In equal societies, citizens trust each other and contribute to their community. This goes into reverse in countries like oursThe gap between image and reality yawns ever wider. Our rich society is full of people presenting happy smiling faces both in person and online, but when the Mental Health Foundation commissioned a large survey last year, it found that 74% of adults were so stressed they felt overwhelmed or unable to cope. Almost a third had had suicidal thoughts and 16% had self-harmed at some time in their lives. The figures were higher for women than men, and substantially higher for young adults than for older age groups. And rather than getting better, the long-term trends in anxiety and mental illness are upwards.For a society that believes happiness is a product of high incomes and consumption, these figures are baffling. However, studies of people who are most into our consumerist culture have found that they are the least happy, the most insecure and often suffer poor mental health. Continue reading...

Researchers suggest effects of the colonial era can be detected in rocks or even airIt brought riches to Britain and many other European nations; played a major role in enslaving more than 10 million Africans; and created the first global markets in cotton, tobacco and sugar. But now colonialism has been accused of having an even greater influence. It is claimed that it changed the Earth’s very makeup.This is the view of two UK scientists who believe the impact of colonialism was so profound it can be detected in Earth’s air and rocks, an idea revealed in The Human Planet: How We Created the Anthropocene, by Simon Lewis and Mark Maslin, published last week. Continue reading...

What exactly is a smile for, how do we do it and if we lose it, can we get it back?It’s one of the most fundamental things that humans do. Smile. Newborns can manage it spontaneously, as a reflex, and this is sometimes misinterpreted by new parents as a reaction to their presence, although it’s not until six to eight weeks of age that babies smile in a social way. That new parents optimistically interpret the first reflex smiles reflects the complexity of smiling: there is the physical act and then the interpretation society gives to it – the smile and what the smile means.On a physical level, a smile is clear enough. There are 17 pairs of muscles controlling expression in the human face, plus the orbicularis oris, a ring that goes around the mouth. When the brain decides to smile, a message is sent out over the sixth and seventh cranial nerves. These branch across each side of the face from the eyebrows to the chin, connecting to a combination of muscles controlling the lips, nose, eyes and forehead. Continue reading...

Exquisite Old Testament-era head of a king found in Israel but subject’s identity a mysteryAn enigmatic sculpture of a king’s head dating back nearly 3,000 years has left researchers guessing at whose face it depicts.The 5cm (two-inch) sculpture is an exceedingly rare example of figurative art from the region during the ninth century BC – a period associated with biblical kings. It is exquisitely preserved but for a bit of missing beard, and nothing quite like it has been found before. Continue reading...

The psychotherapist and fiction writer on the importance of sci-fi and Freud, and the connection between love and madnessFrank Tallis is a novelist, nonfiction writer and clinical psychologist. He has held lecturing posts in clinical psychology at the Institute of Psychiatry and neuroscience at King’s College London. He has written horror fiction, a series of detective novels featuring the fictional detective Max Liebermann and four books about psychology, including Changing Minds, a history of psychotherapy. The Incurable Romantic, an account – told through case histories of his patients – of a life spent investigating obsessive love, is published on 7 June (Little Brown).This is the second book you have written about the nature of love. What draws you to the subject?

A race is on to mine billions of dollars in resources from the solar system’s asteroids, fuelling our future among the starsIn an industrial park in San Jose, California, Grant Bonin is holding what looks like the end of a metal water bottle. It is the casing, he jokes, of his company’s “flying steam kettle”: a propulsion system for small spacecraft that uses super-hot water vapour, heated to 1,000C (1,832F), to produce thrust. The company has sold about 40 to date. “It comes right out of the hole,” explains Bonin, who is the chief technology officer of Deep Space Industries (DSI).It is literally rocket science, but the ultimate aim of Bonin’s startup is even more audacious: mining asteroids. No private company has even got close to one. One of the main reasons asteroids will be mined in the future, so the thinking goes, is for the water locked in their clay deposits – and one of the chief uses of that water is likely to be as propellant for spacecraft. Probes and other spacecraft will be able to refuel in space either directly with water, or the hydrogen and oxygen that can be created from it, enabling them to zip around merrily anywhere they want with no end to their useful life. But before the idea of a solar system dotted with gas stations is realised, what is needed are more spacecraft that can actually run on water, which is where selling flying steam kettles comes in. Continue reading...

