Exclusive: Public Health England has not acted on early findings of report warning of potential carcinogensToxins that may have long-term health implications for the survivors of the Grenfell Tower fire, and thousands of people who live and work nearby, have been identified in the preliminary findings of a study led by one of the world’s leading toxicology experts, the Guardian can reveal.Early results of the study by Prof Anna Stec prompted her to privately urge Public Health England (PHE), the Department of Health, the police and Kensington and Chelsea council to organise a range of tests to ensure any potential health risks can be properly assessed. Continue reading...

With market predicted to be worth $50bn by 2025, is women’s health no longer being overlooked by tech?Digital contraceptive techniques have been on the receiving end of bad press recently after Swedish company Natural Cycles was described as “misleading” by the UK’s advertising body, and a number of women complained about becoming pregnant while relying on the app.But that hasn’t stopped the industry from thriving, with the launch of Moody Month, which tracks hormones and menstrual cycles , and Flo Health, an ovulation calculator, being valued at $200m in the same week, suggesting there is still massive demand among women for products which are invariably described as femtech. Continue reading...

The former president of Ireland has a new raison d’être: saving the planet. Yet, despite the dire warnings of this week’s IPCC report, she is surprisingly upbeatOn the morning that the world’s leading climate scientists warn that the planet has until 2030 to avert a global warming catastrophe, Mary Robinson appears suitably sombre. She wears black shoes, black trousers and a black sweater and perches at the end of a long table at her climate justice foundation, headquartered in an austere, imposing Georgian building opposite Trinity College Dublin. The only dash of brightness is a multicoloured brooch on her lapel. “It symbolises the sustainable development goals,” she says. “It’s the one good emblem that the United Nations has produced, so I like to wear it.”There seems little reason for cheer on this Monday. The landmark report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has just warned that urgent, unprecedented changes are needed to keep global warming to a maximum of 1.5C; even half a degree beyond this will significantly worsen the risks of drought, floods, extreme heat and poverty for hundreds of millions of people. Donald Trump, rejecter of the Paris climate agreement, is riding high on the back of Brett Kavanaugh’s elevation to the US supreme court. Britain and the EU are consumed by Brexit. Brazil is on course to elect a president who wants to open the Amazon to agribusiness. Closer to home, the Irish government is flunking its climate policy goals. Now, climate scientists warn that the clock ticks ever closer to midnight. Continue reading...

Four people with paraplegia were recently implanted with electrodes in their lower backs. They all regained movement below their injuries, and two walked again. This week Nicola Davis investigates this technique – epidural stimulation – and other approaches for treating spinal cord injuriesJeff Marquis was spending his day off work on his bike on a mountain trail in Montana. After he landed a jump badly, he realised he could no longer move his legs. He was eventually diagnosed with a spinal cord injury, and doctors told him that he would never walk again.Fast-forward to 2018, and Marquis is now taking steps for himself again thanks to a groundbreaking trial that implanted an array of electrodes in his lower back. Marquis and three other participants underwent rigorous physiotherapy to relearn how to command their legs to walk. So does this technique, known as epidural stimulation, spell the beginning of the end for paralysis? And what are the other avenues of research that scientists believe might get people back on their feet? Continue reading...

As a psychotherapist, here’s what I’ve learned in the two years since Donald Trump moved into the White House.

In some countries more than half of births now involve the procedure, experts sayThe use of caesarean sections to deliver babies has reached epidemic proportions, say experts, with the procedure growing in use at an “alarming” rate.While caesarean sections can be a crucial intervention for the safety of the mother and child, for example if the baby is showing distress or if the mother is bleeding before birth, experts say the procedure would account for about 10-15% of births if only used when medically necessary. Continue reading...

Problem with Soyuz’s thrusters must be identified before space flights can resume, say expertsThe Russian Soyuz rocket that launches astronauts to the International Space Station will be grounded for months after two crew members were forced to make an emergency landing in Kazakhstan.American Nick Hague and Alexey Ovchinin from Russia were aboard the Soyuz rocket when it developed a thruster problem nearly two minutes after takeoff and were forced to make an emergency landing in their capsule. The Russian space agency, Roscosmos, announced an immediate investigation into the incident. Continue reading...

