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...

Carbon dioxide supplies could take up to three weeks to return to normal with key gas producers on shutdownSupplies of carbon dioxide (CO) may not return to normal levels for another two to three weeks – triggering likely shortages of meat for UK shoppers – the processing industry has warned.The production of crumpets, beer, fizzy drinks, fresh chicken and pork have been affected by shortages of CO over the past two weeks, amid longer than expected shutdowns at ammonia and ethanol plants – key producers of the gas – in the UK and also across Europe. Continue reading...

Colin Salter’s new book is a selection of extraordinary electron microscopic images of the plant world around us, including seeds, pollen, fruiting bodies, trees and leaves, flowers, vegetables and fruit

Nascent planet seen carving a path through the disc of gas and dust surrounding the very young star PDS70It is a moment of birth that has previously proved elusive, but astronomers say they now have the first confirmed image of the formation of a planet.The startling snapshot shows a bright blob – the nascent planet – travelling through the dust and gas surrounding a young star, known as PDS70, thought to be about 370 light years from Earth.

10 problems about big numbersHi guzzlersWe use numbers every day to describe the world – distances, weights, speeds, debts, populations, and so on. Yet most of us struggle to have an intuitive sense of what these numbers mean. How big is big? How fast is fast? Continue reading...

Development could allow women to have children after fertility-damaging treatmentsDoctors have made an “artificial ovary” from human tissue and eggs in a bid to help women have children after cancer treatment and other therapies that can damage female fertility.The team in Copenhagen showed that a lab-made ovary could keep human eggs alive for weeks at a time, raising hopes that the approach could one day help women have families after harsh treatments such as chemo- and radiotherapy. Continue reading...

Researchers raise concern over white people misunderstanding their minority roots: ‘It has no consequences for them’People who use home genetic testing kits to unlock the mysteries of their ancestry tend to “cherry pick” the results, relying on preconceived biases to embrace some of the findings while disregarding others, new research suggests.Home genetic testing has become a multibillion-dollar industry that has seen millions of people around the world sign up for swab kits in hopes of uncovering the secrets hidden in their genomes. Continue reading...

Many ostensibly rural creatures are thriving in our towns and cities, while adapting to surviveLast week, researchers revealed that bumblebees fare better in urban rather than agricultural environments. City colonies produced more males and reached a larger size, had more food stores and survived longer. They concluded that urban environments provide longer-lived, more varied flowers than intensively farmed agricultural areas. Continue reading...

Stories behind Sheela Banerjee’s name go from Aryan invaders via sacred black stones to 70s dinner ladiesIt’s funny the little things that stick in your mind. I was in the back of a cab with my friend Denise, decades ago, when we were both young TV researchers. The driver was having a bit of a flirt, and asked us our names. “Sheela and Denise,” I replied with my London twang. He checked us out again in his mirror, as we sat there: two young Asian women, brown skin, black hair. My parents are Indian and my friend’s father was Sri Lankan. The driver thought we were having him on. How could we both be called such ridiculously English names?His incredulity stuck with me. I can see our younger, twentysomething selves now: confident in who we were, no longer ashamed of our colour and of our background. We had left behind the racism of our childhood (or so we thought) and were proud of being Asian, in quite a political way. The names we had been given spoke of another era, of our parents’ more nervous experience of trying to fit in as new immigrants in Britain. Continue reading...

Roger Oliver and Jef Pirie on the prospect of finding other life in the galaxyProfessor Jim Al-Khalili (Opinion, 27 June) says: “There are some who argue that life on Earth appeared pretty quickly after the right conditions emerged almost 4bn years ago, which was when our planet had cooled sufficiently for liquid water to exist. Doesn’t that mean it could easily appear elsewhere too? Actually, no. A statistical sample of one tells us nothing”.Well, actually, yes. If we had evolved on a planet circling a dying star and observed that although environment conditions for life on Earth had existed for many billions of years before finally getting started, then we might reasonably conclude that the emergence of life was a bit, well, tricky. Since we actually observe that life got started “pretty quickly” then we ought to conclude that it’s not particularly improbable. True, we only have one datum point, but it’s not nothing. Continue reading...

Elsevier - one of the largest and most notorious scholarly publishers - are monitoring Open Science in the EU on behalf of the European Commission. Jon Tennant argues that they cannot be trusted.

