Our ancestors didn’t suffer from hay fever and food allergies were extremely rare even a few decades ago. What is causing the steep rise in their incidence now?To anyone from Generation X or older, it often feels like food allergies are far more common today than in their youth. While they remember them being rare or nonexistent in their school days, their own children will have classmates with allergies or they may have one themselves.According to the Food Standards Agency, estimates suggest that about 5-8% of children and 1-2% of adults are affected by food allergies in the UK. The recent headlines about fatal allergic reactions, such as that of two Pret a Manger customers, heighten the impression that food allergies are more commonplace. Continue reading...

Experts say planet could offer new insights into how solar system formedA British-built spacecraft fitted with Star Trek-style “impulse engines” is on its way to Mercury, the planet closest to the sun.BepiColombo blasted into space from the European space port at Kourou, French Guiana, at about 2.45am UK time on Saturday. It was carried on top of an Ariane 5, the European Space Agency’s (ESA’s) most powerful rocket. Continue reading...

The Canadian professor is only the third female recipient of the physics prize in its 118-year history, but she is nonplussed by the focus on her genderWhen you win a Nobel prize, you can expect a fair bit of attention. When you are a woman and you win the prize in physics, as the Canadian professor Donna Strickland did earlier this month, you can expect the level of attention to be overwhelming.The day after the announcement, just about everyone Strickland knew – and several people she did not, including Justin Trudeau, the prime minister of Canada – called or emailed with congratulations. The day after that, her inbox overflowed with thousands more messages. The interview requests were similarly incessant; Strickland expects to be travelling non-stop, talking at schools and scientific organisations about her work, for the next two or three years. For a self-described recluse, the frenzy was all a bit much. “Two or three weeks ago, I was an ordinary human being and now I’m not,” she says with a laugh. Continue reading...

Separating from people seems like a blast of cold air. I suppose I feel the anguish of lossI belong to that category of people who, after a dinner, after a party, are the last to leave. It’s hard to say why – it’s not clear even to me. I know that my hosts are tired and would like to go to sleep. I’m well aware that, even if I left right away, it would still take them an hour or so to straighten things up and get ready for bed. Yet I continue to ask questions and wait for answers – in short, to keep the conversation going. I don’t do it because the evening has been especially pleasant and I want to prolong it. I’m not generally very sociable on occasions like this; I join conversations timidly and am quite sure that, after an hour, anyone can read in my face that I’m tired, falling asleep.I deduce from this that my problem is leave-taking itself. I don’t like to separate from people; even in the most superficial relationships, separating seems like a blast of cold air. I suppose I feel the anguish of loss. But what am I losing? Continue reading...

A lunar meteorite considered one of the most significant ever found has been sold by a Boston auction houseA chunk of the moon that fell to the Earth as a lunar meteorite has been sold at auction for more than $600,000.Boston-based RR Auction announced the $612,500 winning bid for the meteorite, composed of six fragments that fit together like a puzzle, came from a representative working with the Tam Chuc Pagoda complex in Ha Nam Province, Vietnam. Continue reading...

Airedale, West Yorkshire: My six-week-old daughter still can’t see very well, but her sense of smell is fierce, and we can both hear the magpies, which are everywhereShe’s only six weeks old but I’m sure she can smell the smothering perfume of the rosebay willowherb that crowds the lake edge. A new baby’s senses develop lopsidedly, out-of-sync: our daughter’s eyesight is still finding focus – she can’t see the wood pigeons bombing across the pale dishwater sky, framed by the edges of her pram – but her sense of smell is fierce. This unfamiliar air, for her, must be rich in plant odour. The greenery everywhere is dense, weighty and dull-looking: rangy flowers of fodder radish; milk-white gramophone trumpets of bindweed; teasel-heads, deliciously crisp and sharp; young rowans bowed by the weight of their October berry-crops; reed beds top-heavy with feathery flowers. Elders flash their pale underleaves in the stiff breeze.We grownups can’t smell much of anything over the willowherb – but I see a redwing, skipping in flight like a stone spun across pond water, in the middle distance, and a jay bounding up from the side of the path, a little cameo of peach, blue and black against the army green. We and our daughter move through quite different landscapes. Continue reading...