UNSW professor Martin Green, who revolutionised photovoltaics, says sun’s power is ‘the best option out there’The “father of PV” – University of New South Wales professor Martin Green – has become the first Australian to win the global energy prize from a shortlist that included Tesla’s Elon Musk.UNSW said Green had been selected from 44 contenders from 14 countries by a committee of leading scientists to share the $820,000 prize with Russian scientist Sergey Alekseenko, an expert in thermal power engineering. Continue reading...

Satellite company sees its price rise 13% and says US firm ‘significantly undervalues’ itInmarsat, Britain’s leading satellite company, has rejected a bid approach from a US rival, in what could signal the start of a fresh foreign takeover saga.Responding to a 13.5% rise in its share price on Friday, Inmarsat admitted it had received an offer from Colorado-based EchoStar that it said “very significantly undervalued” the company and its prospects. Continue reading...

Millennials hold most negative attitudes, with 40% believing dementia is inevitable

If ‘just this once’ happens every month, there’s a name for it: a monthly expenseOne of the more infuriating challenges of personal money management goes as follows. Suppose your dishwasher breaks down. It makes sense to replace it with a good one, instead of something cheap that will need replacing again next year, so you buy a high‑end model, congratulating yourself on your wisdom. The following month, it’s your 10th wedding anniversary. You’re not the type to splurge on champagne-fuelled city breaks, but this is different, a once-in-a-lifetime event, so marking it properly seems right.The month after that, you buy a pricey new work outfit, as an investment in yourself. The problem with all these “exceptions” isn’t that they’re unjustifiable – it’s that, if they crop up all the time, they aren’t really exceptions. Which is one reason it’s so hard to stick to a budget: there’s often a solid case for spending beyond your means just this once. But if “just this once” happens every month, there’s a name for that: it’s a monthly expense. Continue reading...

The government has a minister to fight this modern-day epidemic, but still decimates services for those at riskAre we living through an epidemic of loneliness? Well, it depends who you ask. One Red Cross study found that more than 9 million people in the UK – almost a fifth of the adult population – are often or always lonely, and in January Tracey Crouch was appointed the so-called “minister for loneliness” to tackle the problem.But the experts can’t decide if things are actually getting worse. At Cheltenham science festival last week Aparna Shankar, from St George’s, University of London, described levels of loneliness in the UK as having been “fairly consistent” since the 1940s. Continue reading...

Foraging wood ducks, an adder taking a dip and a fearless baby rabbit are among this week’s pick on images from the natural world Continue reading...

Wealth inequality has skyrocketed in the UK, as has anxiety, stress and mental illness. Could the two be linked? Richard Lea investigatesSubscribe and review on Acast, Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Audioboom and Mixcloud. Join the discussion on Facebook and TwitterWe’re all familiar with the phrase money can’t buy happiness. For many years, researchers have pondered why that is. If you can afford more holidays, a nice house and a car, why wouldn’t that make you happier?

Findings offer hope of accurate predictions on age of foetus and early birth through test that picks up free-floating RNA in the mother’s blood

English Heritage concedes proposal for 13th-century mound in York was ‘too much’Plans to build a visitor centre sited in the mound of York’s 13th-century Clifford’s Tower have been abandoned after huge opposition.

Ruined medieval church believed to be a royal burial place has been made safe for visitors againReading has got its abbey back, almost 10 years after the gates to the ruined medieval church were locked when large stones began to fall from the walls with ominously increasing frequency.However, the remains of Henry I, who founded the abbey in 1121 and is believed to be buried there, have yet again escaped discovery. Continue reading...

Researchers find the daily migrations of brine shrimp is strong enough to mix ocean waters

Researchers are genetically engineering plants to produce the sex pheromones of insects, which then frustrate the pests’ attempts to mate“Sexy plants” are on the way to replacing many harmful pesticides, scientists say, by producing the sex pheromones of insects which then frustrate pests’ attempts to mate.Scientists have already genetically engineered a plant to produce the sex pheromones of moths and are now optimising that, as well as working on new pheromones such as those of the mealybugs that plague citrus growers. Continue reading...

