Could the secret to healing a riven politics lie in a Difficult Conversations Laboratory?This is an edited version of a longer piece that you can find hereIn a hard-to-find windowless room deep inside a New York university, some difficult conversations are taking place. But this is not unusual, because this is a Difficult Conversations Laboratory.Though it does not physically resemble a dungeon, it probably should. Researchers conducting experiments here routinely generate the kind of excruciating discomfort that most of us spend every family gathering trying to avoid. Continue reading...

So, research shows narcissists do life better. The meek among us must keep them in check with our conventional social moralityAccording to new research from Queen’s University Belfast, narcissists are some of the most successful people in the world. If you spend your life marauding around with a bellyful of unearned self-worth, it’s claimed, you’ll soon develop a mental toughness that will drive you to beat your more humble peers in education, work and romance.This is depressing news, but not entirely surprising. Everywhere you look, it’s perfectly clear that the narcissists won long ago. Social media drips with wrongheaded opinion masquerading as violent certainty. The buzziest television programme of the day, Love Island, is essentially just a petri dish of obnoxious self-adoration. Untalented colleagues get promoted above you because they are unafraid to gelatinously network. The world’s sole remaining superpower, for crying out loud, is run by a man who looks like the cartoon you’d draw for a monkey to make it understand the basic concept of narcissism. It’s everywhere. We’re drowning in it. Continue reading...

Every day millions of people ask Google life’s most difficult questions. Our writers answer some of the commonest queries

Historic England is funding the excavation of a stone monument in Isley MarshA team of archaeologists is braving horse flies, spiky vegetation and murky ditches to hunt for mysterious standing stones lost beneath a West Country salt marsh.The Yelland stone row at Isley Marsh disappeared beneath a thick blanket of silt after the closure of a power station changed the flow of sediment in the Taw and Torridge estuary in north Devon in the 1980s. Continue reading...

A new study suggests that we could well be on our own in the universe. Yet loneliness might have its advantagesIn 1950 Enrico Fermi, an Italian-born American Nobel prize-winning physicist, posed a very simple question with profound implications for one of the most important scientific puzzles: whether or not life exists beyond Earth. The story goes that during a lunchtime chat with colleagues at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, the issue of flying saucers came up. The conversation was lighthearted, and it doesn’t appear that any of the scientists at that particular gathering believed in aliens. But Fermi merely wanted to know: “Where is everybody?”Related: The most likely cradles for life inside our solar system Continue reading...

Urban bumblebees have better access to food, allowing them to produce more offspringBumblebee colonies fare better in villages and cities than in fields, research has revealed.Bumblebees are important pollinators, but face threats including habitat loss, climate change, pesticide and fungicide use and parasites. Now researchers say that bumblebee colonies in urban areas not only produce more offspring than those on agricultural land, but have more food stores, fewer invasions from parasitic “cuckoo” bumblebees, and survive for longer. Continue reading...

Ambrosia beetles feed on the alcoholic fungus they cultivate on dead trees so finding a gratis pint in the garden is a bonusThose enjoying a cool beer in the garden this summer, at least in the southern half of England, may find an ambrosia beetle swimming about in it. These 6mm beetles, also known as oak pinhole borers, have a remarkable trick of cultivating ambrosia fungi, which produces alcohol, hence their liking for beer.The beetles, Platypus cylindrus, carry spores of the ambrosia fungi about with them so that when colonising dead or dying trees they can start growing the fungus on which they and their offspring feed. One of the benefits for them in farming this particular fungus is that alcohol is toxic to many competing beetles and fungi so they carve out a patch untroubled by competition. Continue reading...

RoboCup brings together some of the finest minds in technology from around the world. Established in 1997, its mission is to create a team of robots capable of beating the human World Cup champions by 2050. Judging by this footage, they still have some way to go. Continue reading...

Mireille Silcoff reports from the other World Cup – the one in Montreal where 5,000 robots from 35 countries compete for gloryIf you’d like to know how things are going in the world of robotics, you would do well to attend RoboCup — the world cup of robot football — and not spend too long looking at the field.Robots are terrible soccer players. They can’t run, they can’t jump, they sometimes wander off the pitch in a stupor, and after kicking the ball they often fall over like toddlers hitting a wall at the end of a Smarties binge. In the pantheon of computer-driven non-human sporting accomplishment, if Kasparov v Deep Blue is a 10 and sending a Black & Decker Toast-R-Oven down a slope tied to a snowboard is a one, then robot football might rate a five. The novelty of a yellow-carded beep-boop-beep-boop from some deeply funded German university’s tech lab wears off pretty quickly. Continue reading...