Museum director Alexander Kellner said the fossil was broken and 80% of its pieces had been recoveredOne of the most prized possessions of Brazil’s National Museum has been found amid debris after a huge fire on 2 September sent the building up in flames.Related: Project to salvage images of collection lost in fire as Brazil mourns museum Continue reading...

When I was younger, I was terrified they would make me lose my mind. Now, I embrace them which I think is a sure sign of maturityI have been told, by a sleep professional no less, that I am a “vivid dreamer”. I remember my dreams often, the twilight theatrics of my unconscious seared into memory by their intensity. Sometimes my dreams upset me, rehashing painful memories and serving them up with an extra side of terror. But mostly they’re just a bit odd, and leave me wondering what I’ve witnessed in the still of the night.Perhaps that’s why interpreting dreams is one of my favourite activities. You can tell a lot about a person by how they do it. Do they subscribe to the superstitious (“A message from the other side!”), the psychological (“This speaks to a wider sense of insecurity”) or the physical (“The human body is not designed to eat whole wheels of cheese”)? Sometimes, the reading of the dream can be more telling than the vision itself: such as the time I told Auntie B that I had had a dream about an owl with guillotine talons. “It’s a message. I knew it would come,” she said, straight-faced. “God is telling you to lose some weight.” This was an interpretation that told me nothing about the dream and everything about why I don’t call Auntie B. Continue reading...

Elon Musk believes we should colonise Mars to ensure the survival of the human race. But is this reasoning compelling enough? Hannah Devlin ponders the case against setting our sites on MarsOn Tuesday, 6 February 2018, SpaceX launched the first ever test flight of the Falcon Heavy rocket. On board was a red Tesla car complete with a dummy driver affectionately named Starman. Starman’s original destination was Mars. However, the dummy test pilot overshot its orbit and sped past the red planet, SpaceX founder Elon Musk later confirmed. Starman is now cruising through the asteroid belt.The test flight serves as a reminder that this rocket could be used to take people to Mars – a vision that Musk believes is important to ensure the survival of the human race should a third world war break out. But is this reasoning compelling enough? Should humans go to Mars at all? Continue reading...

BepiColombo will investigate the internal structure, magnetic field and surface composition of the innermost planet to the SunA European-Japanese mission to Mercury is in the final stages of preparation for launch on Saturday 20 October. The mission, known as BepiColombo, will lift-off from the European Space Agency’s space port in Kourou, French Guiana, at 01.45 GMT.Related: The new space race: how billionaires launched the next era of exploration Continue reading...

Danny Sullivan recalls his incarcerated friend, the peace activist Jim Forest, receiving an iconic photo from one of Nasa’s astronautsRe the letter from David Nowell (The most iconic photograph of Earth, 18 October), my friend Jim Forest, still a peace activist, was in prison in 1969 during the first manned flight to the moon as he was one of the Milwaukee 14 who had publicly burned thousands of draft cards calling up young men to fight in Vietnam.Not long after the space flight returned to Earth, Jim received a package from Nasa. At first the prison governor would not let him have it as Nasa was not on Jim’s list of approved correspondents, but Jim succeeded in arguing his right to have it. The package contained a stunning photo of Earth from one of the astronauts (he didn’t name himself), who wrote that he had followed Jim’s trial and was struck by Jim’s statement that we all live at the same address: Earth. Jim received his photo – which he has to this day – about the same time as an identical one was sent to the White House.

Report showing dramatic decline in internet access growth suggests digital revolution will remain a distant dream for billions of people

Unity, Liverpool

Trial resulted in 25% fall in new infections in year after rapid rollout of PrEP medicationHigh-income countries with people at high risk of HIV should replicate a groundbreaking trial in Australia, which has seen new infections fall by 25% in one year following the rapid rollout of free HIV medication, researchers say.When taken daily the pre-exposure prophylaxis drug known as PrEP is almost 100% effective in preventing HIV-negative people from acquiring the virus. In 2016, NSW became the first Australian state to trial PrEP on a large scale. In the course of just one year 9,714 HIV-negative people at high risk of acquiring HIV were enrolled in the trial, and given PrEP for free. The program was funded by the NSW government. Continue reading...

