A new book gathers words that face extinction. Surely they’re worth savingNews stories about language and the way we use it are rarely edifying, and usually intensely vexatious: the custodians of grammar merrily set about their showing off; the more liberal-minded do their best to convince us that the likes of “cakeism” and “gammon” – two of the words of 2018, according to the Oxford Dictionaries – are signs of vibrancy and growth.The fogeyish wistfulness and the determined digging-in involved in these spats are by now so reliably tedious, there’d be more pleasure and interest in listening to John Humphrys interview himself. Continue reading...

The US watchdog that is supposed to protect patients is in thrall to an industry profiting from addictionYears into America’s opioid epidemic, as the death toll climbed into the hundreds of thousands, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) held a hearing to consider a drug company application to approve a new high-strength painkiller.The FDA assembles advisory committees of doctors and scientists to weigh the arguments for and against new drugs. In 2012, an opioid 10 times more powerful than regular painkillers, Zohydro ER, was on the agenda. By then, no one was in any doubt about the ravages of the worst drug epidemic in US history. So far, it has claimed at least 350,000 lives. Around 150 people a day are dying in a crisis with roots in the push for the mass prescribing of opioid painkillers that took off two decades ago. Continue reading...

Thousands of protesters occupied bridges across the Thames over extinction crisis in huge act of peaceful civil disobedience

At 24, he wanted to kill himself. Now a novelist, he teaches the readers of his books – and his children – how to get through when the future looks bleakOn a September day in Ibiza, the air scented with sea and pine, Matt Haig – then 24 – walked to a cliff edge planning to kill himself. He stopped one step away.Reasons to Stay Alive, his account of this unravelling, the strange hell of depression and anxiety and his journey back from the edge, would become a bestseller 16 years later. Already a novelist by the time he wrote it, Haig saw the book as a “side project”, though it was anything but. Within weeks, he was getting 1,000 emails a day from grateful readers. Strangers stopped him on the street to thank him. Celebrity admirers included Steven Fry, Jo Brand and Ruby Wax – and Haig was catapulted into the role of mental health campaigner. Continue reading...

The conversation analyst on how to calm someone threatening suicide, how comedy works and Donald Trump’s take on realityElizabeth Stokoe is a professor of social interaction at Loughborough University. She studies conversation, often working with organisations such as the police or the NHS to improve interaction with users.What does a conversation analyst do?

Historic vote means unit of measurement will no longer be defined by a piece of metal first conceived in 1889The weight is finally over. Nearly 130 years after the kilogram was first defined by a lump of metal in a vault in Paris, scientists have voted for change and a new system that redefines the global measure of mass in terms of a fundamental constant of nature.Following a historic vote on Friday at the General Conference on Weights and Measures, in Versailles, the kilogram will no longer be defined by the international prototype kilogram (IPK), a platinum alloy cylinder fashioned in 1889, but by Planck’s constant, a number that is deeply rooted in the quantum world. Continue reading...

We shouldn’t worry when a word falls into obscurity. There’s usually a good reason, and a new one will always fill its placeConservationists are all around us, forever appearing on our televisions with their pleas for this noble, endangered mountain lion or that cute, imperilled subspecies of vole. But 70-year-old Edward Allhusen is one of a slightly different stripe. Instead of trying to prevent creepy-crawlies going extinct, he is trying to save the lives of words. In a new book, Betrumped: The Surprising History of 3,000 Long-Lost, Exotic and Endangered Words, he has included a sort of highly endangered list of 600 vocabulary items, culled according to no more systematic criterion than personal preference, from Johnson’s Dictionary of 1755.Related: It’s bare sick that the OED cares how young people speak | Coco Khan Continue reading...

Huge expansion of agri-food industry is harming environment, say investigatorsGreen energy subsidies are fuelling the rise of poultry mega-farms across Northern Ireland, with owners accused of contaminating sensitive habitats with emissions from chicken faeces.An alliance of agri-food companies enlisted the support of Northern Ireland politicians to unlock an estimated £800m in subsidies for contractors. This has paved the way for industry expansion at the expense of the environment, according to an investigation by the not-for-profit journalism group SourceMaterial. Continue reading...