Research team successfully administers insulin to rats in capsule form, raising hopes that a version for humans could be developedAn insulin pill for people with diabetes could be in the offing, say researchers, providing hope that a daily regime of injections might one day become a thing of the past.Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune condition in which an individual’s pancreas does not produce insulin – a hormone that is crucial for regulating blood sugar levels. Continue reading...

Fast-spreading Xylella fastidiosa is devastating species from citrus to oak trees, but can now be detected from the airA devastating and fast-spreading infection killing olive trees and grapevines around the world can now be detected from the air, long before symptoms are visible to the human eye.The new technique offers hope in the battle against one of the world’s most dangerous plant pathogens, which can infect some 350 different species, including citrus and almond trees, as well as oaks, elms and sycamores. Special “hyperspectral” cameras provide an early warning system by detecting subtle changes in leaf colour. Continue reading...

Museum’s director on how its epic anthropology collection fulfils its founder’s brief to “bring the world to Forest Hill”The Horniman Museum’s new director is surrounded by more than 3,000 objects collected over a century ago to show the English how fascinating, different and frankly weird the rest of the world was, but the object he loves most was made in the past year.The “eco-warrior’s helmet”, covered in spikes of sea shells, was created by the New Zealand artist Chris Charteris as an emblem of the resourcefulness of the Kiribati nation, whose archipelago homes are imminently threatened by climate change and rising sea levels.

Cutting-edge telescope makes Greenwich a working observatory for the first time in 60 yearsPull on the right ropes and the dome at the Altazimuth pavilion at the Royal Observatory Greenwich swings around and opens up to reveal a thick band of London sky. The Victorian building is about to emerge from a major refurbishment and inside the dome sits the main attraction: a cutting-edge telescope that will make Greenwich a working observatory for the first time in 60 years.The installation of the Annie Maunder Astrographic Telescope (Amat) has staff at Greenwich palpably excited. Over the obligatory banging of builders at work, Brendan Owens and Tom Kerss, both astronomers at the site, admit that they have been working late, very late, to put the kit through its paces. If they are tired from being up all hours, they do not let it show. “It’s a little bit addictive,” Owens says.

Killer viruses can ravage countries, but now a new project hopes to spot diseases likely to jump from animals to humansFor several months, health workers have been battling to contain an Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. A total of 60 cases, 28 of them fatal, have been reported around the town of Mbandaka, though authorities say the outbreak is now under control.Politicians, nevertheless, remain nervous. Thousands died in the West African Ebola outbreak of 2014 after the virus – which probably spread from infected animals, such as fruit bats – triggered widespread cases of severe, sometimes fatal, internal bleeding. Continue reading...

The maverick inventor, ex-Microsoft executive and ‘patent troll’ is battling Nasa on its asteroid data and exploring pizza scienceNathan Myhrvold is the former chief technology officer of Microsoft, founder of the controversial patent asset company Intellectual Ventures and the main author of the six-volume, 2,300-page Modernist Cuisine cookbook, which explores the science of cooking. Currently, he is taking on Nasa over its measurement of asteroid sizes.For the past couple of years, you’ve been fighting with Nasa about its analysis of near-Earth asteroid size. You’ve just published a 33-page scientific paper criticising the methods used by its Neowise project team to estimate the size and other properties of approximately 164,000 asteroids. You have also published a long blog post explaining the problem. Where did Nasa go wrong and is it over or underestimating size?

Withdrawing from the European Union could leave us far from technology’s cutting edgeIt’s funny the things that geeks notice. I’ve been a keen photographer since I was a teenager and so one of the fascinating aspects for me about the Apollo programme was the cameras that the astronauts used on their missions. On Apollo 11, the first moon landing, for example, they had three Hasselblad 500ELs.Why is this interesting? Well, in those days, Hasselbads were – and remain– ferociously expensive devices. But the final straw came with Apollo 17, the final moon landing, when the commander, Eugene Cernan, left his Hass behind on the lunar surface, where it remains to this day. Even in the context of a space mission that was fabulously expensive, the casual abandonment of such a beautiful, precision-engineered instrument looked – to those of us who thought about these things – like a criminal act. Continue reading...