‘Dusk-like glow’ of proposed satellite could light an area with a diameter of 10-80km, People’s Daily reportsIn Chengdu, there is reportedly an ambitious plan afoot for replacing the city’s streetlights: boosting the glow of the real moon with that of a more powerful fake one.The south-western Chinese city plans to launch an illumination satellite in 2020. According to an account in the People’s Daily, the artificial moon is “designed to complement the moon at night”, though it would be eight times as bright. Continue reading...

David Nowell, a fellow of the Geological Society, is captivated by Earthrise over the moon, taken in 1968Rather than being taken from “inner space”, the most iconic photograph of Earth (Martyrdom? I’ve seen that movie, thanks, 13 October) was taken in December 1968 by Apollo 8 astronaut Frank Borman, showing Earthrise, as the disc of our planet could be seen rising above the lunar surface. Even though this showed it as a fragile pale blue sphere in the indeterminable void of space, Catherine Shoard is right to say that we have trashed the planet anyway. This is a great pity, as we learned a lot about the primordial Earth from the moon rocks they gathered and the instrumentation Nasa left behind, including mirrors that still allow laser beams to be repeatedly timed on their return to show how the moon is slowly drifting away from Earth by a few centimetres a year.

Treatment for rare genetic disease to receive one of seven $3m Breakthrough awards at glitzy ceremonyNew techniques for peering into the intricate innards of cells and a discovery that has given hope for infants with a deadly genetic condition are among the developments that are being lauded in this year’s “Oscars for science”.The 2019 Breakthrough prize will see seven winning discoveries each celebrated with a $3m award for those behind the research to share, with a further six “New Horizons” prizes of $100,000 also going to young researchers in maths and physics and a $400,000-worth award of educational scholarships to a teen prodigy. Continue reading...

From Douglas Adams to Oliver Sacks, the standup comedian reveals some of the writers that have helped him try to work out what makes us tickMost of my standup shows, whether about the behaviour of the bonobo ape or my addiction to celebrity narrowboat TV shows, are really me trying to work out what it is to be human and trying to see how wrong I am getting it.In middle age, I’ve been trying to evaluate the knowledge accumulated from shouting at strangers for money over the last three decades. Where does anxiety come from? What is the key to creativity? How can we deal with grief? How do we overcome impostor syndrome? I’ve interviewed other comedians and artists, such as Lenny Henry, Alan Moore, Jo Brand, Tim Minchin and Ricky Gervais. I’ve been through an MRI scanner to see what my brain does when I’m being funny. And I’ve spoken with psychiatrists, psychologists and neuroscientists to find out what they believe makes us tick. Continue reading...

The idea that smiling changes the way we perceive things seemed like another casualty of social psychology’s replication crisis – but something more interesting was going onIn 1988, Fritz Strack and colleagues published one of the most wonderful studies in psychology. They asked volunteers how funny they thought some cartoons were. While looking at the cartoons, some of the participants held a pen between their teeth without it touching their lips, while some others held a pen in their lips without allowing it to touch their teeth. (The participants believed they were testing out methods disabled people could use to write.)If you try this in front of a mirror, you’ll see that when you hold a pen in your lips you look vaguely as though you’re frowning; when you hold it with your teeth you’re grinning. Continue reading...

Nasa’s greatest feats were a triumph for mankind. History will be less kind to today’s space pioneersThe promised journey is from Earth to the edge of space, rather than London Euston to Crewe, but the story of Richard Branson’s company Virgin Galactic still has echoes of a bad passenger experience on his trains. For the best part of a decade, his potential customers have been waiting for an experience that was meant to arrive in 2011, with only one certainty to hang on to: the tickets are eye-wateringly expensive. The price for Virgin rocket travel now apparently hovers at around £250,000, and reports suggest that among those patiently waiting to climb aboard are Katy Perry, Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga.Related: Virgin Galactic space shot is go 'within weeks, not months' Continue reading...