Ranking of countries’ goals shows even EU on course for more than double safe level of warmingChina, Russia and Canada’s current climate policies would drive the world above a catastrophic 5C of warming by the end of the century, according to a study that ranks the climate goals of different countries.The US and Australia are only slightly behind with both pushing the global temperature rise dangerously over 4C above pre-industrial levels says the paper, while even the EU, which is usually seen as a climate leader, is on course to more than double the 1.5C that scientists say is a moderately safe level of heating. Continue reading...

Maintaining a close relationship with the remaining EU countries is crucial to the continued success of UK universitiesBrexit negotiations may be in turmoil, but UK universities need the government to encourage even stronger links with the remaining 27 member states in the European Union, no matter how we finally decide to leave. We must ensure the UK remains a beacon of scientific excellence, driving improvements in productivity, job creation and growth.Related: It's a harmful myth that UK science can't translate ideas into practice | David Gann and Nick Jennings Continue reading...

Food is an essential part of everyone’s life but how does what we eat affect our health? Could we eat to treat our illnesses? Top oncologists from around the world are beginning to study the role of diet in cancer treatment and early results look promising. Hannah Devlin investigates.Food is an essential part of everyone’s life but how does what we eat affect our health? For a long time, we’ve known about the link between diet and illnesses like obesity, diabetes and heart disease. But now, scientists are wondering could we eat to treat cancer? Top oncologists from around the world are beginning to understand the role of diet in medicine and early results look promising. Could this approach work beyond cancer?Hannah Devlin discusses with Siddhartha Mukherjee, associate professor at Colombia University, and Prof Karen Vousden from the Francis Crick Institute and Cancer Research UK. Continue reading...

European-Russian mission’s rover will land on Mars in 2021 at Oxia Planum, north of equatorA preferred landing site for the European-Russian 2020 ExoMars mission has been chosen. Known as Oxia Planum, the landing site is just north of Mars’ equator.The 2020 ExoMars rover is being built in the UK by Airbus Defence and Space for the European Space Agency. It will launch on a Russian rocket in 2020 and land on Mars the following year using a Russian-built platform. Continue reading...

Review seeks to find common ground, arguing that what matters for most people is qualityA group of scientists is trying to end the “diet wars” raging over how much fat and carbohydrate we should eat, arguing that what matters for most people is quality.A review by US researchers with diverse perspectives on the fraught fat v carbs question attempts to find the common ground. Above all, they say, we should be ditching saturated for unsaturated fat and refined grains for wholegrains and non-starchy vegetables. And they list the unknowns, which need more research. Continue reading...

Choice of drink linked to how we perceive bitterness of substances, researchers sayDo you prefer coffee or tea? The answer to that question might in part be down to your genes, research suggests.Scientists say a genetic predisposition to perceiving the bitterness of particular substances appears to nudge us towards one beverage or the other. Continue reading...

The Empire of the Eagle: An Illustrated Natural History, by Mike Unwin and David Tipling, is published by Yale University Press and celebrates the world’s 68 eagle species in all their magnificence and beguiling diversity Continue reading...

Daily Overview is a website and Instagram feed using high-resolution aerial photography from satellites and planes to mirror the phenomenon from which the project derives its name – the overview effect: the sensation experienced by astronauts when viewing Earth from space

Government innovation policy is based on the idea that the UK is poor at commercialising research. But it should reflect realityBritain’s innovators are unfairly tarnished by a tired fable: that the nation’s inventiveness is matched by an unworldly lack of commercial savvy. Anecdotes abound of the proverbial inventor tinkering in his garden shed, or the academic unable to see the economic potential of her discoveries. Britons discover, the rest of the world cashes in. But these are self-flagellating myths that should be consigned to the history books.In fact, if we adjust for the size of our economies, the UK now exceeds the United States in numbers of spinouts formed, disclosures of discoveries, patents and licences. In emerging fields such as low-carbon, the UK is forming twice as many spinouts per trillion dollars of GDP as the US. Employment growth by digital technology companies in the UK is five times faster than for the rest of the economy. Continue reading...