Despite its potential to battle disease and hunger, genetically engineered food is still controversialLast week, scientists from the University of Edinburgh’s Roslin Institute announced they had deleted the section of DNA that leaves pigs vulnerable to porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome, which is estimated to cost European farmers £1.5bn a year in loss of livestock and decreased productivity. Genetically modified animals are banned from the EU food chain, but since this is a new and different technique it’s possible they’ll be appearing in bacon sandwiches in a few years. Continue reading...

Before her mother died, she handed over a shopping bag of private and personal letters sent long ago between her and her father. But what would Sabine Durrant learn about the man who died shortly after she was born?My father died just after I was born and I knew very little about him until I was in my 30s. I was a journalist then, and I approached it like an investigation, writing a memoir about what I discovered – his unhappy childhood, his life as a pilot in the navy, and his disappearance one November night during practice manoeuvres off the Dorset coast. The memoir was published in a book and serialised in a newspaper. After it appeared, my mother talked to me about him; not much but enough. She told me he had been a great love, and she told me in heart-rending detail about the night he didn’t come back. We both cried, which was good, because I had got used to thinking she had forgotten him. We had met for lunch, and when we had finished eating she rummaged in her shopper and brought out a plastic bundle, a small Ottakar’s bag containing a thick pile of letters. “You can read these,” she said. “If you like.”I took the letters home, and I was going to read them that night. In some ways, it felt like victory. The teenage me, the one who in secret trawled for evidence, who had raged against her silence – would have drunk them in. I liked to think I had bypassed her in my search, because I hadn’t wanted to upset her. She was long remarried, with a life of her own. But if I am honest it had also been a way of snatching my father from her, of having him to myself. And maybe their letters were too much of a rebuke of this, provided too concrete a proof that he had been a lover, a husband, hardly a father at all. Or perhaps their existence was just too personal – that squeamish resistance all children feel towards parental intimacy. I put the Ottakar’s bag on the table in the hall, and at one point it was moved on top of the piano, and then it graduated into a space on the bookshelves behind. I stopped thinking about it. The bag, with its green logo and arc of orange, wasn’t sealed, the top with the handles just folded over, but it gave the impression of being bound in Sellotape and masking tape, of being as impenetrable as a cage. Continue reading...

Study finds fragile marine ecosystems cannot grow fast enough to keep pace with sea levelsScientists have uncovered a new threat to the world’s endangered coral reefs. They have found that most are incapable of growing quickly enough to compensate for rising sea levels triggered by global warming.The study suggests that reefs – which are already suffering serious degradation because the world’s seas are warming and becoming more acidic – could also become overwhelmed by rising oceans. Continue reading...

It’s daft to see too much meaning in the show. Just lie back and enjoy it, like the contestants...On Friday, an evicted Love Island contestant appeared on Daily Politics alongside Nigel Farage and Alastair Campbell to talk about Brexit. Hayley Hughes, from Liverpool, has achieved fame and notoriety beyond the show’s traditional audience for not knowing what Brexit means, before asking on the reality TV series whether it will lead to fewer trees in the UK. But her appearance on Daily Politics had more to do with the fact that, for those in Westminster not preoccupied with the World Cup, a not insignificant proportion of the political class is obsessed with another summer knockout tournament: the grafting, coupling up and mugging off of a group of suntanned under-30s in a villa in Mallorca.This obsession is not confined to Westminster: this year’s Love Island is bringing in record audiences for ITV2. Its opening programme was watched by a peak of 3.4 million viewers, surpassing the audience for last year’s final by a million and making it the highest-ever for the channel. It is becoming such a hit that people are starting to look for hidden meanings behind its popularity. Love Island has turned into a Rorschach test, revealing to the viewer what they want to see, only maybe with a splodge of Fake Bake fake tan instead of an inkblot. Continue reading...

Skeleton of Charles Byrne, who had gigantism, could now be buried at sea in accordance with his final wishesThe “Irish giant”, a centrepiece of the Hunterian anatomical museum in London, could be released to allow the remains to be given a respectful burial after more than two centuries on display.The skeleton is that of Charles Byrne, an 18th-century man who had a genetic form of gigantism that caused him to grow to more than 2.31 metres (7ft 7in) tall. Continue reading...

Years of DIY-testing the dubious stashes of festival-goers have convinced me that urgent reform is needed to keep people safeWhile discussion of drugs and drug policy often revolve around facts, figures and complex science, perhaps it’s worth reflecting on what I have witnessed at British music festivals over the past four years.Summer after summer, I arrive in fields across the UK on a mission to shine a light on how we take drugs. One year, I traipsed across campsites with DIY testing kits – helping revellers understand how pure their stashes were, and what they were cut with. Continue reading...

