Making misogynistic behaviour a criminal offence is unworkable, but highlighting it – as a trial in the Midlands has done – will cause attitudes to shiftWe are going to have to start building more prisons. Huge ones for all the men who are going to be banged up for wolf-whistling. (God knows who is going to build them.) The knee-patters will have to be put away. The blokes who say: “Nice legs, want something between them?” when a woman walks past in the street. Sorry, men, that’s just the way it is. All these things you call flirting, “banter” or just showing appreciation will now come with a custodial sentence. This is what will happen if we make misogyny a hate crime. Or you would think so, by some of the outrageous reactions to the idea.In Nottinghamshire, police have been trialling a scheme since 2016 that records misogynistic behaviour, which can be regarded as a hate crime or a hate incident depending on whether the behaviour is deemed criminal. Researchers are said to be shocked by the volume and the nature of incidents reported by those surveyed. Where have they been? Clearly, not out of the house. Continue reading...

As ill California man’s landmark case begins, attorney attacks Roundup maker’s response to researchers’ findingsMonsanto has long worked to “bully scientists” and suppress evidence of the cancer risks of its popular weedkiller, a lawyer argued on Monday in a landmark lawsuit against the global chemical corporation.

In a video recorded on Saturday, the Liberal National party candidate for Longman, Trevor Ruthenberg, is shown talking to members of the Australian Youth Climate Coalition, who were campaigning in Longman before the 26 July 'super Saturday' byelection. When asked if he rejects the science of climate change, Ruthenberg tells the AYCC campaigner 'your understanding of science … and my understanding of science, are not the same science' Continue reading...

The weather in Britain is only a small part of a global pattern and as the Arctic warms, it will make extreme events into the new, and dangerous, normalThe British are parochial about weather. It is our cherished grievance, not to be shared with foreigners. Perhaps it is the fact that our weather tends to come from the west, across the Atlantic, and not from our neighbours in Europe (unless it’s a “beast from the east”) which reinforces the belief that our weather is a uniquely British problem. But though we cannot say definitively that the current heatwave is caused by carbon emissions, it fits the pattern of long-term changes that we call climate. It is part of a global phenomenon, even if not the most important part. The really significant change is happening in eastern Siberia at the moment, where a completely unprecedented heatwave is warming that Arctic coastline, with consequences that are unpredictable in detail but surely bad on a large scale.Siberia is a vulnerable point in the global climate system for two reasons. The obvious one is the Arctic ice. The more that melts, the less remains to reflect heat back into the atmosphere. Water, being dark, absorbs heat better so there is a feedback loop set up. That is worrying, but it may be less dangerous than the feedback caused by the melting of the layer formerly known as the permafrost. This releases carbon and methane – more methane will be released from under the warming sea – and both are powerful greenhouse gases. Instability in the Arctic affects the whole of the northern hemisphere, as it increases the chances that the northern jet stream, will stick for longer than usual in a particular pattern. When that happens, the weather stops changing in the affected areas. Heatwaves are prolonged and so are cold snaps. Extremes of every sort, such as the rains in Japan which have killed more than 100 people, become more likely. What seems to be happening at the moment is that a fixation of the jet stream has produced the heatwave in Siberia as well as ours here. Again, this is yet another feedback loop. This is a heatwave which makes further, hotter heatwaves more likely in the future. Continue reading...

Blood tests on participants show profound impact work pattern has on hormonesWorking night shifts can mess up the body’s natural rhythms so much that the brain and digestive system end up completely out of kilter with one another, scientists say.Three night shifts in a row had little impact on the body’s master clock in the brain, researchers found, but it played havoc with gut function, throwing the natural cycle out by a full 12 hours. Continue reading...

Pigments found in 1.1bn-year-old rocks beneath the Sahara desert shed light on ‘major puzzle’ about early lifeScientists have discovered what they say are the world’s oldest colours – and they are bright pink.The pigments were discovered after researchers crushed 1.1bn-year-old rocks found in a marine shale deposit, beneath the Sahara desert, in the Taoudeni basin in Mauritania, west Africa. Continue reading...