After a successful operation, Bhutanese conjoined twins Nima and Dawa are now getting used to independent life although they prefer to remain side-by-side. Dr Joe Crameri from Melbourne's Royal Children's Hospital said the 15-month-girls are 'doing very well' and 'we feel quietly confident we will have a good result'. Dr Crameri adds there was a sense of relief 'once we realised that we had the ability to divide the liver without compromising the girls and ultimately we didn’t have to anything fancy to the bowel'. The 15-month-old girls were successfully separated after a six-hour procedure by a team which involved up to 25 surgeons, nurses and anaesthetists. Continue reading...

Lancaster students win £30,000 prize for O-Wind turbine after scooping UK equivalentA spinning turbine that can capture wind travelling in any direction and could transform how consumers generate electricity in cities has won its inventors a prestigious international award and £30,000 prize.Nicolas Orellana, 36, and Yaseen Noorani, 24, MSc students at Lancaster University, scooped the James Dyson award for their O-Wind Turbine, which – in a technological first – takes advantage of both horizontal and vertical winds without requiring steering. Continue reading...

Coral reef scientist jointly awarded John Maddox prize weeks after his research centre lost government funding

Humans will soon subcontract their ethical dilemmas to machines. We must be prepared to make some tough choicesLoved by some philosophers, loathed by others, the so-called trolley problem is the quintessential moral puzzle. A runaway train is heading towards five people tied to a track. You can change a signal, diverting the train down a spur, so saving five lives. Unfortunately, one person is on the spur, and would die. What should you do? Most people – young and old, rich and poor – believe you should divert the train.But what if a runaway train is heading towards five people, again tied to the track, and you are standing on a footbridge overlooking it, next to an overweight man? Once again you can save five lives, but only by toppling the heavy-set man over the bridge: he will die, but he is large enough to slow the train to a stop. What should you do? This time, almost everyone agrees that you should not kill one person to save the five lives. Continue reading...

Crater appears to be result of mile-wide iron meteorite just 12,000 years agoA huge impact crater has been discovered under a half-mile-thick Greenland ice sheet.The enormous bowl-shaped dent appears to be the result of a mile-wide iron meteorite slamming into the island at a speed of 12 miles per second as recently as 12,000 years ago. Continue reading...

Scientist documenting coral reef decline and whistleblower on alternative therapy industry share award

Anthony Clarkson, interim director of NHS organ donation and transplantation, Sue Cartlidge and Ron Brewer respond to a previous letter from Jeanne Felmingham querying whether it’s worth having a donor card at the age of 83Re Jeanne Felmingham’s letter (14 November), too many people mistakenly assume their age means they are too old to consider organ donation. However, people in their 50s, 60, 70s and even 80s can all save lives. Nearly 1,000 people aged over 50 donate every year.Patients who die in circumstances where they may be able to donate their organs, irrespective of age, are considered individually. Clinical teams assess whether or not someone’s organs can be safely used to help others, reviewing information from the person’s medical and life history and talking to the next of kin. Continue reading...

Researchers find improvement in symptoms among men given hormoneTreatment with testosterone could help tackle depression in men, according to a review of studies which found supplements of the hormone appear to improve mood.About 100 million men around the world are thought to have depressive disorders, and almost 17% of men in the UK are thought to have symptoms of depression or anxiety. Continue reading...

Work on engineered gene used to modify DNA of mosquitoes ‘could be stifled’ by perceived risk to environmentResearch on a radical new way to combat malaria and other devastating diseases could be knocked off track if a UN biodiversity conference imposes a moratorium on the work, a group of scientists have said.Some scientists believe the different approach has the potential to transform the battle against malaria. It involves engineered gene drives which are used to modify the DNA of wild organisms on a mass scale. In the case of mosquitoes the method would have the potential to wipe out populations of certain species which carry the malaria parasite, say the scientists. Continue reading...

Ian Robinson on the two versions of the Kibble balance he built with Dr Bryan Kibble, and David Thorpe on the key role played by Professor Ian MillsThe Kibble balance at the heart of the redefinition of the kilogram (Report, 10 November) was invented in 1975, at the NPL in the UK, by the late Dr Bryan Kibble. Bryan and I built two versions of the apparatus. The Mk I played a key part in setting the conventional values of the electrical units in 1990. We then built the Mk II balance, which operated in a vacuum, and was aimed at the 1 part in 100,000,000 uncertainty that we felt was required for the redefinition of the kilogram. It is pleasing to know that the Mk II balance, operating in Canada, has achieved this target and has made a major contribution to the redefinition described in your article.

