Science | The Guardian

David Chipperfield-designed centre would harm Stockholm waterfront, court rulesA Swedish court has blocked the construction of a major new Nobel Centre in Stockholm intended as the future venue for the world’s most prestigious arts and science awards.The 1.2bn krona (£100m) brass-clad structure, designed by the British architect David Chipperfield, would harm the capital’s picturesque waterfront, a cultural heritage site, the land and environmental court ruled on Tuesday. Continue reading...

Survey of 38,000 adults shows 65% higher mortality rate for adults getting five hours’ sleep a night unless balanced with longer snooze on ‘days off’Many people complain they do not get enough sleep, and it seems they are right to be concerned. Researchers have found that adults under the age of 65 who get five or fewer hours of sleep for seven days a week have a higher risk of death than those who consistently get six or seven hours’ shut-eye.However the effect of short sleeps over a few days may be countered by a later lie-in. The research found that individuals who managed just a few hours’ sleep each day during the week but then had a long snooze at weekends had no raised mortality risk, compared with those who consistently stuck to six or seven hours a night. Continue reading...

It’s not to do with rudeness, but with tradition: we take it for granted that people will cooperate with each otherAt first glance it seems a slight on the polite: recordings of more than a thousand casual conversations from around the world reveal that people hardly ever say “thank you” when others help them out.The everyday social exchanges, which played out in eight different languages on five separate continents, highlight a global reluctance to acknowledge trivial favours, such as passing the salt. Overall, people expressed their thanks only once in every 20 occasions. Continue reading...

Readers respond to news that Theresa May has promised millions towards artificial intelligence that could help fight cancer and other diseasesThe news that Theresa May has urged the NHS and technology companies to adopt artificial intelligence techniques in order to diagnose diseases such as cancer is extremely positive for both the healthcare community and for patients (May to promise millions for AI tools to help fight cancer, 21 May).But to usher in an age of AI, there are several obstacles that must first be overcome. Beyond the prime minister encouraging greater adoption, increased investment into how AI can safely and successfully augment healthcare and research is needed. Far greater collaboration across different disciplines and geographies is also needed to fully realise AI’s potential. Continue reading...

They rapped in its tunnels and played instruments made out of old science equipment. Could this be Cern’s most amazing experiment yet?‘Anyone attending the performances,” says Jack Jelfs, “will find themselves in a 12-dimensional quantum superposition.” This superposition, adds the artist, will contain three overlaid elements: our mythic past, our scientific present and our unknown future. “So,” concludes Jelfs, “you may wish to prepare appropriately.”Jelfs is talking about The Wave Epoch, a high-concept performance piece that is the result of four British artists spending time at Cern (the European Organisation for Nuclear Research), where particles are accelerated and bashed into each other to reveal the secrets of the universe. When it’s described as “something between an installation, a music performance and a rave”, The Wave Epoch might not sound like anything particularly new, but it all becomes a lot more original when you realise it was conceived 175 metres underneath the Franco-Swiss border in the presence of the Large Hadron Collider, the biggest single piece of machinery in existence. Continue reading...

John Tyndall – the man who explained why the sky is blue – would be baffled by the idea of democratic discussion of the direction of research and innovationJohn Tyndall – the 19th-century Irish scientist (c. 1822–93), not the 20th-century neo-Nazi – was the man who measured the absorption of heat by gases in the atmosphere, underpinning our modern understanding of climate change, meteorology and weather, and explained why the sky is blue (among much else). He was also scientific adviser to the Board of Trade from 1867 to 1883, so he knew a bit about the policy world. I have just completed his biography, the first substantive profile of him for more than 70 years. It has struck me how similar today’s big questions about the direction and funding of scientific research are to those of 150 years ago.When Tyndall started his career, and became a fellow of the Royal Society in 1852, government expenditure on “basic science” was small. The Royal Society administered a government grant of £1,000 per annum, which could only be spent on apparatus. Even allowing for a factor of a hundred to give a modern equivalent, and the relatively simple and low-cost apparatus of the time, it is a negligible sum. When this grant was suddenly increased to £4,000 in 1876 there was a flurry of concern in the higher echelons of the Royal Society as to how they were going to manage the increase. Tyndall was a member of the government grant committee for many years. He received several hundred pounds from the fund over the years, at a time when the concept of a conflict of interest would not have occurred to anyone. Continue reading...