Findings show barriers to same-sex reproduction in humans can technically be overcome – but not yetHealthy mice with two mothers have been born for the first time in a study that pushes the boundaries of reproductive science.Mice with two fathers were also born, but only survived a couple of days, the Chinese team behind the work reported. There is no imminent prospect of the techniques being used clinically in people, but the findings demonstrate that the biological barriers to same-sex reproduction can, technically, be overcome. Continue reading...

A Russian-American space crew have been forced to make an emergency landing in Kazakhstan after their Soyuz rocket suffered a failure shortly after launching from Russia’s Baikonur cosmodrome in one of the most serious space incidents in recent years

US and Russian crew of Soyuz spacecraft reported safe after emergency landing

Black Hole Entropy and Soft Hair was completed in the days before the physicist’s death in March• Black holes and soft hair: why Stephen Hawking’s final work is importantStephen Hawking’s final scientific paper has been released by physicists who worked with the late cosmologist on his career-long effort to understand what happens to information when objects fall into black holes.The work, which tackles what theoretical physicists call “the information paradox”, was completed in the days before Hawking’s death in March. It has now been written up by his colleagues at Cambridge and Harvard universities and posted online. Continue reading...

Malcolm Perry, who worked with Hawking on his final paper, explains how it improves our understanding of one of universe’s enduring mysteries

Humans can memorise thousands of faces, say scientists. But that only makes the social awkwardness of not being able to place an acquaintance even worse. Here’s how to brazen it outScientists from the University of York have claimed that humans can recognise and memorise 5,000 faces – making those occasions where you can’t quite place or name someone even more excruciating. Here is the modern etiquette for navigating this social nightmare: Continue reading...

Studies by the Climate Impact Lab have found that higher temperatures increase suicide ratesOne of the biggest hubs of real-time climate research is a lab hundreds of miles from the rising seas and melting ice caps. There are no test tubes or beakers. Instead young scientists and economists hunch over computers analyzing the newest data.A group of them are currently reviewing a study that considers whether crime levels are connected to monsoon seasons. The findings are a tiny part of a big question: how much is climate change costing society, and who’s paying? Continue reading...

The government’s plans are an improvement, but still fatally flawed. We need a proper agriculture debateI’m a remainer, but there’s one result of Brexit I can’t wait to see: leaving the EU’s common agricultural policy. This is the farm subsidy system that spends €50bn (£44bn) a year on achieving none of its objectives. It is among the most powerful drivers of environmental destruction in the northern hemisphere. Because payments are made only for land that’s in “agricultural condition”, the system creates a perverse incentive to clear wildlife habitats, even in places unsuitable for farming, to produce the empty ground that qualifies for public money. These payments have led to the destruction of hundreds of thousands of hectares of magnificent wild places across Europe.It is also arguably the most regressive transfer of public money in the modern world. Farmers are paid by the hectare for owning or using land; so the more you have, the more you get. While in the UK benefits for poor people are capped at £20,000 (outside London), these benefits for the rich are uncapped. Some landowners receive £1m or more. You don’t even have to live in the EU to take this money: you just have to own land here. Among the benefit tourists sucking up public funds in the age of austerity are Russian oligarchs, Saudi princes and Texas oil barons. Continue reading...

University of York says first evidence-based study nails down facial-recognition abilityThe next time an old friend meets your greeting with a quizzical who-are-you stare, you’re right to take offence: new research suggests the average person can recognise 5,000 different faces.Psychologists at the University of York embarked on the study after realising that for all the work scientists have done on faces, they had never nailed down, even roughly, the number of faces the average human knows. They say it is the first evidence-based estimate of this figure. Continue reading...

Research in Taiwan has show a link between very high levels of air pollution and oral cancerHigh levels of air pollution are linked to an increased risk of mouth cancer, new research has revealed.Scientists have previously linked high air pollution to a host of health problems, from an increased risk of dementia to asthma and even changes in the structure of the heart, with recent research suggesting there is no “safe level” of air pollution. Continue reading...

