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...

Biggest ever review of evidence recommends the government ditch its advice to take them throughout winterVitamin D supplements do nothing for bone health and the government should ditch its advice that everyone should take them throughout the winter months, according to the authors of the biggest review of the evidence ever carried out.The findings challenge the established view of vitamin D and will dismay the many people who believe a daily dose of it is doing them good. But the large meta-analysis, the authors of which compiled 81 separate studies to come to the most robust possible conclusions, found there was no evidence to justify taking vitamin D supplements for bone health, except for those at high risk of a few rare conditions. Continue reading...

In the weak gravity, it took the Mascot lander 20 minutes to fall 51 metres to the surface – taking photos and readingsA German-French lander has arrived safely on the surface of the asteroid Ryugu, 300m kilometres from Earth. The Mobile Asteroid Surface Scout (Mascot) is about the size of a shoebox and weighs 9kg. It was developed by the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and built in cooperation with the National Centre for Space Studies (CNES) in France. It was carried to the asteroid by Hayabusa2, a spacecraft built by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).Related: Spacewatch: Ryugu, an asteroid under close inspection Continue reading...

Program says it will use virus-carrying insects to engineer crops, but some worry it’s a way to develop biological agents

Repository would store ‘friendly’ germs from the intestines of people in remote communities for future medical treatmentsScientists have put forward plans for a microbial “Noah’s ark” to preserve beneficial bugs found in the guts of people living in some of the most remote communities on Earth.The move to save the microbes is driven by concerns that modern lifestyles are wiping out organisms that have colonised human intestines for millennia and are vital for good health. Continue reading...

Bath Festival of Blues and Progressive Music | Sports Personality of the Year | Inequality and lack of empathy | Nuclear threat | Tequila brand ambassadorMy abiding memory of the Bath Festival of Blues and Progressive Music of 1970 (Letters, 3 October), to give it its full title, was Pink Floyd coming on stage in the early hours with a local women’s choir to perform Atom Heart Mother, not to mention Led Zeppelin headlining on the Sunday night. It was a fantastic lineup and, as a Glasto regular gearing up for the ticket sale this Sunday, I am so glad that Michael Eavis was there with us at the Shepton Mallet showground that weekend 48 years ago.

Anna Eavis of English Heritage on efforts to get more blue plaques commemorating women; Hilary Caldicott on the suspended Cern professor Alessandro Strumia; Jean Rogers on men writing about feminism, and Sandy Balfour of Wikimedia on the gender bias of WikipediaAnna Kessel makes some valuable points on the lack of blue plaques to women – not least that inaction will only lead to the worsening of this imbalance (Shortcuts, G2, 3 October). With this in mind, in 2016, English Heritage appealed for more female nominations for our London blue plaques scheme. The many suggestions we received means that now, for the first time, more women than men are being shortlisted for plaques. And far from being ignored, Noor Inayat Khan and Gertrude Bell will both be awarded plaques, subject to permission from the relevant buildings’ owners. But we need more proposals, which can be made via our website.

Researchers say font, which slants to the left and has gaps in each letter, can aid recall

Nasa said ruling out defects doesn’t mean ‘hole was created intentionally’ after Russian agency said it was investigating the possibilityNasa has expressed doubts over a Russian theory that a tiny hole that caused an air leak on the International Space Station (ISS) was the result of sabotage.Related: 'All is calm': Russian cosmonaut shows space station hole Continue reading...

Neptune-sized body would be the first known moon outside solar system and the largest moon yet discoveredAstronomers believe they have discovered the first known moon beyond our solar system, in orbit around a gigantic planet 8,000 light years away.The so-called exomoon, which is estimated to be the size of Neptune, would also be the biggest known moon, far exceeding anything known to exist in our own solar system. The team behind the apparent discovery said it needed further confirmation but that they had failed to find any other convincing explanation for their data. Continue reading...

Site moderator rejected submission for Donna Strickland, the first female physics winner in 55 years, in MarchWhen the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm announced the Nobel prize for physics this week, anyone wanting to find out more about one of the three winners would have drawn a blank on Wikipedia.Related: Physics Nobel prize won by Arthur Ashkin, Gérard Mourou and Donna Strickland Continue reading...

Poor sleep and high blood pressure are also more common in women with experience of assault or harassment, research showsWomen who have experienced sexual assault or harassment are more likely to suffer from poor sleep, anxiety, high blood pressure and symptoms of depression, new research has revealed.While the study cannot prove that the events are behind the greater likelihood of such health problems, researchers say it highlights an important link. Continue reading...

Briton and two Americans honoured for using evolutionary principles to develop proteins that have been used in new drugs and medical treatments

Americans Frances H Arnold and George P Smith and Briton Gregory P Winter will share the prize of 9m Swedish kronor (£770,000)

It’s the only evidence-based explanation of life on Earth, yet some countries are turning their backs on it

After Australia cynically releases its catastrophic climate data the day before grand final weekend, Ian the Climate Denialist Potato holds a press conference

Working with older people, I know what’s in store for me as I enter another decade. I just hope I’ll know when I need to let goEighty, eh, so how does it feel?” It’s a question to which I have had to reply too often since “that” birthday. I have now lived two years longer than my father, eight years longer than my mother, a full decade longer than the good book anticipated and if the demographic pundits are to be believed, as a resident of the soft south I have another 4.7 years to go.Related: 'A new way to stretch yourself': the older people realising their acting dreams Continue reading...