PrEP availability may play a part in men’s complacency about the chances of becoming infected, study suggestsA rapid rise in the takeup of pills to prevent HIV infection in some parts of Australia has been accompanied by a steep drop in the numbers of men using condoms during sex with other men whether or not they are on the protective drugs, a major study has shown.Pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, has been hailed as a game-changer in the Aids epidemic, but the Australian experience suggests the availability of once-a-day pills that reliably prevent transmission of the virus may play a part in complacency about the chances of becoming infected. Continue reading...

Ancient prints bring scientists closer to understanding what were the first creatures to evolve pairs of legsThe oldest known footprints on Earth, left by an ancient creepy-crawly more than 500 million years ago, have been discovered in China.The tracks were left by a primitive ancestor of modern-day insects or worms, according to scientists. Precisely what the creature looked like is a mystery, though: nothing this old with legs has been discovered to date. Continue reading...

ESA director general argues for more collaboration as EU ramps up investment in own space agencyThe EU has clashed with the head of the independent European Space Agency (ESA) over the bloc’s plans to take greater control over the continent’s space programmes, in a move that could cut the UK out of key decisions.EU officials have rubbished as “unfounded” claims made by Jan Wörner, the ESA’s director general, that a restructuring of arrangements would “take decades and cost billions”. Continue reading...

‘It’s the most colour-blind place on Earth. It took me four flights to get there. I wanted to celebrate the islanders’ unique way of seeing the world’I shot this image of Deke, one of the smaller islands of the Pingelap atoll, in 2015. I had travelled to the atoll, in the Federated States of Micronesia, to research achromatopsia, a rare genetic condition that causes colour blindness and hypersensitivity to light. Worldwide, only one in every 30,000 people have achromatopsia. But on Pingelap, one in 10 do. It’s the most colour-blind place on Earth.The prevalence of achromatopsia on the island can be traced back to the 18th century when it was engulfed by a typhoon, leaving around 20 survivors. The ruler carried the recessive gene that causes the condition. After a few generations, more or less everyone on the island was related to him. Continue reading...

The latest advance in immunotherapy offers great hope, but there is much to learn before it can be translated into treatmentThese are exciting times to be a cancer researcher. The news this week that a woman’s advanced breast cancer has apparently been eradicated by a therapy derived from her own immune system is a development many of us have waited a long time to hear. It’s personalised medicine, taken to the absolute limit, and a huge testimony to decades of hard work by a team of US researchers. And it’s the sort of advance that genuinely deserves to be called a breakthrough.But those of us who treat people with advanced cancer have to balance the optimism of scientific progress with sober reality – this isn’t yet a cancer “treatment”, in the sense that is meaningful to our patients. The techniques used by Dr Steve Rosenberg’s team at the US National Cancer Institute, and which many of us in the UK (including my own team) are also working on, are fearsomely complex, and currently far outside the routine clinical reality of an NHS cancer centre. That’s not because of funding, staff levels, or any of the other criticisms often levelled at our overstretched healthcare system – it’s because of the speed with which these insights have arrived. Naturally there will be a period of catch-up while they are tested more widely, and the infrastructure to deliver them routinely is put in place. Continue reading...

Palaeontologists and museum curators try to keep their objects safe, but sometimes there are forces outside of their controlPeriodically palaeontologists will announce a new candidate for the largest dinosaur to have ever walked the Earth with the finding of a new specimen or species. There are multiple credible candidates for this title on display in various museums though sadly each is inevitably represented by less than complete remains. Most recently a new giant from Argentina has been on show in the US that might top the lot, but even this may not have beaten a near mythical animal:a giant that was known from a single and incomplete top part of a vertebra from the middle of the spine.‘Was’ is critical here because the specimen is no longer in existence. It was extremely fragile and at some point shortly after its discovery it apparently crumbled and fell apart. Such a fate is not uncommon for some kinds of fossils where exposure to the air or being freed from the supporting matrix can lead to specimens disintegrating but this was before the development of glues that could help consolidate and preserve fragile specimens, and it is also likely that no one immediately realised this was a risk.

