30 GMT on 9 December. It will be easier to see the moon on the following days as it will be both a larger crescent and higher in the sky. Once you have found the moon, look downwards to the right and the ochre spot of Saturn should be visible against the darkening sky between the planet and the horizon. Continue reading...
AI program’s understanding of proteins could usher in new era of medical progressHaving laid waste to the Atari classics and reached superhuman performance in chess and the Chinese board game, Go, Google’s DeepMind outfit has turned its artificial intelligence on one of the toughest problems in science.The result, perhaps, was predictable. At an international conference in Cancun on Sunday, organisers announced that DeepMind’s latest AI program, AlphaFold, had beaten all-comers at a particularly fiendish task: predicting the 3D shapes of proteins, the fundamental molecules of life. Continue reading...
by Hannah Devlin Science correspondent on (#4458T)
Brought to prominence twenty years ago by a controversial test, the concept is now essential to our understanding of racismIn the ranking of taboos, racism and sexism come close to the top of the list. So it is perhaps unsurprising that the concept of unconscious or implicit bias has gripped the popular imagination to a greater degree than any other idea in psychology in recent decades.Spearheaded by a team of social psychologists at the University of Washington and Yale, the Implicit Association Test (IAT) promised to lift the veil on people’s subconscious attitudes towards others. Upon publishing their landmark paper in 1998, the team described “a new tool that measures the unconscious roots of prejudice†that they said affected 90-95% of people. Continue reading...
He Jiankui’s work on Crispr babies has been condemned. But the beneficial possibilities in his work are endlessLast week, the Chinese scientist He Jiankui announced the birth of the first Crispr baby (actually, twins). His claim is unverified, but if true, it would signal a landmark moment in human genome editing. It has also been widely condemned by scientists and ethicists worldwide.Crispr-Cas 9 is a technique that allows researchers to cut DNA at a specific point and then to edit the genome. It holds great promise in the battle against many diseases and disorders, but our understanding of the technique is still in its infancy. Continue reading...
Specialists are using public-access DNA databases to track down violent criminals such as the notorious Golden State Killer. But the technique raises a host of legal and ethical questionsDNA sleuth CeCe Moore recalls the moment that the pieces came together, in May, in the hunt for her first suspected killer – the man now thought to be responsible for the brutal 1987 murders of a young Canadian couple on a trip to Seattle. While Moore is used to uncovering secrets – she’s helped hundreds of adult adoptees to identify their biological parents – finding someone who might be guilty of murder was shocking. “It is hard to even put into words. It was a very surreal feeling,†she says. Moore, a genetic genealogist known in the US as an expert on the PBS television series Finding Your Roots, runs DNA Detectives, a Facebook group of 100,000-plus members, which helps people find their biological parents.Since May, she has also headed a forensic genealogy unit at the DNA tech company Parabon, which helps police find perpetrators of violent crimes – mostly unsolved murders and rape. She uses a controversial method called genetic, or forensic, genealogy that is becoming indispensable to police forces while raising legal and ethical questions. To date, the work of Moore and her team has led to identifications in 21 US cases and she says that there will be more soon (no case has yet come to trial, so all those identified are for now suspects only). Continue reading...
Therapy helps in a crisis. But when it comes to lessons in life, music has most of the answersWhen my marriage dissolved a decade ago, I went to a cognitive therapist to see if I could make sense of it. I sat in a small room with a kindly old lady who was not my mother, but who may as well have been, as we discussed love and sex as best we could. Although delivering my opinion about what had happened out loud without shouting was an enjoyable relief, I can’t say I truly learned much. We decided I wasn’t such a bad person. We decided my ex-wife wasn’t a bad person either. Then I paid my £60 and arranged to return the following week.Eventually, I stopped making those arrangements to return. What was I learning there, in those meetings, that I hadn’t heard a thousand times already listening to Pain in My Heart by Otis Redding, Love Will Tear Us Apart by Joy Division, or You Can Leave, But it’s Going to Cost You by Marvin Gaye? I hadn’t spent my entire teens in my bedroom with the door closed playing records, to not have those hard-won insights to fall back upon in times of romantic trouble. Therapy helps lift the weight from your chest, which is useful in times of crisis. But music can illuminate the way forward. Continue reading...
Official minimize warnings and say government report considers only the highest possible levels of greenhouse gas emissionsThe Trump administration has a new strategy for deflecting concerns about the warming planet.Related: Why no US region is safe from climate change Continue reading...
by Jessica Elgot Political correspondent on (#442C5)
British armed forces will not get access to Galileo, a rival to the US GPS system, after BrexitThe UK may never claw back £1.2bn of investment in Galileo, the EU’s satellite navigation system, as Theresa May officially pulled the plug on UK defence and security participation in the system after Brexit.Galileo, developed as a rival to the US GPS system, is due to be launched in 2020 with civilian and military variants. The UK’s continued involvement, given the extent of British funding of the system, has been at the centre of some of the bitterest rows of the Brexit negotiations. Continue reading...