Advice on when to introduce babies to solid food has been hotly disputed for years, but the latest research seems to indicate that earlier is betterIntroducing solid food to babies before they reach six months might offer a small improvement to their sleep, new research suggests.Researchers from the UK and US looked at data collected as part of a clinical trial exploring whether early introduction of certain foods could reduce the chance of an infant developing an allergy to them. As part of the study the team also looked the impact on other measures, including growth and sleep. Continue reading...

Although there are benefits to genetic screening, it could take a great psychological toll on women who carry mutationsApproximately one in eight women in the UK will be diagnosed with breast cancer in their lifetime, and early screening can save lives – around 1,300 a year, according to the NHS. That’s one in every 200 women screened; all women aged between 50 and 70 are invited for a mammogram every three years.But researchers at University College London have found that women who are at lower risk of breast cancer – about a third of the population – would be better off not being screened at all. Their research shows that screening according to risk would not substantially increase the number of women who are missed, but would reduce the number of women who are put through unnecessary tests and treatment for breast cancer. Continue reading...

Adventures on the Royal Society Policy Secondment SchemeThe Royal Society has started a Policy Secondment Scheme: placing research fellows in Governmental departments to foster communication between scientists and science policy-makers. Dr Lily Asquith is a Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin Research Fellow based at the University of Sussex, and is one of three participants on the pilot round for this scheme. Lily’s secondment is in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, working with the team focused on combatting Illegal Wildlife Trade (IWT). Dr Emma Hennessey is the deputy Chief Scientific Adviser, and has taken Lily under her wing.

Is consciousness internal, readable, even uploadable? Does it exist in the external world? Here are some mind-bending reads that have the answersHumankind has been reflecting on consciousness from the moment thought became possible. What is this business of experiencing colour, touch, taste, sound, smell? How does it happen, and where? Is the world as we experience it? There’s hardly a philosopher hasn’t made a contribution, or, more recently, a neuroscientist.To get your bearings in the literature, then, it’s not a bad idea to divide the field into those who think consciousness is all internal to the body, those who claim it involves our bodies and objects we engage with, and those who say our experience is external – one with the things experienced. Continue reading...

Patients will have to be told when fertility treatment extras are not likely to be effectiveIVF patients will need to be told when expensive “add-ons” to fertility treatments are not likely to be effective, under new rules due to be issued to clinics later this year.The crackdown by the government’s fertility regulator, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, comes as an increasing number of clinics are charging patients top-up fees for experimental procedures that have not been tested in clinical trials, or have been shown to make no difference. Continue reading...

As dusk darkens into night next Sunday, the patient watcher will be rewarded by a sight worth waiting forSet a reminder on your phone for this one – it will be worth it. Just after sunset on Sunday 15 July, the moon and Venus will come into conjunction, very low in the west. Although you will need a clear horizon to see, it will be a particularly beautiful sight. Only 11% of the moon will be illuminated, making it a very slender crescent indeed. The chart shows the view looking west at 21:30 BST on Sunday. The sky will still be quite bright, but brilliant Venus will cut through the late evening twilight and guide your eye. If you can’t see the moon at first, just be patient and wait. As the sun slips lower below the horizon, the sky will darken and the sliver of illumination will gradually become visible. The conjunction takes place against the backdrop of the constellation Leo, although you will be hard pressed to see any stars. Only as Venus and the moon drop below the horizon, will the sky darken enough for the stars to shine. Continue reading...

It’s great that more of us are living to 100, but the transhumanist dream of immortality would betray what it means to be humanHow long would you like to live? One hundred no longer seems too greedy. In 1983, the Queen sent 3,000 congratulatory telegrams to centenarians. By 2016 she was sending 14,500 cards. One in three children born that year are expected to make it to three figures. Should you receive the second royal card that is sent out for reaching 105, a recent study suggested that every year that followed you’d have a 50-50 chance of surviving – better odds than an 80-year-old. If you made it to 123, you’d beat a record held by a French woman called Jeanne Calment who died in 1997.For many, that’s not good enough. Maverick scientists such as Aubrey de Grey are trying to find a “cure” for senescence, while transhumanists are looking to avoid the problem of your body packing up by packing you up and sending it to something more durable, like a virtual reality. Continue reading...