From crime to health to business, Canada’s decision to legalize marijuana is a grand progressive experiment that promises to answer a host of questionsWhen Canopy Growth opened its first cannabis factory in an old chocolate plant near Ottawa four years ago, it did so predicting a bright future. Canada had already legalized medical marijuana, and Canopy predicted full legalization for recreational use to be next.What the company hadn’t predicted, however, was the sudden flood of foreign visitors. Politicians and police authorities from Jamaica, Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands, Greece and Australia have all come knocking, as well as doctors from New Zealand, Brazil and Chile, along with groups of corporate investors and bankers – so many that Canopy now sometimes splits up the groups according to their birthdays. Continue reading...

Men with diabetes or heart disease under ‘job strain’ have 68% higher risk of early death

A long-term ‘precision medicine’ study found improved outcomes when doctors engage in genetic sequencing of patients’ tumorsCancer patients with diseases that are difficult to treat may live longer if doctors engage in genetic sequencing and then match treatment to their illness, a long-term “precision medicine” study has found. Continue reading...

Wyre Forest, Worcestershire: The male pearl-bordered fritillaries were laying pheromone trails low along the trackThe amber flicker materialised in air so saturated that it steamed through the trees, sauna hot. The orange light became two, spinning around each other only a metre above the ride, knotting and unknotting in the air. These were small pearl-bordered fritillary butterflies, Boloria selene, males in a dogfight over territory.After each skirmish they separated, flying low in opposite directions, occasionally stopping to feed on bugle flowers or resting for a brief moment. Only then was it possible to see the black patterns on their orange wings, like glimpsing a sunset through the leaded lights of stained glass. The undersides of the wings, when they flexed at rest, revealed pearly, futurist compositions of bright, reflective panels. Continue reading...

CSIRO and agriculture group Hort Innovation turn ‘ugly’ bunches into a powder for drinks, soup and baked goodsThose who don’t fancy eating broccoli can still reap its health benefits thanks to a newly developed powder version that be stirred into smoothies, baked goods and even coffee.Bunches of broccoli deemed too imperfect in appearance to be stocked in shops have been ground up and turned into a powder by Australian government science agency CSIRO and agriculture group Hort Innovation. Continue reading...

From rotten food to weeping sores, our sense of squeamishness can help save our lives. But why are some people more susceptible ​to disgust ​than others – and what does it mean?One of the fun parts of being a disgustologist – as researchers who study the emotion of disgust sometimes call themselves – must be coming up with revolting scenarios. Repulsive enough to test a theory, but not quite so stomach-turning as to repel the people who have volunteered to take the test. In a recent study led by Prof Val Curtis, director of the environmental health group at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, the vignettes were admirably imaginative. People were asked to rate their levels of disgust at more than 70 scenarios. These included imagining a hairless old cat rubbing up against one’s leg, stepping on a slug in bare feet, shaking hands with someone with “scabby fingers”, finding out a friend eats roadkill, finding out another attempted to have sex with a piece of fruit, and seeing “pus come from a genital sore”. And, my personal favourite, for warped imagination alone: learning your neighbour defecates in his back garden.The findings, published this week in the Royal Society’s Philosophical Transactions B journal, reveal six categories of disgust: poor hygiene, animals that are vectors of disease (such as rats or cockroaches), sexual behaviours, atypical appearance, lesions and visible signs of infection, and food that shows signs of decay. “The fact we’ve found there is an architecture of disgust that has six components to it tells us something about the way in which emotions work,” says Curtis. “It tells us that emotions are for doing particular behaviours. The emotion of disgust is about doing certain things that avoid disease – they’re about not eating spoiled food, not sticking your fingers in somebody’s weeping sore, not having sex with somebody you know is having sex with lots of other people, not picking up cockroaches and kissing them. It confirms the hypothesis that disgust really is about avoiding infection.” Continue reading...