On Ada Lovelace Day, let’s rethink how we ensure scientists from diverse backgrounds can contribute to our understanding of the worldIn recognition of the fact that their obituary pages had been dominated by white men, in 2018 the New York Times published an obituary of the Countess Ada Lovelace. Alongside Grace Hopper and Katherine Johnson, Lovelace has become an icon for women in technology. So much so that the second Tuesday in October is recognised internationally as Ada Lovelace Day. But what would a modern-day Lovelace make of the situation for women working in science today?Lovelace was from a wealthy background; her father was the poet Lord Byron and her mother, Anne Isabella Milbanke, the “princess of parallelograms”, was a keen mathematician and social reformer. Social scientists of today would describe Lovelace as having high “science capital” – her well-connected parents meant her mentors and advisers were members of the British scientific elite, including the polymaths Mary Somerville and Charles Babbage. Her extraordinary insight was the product of an interdisciplinary and inspiring education from world-renowned experts, and she would have been appalled at how modern Britain has rejected expert advice. Her childhood allowed her to recognise the poetry in mathematics and the beauty of computation. The poetical scientific learning of Lovelace gave her immense clarity and forward thought. She might have been surprised to find out that 170 years later, the government has cut funding to arts education to such an extent that it is the preserve of the elite. I’m pretty sure that she wouldn’t be happy that we force young people to specialise in one subject at the age of 18. Continue reading...

Richard Branson commits to SpaceShipTwo VSS Unity flight beyond Earth’s atmosphereVirgin Galactic will take its first trip into space within weeks according to Richard Branson, the firm’s billionaire chief and founder.The feat would mark a milestone for the company which is in a race against Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and Elon Musk’s SpaceX to offer space flights to wealthy would-be astronauts. Continue reading...

Dutch scientists say they can create swarms of bee-like drones to take over if the insects die outIntensive modern farming methods and the unravelling consequences of global climate change are said to have put the future of the common bee under threat like never before.But in Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands a group of scientists working on long-term solutions to some of the world’s thorniest problems have developed a solution that could have come straight from a sci-fi novel: robotic bees. Continue reading...

Inequality isn’t just changing the way we deal with economics – it’s perversely altering how we see ourselves and what we valueMichael was a fortysomething middle manager at a mid-sized tech company who every day felt like a failure.Even though he was wealthy enough to send his two kids to private school, he was always anxious about his status. He frequently snapped at his wife and after working long hours, often retreated from his family with a “headache” so he didn’t have to deal with anyone’s noise or demands. Continue reading...

First ground landing of reusable booster rocket on west coast of America hailed a success Continue reading...

Social media has created a world in which everyone seems ecstatic – apart from us. Is there any way for people to curb their resentment?One night about five years ago, just before bed, I saw a tweet from a friend announcing how delighted he was to have been shortlisted for a journalism award. I felt my stomach lurch and my head spin, my teeth clench and my chest tighten. I did not sleep until the morning.Another five years or so before that, when I was at university, I was scrolling through the Facebook photos of someone on my course whom I vaguely knew. As I clicked on the pictures of her out clubbing with friends, drunkenly laughing, I felt my mood sink so fast I had to sit back in my chair. I seemed to stop breathing. Continue reading...

Ageing device cannot make observations after backup gyroscope failed tooThe Hubble space telescope has been sidelined after a gyroscope failed, leaving it unable to point in the right direction during observations.The device had been expected to fail at some point this year, but the surprise came when a backup did not kick in properly after Friday’s failure, said Nasa on Monday. Continue reading...

More research is needed to understand new problems that may arise out of internet use, experts sayThe internet could be fuelling a rise in new conditions such as cyberchondria and cyberhoarding, experts have warned.While researchers say most internet use is benign, it can lead some people to develop problems. Now experts are calling for more research to understand the range of problems that exist, who might be at risk, and how individuals can be helped. Continue reading...

Genomic Risk Score test is cheap enough to allow population-wide screening of children, researchers believe

The solutions to today’s puzzlesIn my puzzle column earlier today I set you the following two self-referential logic list problemsONE Continue reading...