Slippery-when-wet concept may raise comfort and outlast couples’ stamina, say scientistsCondoms could be set for a makeover that might not only boost couples’ sex lives but encourage safe sex, according to researchers.Experts say a big-turn off for condom use is a lack of lubrication: current latex condoms are relatively rough, which can lead to breakage and discomfort, while commercial lubricants, including those applied by manufacturers to condoms, wear off during sex and may not be something couples want to apply. Continue reading...

Mediterranean lifestyle takes effect in Spain but US continues to drop down tablePeople in Spain are predicted to have the longest life expectancy in the world by 2040 – beating Japan into second place – and much of the reason is to do with the way they eat, according to the authors of the most comprehensive study of the global burden of disease.In the years to come, the biggest threats to our health and longevity will be obesity, high blood pressure and blood sugar, tobacco use and drinking alcohol, according to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation in Seattle, US, which has produced the forecasts. Continue reading...

Inscription suggests Mount Vesuvius erupted weeks later than previously thoughtA newly-discovered inscription at Pompeii proves the city was destroyed by Mount Vesuvius after 17 October AD79 and not on 24 August as previously thought.Archeologists recently discovered that a worker had inscribed the date of “the 16th day before the calends of November”, meaning 17 October, on a house at Pompeii, the head of archeology at the site, Massimo Osanna, told Italian media. Continue reading...

Trump’s assertions are at odds with scientific consensus that humans are causing higher temperatures that pose immediate and growing threatsAsked about climate change on CBS’s 60 Minutes and by reporters in Georgia on Monday, Donald Trump suggested that climate change will “change back again”,” that it might not be manmade, and that hurricanes aren’t getting worse. The Guardian compared the US president’s comments with the science. Continue reading...

Research reveals that fighting between youths – particularly females – is less common where corporal punishment has been outlawedCountries that ban the smacking of children appear to be safer for young people to grow up in, according to research revealing that fighting between youths – particularly females – is less common where corporal punishment has been outlawed.Experts say the study adds to a growing body of evidence that punishing children by smacking, slapping or spanking them can lead to later harm. The research has led to renewed calls for policymakers to ban such practices in both schools and the home. Continue reading...

Archaeologists detect 20-metre ship using motorised high-resolution ground-penetrating radarArchaeologists have discovered a Viking ship burial in Norway using ground-penetrating radar that suggests the 20-metre keel and many of its timbers remain well preserved just half a metre below the topsoil.The ship lies in farmland in Østfold county in south-east Norway. Just three other intact ship burials have been recorded in the country; the survival of this one is remarkable because the imposing burial mound that once covered it has long since been ploughed out. Another mound, Jelle mound, still rises high in the field, and the research has also traced the outlines of at least eight other previously unknown burial mounds that once surrounded it, and five nearby longhouses. Continue reading...

Dr JK Anand, Chris Page and Pam Lunn reflect on the UK government’s decisionOf course the planned fortification of flour with folic acid will help – where the cause of spina bifida is nutritional deficiency of folic acid (All UK flour to be given folic acid additive, 15 October). However, it can not conceivably prevent the defect where it is due to genetic factors – two defective genes from two parents coming together.In some parts of the world consanguineous marriages are commoner than in others. An academic paper in the Journal of Health, Population and Nutrition (Vol 32, No 2, June 2014) by Nazish Jabeen and Sajid Malik from a university in Pakistan is useful reading. The practice has nothing to do with religion. It is purely “custom and practice”. Continue reading...

Guardian readers respond to Gary Greenberg’s essay on Trumpian psychoanalysisGary Greenberg’s beautifully written but flawed account of the first two years of the Trump presidency highlights the limitations of using psychoanalytic concepts to explain wider political and social developments (Analyse this, The long read, 12 October).Far from Trumpism representing the return of “our archaic heritage”, our deep instinctual need to “consume, to pillage, to destroy, to wall out our neighbours and to hate people living in shitholes”, it is rather, like Brexit, a response to 30 years of neoliberal inequality and increased exploitation, an era during which millions of people both here and in the US have seen their lives get worse and their dreams evaporate. Continue reading...