Scientists studying the tissue bequeathed to the Sydney Brain Bank hope it will lead them to an eventual cure for neurodegenerative diseasesIt’s a rainy Wednesday morning and Dr Andrew Affleck is driving more carefully than usual on his way to the Neuroscience Research Australia building in Randwick.It’s not just the slick, crowded roads putting the edge on his caution; in the boot of his car, cocooned in several layers of protective container and nestled in ice, is the brain of a human being who was alive only a few hours earlier. Continue reading...

Study of beetles could explain global decline – and also be a warning to humankindHeatwaves severely damage the fertility of male beetles and consecutive hot spells leave them virtually sterilised, according to research.Global warming is making heatwaves more common and wildlife is being annihilated, and the study may reveal a way in which these two trends are linked. The scientists behind the findings said there could also be some relevance for humans: the sperm counts of western men have halved in the last 40 years. Continue reading...

With Google taking the place of memory, many worry that a vital faculty is eroding. Can memory athletes – who can retain hundreds of numbers in seconds – show us how to get it back?Alex Mullen has an extraordinary talent: after just 16 seconds of flicking through a pack of cards, he can recall their exact order. The 26-year-old medical student began using memory techniques to help with his university degree, but he picked them up so quickly that soon he was entering competitions, eventually becoming the International Association of Memory world champion in 2015. At the championships, which take place again this December, “memory athletes” compete to remember the most in the shortest time, in categories that include card sequences, names, faces and dates of historic events.“My first world championships win was very surreal. I was training hard, but winning was never really on my radar,” Mullen says. “When I won by literally one second, on the tenth and final event, I didn’t really process it.” Yet he went on to win the championships again in 2017, is ranked No 1 in the world and holds multiple records for his recall skills. Continue reading...

Having genetic variants linked to high BMI can lead to mental health issues, study findsBeing overweight can cause depression, researchers say, with the effects thought to be largely psychological.While previous studies have found that people who are obese are more likely to have depression, it has been unclear whether that is down to depression driving weight changes or the reverse. Continue reading...

German chancellor makes speech in Berlin on 100th anniversary of female suffrageThe German chancellor, Angela Merkel, has said that her role as the most powerful woman in Germany should not let society off the hook for the small proportion of women in politics.As Germany marked the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage, Merkel said in a speech in Berlin that there was a lot still to do to achieve gender equality, notably in the worlds of politics, business, science and culture. Continue reading...

UK resident infected with disease after being bitten by cat, says Public Health EnglandA Briton has died after contracting rabies while visiting Morocco, public health officials have said.The UK resident was infected with the disease after being bitten by a cat, Public Health England (PHE) said on Monday. Continue reading...

Ethologist, broadcaster and expert on the evolutionary genetics of animal behaviour who was a natural communicator on televisionAubrey Manning’s hugely popular 1998 BBC series Earth Story, about the evolution and shaping of the planet Earth, inspired a generation and led to a noticeable increase in students applying to read earth sciences. Yet, Aubrey, who has died aged 88, was not a geologist, but an ethologist, whose work made an important contribution to the understanding of how animal behaviour plays a role in the evolution of new species.In a series of experiments at Oxford and Edinburgh universities – he was professor of natural history (1973-97) at the latter – Aubrey showed how mutations in genes that affect the behaviour of fruit flies could lead to reproductive isolation, a key mechanism in the creation of new species. This work laid the foundation for the modern study of the evolutionary genetics of behaviour. Continue reading...