Successful correction of genetic problems in mice before birth raises hopes of similar treatments for humansGene editing to correct faulty DNA in human embryos has taken a step closer to becoming a reality, with scientists showing it is possible to correct genetic problems in mice before they are born.Researchers used a form of the gene-editing tool Crispr-Cas9 to introduce a mutation into a gene that would otherwise cause lethal liver failure in mice. While the approach has previously been shown to work in mice after birth, the latest study showed it was also possible to make the all-important tweak before they were born. Continue reading...

Universities must end the culture of tolerating bad behaviour and of valuing perpetrators more than their victims

Officials say they cannot find any link between cases and will not investigate furtherFrench doctors have admitted they do not know why clusters of babies have been born with limbs missing, saying they cannot find any link between the cases and will not be investigating further.Thirteen children have been born missing hands, forearms or arms in three rural areas of France between 2007 and 2017. Continue reading...

The dangers if governments ignore efforts to limit warming to 1.5C are more grave than the summary makes outA report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change confirms the enormous wisdom that governments showed in Paris in December 2015, when they agreed to the goal of “pursuing efforts” to limit global warming to 1.5C.The report’s summary for policymakers paints a sobering picture of the potentially terrible impacts of allowing global mean surface temperature to rise by 2C compared with pre-industrial levels: more extreme weather, sea level rise and ocean acidification, with detrimental effects on wildlife, crops, water availability and human health. Continue reading...

Urgent changes needed to cut risk of extreme heat, drought, floods and poverty, says IPCC

Puzzles that make a statementUPDATE: The solutions can now be seen here.Hi guzzlers,(i) People who are logically minded like to list things. Continue reading...

Ethnic minorities set to miss out on medical benefits of research, scientist warnsPeople from minority ethnic backgrounds are set to lose out on medical benefits of genetics research due to an overwhelming bias towards studying white European populations, a leading scientist has warned.Prof David Curtis, a geneticist and psychiatrist at University College London, has called on funding bodies to do more to address the emerging issue that genetic tests developed using samples from white Europeans can give meaningless results when applied to other ethnic groups. The problem could intensify as the clinical applications of genetics expand over the next decade. Continue reading...

A landmark verdict found Roundup caused a man’s cancer, paving the way for thousands of other families to seek justice

Christiana Figueres, who led the 2015 Paris accord, stresses urgency of meeting 1.5C targetPolitical leaders have been urged to act on the landmark special report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which has warned that strong efforts would be required to prevent disastrous consequences from dangerous levels of climate change.Christiana Figueres, the former UN climate chief who led the historic Paris agreement of 2015, said: “There is nothing opaque about this new data. The illustrations of mounting impacts, the fast-approaching and irreversible tipping points are visceral versions of a future that no policy-maker could wish to usher in or be responsible for.” Continue reading...

Unprecedented diagnoses show system set up after Ebola works well, medics saysLate on a Friday night Dr Mike Beadsworth left the Royal Liverpool hospital after a “pretty hellish couple of weeks”. The clinical director of tropical and infectious diseases and his team had spent weeks trying to save the life of a Middle Eastern man who had been diagnosed with a deadly virus.The man had contracted Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (Mers), the first such diagnosis in the UK since 2013. Continue reading...

Donna Strickland’s Nobel prize ends half a century in which the committee ignored big breakthroughs by female physicistsLast week, Donna Strickland (above) was awarded the 2018 Nobel prize for physics jointly with Arthur Ashkin and Gérard Mourou for their work on high-intensity lasers. It’s the first time in 55 years that a woman has won this prestigious prize, but why has it taken so long? We look at five other pioneering female physicists - past and present - who had a genuine claim to the prize. Continue reading...

This week marks half a century since the launch of Apollo 7. The photographs from that mission and those that followed still have the power to astonishFifty years ago this week, the first Apollo spacecraft to carry humans into space was launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The sequence of missions begun by Apollo 7 would eventually see American astronauts land on the moon nine months later. The 11 manned Apollo flights that took place between 1968 and 1972 represent the greatest odyssey ever undertaken by our species and are revealed in majestic colour in the newly released Apollo VII to XVII, published by teNeues (£45).The book is filled with startling colour images of fiery Apollo launches and spacecraft interiors as well as scenes of the bright blue disc of the Earth rising majestically over grey lunar plains. It is a dramatic evocation of just how swiftly the US manned space programme had advanced in only a few years since President John Kennedy had committed the US, in May 1961, to land a human on the moon by the end of the decade. Continue reading...