From satellites to drugs, article 50 will be a spanner in the works of many costly projectsThe EU’s £9bn rival to the GPS satellite navigation system developed by the US. It was commissioned in 2003 and is due for completion in 2020. The European commission has decided to block the UK from working on the system as post-EU it will be considered a “third country”. T he UK is threatening to demand a £900m refund of contributions to the project. Continue reading...

The first ‘test-tube’ baby turns 40 this month, but the impact of in vitro fertilisation extends far beyond solutions to fertility problemsIt sounds rather perverse and archaic today to call a child born by IVF a “test-tube baby”. The technique of assisted reproduction has become so widespread and normalised, more than 6 million babies down the road, that there’s nothing so remarkable or stigmatising in having been conceived in a petri dish (“in vitro”means in glass, although test tubes were never involved). In many countries worldwide, 3-6% of all children are now conceived this way. Continue reading...

She reads to them, watches TV and sleeps with them. Britt Collins on her enduring passion for catsAfter my marriage ended three years ago, my husband’s parting words were: “You always loved the cats more than me, anyway.” It would’ve been funny if it weren’t true. Not that he didn’t share my passion for our feline family. And not that I didn’t love him. I did, deeply, though never with the ferocious intensity of the strays I’d rescued. Even as I leave behind those I’ve outgrown or fallen out of love with, the consuming affection I feel for my cats is unbreakable.Everything I ever wanted in life came from music, books and animals. Raised as an only child by my animal-loving German father with a houseful of strays and convalescing wildlife, I’m sure my love of felines is inherited. My nickname growing up was Mačka, cat in Yugoslavian. I’d disappear for hours in my room, reading and listening to records, with the cats – all 13 of them. Continue reading...

Late-night research, isolation and a strict, male-dominated hierarchy are the perfect conditions for sexual harassment. With colleges struggling to enforce conduct codes, what can be done?Lois, a medical researcher, endured more than five years of sexual harassment during her postgraduate study at a leading UK university. It started when she worked on a project between her MSc and PhD. The professor overseeing the research bombarded her and the other women in the group of junior researchers with crude and humiliating sexual comments.“He said I looked so sexy in overalls that he had to resist the urge to rip them off me. One day it was raining and he came in wet and he announced that, him being our boss, he should make us dry him with our naked bodies,” she recalls. Sometimes she would scream to block out the lewd comments; on other occasions she and her female colleagues would “leave the room and lock ourselves in a bathroom before going back to work”. She adds: “Sometimes he would make a comment about someone’s arse, and you’d respond by not paying any attention; but sometimes when it was particularly bad you’d have to walk away.” Continue reading...

Caistor St Edmund, Norfolk: We relish the new vocabulary that comes with these terrestrial isopods – and how to tell the difference between males and females

Siddhartha Mukherjee says trial is first in a series on ‘rethinking human diets for cancer’A groundbreaking clinical trial on whether diet could boost the effectiveness of cancer drugs is set to be launched by one of the world’s leading oncologists.The work, led by Siddhartha Mukherjee at Columbia University Medical Center in New York, will investigate whether a high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet could improve outcomes for patients with lymphoma and endometrial cancer. Continue reading...

Colorado-based firm’s cash and shares offer valued UK rival at £3.2bnUS satellite company EchoStar has walked away from attempts to acquire Inmarsat after a second takeover bid was rejected by its UK rival.EchoStar said it had no intention of making a formal takeover bid on Friday afternoon, after issuing a statement earlier in the day saying that its latest cash and shares offer had been rejected. Shares in Inmarsat closed down 8% at 484p. Continue reading...

