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...

Concerns expressed that opportunities to save lives may be missedCancer patients in the UK may not receive enough follow-up after a diagnosis, a new study by researchers in Chicago suggests.

The song’s 103bpm tempo was found to help people perform chest compressions at the correct rateHumming the Spanish dance song Macarena could save lives, according to research that suggests it helps people administer chest compressions at the correct rate while performing CPR.The study compared the rate and depth of compressions 164 students performed on a mannequin over the course of two minutes. One group were given no external beat, one group were given a smartphone app that featured a metronome, and one group were asked to play Macarena in their head. Continue reading...

Science works best when qualified people can evaluate evidence without political pressure to draw poorly founded conclusions, say 15 neuroscientists and physicistsAs neuroscientists and physicists we have no reason to dispute that US diplomats living in Cuba heard loud noises, or that they reported feeling ill afterwards. Some US politicians have seized on these reports to construct conspiracy theories in which they imagine a mysterious disease-causing “sound ray gun” – something that isn’t possible with today’s technology. These same politicians have used their positions of authority to present their speculations to a credulous public as though they are fact. The pronouncements, in turn, have led to international confrontation and hysteria, resulting in the removal and expulsion of diplomats, and travel advisories. Now, an apparently analogous incident has been reported in China.A “preliminary communication” from the University of Pennsylvania, with US government support, published in the prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), has been used to buttress this putative “acoustic attack” idea with science. In fact, that work is deeply flawed, and does nothing to support the attack theory. We thus applaud the recent paper by Sergio Della Sala and Robert McIntosh, for its thoughtful criticisms of the JAMA report, and praise the effort described in the Guardian (Cuba calls on US and Canada to investigate ‘sonic attack’ claims, 29 May) to engage in an international scientific collaboration to study any connection between the illnesses and sound. Science works best this way, when qualified people can evaluate evidence without political pressure to draw poorly founded conclusions. Continue reading...

A new early detection blood test for 10 types of cancer could be used to screen for the disease before symptoms appearA type of early detection blood test for 10 different types of cancer has been hailed as a “holy grail” by researchers, with experts claiming such “liquid biopsies” could save lives. But how does it work, and when might it be rolled out?Why do we need early detection of cancers? Continue reading...

Many consumers are unaware the SPF rating on suncreams does not measure all-round sun protection, scientists sayBritons are putting themselves at risk of sunburn, long-lasting skin damage and even cancer as a result of their ignorance about how to choose and use suncare protection, England’s senior pharmacists have warned.Amid rising skin cancer rates in the UK, the Royal Pharmaceutical Society has for the first time published an online guide on how to select and correctly use the right products to keep safe in the sun. Continue reading...

Blood tests called liquid biopsies show signs of finding 10 different types of cancer at an early stageA blood test for 10 different types of cancers could one day help doctors screen for the disease before patients show symptoms, researchers at the world’s largest gathering of oncologists have said.The test, called a liquid biopsy, screens for cancer by detecting tiny bits of DNA released by cancer cells into blood. The test had particularly good results for ovarian and pancreatic cancers, though the number of cancers detected was small. Continue reading...

Each and everyone of us has a voice that is unique. As a result, we make a lot of assumptions about someone from just the way they speak. But are these judgements fair? And what if they’re wrong? Nicola Davis exploresSubscribe and review on Acast, Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Audioboom and Mixcloud. Join the discussion on Facebook and TwitterYour voice is unique to you, much like your fingerprint. We all have similar anatomy but how you choose to “play” your instrument says something about you. But what exactly? From just the sound of your voice, research has shown that we can glean information about your height, your personality and even whether you’re pregnant or not. Sometimes, we can make these judgment in as little as 300 milliseconds. But are these snap judgements we make about someone correct? And what consequences could that have? Continue reading...

Initial studies show that a molecule in the tea might reduce plaque build up inside arteriesA substance found in green tea could help scientists find new ways to reduce the risk of heart attacks, research suggests, although experts say that doesn’t mean you should rush to put the kettle on.The study found that a molecule in green tea, known as EGCG, can bind to a protein that is found in plaques linked to coronary artery disease and, under certain circumstances, make it more soluble. Continue reading...