My father, Nick Foster, who has died aged 61 after suffering a ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm, was an agricultural engineer devoted to improving conditions for rural people in the developing world.He wanted to empower communities by encouraging participation and education, and established water-user groups that led to the sustainable management of irrigation schemes. Continue reading...

The Geological Society of London has announced the results of its 2018 Earth Science Week photography competition. Entrants were asked to submit images of geological sites in the UK and Ireland that meant something in their lives. These 12 winning images will feature in a calendar and be displayed at the Geological Society during Earth Science Week 2018 (13-21 October). Continue reading...

The biopic of Neil Armstrong and the first moon landing has US patriots all fired up, but do Gosling and director Damien Chazelle achieve their objectives?Damien Chazelle’s film about the iron-jawed, ice-water-in-the-veins pilot and astronaut Neil Armstrong is a rocket pointed directly at the distant planet known as Awards Season. It ought to do well there, as its thrilling set-pieces, strong performances, dramatic score and sweeping emotions achieve escape velocity from typical biopic trappings.You’d think a movie like First Man wouldn’t have too many surprises; most people know that Apollo 11 landed on the moon and safely returned. (Some, like my late grandmother, think it was a hoax, but there’s not much that can be done about that.) Yet there’s a lot to rummage through in all this lunar dust. Chazelle and company make a lot of unusual choices. One of those choices got a little blown out of proportion into a quasi-controversy when “alt-right” bozos such as renowned troglodyte Dinesh D’Souza, repeated the bad faith argument that First Man didn’t show the US flag. It’s complete poppycock (I saw the movie; I saw the flag) but it is true that there is no typical, shot-from-below moment of a flagpole penetrating the alien soil in Michael Bay-esque slow motion. It’s just there, in the background. Continue reading...

Cannabidiol, or CBD, is now available in the UK in everything from skin creams to beers. But don’t set your hopes too highThis has been the year medical cannabis hit the mainstream. The government has announced that it is relaxing laws on when cannabis medicines can be prescribed by doctors, following high-profile cases such as that of Billy Caldwell, the 13-year-old boy hospitalised by his epileptic seizures after he was denied legal access to the cannabis oil that helps control them. Meanwhile a new generation of cannabis medicines has shown great promise (both anecdotally and in early clinical trials) in treating a range of ills from anxiety, psychosis and epilepsy to pain, inflammation and acne. And you don’t have to get stoned to reap the health benefits.Caldwell’s medicine was illegal because it contained THC, the psychoactive compound that smoking weed socks you with. However, the new treatments under development use a less mind-bending cannabinoid known as CBD (or cannabidiol). Continue reading...

From a 50s sci-fi curio to Hollywood blockbusters, there have been giant leaps in films that reach for the moonFirst Man is in cinemas now, in all its crashing, whooshing, non-flag-waving glory, reminding audiences afresh that the space race has served Hollywood remarkably well over the years. Even at its most scientifically credible, there’s an eternal streak of fantasy to the business of launching human beings far beyond Earth: for most of us, the sheer unimaginability of such a mission lends even the most prosaic space-travel stories a tingle of fascination.Damien Chazelle’s gripping moon-landing drama can stand proudly upright in the astronaut canon, but it also left me hungry to revisit The Right Stuff (1983), which I, like many critics, had long regarded as Hollywood’s crowning achievement on the subject. Continue reading...

Renewed US interest could produce some fascinating hearings, but the focus should be on the quality not just the quantity of reported sightingsThere’s renewed interest in the UFO phenomenon and it’s coming from an unexpected source: the United States Congress.The Senate Armed Services Committee is looking into a 2004 incident where US Navy pilots flying with the USS Nimitz strike group encountered, chased and filmed fast-moving unidentified objects. Reliable sources say at least two of the military pilots involved have already been interviewed, and a radar operator was subsequently invited to get in touch. Continue reading...