In the Guardian’s new VR 360 film, inspired by solar physics, contemporary dancers from the Alexander Whitley Dance Company explore movement across human and astronomical scalesCelestial Motion uses a combination of contemporary dance and motion-capture technology to explore the human relationship with the Sun. The VR piece was made by the Guardian’s in-house VR studio with Alexander Whitley Dance Company, and in association with Sadler’s Wells. Continue reading...

Pigs have been rendered immune to a disease that has cost billions. Hannah Devlin questions whether this could be the future of eliminating debilitating and costly viruses in livestockSubscribe and review on Acast, Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Audioboom and Mixcloud. Join the discussion on Facebook and TwitterPorcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome is the most significant disease affecting pigs worldwide. In the United States, it costs around $644m (£486m) every year, and for Europe, it’s believed that figure is almost €1.5bn (£1.3bn). There is no cure, and vaccines have proven ineffective. However, hope is on the horizon. Scientists at the Roslin Institute at the University of Edinburgh have found that deleting a section of pigs’ DNA has rendered them immune to the virus. Continue reading...

Researchers say World Health Organisation’s warnings over ‘gaming disorder’ are premature and say other factors affect child wellbeing

Tests show drug causes eels to become hyperactive and damages their muscles, possibly hindering their ability to migrateTiny amounts of cocaine flushed into rivers cause eels to become not only hyperactive but to suffer from muscle wastage, impaired gills and hormonal changes, a study has found.The impact of traces of cocaine on the physiology of European eels could be hindering their epic migrations through the oceans to reproduce, according to researchers who examined the impact of the drug. Continue reading...

Research reveals strains of virus more abundant in brains with early stage of disease, though uncertainly whether virus is a trigger or a symptom

Neuroscientists have studied treadmill runners, ultramarathon athletes – and a number of lab animals – to investigate the effects of running on grey matterIt may seem obvious – as you push on through a long run, veering wildly between sensations of agony and elation – that running can have a huge effect on your state of mind. It is an intuitive idea that a growing number of neuroscientists have begun to take seriously, and in recent years they have started to show us what actually plays out on the hills and valleys of your grey matter as you run.Their findings confirm what many runners know from their own experience: we can use running as a tool to improve the way we think and feel. And we are now learning precisely why running can return focus, vanquish stress and improve mood. Plus we know why – if you’re lucky – you might get a brief glimpse of nirvana.

Research in Maasai Mara linked areas with high density of vehicles to lower numbers of cubs raised to independenceHigh levels of tourism can lead to a dramatic reduction in the number of cheetahs able to raise their young to independence, new research has found.A study in Kenya’s Maasai Mara savannah found that in areas with a high density of tourist vehicles, the average number of cubs a mother cheetah raised to independence was just 0.2 cubs per litter – less than a tenth of the 2.3 cubs per litter expected in areas with low tourism. Continue reading...

UCL study backed by Audible finds unconscious responses to the same book scenes, witnessed in adaptations across different media, are strongest in the auditory formatAs Arya Stark watches from the crowd, tears streaming, King Joffrey toys with her father Ned Stark before executing him in front of a baying crowd. This scene from Game of Thrones is harrowing in any medium – but a new University College London study has found that audiobooks are more “emotionally engaging” than film and television adaptations.Related: We’re all ears for audiobooks – and here are some of the best Continue reading...

Findings raise hopes many patients could benefit in the near future, given it is already approved for other cancersAn existing cancer treatment could be used for a common form of lung cancer for which there is currently no specific treatment available, new research suggests. Scientists found the treatment blocked cell growth in a subtype of lung cancer.The new findings, led by the University of Glasgow, have raised hopes a large number of patients could benefit from the treatment if used in combination with additional therapies. Continue reading...

Researchers say many dinosaurs’ tongues were anchored to the floors of their mouths and unable to waggleThe fearsome creatures of Jurassic World might chase you, kill you and rip you limb from limb, but there is one thing a T rex couldn’t do: stick out its tongue.

But beneficial bacteria do appear to reduce anxiety in rodents with various problemsThere is no clear sign that taking probiotics can help dampen feelings of anxiety in humans, according to new research, despite evidence that it works for rodents.A wide range of conditions, from obesity to asthma, have been linked to the microbes living in our guts, with a number of studies suggesting a link to mood and behaviour. As a result, there is a burgeoning interest in psychobiotics: using beneficial bacteria known as probiotics to tinker with the gut’s microbes to affect brain health. Continue reading...