Many of us are familiar with the idea of stripping to our pants, opening a beer and watching TV. But in Finland ‘Pantsdrunk’ has been elevated to an official activityIt’s been a long day: one meeting after another. You leave your office, happy the working day is finally over. You could head out, network until the early hours, but somehow it doesn’t appeal. What you need, more than anything, is to relax and de-stress.You might be tempted to turn to the popular Scandinavian antidotes to stress, lagom and hygge. But are they really any good? Lagom, a Swedish word, can be translated as “in perfect balance”, or “just right”. Where lagom reigns, all is as it should be. Proportion is maintained: there’s neither too much nor too little… which is where the problem lies. Although lagom encapsulates nearly all aspects of a well-lived life, its puritanism isn’t compatible with the realities of the modern world. The problem with lagom lies with its emphasis on being a good person: a good person can never really relax. They’re too busy constantly weighing the ethical consequences of every little decision they make. “I could buy a nice pot of hummus to enjoy with dinner, but that plastic pot it comes in is so bad for the environment.” Continue reading...

Filmmaker Rory Kennedy was born six months after the assassination of her father Robert Kennedy. Here, she talks about living with her family’s tragic legacy and her new film about the space raceChildren in the Kennedy household had to follow the rules. The horses, seals and coatimundis in the grounds of Hickory Hill – the imposing family home John F Kennedy sold to his brother Robert – might have made it feel a long way from Capitol Hill, but for a family inextricably connected to the formalities of high office there were certain expectations. Dinner was served at 7pm sharp every evening, no exceptions; each of the siblings would have their nails scrubbed and hair brushed when they took their seats at the table. Sunday mornings were spent in church, Sunday nights were for poetry recitation. That said, Rory, now 49, and the youngest of Bobby and Ethel Kennedy’s kids, understands it to have been a household of welcome contradictions: “There was a healthy encouragement of rebellion, too.”On a December evening in 1984, Rory, then 13, and her brother Douglas were watching the news. Anti-apartheid activists were being handcuffed at protests outside the South African embassy in DC, just 10 miles from where they lived with their nine siblings. It was decided: if other people were putting their bodies on the line, these two would as well. At breakfast the next morning, they made their case for getting arrested to their mother. “Without missing a beat, mummy looked at us and said, ‘Fantastic, get in the car, I’ll get you down there’,” says Rory, smiling as she remembers. “They arrested me and I was thrown in a police car and handcuffed. I looked up at my mother and I tell you, I don’t think she has ever been prouder.” Continue reading...

As time passes, the number of damaged, ‘senescent’ cells in our bodies increases. These in turn are responsible for many effects of ageing. Now scientists are working to eliminate themIn a lab just south of San Francisco I am looking at two blown-up images of microscope slides on a computer screen, side by side. The slides are the same cross-sections of mouse knees from a six-month-old and an 18-month-old animal. The older mouse’s image has a splattering of little yellow dots, the younger barely any. That staining indicates the presence of so-called senescent cells – “zombie cells” that are damaged and that, as a defence against cancer, have ceased to divide but are also resistant to dying. They are known to accumulate with age, as the immune system can no longer clear them, and as a result of exposure to cell-damaging agents such as radiation and chemotherapy. And they have been identified as a cause of ageing in mice, at least partially responsible for most age-related diseases. Seeing the slides, it makes me worried about my own knees. “Tell us about it,” says Pedro Beltran who heads the biology team at Unity Biotechnology, a 90 person-strong company trying to halt, slow or reverse age-associated diseases in humans by killing senescent cells. “We think about it all the time… Wait until you see your brain.”Developing therapies to kill senescent cells is a burgeoning part of the wider quest to defeat ageing and keep people healthier longer. Unity, which was founded in 2011, has received more than $385m in funding to date including investment from big tech names such as Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel. It went public this May and is valued at more than $700m. Its first drug entered early clinical trials in June, aimed at treating osteoarthritis. Continue reading...