We all have an innate ability to pick a face out of a crowd. But some can memorise thousands of people – often seen only fleetingly on CCTV. Alex Moshakis meets the ‘super recognisers’Earlier this year, a softly-spoken community support officer named Andy Pope received the Chief Constable’s Award, an honour bestowed on police force employees who’ve shown extraordinary bravery, or remarkable dedication, or both. In Pope’s case, the award related to a peculiar knack. Between 2012 and 2017, he identified 1,000 criminal suspects, sometimes by connecting images taken from CCTV footage to mugshots available on the police database, which he does nearly every morning, but more often while riding the West Midlands train, bus and tram network, which falls under his beat. (He calls at least one Birmingham bus route “my baby”.) By any measurement, Pope’s achievement was staggering. During the same period, most of his colleagues had struggled to make even a 10th of his tally, and some had made no identifications at all. When I mentioned Pope’s stats to one chief superintendent, he was shocked. “Unbelievable,” he said. “In 20 years I’ve only identified about 30 people.”Pope has recognised suspects wanted for all manner of serious crimes, from assault and exposure to theft. And, on the strength of his identifications, many of those perpetrators have been arrested, convicted and sent to prison. Continue reading...

An extraordinary new documentary about identical triplets who were separated at birth has reignited the debate over the dominance of DNA in controlling our behaviour and the way we live our livesRobert Shafran’s first inkling that his life would soon be turned on its head occurred on his first day at college in upstate New York in 1980. His fellow students greeted him like a long-lost friend. “Guys slapped me on the back, girls hugged and kissed me,” he recalls. Yet Robert had never set foot inside Sullivan County Community College until that day.Another student, Eddy Galland, who had studied at the college the previous year, was the cause of the confusion, it transpired. Eddy was his spitting image, said classmates. Robert was intrigued and went to Eddy’s home to confront him. Continue reading...

An ancient unopened tomb and rare mummified scarab beetles were also unearthed at the site south of Cairo

Anthropologist and presenter takes over as figurehead of campaign group next yearThe scientist and television presenter Alice Roberts is to be the next president of Humanists UK, championing campaigns against state funding of faith schools and in favour of removing bishops from the House of Lords and the legalisation of assisted dying.Roberts, the author of nine popular science books and the host of TV programmes such as The Incredible Human Journey and Digging for Britain, will take on the figurehead role on 1 January 2019. From September next year, she will also be the president of the British Science Association. Continue reading...

A team of former civil servants specialising in behavioural psychology now pulls in revenues of £14m a yearDavid Halpern pauses at the mention of a quote from one of the government’s senior Brexiters – that “people in this country have had enough of experts” – and briefly gazes out of a window in the Westminster offices of the Behavioural Insights Team (BIT).“Empirically, it doesn’t appear to be true,” replies the chief executive of the business that was once the Cabinet Office team nicknamed the “nudge unit”. It was spun off in 2014 as a “social purpose company” and is now co-owned by its employees, the Cabinet Office and the innovation charity Nesta. Continue reading...

Prison letters are a treasure trove of stories – filled with both honesty and humourEight years ago, I saw a job ad on a local website. A small charity was looking for a PR officer. The ad was brief, but it struck me as sweet. In it, they said that through yoga and meditation, they offered hope and healing to prisoners. I liked the sound of that. Unfortunately, I had no experience at all in the criminal justice sector, and I had also never done yoga and meditation. When they asked me why I wanted the job I said that I wanted to leave work each day feeling as if I’d made the world a little bit better rather than a little bit worse. I still work there today.On my first day I was sent to the filing cabinet room and told to have a look through some of the old correspondence to get an idea of how the letter-writing element of the charity worked. It was a treasure trove of stories – conversations between a prisoner and a letter-writing volunteer stretching over years, occasionally decades in some cases. The things that the prisoners wrote really jumped off the page – they were sad or angry, or despairing, or filled with excitement and hope about the future. They were often very funny. And they were honest. I had never encountered that level of honesty in conversation before – and I haven’t since. Continue reading...

Lamar Smith, retiring chair of the House science committee, has vehemently denied that climate change is man madeSeven scientists are entering the US congress next year, from engineers and health professionals to an energy businessman and a computer programmer. Five of them are women, including a new senator for Nevada. All are Democrats.Dr Rush Holt, a physicist who represented New Jersey in congress and is now CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, said the newcomers will likely never use their specific expertise but will contribute a much-needed way of thinking. Continue reading...