Gene-editing technology could be propelled into commercial farms within five yearsScientists have genetically engineered pigs to be immune to one of the world’s most costly animal diseases, in an advance that could propel gene-editing technology into commercial farms within five years.The trial, led by the University of Edinburgh’s Roslin Institute, showed that the pigs were completely immune to porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS), a disease that is endemic across the globe and costs the European pig industry nearly £1.5bn in pig deaths and decreased productivity each year. Continue reading...

New research into pterosaur diets is overturning assumptions based on qualitative assertions made decades agoWhat did it eat? This is one of the first questions the general public – and especially kids – ask about extinct animals. It may surprise you to know that palaeontologists sometimes struggle to work out the answer. They may look at living relatives for clues, but for long-gone animals with no living descendants, like pterosaurs, the job is much trickier. What can you sensibly compare them to? Even if you make a hypothesis on their diet, how can you test it?Pterosaurs are a group of extinct flying reptiles that include the famous Pteranodon and Pterodactylus. They are not dinosaurs, but a separate branch of reptiles that lived alongside them in the Mesozoic. They were the first group of backboned animals to evolve true flight, beating the avian dinosaurs to aerial domination by at least 60 million years. They came in many shapes and sizes, from kitty-sized cuties to giant stalkers that would have stood eye-to-eye with a giraffe – had giraffes been available in the Cretaceous. In their 140m-year span of existence, pterosaurs were a vital component of the many rich ecosystems of the Mesozoic. And yet we know almost nothing definitive about what they ate. Continue reading...

Trial at music festival found many of those tested didn’t know what drug they were taking• Sign up to receive the top stories in Australia every day at noonThe pill-testing trial at a music festival in the Australian Capital Territory was an “overwhelming success” and the federal government should help roll out a scheme nationwide, the organisers have said.In a report on the trial at the Groovin’ the Moo festival in April, released on Wednesday, the Sta-safe consortium said the government should support a “mixed-model” with pill-testing offered permanently at drug, alcohol and syringe services – not just at festivals and special events. Continue reading...

Like Billy Caldwell’s mother, I want to try anything that might help stop my child’s seizures. At the moment, I can’tBilly Caldwell is a 12-year-old boy with severe epilepsy. Last week, British airport officials confiscated the cannabis oil his mother was using to treat his condition, because the tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) it contains is illegal in the UK. He ended up in hospital after his seizures intensified. After the intervention of Billy’s doctors, the home secretary, Sajid Javid, has allowed the return of the drug on the grounds that this situation was a “medical emergency”. Today William Hague, who advocated a “zero-tolerance” approach to cannabis when he was Tory leader, says he has changed his mind, and that Billy’s case “provides one of those illuminating moments when a longstanding policy is revealed to be inappropriate”. And, in a statement to the Commons, Javid proposed a government review of the use of cannabis for medicinal purposes.I’m pleased about this – and feel particular sympathy for the Caldwell family. My daughter Sia is 17 years old and, like Billy, experiences severe seizures. Sia had her first when she was a little over two years old. Initially we were told it was a febrile seizure resulting from a high temperature; then that she’d probably grow out of it, or that the right medication would provide seizure control. In the beginning, her seizures came occasionally, out of the blue. Then they were monthly. Now they happen daily. They knock her over, throw her off her chair, make her unable to sleep, and keep her permanently exhausted. Continue reading...

Obsessive hygiene, antibiotics and car exhausts are blamed for hay fever now affecting 20% of Britain’s populationThis has been the worst month for hay fever for 12 years. Grasses had perfect growing conditions over late April and in May with warm sunshine and showers. That was followed in June by hot dry conditions when the grass flowers matured and shed clouds of pollen on light breezes and up people’s noses.The strange thing is that hay fever was incredibly rare when it was first reported by John Bostoc, a London doctor, nearly 200 years ago. Yet in those days far more people lived and worked in the countryside, where grasses grew everywhere. Continue reading...

Report warns that swift progress in our ability to manufacture viruses is making us vulnerable to biological attacksThe rapid rise of synthetic biology, a futuristic field of science that seeks to master the machinery of life, has raised the risk of a new generation of bioweapons, according a major US report into the state of the art.Advances in the area mean that scientists now have the capability to recreate dangerous viruses from scratch; make harmful bacteria more deadly; and modify common microbes so that they churn out lethal toxins once they enter the body. Continue reading...