With smartphone cameras and digital message trails, ‘what actually happened’ is more available to us than it has ever been. So why is public life saturated in both illusion and delusion?

Nicola Davis explores Proto-Indo-European, the hypothetical common ancestor of modern Indo-European languages and asks, where did it come from? How and why did it spread? And do languages evolve like genes?Subscribe and review on Acast, Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Audioboom and Mixcloud. Join the discussion on Facebook and TwitterSwedish, Ukranian, Punjabi, and Italian. To many of us, these languages are as different and distinct as they come. But in the same way that dogs, sheep and pandas have a common ancestor, languages can also be traced back to a common tongue, linguists say. Continue reading...

Study finds birds have design templates in their minds and may pass them on to future generationsNew Caledonian crows use mental pictures to twist twigs into hooks and make other tools, according to a provocative study that suggests the notoriously clever birds pass on successful designs to future generations, a hallmark of culture.“We find evidence for a specific type of emulation we call mental template matching,” co-author Alex Taylor, director of the Language, Cognition and Culture Lab at the University of Auckland, told AFP. Continue reading...

New research suggests continuity and bond between patient and doctor not only improves level of care, but can also save lives

Japan’s Hayabusa2 spacecraft plans to strike the asteroid creating a crater and dislodging rocks for analysisJapan’s Hayabusa2 spacecraft has arrived at its target asteroid, Ryugu, after a journey of nearly 2bn miles (3.2bn km), which has taken three and a half years to accomplish. The spacecraft is now tracking the 900-metre-wide asteroid, from about 12 miles above its surface. Following analysis while in orbit, Hayabusa will begin a series of touchdowns on Ryugu this autumn.During these manoeuvres the spacecraft will collect surface samples. It will also release a German-French rover, the MASCOT, which will hop across the asteroid. Continue reading...

Study suggests that death rates level off at this age threshold, but fuels fierce debate whether humans are approaching upper lifespan limit

Animal iconography | Ladybirds’ absence | Measuring space gloop | Nat King Cole’s Route 66 | Morris mushrooms“I’m looking for the wombat in the altarpiece now,” says Heather Dalton, the historian who found a cockatoo in a 16th-century Italian altarpiece created long before Captain Cook washed up in Australia (Report, 27 June). She might enjoy the 17th-century painting of the Last Supper in Cuzco Cathedral in Peru, which shows a festive spread of wine, bread, fruit and, at the very centre of the painting, a roast guinea pig.

Dr Cristiana Pașca Palmer, UN assistant secretary general and executive secretary of the convention on biological diversity, discusses Half Earth, a future biodiversity agreement and where to find the money to save life on EarthDr. Cristiana Pașca Palmer has a big job ahead of her: planning the 2020 UN Biodiversity Convention in Beijing. As the Executive Secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), Pașca Palmer is in charge of forming new goals with governments for the natural world post-2020. At the same time, a growing group of scientists are calling for a serious consideration of the Half Earth idea – where half the planet would be placed under various types of protection in a bid to prevent mass extinction.

Soon more English students will study Spanish than the tongue of Molière and MC Solaar. We lazy Britons think it’s easierPutain de bordel de merde. Ces rosbifs sont cons comme des bites. Pardon my French, but we must make the most of the obscenities while we can. English children are increasingly unwilling to learn the language of Molière and MC Solaar, according to the British Council, which reports that within a few years Spanish will overtake it as the most-studied foreign language. At A-level, takeup has already fallen to 8,300, from 21,300 in 1997, while Spanish has climbed to 7,600.Laziness seems to have a lot to do with it. As Vicky Gough, a schools adviser at the British Council, put it, “There is a perception of Spanish being easier to pick up than other languages, which may account in part for its popularity.” Which, one might say, confirms another perception: that the kids of today want everything handed to them on a plate, from chauffeur service to and from school, to first-class university degrees. When I was a boy, we had to walk to Dotheboys Hall in all weathers because it was “character-forming”, and even clever kids were happy with a 2ii. Continue reading...