The moon takes centre stage in this week’s planetary line-up – but Pluto is there too, invisible to the naked eyeThis week the waxing Moon glides between Saturn and Mars in the low southern sky. Mars is the brighter and redder of the two planets. The chart shows the sky at 20:00 BST on 16 October 2018 when the Moon is roughly halfway between the two visible planets. The Moon will be at first quarter phase, when half the illuminated surface will be visible from Earth. While Mars and Saturn are the planetary stars of this show, on the 16th the Moon is actually aligned most closely with the dwarf planet Pluto, which sits in the sky just to the right of the Moon, in the direction of Saturn. But the far-off world is invisible to the naked eye, being thousands of times too faint to trigger our retina. Pluto itself is just two-thirds the diameter of the Moon, meaning that its surface area is just larger than that of Russia. The planet Saturn is 9.5 times wider than Earth, but 21 times wider when measured from one side of its expansive ring system to another. Mars, on the other hand, is just over half the diameter of Earth. Continue reading...

‘We-talk’ – constantly referring to yourself and your partner in the plural – is annoying. But it is also a sign that your relationship is solid. What else has science got to teach us about staying together?It’s always we, we, we … have you noticed? We all know people who seem to have lost the capacity to talk about themselves as autonomous individuals the moment they couple up. “We’re doing well, thanks”; “We love spaghetti”; “We are thinking about buying an emotional support squirrel.”Irritatingly, it turns out that these people are not just semantically smug – they’re joyful. A study by researchers at the University of California, Riverside found that “we-talk”, as they term it, is associated with happier and healthier relationships. To quote the undecipherable academese seemingly beloved by social scientists trying to justify the fact they have spent months studying we-ing, they found “meta-analytic evidence that we-talk predicts relationship and personal functioning in romantic couples”. The study also found that hearing your partner use “we” frequently is more strongly linked to happiness than using we-talk yourself. Continue reading...

Physicist said genetic editing may create species that could destroy rest of humanityThe late physicist and author Prof Stephen Hawking has caused controversy by suggesting a new race of superhumans could develop from wealthy people choosing to edit their and their children’s DNA.Hawking, the author of A Brief History of Time, who died in March, made the predictions in a collection of articles and essays. Continue reading...

Scientists may soon be able to create human sperm and eggs using ordinary cells – a boon for those with fertility problems that raises troubling ethical questionsForty years ago, couples suffering from infertility were given hope by the birth of Louise Brown, the first “test-tube baby”. But although millions of babies have now been born by IVF, the technique can offer no help to couples eager to have a child that is genetically theirs but who lack the eggs or sperm to make it: men whose testes produce no sperm, say, or women who have undergone surgery for ovarian cancer. Some opt for donor eggs or sperm, but an alternative may be on the way. Scientists are making steady progress towards creating human eggs and sperm – the so-called gametes that combine in fertilisation – artificially in a petri dish.The idea is to make them from the ordinary “somatic” cells of the body, such as skin. The feasibility of such an extraordinary transformation of our flesh has only been recognised for 11 years. But already it is revolutionising medicine and assisted reproductive technologies may eventually feel the benefits too. If gametes grown in vitro prove safe for reproduction, the possibilities are dramatic – but could also be disconcerting, and might go well beyond providing eggs and sperm for those who lack them. Instead of having to undergo a painful egg-production and extraction procedure involving doses of hormones with uncertain long-term effects, a woman could have an almost limitless supply of eggs made from a scrap of skin. Huge numbers of embryos could be created easily and painlessly. What might we do with such a choice? Continue reading...

The drive for genetic selection means cattle are increasingly vulnerable to deadly new epidemics that could emerge as the climate warmsKnown for their distinctive long horns, the Ankole cattle of western Uganda have evolved over millennia to withstand their harsh environment, with its lengthy dry spells and abundance of local maladies such as trypanosomiasis, a disease spread by the tsetse fly. But after flourishing for almost 10,000 years, the Ankole have begun to rapidly disappear.Farmland is dwindling in Uganda due to the expanding human population, and Ankole require vast areas to graze. Local herders have responded to the pressure by replacing them, cross-breeding Ankole cattle with industrial species such as the European Holstein. But while these hybrids gain favourable genetic traits from the Holstein, producing more milk and meat, and requiring less land to keep, there is a hidden cost. Continue reading...