Viewing sensory films of people tapping, crinkling paper and scratching beards can trigger brain tingles that are relaxing – and advertisers hope will entice you to buyIt all started when people discovered that softly-spoken instructional videos on YouTube – often including tapping, brushing and stroking sounds – gave them a curious head-tingling sensation and an almost euphoric feeling of calm.This autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) has since become a global phenomenon and a new self-help book, Brain Tingles, is hoping to encourage more of us to experience it in our everyday lives. Continue reading...

Alessandro Strumia hits back at petition sparked by claim physics was built by menMore than 1,600 scientists have backed a campaign condemning the Italian researcher who claimed physics was “invented and built by men”.They have signed a petition in response to comments made by Prof Alessandro Strumia, of Pisa University, who said male scientists were being discriminated against because of ideology. Continue reading...

Mourou and a colleague shown dancing in a lab surrounded by female students, some of whom do a stripteaseWhen Donna Strickland was announced this week as physics’ first female Nobel laureate in 55 years, it appeared progress was afoot in the field. But a bizarre video that has resurfaced on YouTube featuring another of this year’s physics laureates, Gérard Mourou, suggests enlightenment may be yet to reach all corners of the laser physics community.The clip, titled “Have you seen ELI”, was made in 2013, apparently with the aim of promoting Extreme Light Infrastructure (ELI), a €850m EU project led by Mourou. The soundtrack, an upbeat reggae song, lists the exciting goals of the laser facility: “reversing nuclear waste, understanding the universe and wait guys, even heal cancer”. Continue reading...

Biotherapeutics are a great leap forward. Now proper funding is needed to fulfil their potentialTheresa May’s announcement this week of a renewed NHS focus on diagnosing cancers earlier was warmly welcomed here at Cancer Research UK. Early detection and diagnosis is a key priority for us. A clear government ambition that within a decade 75% of cancer patients should be diagnosed at an early stage, when they still have options that can cure, would be great progress from where we are today.But should this ambition be realised, all patients still need treating – and, unfortunately, cancer can often evolve a stubborn resistance to the best therapies we currently have. Continue reading...

On 16 November, scientists vote on whether to update the way we measure the kilogram. This week, Ian Sample investigates the history of the metric system, and finds out how universal constants might now make it more robustOn 16 November, scientists will vote on whether or not to update the way we measure the kilogram and three other base units. Currently the kilogram is defined by a cylinder of platinum-iridium, locked in a vault in a suburb of Paris. But few have access to it, and the international copies are ever so slightly shifting their weight relative to it.The hope now is to move away from this unstable, physical artefact and instead base our definition of mass on a fundamental constant of nature – Planck’s constant. If this goes through, the whole metric system will for the first time be derivable from natural phenomena. Continue reading...

Saga Nevecek discovers 1,500-year-old sword while skimming stonesAn eight-year-old girl has pulled a 1,500-year-old sword from a lake in southern Sweden.“I felt something with my hand and at first I thought it was a stick,” Saga Nevecek told the local Värnamo Nyheter newspaper. “Then it had a handle that looked like it was a sword, and then I lifted it up and shouted: ‘Daddy, I found a sword!’” Continue reading...

The easy way to cut emissions – closing coal power stations – is exhausted. Now the public has to be convinced to make sacrificesThree years after world leaders signed the Paris climate agreement, we’re about to better understand what that deal means for how we live our lives. On Monday, a major report from the UN’s climate science panel will set out what it will take to limit global warming to 1.5C, the key Paris target.There are reasons to think the world is, finally, getting to grips with climate change. Carbon emissions are still rising but more slowly than before, and in many countries they’re falling. The UK has slashed its emissions to 19th-century levels, and we’re not alone – plenty of other countries, including the US, are making progress as well. Crucially, that’s happened without many people noticing, suggesting the world might be able to deal with the problem without having to persuade the public to change their polluting lifestyles. Continue reading...