With US funding for the International Space Station in doubt, Beijing is proposing that UN member states use its new orbiting research labWorking through the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs, the Chinese Manned Space Agency (CMSP) has invited applications from UN member states to conduct experiments on China’s space station. It is expected to launch next year and be ready for operations by 2022. It will consist of a core section with two attached laboratory modules. Three astronauts will be able to live onboard.Related: Space stations: our future among the stars Continue reading...

Dwarf planet’s methane dunes, located near a glacier of nitrogen, come as a surprise to scientistsScientists have detected a large field of dunes on the surface of the distant, frigid dwarf planet Pluto apparently composed of windswept, sand-sized grains of frozen methane.The dunes, spotted on images taken by Nasa’s New Horizons spacecraft during its 2015 flyby, sit at the boundary between a heart-shaped nitrogen glacier about the size of France called Sputnik Planitia and the Al Idrisi Montes mountain range made of frozen water, scientists said on Thursday. Continue reading...

Expert on Anglo-Saxon graves and glassThe archaeologist Vera Evison, who has died aged 100, expanded knowledge of the crucial period in British history that saw the transition from Roman Britain to Anglo-Saxon England, the fifth to seventh centuries AD. She did this by pioneering the introduction of continental methods to develop the systematic study of Anglo-Saxon cemeteries.Connections between Anglo-Saxon England and Germany and Scandinavia have long been recognised, but Vera showed that there was also considerable interaction between southern Britain and northern France and the Low Countries, the areas under Frankish control in the post-Roman period. Continue reading...

Patients given wrong dose, wrong type, or poor quality medicines because supply is waningThe antibiotic resistance crisis which is threatening to render many diseases untreatable is being fuelled not just by overuse of the drugs, but a fragile supply chain that is at risk of collapse, experts have warned.The authors of a white paper by the Dutch non-profit organisation Access to Medicine say a lack of access to specific antibiotics can lead to less appropriate drugs being prescribed for an infection, or even the use of lower doses – both of which increase the risk of antibiotic resistance – as well as delay for treatment. What’s more, they say, low stocks can lead to price hikes and mean poor quality medicines become rife. Continue reading...

The second in an occasional series on meteorological terminology: the rare and luminous clouds that form in an upper layer of Earth’s atmosphereThe majority of our weather occurs in the bottom 4% or so of Earth’s atmosphere, in the troposphere, which extends around 10 miles (16 km) up from the surface. One type of cloud, however, is far more remote and exists in the upper parts of the mesosphere, a layer of our atmosphere reaching over 50 miles (80 km) into space. These clouds get their name (noctilucent, i.e. luminous at night) from the time at which they are visible and are usually seen a couple of hours before sunrise or after sunset, when their higher altitude allows the sun to reflect off them brightly, while lower clouds and the sky turn darker.Related: Watch the skies: the season for rare and mysterious noctilucent clouds is here Continue reading...

It’s not just a pop culture trope – a University of Edinburgh study has found intelligent people are 30% more likely to have genes related to poor eyesightIf you wear glasses I’ve got some good news: you may well be smarter than the average person. A new study published in the journal Nature Communications has found that needing to wear glasses is associated with higher levels of intelligence. But you probably knew that already.In the study, the largest of its kind ever conducted, researchers from the University of Edinburgh analyzed cognitive and genetic data from over 300,000 people aged between 16 and 102 that had been gathered by the UK Biobank and the Charge and Cogent consortia. Their analysis found “significant genetic overlap between general cognitive function, reaction time, and many health variables including eyesight, hypertension, and longevity”. Specifically, people who were more intelligent were almost 30% more likely to have genes which might indicate they’d need to wear glasses. Continue reading...

Discovery pushes back the earliest known member of lizard and snake group by 75m years

Researchers identified two specific regions in the brain which respond to sweet and bitter tastes – and altered those responsesFrom whispering sweet nothings to hoping for sweet dreams, sugariness and pleasure have long been bound together. Now scientists studying the brains of mice have revealed why, unpicking the pathways in the brain which result in sweet foods being perceived as nice and bitter foods as nasty.What’s more, they have managed to tinker with these routes so that mice get a kick out of a tasteless substance such as water, and have even managed to switch off such judgments completely. Researchers say the finding may help with the search for treatments for eating disorders.