Reykjavík’s ice-cream vendors, camp sites and outdoor swimming pools are struggling as our unusually pleasant summer spells bad news for our north-western neighboursAs you enjoy the sunshine, spare a thought for Iceland. It is having the greyest, wettest summer since 1914, preceded by rain every single day in May.According to Icelandic meteorologist Trausti Jonsson, the UK heatwave is to blame for Iceland’s struggling ice-cream vendors, outdoor pools and campsites. “The people of Reykjavík are paying for the sunshine in England and southern Scandinavia,” he said, thanks to high pressure over western Europe changing the jet stream and pushing clouds over the north of the continent. Continue reading...

Water, housing, farming … almost every aspect of public life needs to change. Why isn’t this top of the political agenda?Much of the world is in the grip of a heatwave. Britain is so hot and dry that we have Indonesia-style peat fires raging across our moorlands. Montreal posted its highest temperature ever, with the deaths of 33 people in Quebec attributed to the scorching heat. And if you think that’s hot and dangerous, the town of Quriyat in Oman never went below a frightening 42.6C for a full 24 hours in June, almost certainly a global record. While many people love a bit of sun, extreme heat is deadly. But are these sweltering temperatures just a freak event, or part of an ominous trend we need to prepare for?Earth’s climate system has always produced occasional extreme weather events, both warm and cold. What is different about now is that extra short-term warmth – from the jet stream being further north than usual – is adding to the long-term trend of rising global temperatures. The warming trend is very clear: the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration shows that all 18 years of the 21st century are among the 19 warmest on record; and 2016 was the warmest year ever recorded. Overall global surface air temperatures have risen by 1C since the industrial revolution. It is therefore no surprise that temperature records are being broken. And we can expect this to become a feature of future summers. Continue reading...

Headlines are quick to scream that solitary eating has a dark side, but the science is more complexWhile many people enjoy eating alone, recent headlines have been quick to scream that it has a dark side. But is it really bad for you?Research into eating alone is sparse, but some studies have suggested the practice might be linked to problems including depression, a blockage of blood supply to the heart, obesity and having metabolic syndrome: a combination of conditions such as diabetes and high blood pressure. Analysis of a survey of about 8,000 adults by Oxford Economics and the National Centre for Social Research for Sainsbury’s suggested eating alone has a stronger link to being unhappy than any other factor except mental illness. Continue reading...

Over two decades, Southgate has gone from whipping boy to national hero. What he’s gone through will have left lasting psychological impressionsI don’t follow football. Never have. Nothing against it, just not my thing. Of course, I’ve absorbed some vague background awareness because you can’t get away from it in the UK. However, my limited knowledge has been thrown into sharp relief lately, as my six-year-old son has really got into the World Cup and keeps asking me who the best players are. Hence I keep getting asked “Is Pelé in this one?”, no matter what teams are playing.But still, given the national obsession with football and the coverage it receives, you can’t help but know about major happenings. My earliest football-based memory is Gareth Southgate’s penalty miss in the Euro 96 semi-final against Germany. I confess I did have to Google it to remember the year, the tournament, and who they were playing against. But I certainly remember the fallout from it. It was everywhere, in the papers and on TV, people cursing Southgate’s name: I even remember the Spice Girls having a go at him as they hosted the Christmas Day Top of the Pops a full six months later! That’s some grudge. Continue reading...

Technology is never going to replace doctors - or make healthcare cheaper. But data and artificial intelligence are the futureFrom vaccines and antibiotics to memory metal stents that widen narrowed arteries and algorithms that process radiological images and let us see the earliest signs of disease, innovation has been saving lives since the inception of the National Health Service 70 years ago. It is this blend of new molecules, materials science and biomedical engineering, in partnership with digital systems, that will continue to transform our expectations of life and survival in the 21st century.While the digital revolution has taken hold in almost every corner of our lives, transforming everything from hailing cabs and booking holidays to shopping and dating, the health service has appeared to lag ever further behind. There are reasons why clinical medicine has been slower to embrace the seismic changes brought by the information age. Medical digital systems underpin life-critical organisations that run 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Making substantial change is like trying to change the gearbox on a Formula One racing car while it is still sprinting round the track, and without hindering its championship prospects. Continue reading...