New study looked at patients with Barrett’s esophagus, usually caused by stomach acid, which is considered a precancerous condition

There is no evidence that AI robots will reduce the need for sex workers or provide a ‘safe’ outlet for paedophilesSex robots are coming, but the argument that they could bring health benefits, including offering paedophiles a “safe” outlet for their sexual desires, is not based on evidence, say researchers.The market for anthropomorphic dolls with a range of orifices for sexual pleasure – the majority of which are female in form, and often boast large breasts, tiny waists and sultry looks – is on the rise, with such dummies selling for thousands of pounds a piece. Continue reading...

As the moon pulls away from the Earth, our planet’s rotation is slowing, making our days 1/75,000 second longer each year

Scientists say 150m-year-old skeleton may be new species of carnivorous allosaurusThe skeleton of an extremely rare form of dinosaur has been sold for more than €2m (£1.8m) at the Eiffel Tower in Paris.The bones of what scientists believe may be a new species of the carnivorous allosaurus were discovered during a dig in Wyoming, US, in 2013. Continue reading...

The solutions to today’s puzzlesOn my puzzle blog earlier today I set you three football table challenges:1) England, Tunisia, Belgium and Panama make up Group G in the 2018 World Cup. Imagine that once they have all played each other the table looks like this. Continue reading...

Data from 10 year study shows that sulphonylurea tablets effectively controlled patients’ blood sugar over the long termThe misery of giving tiny babies regular insulin injections is over. Babies born with diabetes can now be treated successfully with tablets instead of injections, a new study suggests.Scientists have examined data collected over the last decade from patients diagnosed with neonatal diabetes who switched from receiving insulin injections to sulphonylurea tablets. Continue reading...

Immune cells from the woman’s own body used to wipe out tumoursA woman with advanced breast cancer which had spread around her body has been completely cleared of the disease by a groundbreaking therapy that harnessed the power of her immune system to fight the tumours.It is the first time that a patient with late-stage breast cancer has been successfully treated by a form of immunotherapy that uses the patient’s own immune cells to find and destroy cancer cells that have formed in the body. Continue reading...

Never has news been so joyous as the results of my oncotype DX, the test revolutionising treatment for thousands of women

Clinical trial finds those given chemoradiotherapy 10 weeks before surgery for deadly disease lived months longerPancreatic cancer patients may live months longer if they receive chemotherapy before surgery, a new study has found.The cancer is one of the most deadly; just 5% of pancreatic cancer patients live five years after a diagnosis. Continue reading...

The puzzle that shoots and scoresUPDATE: Read the solutions hereHi guzzlers,The World Cup is almost upon us, so here’s a puzzle to get you in the mood. Continue reading...

It’s an illness that fills our news pages on an almost daily basis. Juliette Jowit asks what causes depression, who is susceptible and what the best treatment is Continue reading...

The evening star will be travelling through Gemini this week to line up with Castor and PolluxThis whole week, Venus shines in the western evening sky. It will be easy to see why the classical Greeks called it Hesperus or evening star. The reason is that it is so bright. It is travelling through the constellation Gemini, the twins, and by the weekend, it will line up with the stars Castor and Pollux. These are the brightest stars in the constellation and are named after twin brothers in both Greek and Roman mythology. Venus appears so consistently bright for two reasons. Firstly, it is an inferior planet to Earth, meaning that its orbit is closer to the sun. At just three quarters of the Earth’s orbital radius, it receives more light than the Earth. Secondly, it bounces this light back into space because it is permanently covered in reflective clouds. On Earth we get to enjoy it as a brilliant beacon in the twilight sky. Look for it low in the west between 21:00 and 23:00 BST. Continue reading...

Greater investment in early-stage drug research and market-entry rewards are essential, says Anthony McDonnellI read with interest your article (Antibiotics crisis made worse by shortages in supply, 1 June) on the Access to Medicine Foundation report into this topic. Its excellent report highlights an important problem. A failing supply chain along with a lack of investment in new antibiotics is already causing major health problems across the world, and this will only get worse. However, I fear your article missed part of the story. Over the past few years the UK independent Review on Antimicrobial Resistance (on which I worked), the EU’s Drive-AB and many other groups have suggested workable solutions to the problem of underinvestment in new antibiotics. In short, we need greater investment in early-stage drug research, and market-entry rewards that pay researchers based on the quality of the drug. This is necessary to discourage overselling and because antibiotic sales do not reflect their societal value, making patents a poor form of incentive.The problems of and solutions to antibiotic resistance are well understood. What we need now is politicians to start acting. Something the UK led the world on when David Cameron was prime minister, but now seems to be neglected as politicians focus on the UK’s departure from the EU.