Defining this continent is a slippery undertaking, but it is revealing to look at its evolution over the last 100 million yearsHow was Europe formed? How was its extraordinary history discovered? And why did Europe come to be so important in the world? For those, such as me, seeking answers, it is fortunate that Europe has a great abundance of bones – layer upon layer of them, buried in rocks and sediments that extend all the way back to the beginning of bony animals. It is where the investigation of the deep past began. The first geological map, the first palaeobiological studies, and the first reconstructions of dinosaurs were all made in Europe.This history begins around 100 million years ago, at the moment of Europe’s conception – the moment when the first distinctively European organisms evolved. Earth’s crust is composed of tectonic plates that move imperceptibly slowly across the globe, and upon which the continents ride. Most continents originated in the splitting of ancient supercontinents. But Europe began as an island archipelago, and its conception involved the geological interactions of three continental “parents” – Asia, North America and Africa. Together, those continents comprise about two-thirds of the land on Earth, and because Europe has acted as a bridge between these landmasses, it has functioned as the most significant seat of exchange in the history of our planet. Continue reading...

London conference pushes uses ranging from reducing pain to increasing orgasms

The Cern physicist who claimed women have made no contribution to research could be an isolated misogynist, but there’s something deeper going on

Existing guidance that symptoms are minimal leads to misdiagnosis and ‘harmful long-term prescribing’Half of all those taking antidepressants experience withdrawal problems when they try to give them up and for millions of people in England, these are severe, according to a new review of the evidence commissioned by MPs.Guidance from the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (Nice), which says withdrawal symptoms “are usually mild and self-limiting over about one week” urgently needs to be changed, say the review authors. Continue reading...

Massively elongated orbit suggests object is influenced by theoretical giant Planet Nine in Oort Cloud regionAn extremely distant dwarf planet, named The Goblin, has been discovered in observations that are redefining the outer reaches of the solar system.Astronomers made the discovery while hunting for a hypothetical massive planet, known as Planet Nine, that is suspected to be in orbit far beyond Pluto in a mysterious region known as the Oort Cloud. Planet Nine has not yet been seen directly, but The Goblin appears to be under the gravitational influence of a giant unseen object, adding to astronomers’ certainty that it is out there. Continue reading...

American Arthur Ashkin, Frenchman Gérard Mourou and Canadian Donna Strickland share annual award for advances in laser physics• Arthur Ashkin, Gérard Mourou and Donna Strickland win physics Nobel12.34pm BSTThanks for joining us for the live coverage of the 2018 Nobel prize for physics. Don’t forget to come back tomorrow to find out who has scooped the prize for chemistry.The last thoughts on today’s award are from Dr Amelle Zaïr from King’s College London, who is a lecturer in advanced photonics and Dr Seirian Sumner, a behavioural ecologist and co-founder of Soapbox Science, an outreach platform to promote women in science.12.31pm BSTAccording to an interview from a few years ago, Ashkin felt a bit miffed that he had previously missed out on the Nobel prize when it was awarded in 1997 to a trio of scientists including Steven Chu, one of Ashkin’s colleagues, “for development of methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light.”Perhaps today’s news is some consolation… Continue reading...

American, Frenchman and Canadian share 9m Swedish kronor (£770,000) prize for work in laser physics• Nobel physics prize awarded – as it happenedThree scientists have been awarded the 2018 Nobel prize in physics for creating groundbreaking tools from beams of light.The American physicist Arthur Ashkin, Gérard Mourou from France, and Donna Strickland in Canada will share the 9m Swedish kronor (£770,000) prize announced by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm on Tuesday. Strickland is the first female physics laureate for 55 years. Continue reading...

Third of men and one in two women aged 45 are likely to go on to be diagnosed with one of the conditions, study saysOne in two women will develop dementia or Parkinson’s disease, or have a stroke, in their lifetime, new research suggests.About a third of men aged 45 and half of women of the same age are likely to go on to be diagnosed with one of the conditions, according to a study of more than 12,000 people. Continue reading...

Italian professor’s presentation deemed ‘unacceptable’ by Geneva research centreA senior Italian scientist has been suspended after he sparked fury during a presentation at Cern, the European nuclear research centre in Geneva, when he said physics was “invented and built by men, it’s not by invitation”.Prof Alessandro Strumia of Pisa University claimed during a seminar on gender issues in physics that male scientists were being discriminated against because of ideology. Continue reading...

Inventing Ourselves by Sarah-Jayne Blakemore wins £25,000 prize with investigation praised by judges as ‘truly a book that everyone should read’A radical reframing of our understanding of the teenage mind, that explains typically ridiculed behaviours such as risk-taking, emotional instability and heightened self-consciousness as outward signs of great transformation, has won the prestigious Royal Society prize for science book of the year.Two thousand years since Socrates said that teenagers have “bad manners, contempt for authority, show disrespect for elders and love chatter in the place of exercise”, Inventing Ourselves: The Secret Life of the Teenage Brain by neuroscientist Professor Sarah-Jayne Blakemore has scooped the £25,000 prize on Monday night. Blakemore is the fourth woman to win the prize over its 30-year history, and also the fourth in a row, following Cordelia Fine for her book Testosterone Rex last year, Andrea Wulf in 2016 for The Invention of Nature and Gaia Vince for Adventures in the Anthropocene in 2015. Continue reading...

Jefferson airplane | Crosswords | Male slutsAdam Sweeting references the three classic US rock festivals of the 1960s at which Jefferson Airplane performed (Marty Balin obituary, 1 October). JA also played at the Bath Festival of 1970, progenitor of the Glastonbury series, at which they were famously rained off halfway through their planned set.