Is it true that dinosaurs had a role to play in the emergence of flowers? Nicola Davis investigates whether herbivores caused plants to blossomSubscribe and review on Acast, Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Audioboom and Mixcloud. Join the discussion on Facebook and TwitterFrom providing us with medicine to smelling like decaying flesh, plants have an amazing and diverse set of traits. (Without them we wouldn’t exist: they provide us with food and oxygen.) During the era of the dinosaurs, they changed drastically. Seed-protecting cones emerged then, as did flowers. Could the fauna have caused the flora to change? Continue reading...

Number of women put through unnecessary tests would reduce if screening done by risk, find UCL researchersWomen who are at lower risk of breast cancer – about a third of the population – would be better off not being invited for NHS screening for the disease, according to new research.Researchers at University College London have found in a modelling study that screening according to risk would reduce the number of women who are put through unnecessary tests and treatment for breast cancer without substantially increasing the numbers who are missed. Continue reading...

Antibiotic-resistant bacteria are among those targeted by new ‘immunobiotic’Scientists have created a new drug that hunts down and eliminates deadly antibiotic-resistant bacteria by engaging the body’s natural defences.Researchers at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania fused part of an existing antibiotic with a molecule that attracts antibodies unleashed by the immune system to fight invaders such as bacteria. Continue reading...

Arachnids may use natural electric fields to help them stay airborne for up to hundreds of miles, scientists sayIn October 1832 a young naturalist named Charles Darwin watched with delight as hundreds of tiny spiders dangling from short silk threads floated on to HMS Beagle as the ship made for Buenos Aires.Darwin reasoned that the spiders must have flown at least 60 miles before reaching the vessel. But even as he marvelled at their aerial antics, a debate was under way as to how spiders became airborne in the first place. Continue reading...

Experts say nerve agent degrades slowly and direct contact is most likely route of exposureThe latest novichok case raises the question of whether the British couple Dawn Sturgess and Charlie Rowley were exposed to the same source of the nerve agent that poisoned the Russian former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in March.There has been no official comment on this question, but it is scientifically plausible that the agent might persist for long enough, particularly if it was contained in some way. Continue reading...

Nutrient run-off from agriculture and urban sewage are likely to be to blame, scientists sayThe coastal waters of the Baltic have been starved of oxygen to a level unseen in at least 1,500 years largely as a result of modern human activity, scientists say. Nutrient run-off from agriculture and urban sewage are thought to be to blame.“Dead zones” – areas of sea, typically near the bottom, with a dearth of oxygen – are caused by a rise in nutrients in the water that boosts the growth of algae. When these organisms die and sink to the seafloor, bacteria set to work decomposing them, using up oxygen in the process. Continue reading...

Queues are simple: you join at the back and wait your turn. But there's a whole branch of psychology devoted to studying how they work. Wimbledon publishes a guidebook on how to queue and major brands are obsessed with stopping you leaving to go elsewhere. The Guardian's science editor, Ian Sample, explains Continue reading...

Prof Derek Alderson says innovations should be backed by evidence before use on NHS

The Impossible Burger, being served on Air New Zealand, has also drawn the ire of acting prime minister Winston PetersA veggie burger that “bleeds” fake blood has been accused of posing an “existential threat” to New Zealand’s beef industry, amid a growing row over synthetic meat.The Impossible Burger, which is being served on the national carrier Air New Zealand, has drawn the ire of the acting prime minister Winston Peters, who has said he is “utterly opposed to fake beef,” and the airline should be using real animal products. Continue reading...