Last year’s expedition in Papua New Guinea ended in him falling ill, being rescued by the newspaper and facing accusations of imperialism. What drives him to seek out yet more adventures?Benedict Allen arrives dressed like an explorer: all in green, multi-pocketed jacket, sturdy trousers, a bag that could carry accessories in the Amazon. It is a somewhat anachronistic get-up for a meeting in central London, at the Savoy hotel, but very useful given that we want a picture of him in the gardens next to the Embankment, which, for our purposes, will double as a jungle.He takes the artifice like a trouper, pushing aside the ferns as if he was yomping to a lost city in Amazonia, but proves less adept once we are seated in the hotel, having difficulty making clear just how large a pot of tea he wants and turning away the nuts and olives because he doesn’t realise they are complimentary. “Sorry, I’m not your usual class of guest,” he says to the bemused waitress. After spending so much of his life in wildernesses, he admits he finds it difficult adapting to this more refined jungle, but it may also be a natural trait: tall, gangly and prone to gesticulating wildly to express himself, he was not made for sipping tea in hotel bars. He was made for a life of adventure. Continue reading...

Diggers laying groundwork for a new windfarm discover previously unknown site of international significanceAs diggers began to strip the daisies and buttercups and carve down through the parched clay of a field near Woodbridge in Suffolk that sloped down to a riverbank, with archaeologists watching over the pretty but apparently featureless site, something extraordinary began to emerge. Clear spring water came bubbling from the ground, and with it came massive timbers preserved so perfectly that tool marks were still visible and stake posts were sharply pointed.The archaeologists first thought the timbers must be medieval or even Victorian, and were puzzled to find them so deeply buried. But as 30 metres of timber track were exposed, alongside other unexpected objects too, such as the massive horns and skull of an aurochs, an extinct breed of giant cattle, they realised they were dealing with something far more ancient. The timbers were 4,300 years old, according to the first carbon-14 tests, and underlying ones may be much older. Continue reading...

Spokesman says no safety risk but there are fears patients could face delays in cancer diagnosisPatients in hospitals around Australia may face delays in cancer diagnosis after production of the most commonly used isotope in nuclear medicine was halted at the Lucas Heights nuclear reactor in Sydney’s south.The Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (Ansto) usually produces about 10,000 doses a week of Technetium-99m (Tc-99m), which is used to diagnose a variety of heart, lung and musculoskeletal conditions, as well as cancers. Continue reading...

Nasa probe detected complex organic molecules in plumes of water and ice as it flew over EnceladusBlasts of ocean spray that erupt from a moon of Saturn contain complex organic molecules, making it the only place beyond Earth known to harbour crucial constituents for life as we know it.Astronomers detected the compounds in plumes of water and ice that shoot from huge fractures in the south pole of Enceladus, a 300-mile-wide ice ball that orbits Saturn along with 52 other moons. Enceladus stands out among the planet’s natural satellites because it hosts a global water ocean beneath its frozen crust. Continue reading...

Visitor from another solar system is actually a comet in disguise, say researchersIt isn’t a bird, and it isn’t a plane. But quite what the cigar-shaped interstellar object ‘Oumuamua is has remained something of a mystery. Now research suggests it is a comet in disguise.Named after the Hawaiian for messenger or scout – a nod to the fact it was initially spotted by researchers working at the Pan-Starrs telescope in Hawaii in October – ‘Oumuamua was quickly revealed to be a visitor from another solar system, making it the first known interstellar object to swing through our neighbourhood.

Research to calculate amount of ‘space grease’ in the Milky Way found enough for 40 trillion trillion trillion packs of butterIt looks cold, dark and empty, but astronomers have revealed that interstellar space is permeated with a fine mist of grease-like molecules.The study provides the most precise estimate yet of the amount of “space grease” in the Milky Way, by recreating the carbon-based compounds in the laboratory. The Australian-Turkish team discovered more than expected: 10 billion trillion trillion tonnes of gloop, or enough for 40 trillion trillion trillion packs of butter. Continue reading...

Invention can make an object appear to have the same temperature as its backgroundScientists have developed a thin, lightweight and flexible film that can outfox infrared cameras, allowing hot bodies to appear cool and cold items to appear warm. The invention can also help camouflage an object by making it appear the same temperature as its background.The design was inspired by the colour-shifting capabilities of cuttlefish, says Coskun Kocabas, a co-author of the research from the University of Manchester.