Brian McFadden’s dress sense | Antimaterialism | Amazon jargon | Restaurant names | Marshmallow test | Brian CloseI’m so sorry Brian McFadden found it difficult to make good clothes choices when he went solo but I didn’t appreciate him saying he “looked like an old lesbian aunt” (Boys to men, G2, 30 May). I’m a lesbian aunt (who at 58 I’m sure he would deem ancient), I’ve never worn a suede shirt, and I have a great hairdresser. Time to cut the lazy insults, Brian.

My father, Richard Wilson, who has died aged 92, was an experimental particle physicist and humanitarian. As a professor of physics at Harvard University his work focused on the structure of the nucleon using Harvard’s cyclotron and other accelerators around the world. When the university’s cyclotron became obsolete, he helped adapt it for the treatment of cancerous tumours.Dick held principled positions on humanitarian and environmental issues. He was an early supporter of Andrei Sakharov, the dissident Soviet physicist, believing that direct cultural and scientific contact was essential to prevent war. Continue reading...

With £10bn and a pretty face, fraudster Elizabeth Holmes blinded some of the most respected journalists in the industryIt’s a quintessential Silicon Valley story. A smart, attractive 19-year-old American woman who has taught herself Mandarin while in high school is studying chemical engineering at Stanford, where she is a president’s scholar. Her name is Elizabeth Holmes. In her first year as an undergraduate she persuades her professor to allow her to attend the seminars he runs with his PhD students. Then one day she drops into his office to tell him that she’s dropping out of college because she has a “big idea” and wants to found a company that will revolutionise a huge part of the healthcare system – the market for blood testing services. Her company will be called Theranos.Holmes’s big idea was for a way to perform multiple tests at once on a tiny drop of blood, and to deliver the results wirelessly to doctors. So she set about pitching to investors. Her story was straight out of the Silicon Valley playbook: blood testing is a $75bn (£56bn) market, which is certain to keep growing as medical science advances and is dominated by a few big, dozy companies. As such, it’s ripe for disruption – that key SV word. A standard blood test costs $50, but Theranos will be able to do it for $2.90, and because the dozy incumbents buy their testing kit from other companies such as Siemens and Roche Diagnostics, it has to be approved by the Food and Drugs Administration (FDA). But Theranos will make its own “lab-on-a-chip” testing machine and so, via a strange legal loophole, will be exempt. And – best of all – Theranos will just require a tiny pinprick’s-worth of blood: none of that nasty business of sticking a needle into a vein. Continue reading...

The US agriculture industry, often the first to feel the hit of trade disputes, is bracing itself as nations threaten to retaliateAmerica’s farmers are about to start harvesting the wheat crop. Close to 60m tonnes are gathered annually and almost half is usually exported. Where this crop will be sold, though, remains an open question.As Donald Trump’s trade war escalates, a lot of farmers are worried. Trump was elected, in part, on a promise to put America’s interests first and crack down on what he characterises as a world trade system rigged against the US. But until recently the president has acted like many of his predecessors – talking tough on the campaign trail but backtracking in the White House. Continue reading...

Having been treated for head and neck cancer, Genevieve Fox looked for the yellow brick road back to her old, pre-cancer self, but the truth is it really isn’t like that“Hey cancer, you picked the wrong bitch.”“Been there. Beat that.” Continue reading...

Researchers say it is the first time this treatment has been shown to benefit some menMen with otherwise untreatable prostate cancer could halt its spread and survive longer by undergoing immunotherapy treatment, a trial has shown.More than a third of men with an advanced form of the cancer were still alive and one-in-10 had not had further growth after a year on the drug pembrolizumab, the study found. Continue reading...