On the 70th anniversary of the founding of the NHS, readers celebrate its achievements and worry for its futureIt was no surprise to read that the very first lesson you suggest could be learned from overseas (Five things the NHS could do to improve service, 3 July) is the establishment of integrated health and social care, as has happened in New Zealand. The achievements of the Attlee government are at the heart of my socialist beliefs but the compromises which led then to the split between free NHS care and means-tested social care remain the achilles heel as the NHS celebrates 70 years. It is utterly ludicrous to have separate systems which imply distinct and neat boundaries between health and care, with rather a lot of people making a good living arguing on which side of the fence some poor demented soul belongs. Disputes around the funding of continuing care have become a major industry.The recent NHS funding announcement, making no reference whatsoever to social care, evidenced the fact that the government still hasn’t the least idea of how the two are umbilically linked. From as far back as 1998 to as recently as last month, the health select committee has argued for properly joined-up provision. The Treasury opposes a formal integration but continuing separation is costing billions in terms of delayed discharges and other inefficiencies.

An astonishing neolithic ruin shows the incomprehensible variety and power of religionUnesco has just added to its list of world heritage sites one of the most remarkable archaeological locations in the world, one which raises huge questions about the development of civilisation and offers no answers at all. Göbekli Tepe appears to be no more than a hill of dirt in the bare, brown landscape of south-eastern Turkey, but excavations starting in the 1990s revealed something extraordinary: beneath the surface were rings of megaliths, carved stones weighing up to 20 tonnes, which had been first placed there 11,000 years ago, before the invention of agriculture or the discovery of metal. No one seems actually to have lived on the site. This was, so far as we can tell, the first temple complex built anywhere on earth. It far predates cities. Its builders knew how to plant stones and carve them, but not to plant crops for food. Yet somehow they must have had the social organisation to come together in groups larger than any hunter-gatherer band and coordinate their labours over months or years.What they believed, and why they did this, remains a mystery, and one which opens a profound question. Did cities make gods or did gods make cities? One theory holds that the development of elaborate religions and belief systems followed the development of complicated societies, in which agriculture provided a surplus of food. There were relatively large settlements in other parts of the Middle East at around that time, made possible by the immense fertility of the land before humans and their goats took it over. But no one seems to have lived at Göbekli Tepe. It was not built for any practical purpose. It must have been the expression of a great shared dream. In that sense, it was a city that the gods built, even if the gods existed only in the minds of their worshippers and had no form that we could now recognise. Continue reading...

Surgical robots such as Versius cut training time down from 80 sessions to 30 minutes

Snacking on nuts was shown to increase the number and quality of the sperm men produced

New public exhibition at Beijing’s Museum of Natural History features scores of previously unseen fossils

Every day millions of people ask Google life’s most difficult questions. Our writers answer some of the commonest queriesThe six-pack is a shy, elusive thing that, although doesn’t serve any functional purpose, is used by some keep-fitters as a measure of personal progress – rather in the way that standing on those bathroom scales is. On the naked, athletic body, a six-pack can look as sharp as a Tom Ford suit or a Vivienne Westwood gown. But, when you think about it, there aren’t many people who make a daily appearance in their best outfit. Our best is usually reserved for special occasions, and our masterpiece is only displayed in peak condition.A washboard tummy requires a delicate balance of nutrition and exercise technique, so anyone who maintains a glowing six-pack must admit to keeping a vigilant regime. They don’t train hard only to eat carelessly. (A baggy top will conceal a guilty meal. I should know. I have several!) So the short answer is: you already have one. Stop covering it with fatty food choices, and you’ll see it. Continue reading...

The founding principles of the health service must be extended to social care. Otherwise the NHS will be run into the groundThere’s so much of modern life we take for granted, but not the NHS. It has a special place in British hearts, outranking the armed forces and the royal family in what makes us proud to be British. But the NHS is facing two existential tests on its 70th birthday, both of which exert big cost pressures.Back in the 50s, much of its work involved doling out treatment for one-off illnesses such as pneumonia and tuberculosis. Today, those serious infections are less common and the greatest demands on the NHS come from chronic conditions that people can live with for decades – diabetes, cancer, dementia – some associated with unhealthy lifestyles. Continue reading...