The weight is defined by a lump of metal in a Paris vault - which could make Earth ‘laughing stock of universe’For the band of specialists in the much-overlooked arena of metrology, it will be the most profound moment in more than a century. Since 1889, one of the pillars of the science, the kilogram, has been defined by a lump of metal held in a triple-locked vault in a lab on the outskirts of Paris. It is the one true kilogram in the world.Related: The future of the kilo: a weighty matter Continue reading...

Nicola Davis sits down with Nobel prize-winning scientist Sir Venki Ramakrishnan to discuss the competition he faced in the race to discover the ribosome – AKA the gene machine. Is competition good for science, or would a collaborative approach be better?Competition, as defined by the Oxford living dictionary, is ‘the activity or condition of striving to gain or win something by defeating or establishing superiority over others’. Organisms, including humans, compete all the time – for food, for water, for a mate, for space. But should science also operate in this way?In his new book The Gene Machine, Nobel Prize-winning scientist Sir Venki Ramakrishnan from the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology writes about the competition he faced in the race to understand the ribosome – a fundamental part of how DNA is encoded into the stuff that all organisms need to develop, live and reproduce. Nicola Davis sits down with Venki to discuss the idea of competition in science – could it be driving innovation or is it damaging research? Continue reading...

The Guardian has obtained an audio recording of a presentation by Craig Kelly at the right-aligned Mosman branch of the Liberal party in September that outlines in detail his climate scepticism Continue reading...

Christie’s sale also includes items belonging to Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin and Albert EinsteinStephen Hawking’s wheelchair and a set of his medals and awards have been sold for a combined total of nearly £600,000, while a copy of his PhD thesis raised almost that amount on its own, at an auction of items belonging to him and other celebrated scientists.The sale, run online by Christie’s and including 52 lots, raised more than £1.8m on Thursday. It included items belonging to Hawking, as well as others linked to Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin and Albert Einstein. Continue reading...

DNA testing discredits theory Nevada’s ‘Spirit Cave mummy’ is of Paleoamerican heritageScientists attempting to map out the historical migrations of North and South America by analysing ancient bones have revealed that a 10,000-year-old skeleton unearthed in a cave in Nevada is the ancestor of a Native American tribe.The iconic skeleton, known as the “Spirit Cave mummy”, was reburied this summer by the Fallon Paiute-Shoshone people in Nevada, bringing closure to a decades-long legal dispute with anthropologists who fought for it to remain on display in a museum. Continue reading...

Research finds 27.6% of people say they feel lonely at least three days every weekMore than one-fifth of Australians rarely or never feel they have someone to talk to or turn to for help, and more than one quarter feel lonely for at least three days every week, according to a comprehensive study of loneliness and wellbeing.Swinburne University in Melbourne and the Australian Psychological Society are conducting the country’s first research project on the impact of loneliness on physical and mental health, and released their preliminary findings on Friday. Continue reading...

This engaging documentary explores controversial research into the treatment of depression with magic mushroomsAn intriguing, inconclusive film about an intriguing, inconclusive drug trial. Monty Yates’s documentary shows the work of Dr Robin Carhart-Harris at Imperial College London: after years of bureaucratic wrangling, he got permission to conduct research into the possibility that psilocybin – the psycho-active ingredient of magic mushrooms – could be used to treat depression. Could it be that society’s taboo disapproval is needlessly holding back our understanding of this issue?We see three long-term sufferers of depression, sensitively interviewed about their lives. They are each shown into a room that has been tricked out like an aromatherapy suite with low lighting and gentle music; they lie down on a couch, and doctors reassuringly hold their hand. They are given a low, introductory dose of shroom-essence at the first session, and at the second the amount is stepped up. The results are startling. Continue reading...

Investigation reveals 25 of 195 CCGs in England have not issued glucose monitoring devicesTens of thousands of people living with type 1 diabetes in England are being refused access to devices that could improve lives, an investigation has revealed, with experts claiming that the situation amounts to a “postcode lottery”.About 400,000 people in the UK have type 1 diabetes – an autoimmune condition where the body does not produce insulin, leading to glucose not being taken up by cells and potentially reaching dangerously high levels in the blood. Continue reading...