Dundee University researchers receive $1m funding boost from Bill and Melinda Gates FoundationResearchers at a Scottish university hope to make a breakthrough in the long hunt for a male pill, thanks to a grant of more than $900,000 that will allow them to screen thousands of existing drugs to see if they have potential.Related: Male pill could be on horizon as trials yield positive results Continue reading...
Vibrations off Madagascar baffled experts but now they believe they have the answerIt is the kind of mystery scientists relish. On 11 November, something stirred near the French island of Mayotte off the west coast of Madagascar and sent a rumble around the world. Travelling at 9,000mph, the deep hum hurtled past earthquake detection systems unnoticed. No one appears to have felt a thing.The event came to light on Twitter when seismology enthusiasts posted weird signals they had spotted in recordings made by seismic stations from Kenya to Hawaii. Having ruled out the violent lurches of an earthquake, educated guesses gave way to more fanciful theories. Was it a landslide? A meteorite exploding in the atmosphere? The awakening of some long-dormant sea monster? Continue reading...
The three leading regulatory bodies for the counselling and psychotherapy profession have created a new competence framework as a response to the mental health crisisSuzanne Moore is right (We can talk about self-care, but this mental health crisis is political, 26 November) that counselling and psychotherapy is about talking and that “it is better to talk about things rather than notâ€. Addressing the mental health crisis is one of the most challenging tasks faced by us all and counselling and psychotherapy have an important role to play in providing a solution. As the three leading regulatory bodies for the counselling and psychotherapy profession, representing over 50,000 counsellors and psychotherapists, we take this role very seriously. We have registers accredited by the Professional Standards Authority, accountable to parliament, and have in place robust professional training and conduct procedures.To ensure that we continue to offer consistent training requirements and practice standards across the three professional bodies, we are mapping and defining common professional competencies for our professions. The Scope of Practice and Education for the counselling and psychotherapy professions (SCoPEd) is a collaborative project being jointly undertaken and will enable us to produce a common, evidence-based competence framework. Continue reading...
Windfarms supplied third of UK’s electricity this week, with output hitting 14.9GW highStorm Diana brought travel chaos to road, rail and airports, but the clouds did have a silver lining: the strong winds helped set a renewable energy record.Windfarms supplied about a third of the UK’s electricity between 6pm and 6.30pm on Wednesday, a time of peak energy demand. Output hit a high of 14.9GW, beating a previous record of 14.5GW. Continue reading...
by Presented by Ian Sample and produced by Graihagh J on (#440GR)
Tim Peake beat 8,172 applicants for a spot on the European Space Agency’s astronaut training programme. Ian Sample talks to him about the selection process and the intensive training he went throughHave you got what it takes to be an astronaut? Major Tim Peake did. He beat 8,172 applicants for a spot on the European Space Agency’s astronaut training programme. He began his intensive training in 2009, which involved living in extreme environments such as semi-submerged caves and at sea.Six years later, Tim was launched into space and he began his stint on the International Space Station (ISS). In his 2,720 orbits of the Earth, he ran the London Marathon from the ISS treadmill, completed his first space walk and much more besides. Continue reading...
Medical research enters a new era to find ways to eradicate HIV from infected populationsMore than 50 years after it jumped the species barrier and became one of the most devastating viruses to affect mankind, HIV remains a stubborn adversary. Treatment has improved dramatically over the past 20 years, but people who are infected will remain so for the rest of their lives, and must take one pill daily – at one time it was a cocktail of 30.But now, as another World Aids Day pulls into view, scientists are beginning to ask if the biggest breakthrough – an out-and-out cure for the tens of millions who have contracted the virus – could be in sight. Continue reading...
by Hannah Devlin Science correspondent on (#4402P)
Stars have radiated 4x10 photons since the universe begun with formation peaking 11bn years agoAll the light from all the stars that have ever existed. It is a quantity of unimaginable magnitude, but now astronomers have put a number on it.From the earliest, faintest stars, to the largest galaxies, an international team has managed to measure the total amount of starlight emitted over the entire 13.7bn-year history of the universe. Continue reading...
Capsules being developed to act as taxis between Earth and International Space StationNasa and its commercial partners, Boeing and SpaceX, are nearing the end of their programme to develop new crew capsules that will act as taxis between Earth and the International Space Station (ISS).Two final uncrewed test flights have been confirmed for next year, which will be followed by the first astronauts in the summer. Continue reading...
Delegates at UN biodiversity conference turn to Beijing to avoid point of no returnChina must play a leading role if the world is to draw up a new and more effective strategy to halt the collapse of life on Earth, according to senior delegates at the close of this week’s UN biodiversity conference.With the US absent, Europe distracted and Brazil tilting away from global cooperation, the onus has shifted towards Beijing, the diplomats said after two weeks of slow-moving talks on how to maintain the natural infrastructure on which humanity depends. Continue reading...