We check our phones every 12 minutes, often just after waking up. Always-on behaviour is harmful to long-term mental health, and we need to learn to the hit the pause buttonIt is difficult to imagine life before our personal and professional worlds were so dominated and “switched on” via smartphones and the other devices that make us accessible and, crucially, so easily distractible and interruptible every second of the day. This constant fragmentation of our time and concentration has become the new normal, to which we have adapted with ease, but there is a downside: more and more experts are telling us that these interruptions and distractions have eroded our ability to concentrate.We have known for a long time that repeated interruptions affect concentration. In 2005, research carried out by Dr Glenn Wilson at London’s Institute of Psychiatry found that persistent interruptions and distractions at work had a profound effect. Those distracted by emails and phone calls saw a 10-point fall in their IQ, twice that found in studies on the impact of smoking marijuana. More than half of the 1,100 participants said they always responded to an email immediately or as soon as possible, while 21% admitted they would interrupt a meeting to do so. Constant interruptions can have the same effect as the loss of a night’s sleep. Continue reading...

Damien Chazelle’s drama about Neil Armstrong and the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing is a moving tale of loss and perilIn William Peter Blatty’s underrated 1980 mystery-thriller The Ninth Configuration, a grounded lunar astronaut played by Scott Wilson (who sadly died last week) delivers a heartbreaking soliloquy that perfectly encapsulates the existential crisis at the centre of much space-travel cinema. “See the stars, so cold, so far and so very lonely,” he says, plaintively. “What if I got there, got to the moon and couldn’t get back… I’m afraid to die alone, so far from home. And if there’s no God, then that’s really, really alone.”That sense of cosmic isolation reverberates throughout a range of space movies, from Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris to Douglas Trumbull’s Silent Running (dubbed “the loneliest adventure of all”) and, more recently, Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity. Now it resurfaces in powerful form in First Man, Damien Chazelle’s sombre, real-life account of the 1969 moon landing, which turns a spectacular space-race adventure into a low-key study of grief. Continue reading...

Anyone can be taught anything if they are inspired enough to pay attention – the key to remembering it is firing up the imaginationI first encountered memory techniques just after leaving secondary school. I’d been struck down by an illness, and had to spend a few months in hospital. Needing a project to escape the boredom of the ward, I was unable to resist diving into memory techniques when a friend brought me a book called Learn to Remember by Dominic O’Brien (the “eight-time world memory champion”, I was reassured to learn).I still recall the delight at realising how simple and intuitive the ideas within it were. Enhancing your memory is first of all enhancing your imagination, O’Brien explained. You remember better by making things more memorable. Your memory – your capacity to learn, in other words – is, according to O’Brien, personal, improvable and much more interesting and colourful than education or traditional concepts of memory (such as it being akin to a warehouse or computer) might lead you to believe. Continue reading...

A new documentary recalls the extraordinary but largely forgotten Lucas Plan, which saw British workers attempt to make wind turbines instead of weaponsIt was 1974. A new Labour government had come to power on the promise of defence cuts. Swingeing job losses were soon to follow. Desperate workers at one Birmingham factory – Lucas Aerospace – fought to save their livelihoods, not by downing tools but by transforming from weapons-makers into one of Britain’s first eco-manufacturers, with early designs for wind turbines and hybrid cars.The extraordinary story of what became known as the “Lucas Plan” is now being told in a documentary, The Plan that Came from the Bottom Up, that screens for the first time this week at the BFI London film festival. Continue reading...

When a heterosexual couple marries, who’s likely to get bored of sex first? The answer might surprise you…What do you know about female sexuality? Whatever it is, chances are, says Wednesday Martin, it’s all wrong. “Most of what we’ve been taught by science about female sexuality is untrue,” she says. “Starting with two basic assertions: that men have a stronger libido than women, and that men struggle with monogamy more than women do.”Martin pulls no punches. Her bestselling memoir Primates of Park Avenue cast her as an anthropologist observing the habits of her Upper East Side neighbours. She claimed among other shockers that privileged stay-at-home mothers were sometimes given a financial “wife bonus” based on their domestic and social performance. The book caused a furore, and is currently being developed as a TV series, with Martin as exec producer. Her new book, out this week, should be equally provocative. Entitled Untrue, it questions much that we thought we knew about women’s sexuality. Continue reading...