From 1 October new cancer patients will have tumours screened for key mutations

Data from Juno may show whether there is a solid core at the centre of JupiterEarth’s crust and oceans give our planet an obvious boundary. But jump to Jupiter and no such edge is visible. Instead, its gaseous atmosphere gradually compresses until it becomes a liquid.No one knows if there is a solid core at its centre. But with luck, data coming back from Nasa’s ambitious Juno mission will reveal what lies at Jupiter’s heart. Already images of exquisite swirling cloud tops have been beamed back, and the accompanying data reveals strong local variations in magnetic and gravity fields on the planet. “The most likely way this could occur is that strong winds deep below the cloud surface are disturbing these fields,” explains Gary Glatzmaier from the University of California. Continue reading...

Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs to carry out study for home secretaryThe home secretary, Sajid Javid, is considering whether cannabis could be made easier to prescribe for medical use, Downing Street has said.It comes after a review last month was published in which the chief medical officer of England, Sally Davies, concluded there was evidence of “therapeutic benefit” for some conditions. Continue reading...

£350 procedure known as an endometrial scratch does not help embryos implant, according to large-scale studyA procedure thought to boost chance of a successful pregnancy for women undergoing IVF has been dealt a blow by research that reveals it does not improve the chances of having a live birth.An endometrial scratch involves grazing the tissue lining the womb, as occurs when taking a tissue biopsy, in a process that takes about a minute and is similar to a smear test – but more painful and invasive.

Researchers found that applying an electric current to a part of the brain linked to violent acts reduced people’s intentions to commit assaultIt could be a shocking way to treat future criminals. Scientists have found that a session of electrical brain stimulation can reduce people’s intentions to commit assaults, and raise their moral awareness.Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore explored the potential for brain stimulation to combat crime after noting that impairment in a part of the brain called the prefrontal cortex has been linked to violent acts. Continue reading...

Dr John Ellis contemplates the size of the cosmos in relation to Wales and packs of butterTony Robinson asks to what depth 40 trillion trillion trillion packs of butter would cover a country the size of Wales (Letters, 29 June). In scientific notation this is 40x10 packs. Wales is about 2x10 square metres. A pack of butter measured 95x63x41mm, so 2x10÷6x10 or 3.4x10 packs would cover the surface. The height of 40x10 packs stacked on top of each other comes to 40x10÷3.4x10x 0.041 metres, or 4.8x10 metres. The sun is only 1.5x10 metres away, but Saturn is a little farther at 1.4x10 metres from the sun, while Pluto is at 5.9x10 metres. Andromeda is a mere 2.4x10 metres away. You could therefore, if you arranged the packs as steps, climb this “butter mountain” and reach all of the planets in the solar system, then go on to Andromeda, but you’d have to do it at night or the stairway to the solar system would swing past the sun and melt.

A construction project in the Dutch capital has led to hundreds of thousands of artefacts being dug up – and they have now gone on displayCanals have long offered a fine place to lose things – shopping trolleys, love tokens, drowned kittens, all the unwanted objects and dark secrets many hoped would never be found, slipped into their still, dark depths.But in Amsterdam, some of those long-forgotten artefacts have found themselves exposed. In 2003, the city began the process of draining and excavating two of its canal riverbeds for the construction of its new metro line. The Damrak and the Rokin were once busy stretches of the Amstel River, though for many years now both have been filled in, repurposed as two of the city’s main thoroughfares. Continue reading...

For 50 years the Ministry of Defence had a desk dedicated to stealing and weaponising alien tech. But what about cryosleep, or intergalactic wifi?The universe is vast and unexplored. For as long as humanity has existed we have gazed out awestruck into the stars, hoping against hope that we are not alone in the void.Might there be other life forms out there? Might we simply be an undiscovered tendril of an intergalactic community that stretches out towards infinity? And, were we ever to chance upon the miracle of an alien species, what’s the best way that we could catch them, kill them and harness their technology in order to destroy our enemies in a mist-cloud of laserbeams and blood? Continue reading...