Epidemiologist whose research led to a breakthrough in bowel cancer screening programmes worldwide“Breakthrough†is an overused word when applied to medical advances. But in the case of the 2010 trial of a new screening test for bowel cancer led by Wendy Atkin, professor of gastrointestinal epidemiology at Imperial College London, who has died of acute myeloid leukaemia aged 71, it is fully deserved. Its impact will be felt by millions. The trial was the first in the world to show that bowel cancer – the second biggest cancer killer in the UK – could be prevented with a simple, five-minute test.The examination – where a sigmoidoscope (a camera mounted on a thin, flexible tube) is inserted into the rectum to detect polyps, which are then ablated (burnt) or snipped off – is now being offered to all 55- to 60-year-olds in England after a follow-up study showed it reduced deaths from bowel cancer by 43% for as long as 17 years after screening, making it the most effective of all cancer screening tests. In the lower bowel, the test prevented half of potential cancers from developing in that area. Continue reading...
Vice-minister condemns work of He Jiankui, but Chinese regulations are vagueChinese authorities have declared the work of He Jiankui, a scientist who claims to have created the world’s first gene-edited babies, a violation of Chinese law and called for the suspension of all related activity.“The genetically edited infant incident reported by media blatantly violated China’s relevant laws and regulations. It has also violated the ethical bottom line that the academic community adheres to. It is shocking and unacceptable,†Xu Nanping, a vice-minister for science and technology, told the state-owned CCTV on Thursday. Continue reading...
by Fiona Harvey Environment correspondent on (#43YCE)
World running out of time to combat climate change, warns meteorological organisationGlobal temperatures have continued to rise in the past 10 months, with 2018 expected to be the fourth warmest year on record.Average temperatures around the world so far this year were nearly 1C (1.8F) above pre-industrial levels. Extreme weather has affected all continents, while the melting of sea ice and glaciers and rises in sea levels continue. The past four years have been the hottest on record, and the 20 warmest have occurred in the past 22 years. Continue reading...
The administration tried to bury the assessment, but as residents flee wildfires and wade through flooded streets, let’s hope decision-makers get the messageTalk about cognitive dissonance. Just two days before 13 federal agencies released a report laying out the devastating human and economic toll that climate change already is taking in the United States, Donald Trump tweeted: “Whatever happened to global warming?†The tweet was based on a spurt of cold weather in the north-east, never mind that the rest of the world was experiencing higher than normal temperatures.The administration was so concerned about what the report, called the National Climate Assessment (NCA), would reveal – including the fact that the president’s thinking on climate change is hopelessly flawed – that it chose to release it on Black Friday, hoping no one would pay attention. A member of Trump’s transition team, Steven Milloy, was candid about this strategy, saying: “Do it on a day when nobody cares, and hope it gets swept away by the next day’s news.†Fortunately for the Earth and its residents, news coverage about the report continued over the weekend and into the following week. Continue reading...
I’m an accidental killer – and thousands of Americans share this secret shame. How can you recover from the trauma of accidentally killing someone?
More than 90% of cases are diagnosed, on treatment and virally suppressed, Public Health England saysThe UK has hit a significant UN target on the way to ending the HIV epidemic by succeeding in diagnosing and effectively treating more than 90% of people with the virus.Public Health England said there were an estimated 102,000 people with HIV in the UK last year, of whom 8% – 8,200 – were believed to be unaware of their infection. Continue reading...
Tim Peake beat more than 8,000 applicants to the job. Here, he shares some images of the training he underwent, as seen in his new hardback, The Astronaut Selection Test Book Continue reading...
Cambridge team develops organoids or mini placentas to advance knowledge of stillbirth and pre-eclampsiaScientists have grown “mini placentas†in a breakthrough that could transform research into the underlying causes of miscarriage, stillbirth and other pregnancy disorders.The tiny organoids mimic the placenta in the early stages of the first trimester and will be used to understand how the tissue develops in healthy pregnancies, and what goes wrong when it fails. Continue reading...
by Suzanne Sataline in Hong Kong and Ian Sample on (#43W78)
He Jiankui uses Hong Kong summit to reply to critics of his Crispr-Cas9 trials altering baby DNA for HIV resistanceThe Chinese scientist who claims to have altered the DNA of twin girls before birth – without going through the usual scientific channels – said he was proud of his work, and claimed another woman enrolled in his trial was pregnant with a similarly modified baby.The scientist, He Jiankui, spoke to hundreds of colleagues and journalists on Wednesday at the International Human Genome Editing Summit at the University of Hong Kong. Continue reading...
Aliens exist and global warming is a hoax – these unbelievable beliefs are symptoms of people feeling threatenedWho believes in conspiracy theories, and why? That is the question asked in a five-year study at Cambridge University, which commissioned three surveys from YouGov (2015, 2016 and 2018) to get a sense of the phenomenon.It turns that out 60% of British people believe in at least one of the 10 conspiracy theories we put to them. So, for instance, 8% think humans have made contact with aliens at Roswell but the US government is hiding it from us; 7% believe that global warming is a hoax invented to deceive people; and 10% agree that the truth about the harmful effects of vaccines is being deliberately hidden from the public. Continue reading...