Lifestyle habits matter when it comes to brain health, and the rewards of increased mental stimulation can be seen in a very short space of timeSharon, a 46-year-old single mother of three teenagers, came to see me about her increasing forgetfulness. Working full-time and managing her household was becoming overwhelming for her, and she was misplacing lunchboxes, missing appointments and having trouble focusing her attention. She was worried because her grandmother got Alzheimer’s disease at the age of 79, and Sharon felt she might be getting it too – just a lot younger. I said it was highly unlikely that Sharon was suffering from early-onset dementia, but I agreed to evaluate her.Whenever I consult with people about their middle-aged pauses, I first check for physical conditions or medication side-effects that might be affecting their brain health. Left untreated, high cholesterol, hypertension and other age-related illnesses can worsen memory, increase the risk of dementia, and shorten life expectancy. I also review their daily lifestyle habits to see if there are any areas they can improve to boost their brain health. Continue reading...

Taking time over a book cuts stress, improves comprehension and promotes empathyTen years ago, I typed the phrase “slow reading” into a web search engine. I found reports about dyslexia and eye disorders. In these cases, slow reading is understandably a problem and interventions can be helpful. Often, though, slowness in the pace of reading and thinking is desirable. Try the same web search today and it will yield more positive results. You will learn how slow reading cuts stress, improves comprehension, and increases empathy.The last decade was a time of transformation for readers. Beyond the explosive growth of the web, Amazon introduced its first Kindle ebook reader. Ebook sales soared, outpacing print sales. Book stores closed or supplemented their book sales with gifts and electronics. Intellectuals debated the merits of e-reading and the adverse impact on our brains and social lives. Continue reading...

The human brain is made of food, so what we eat and drink affects our ability to keep a healthy, alert and active mindWe all intuitively appreciate that the foods we eat shape our thoughts, actions, emotions and behaviour. When you are feeling low, you reach for chocolate; when you are tired, you crave coffee. We all use food to soothe our moods and clear our heads without seeming to think much about it.Yet the focus of most diets is on the way we look rather than the way we think. This is in part due to western society’s fascination with appearance, and medicine’s bias towards drugs and surgery. In fact, contemporary medicine often disregards the ways that our diet helps shape our cognitive health. Medical students are not trained in nutrition. And, for what it is worth, neither are scientists. Continue reading...

Even the smartest people sometimes struggle to stay in the zone. What tricks do they use to get back on track?Most of the essentials of my job come down to concentration and focus. It is not a matter of memory, but of how best to use and deploy what one has remembered. That is true if, for example, you are marking a student’s essay. It is not a question of seeing what they get wrong or right (my subject isn’t really about that, others may be). It is about seeing what the student was trying to argue, and how they could make it better and more convincing. That sounds simple, but it requires a hell of a lot of thought. The same is true of lecturing, or writing the chapter of a book. It is all about how you can use what you know to make the most powerful case, to engage people’s interest, or to show why what you want to say is important. Continue reading...

Ellen Stofan made history this summer when she became the first female director of the third-most-visited museum in the worldOn the red carpet beneath an Apollo lunar module and Charles Lindbergh’s Spirit of St Louis, actors Ryan Gosling and Claire Foy mingled with astronauts, Nasa engineers and members of the US Congress. Washington was staging the national premiere of a Neil Armstrong biopic. But before it saw First Man, it heard from the first woman.Related: First Man review: Ryan Gosling shoots for the moon in Neil Armstrong biopic Continue reading...

After Russian-American crew made emergency landing, chief of US space agency predicts return to flight by DecemberNasa’s chief has praised the Russian space programme and said that he expected a new crew to go to the International Space Station in December, despite a rocket failure.Jim Bridenstine spoke to reporters at the US embassy in Moscow a day after a Soyuz rocket failure forced Russian cosmonaut Aleksey Ovchinin and US astronaut Nick Hague to make an emergency landing shortly after takeoff in Kazakhstan. The pair escaped unharmed. Continue reading...