Scientists have developed an implant which releases diabetes medication when it senses caffeine in the bloodThe days of the insulin pen may be numbered. According to researchers in Switzerland, the future of diabetes treatment will not be a shot in the arm after a meal, but a shot of espresso instead.The scientists hope to transform the lives of diabetics who need regular jabs with an implant that contains hundreds of thousands of designer cells which churn out medicine when they sense caffeine in the bloodstream. Continue reading...

Your questions about the medical use of cannabis oil answeredCannabis oils are extracts from cannabis plants. Unprocessed, they contain the same 100 or so active ingredients as the plants, but the balance of compounds depends on the specific plants the oil comes from. The two main active substances in cannabis plants are cannabidiol, or CBD, and delta-9 tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC. Oil extracted from hemp plants can contain a lot of CBD, while oil from skunk plants will contain far more THC. THC produces the high that recreational cannabis users seek, while oils for medical use contain mostly CBD. Continue reading...

Ex-Conservative leader says policy is ‘inappropriate, ineffective and out of date’William Hague, the former leader of the Conservative party, has urged Theresa May to legalise cannabis, saying the UK’s drug policy is “inappropriate, ineffective and utterly out of date” and that the “battle is effectively over”.Lord Hague said issuing orders to the police to stop people smoking cannabis were “about as up to date and relevant as asking the army to recover the empire”. Continue reading...

Trump claims plan will keep US ahead in space race, prompting fears over militarisation of spaceDonald Trump said on Monday he would direct the Pentagon to create a “space force” as a new branch of the US military to shore up American dominance in space.Trump claimed that the plan will ensure that America, which plans a return to the moon and a mission to Mars, stays ahead of China and Russia in any new space race. But it is likely to raise fears over the militarisation of space and prompted a slew of Twitter parodies featuring Star Trek and Star Wars. Continue reading...

An annual conference on consciousness in the Arizona desert takes an anything-goes approach to some seriously wacky theoriesBy Tom BartlettStart with Noam Chomsky, Deepak Chopra and a robot that loves you no matter what. Add a knighted British physicist, a renowned French neuroscientist and a prominent Australian philosopher/occasional blues singer. Toss in a bunch of psychologists, mathematicians, anaesthetists, artists, meditators, a computer programmer or two and several busloads of amateur theorists waving self-published manuscripts and touting grand unified solutions. Send them all to a swanky resort in the desert for a week, supply them with lots of free coffee and beer and ask them to unpack a riddle so confounding that it’s unclear how to make progress, or where you’d even begin. Then just, like, see what happens.The cover of the programme for the Science of Consciousness conference, which was held in Tucson in April, shows a human brain getting sucked into (or perhaps rising from?) a black hole. That seems about right: after a week of listening to eye-crossingly detailed descriptions of teeny, tiny cell structures known as microtubules, along with a lecture about building a soundproof booth in order to chat with the whispery spirit world, you too would feel as if your neurons had been siphoned from your skull and launched deep into space. Continue reading...

A woman with cystic fibrosis and lung transplants suffered chronic pain for three years after she had a tattoo on her thighGetting a tattoo if you have a weakened immune system could put you at risk of complications, doctors have warned. The caution comes after a woman with cystic fibrosis and lung transplants developed thigh and knee pain after having body art inked on her leg.Doctors say those taking immunosuppressant drugs should take precautions if considering body art. These medicines are often given after an organ transplant or to treat autoimmune conditions such as Crohn’s disease, lupus or rheumatoid arthritis. Others who may have weak immune systems include those with chronic long-term conditions such as diabetes. Continue reading...

PM appears to be at odds with health secretary, who says government has not got law right on medicinal use of substanceTheresa May appears at odds with senior cabinet ministers after playing down the prospect of a full-scale review into the medical use of cannabis oil, despite Jeremy Hunt admitting that the government had not got the law right.The health secretary said he backed the use of the substance and called for a swift legal review after an emergency licence was provided to Billy Caldwell, a boy with severe epilepsy whose medication had been confiscated. Continue reading...

Exclusive: men believed to be from late Roman or early Saxon period were found in pit being used as rubbish dumpThe graves of two men whose legs were chopped off at the knees and placed carefully by their shoulders before burial have been discovered by archaeologists working on a huge linear site in advance of roadworks in Cambridgeshire.The best scenario the archaeologists can hope for is that the unfortunate men were dead when their legs were mutilated. It also appears their skulls were smashed in, although that could be later damage. Continue reading...

The solution to today’s puzzleEarlier today I set you a puzzle about a mirror:A man is facing a mirror hanging on a wall 1m in front of him.