The lingua franca of the ‘establishment’ is now only spoken by a tiny fraction of the population – although the RP tinges of my own accent often proved beneficialPeople often talk about the English language as if it is a thing to keep pretty – a petticoat that might be sullied by the spread of glottal stops, text-speak or slang. The latest to weigh in is the writer and critic Jonathan Meades, in a column mourning the decline of received pronunciation (RP). Meades argues that the accent – also known as the Queen’s English or BBC English – should be regarded as “a sort of glue, a force for uniting the country” and “celebrated as a tool of social mobility”.The term RP has murky origins, but it is regarded as the accent of those with power, influence, money and a fine education – and was adopted as a standard by the BBC in 1922. Today, it is used by 2% of the population. Continue reading...

In June, a California groundskeeper will make history by taking company to trial on claims it suppressed harm of RoundupAt the age of 46, DeWayne Johnson is not ready to die. But with cancer spread through most of his body, doctors say he probably has just months to live. Now Johnson, a husband and father of three in California, hopes to survive long enough to make Monsanto take the blame for his fate.

Purists only gathered dew on the first while others believed the power persisted for the whole monthFolklore maintains that dew gathered in May is special. For one thing, it is supposed to give you a flawless complexion. In 1667, Samuel Pepys’ wife went to Woolwich to collect May dew, “the only thing in the world to wash her face with”.While purists only gathered dew on 1 May, others believed the power persisted for the whole month. The Royal Society took May dew seriously, the mathematician John Pell telling a meeting about a man whose warts it had cured. The chemist Robert Boyle mentioned a recipe for making vinegar from May dew, and copious quantities were harvested for experimentation. Continue reading...

Researchers suspect that taking your shoes off, getting rid of carpets and dusting can prevent chemicals building up that may affect our hormones – and our waistlines. But is it good science?With 26% of adults classified as obese in the UK in 2016, the hunt for causes and solutions to expanding waistlines is on. While public health messages have focused largely on the food we eat, some scientists suspect there is another factor at play: substances being dubbed as “obesogens” – found in our packaging, household goods and furnishings that might affect our hormones and the buildup of fat in the body.However, experts are sceptical, particularly in the light of one report this week. It has made the bold claim that “removing shoes when entering the house and swapping carpet for wooden floors could help people stay slim”, citing a talk by researchers at the universities of Aveiro and Beira Interior in Portugal, who have suggested that preventing obesogens accumulating in the house by frequently sweeping and dusting could stop us gaining weight. Continue reading...

Rolling coverage of the day’s political developments as they happen

The instruments achieve their sweetness and brilliance by mimicking aspects of the human voice, study saysThe violins made by the Italian masters Andrea Amati and Antonio Stradivari are celebrated as the finest ever made, but the secret behind their perfect sound has mystified experts for centuries.Now scientists in Taiwan believe they have hit on an answer. Using software normally reserved for speech analysis, they found that violins from the two Cremonese luthiers mimic aspects of the human voice, a feature they argue adds to the instruments’ exceptional musical quality. Continue reading...

Groundbreaking assessment of all life on Earth reveals humanity’s surprisingly tiny part in it as well as our disproportionate impactHumankind is revealed as simultaneously insignificant and utterly dominant in the grand scheme of life on Earth by a groundbreaking new assessment of all life on the planet.The world’s 7.6 billion people represent just 0.01% of all living things, according to the study. Yet since the dawn of civilisation, humanity has caused the loss of 83% of all wild mammals and half of plants, while livestock kept by humans abounds. Continue reading...

A year 11 pupil describes the strain on her non-academic peers, while other readers decry the effects of relentless exams on young peopleI am a year 11 student who is currently sitting their GCSE examinations. Sally Weale’s article (‘My lunchtimes are filled with crying children’, 17 May) sheds some light on what people my age go through. Many people I know suffer from depression and anxiety, we lose sleep, we don’t want to wake up in the mornings and we are afraid to walk into the exam rooms.We are told over and over again that if we do not achieve level 7 or above we will not be able to progress in the future. I am not very academic and my skills are in the creative arts. However, my passion for those things is taken away when I have to sit a written drama exam for 40% of my grade. Continue reading...

The NHS collects vast amounts of data. It must be used in imaginative ways that respect privacy and make life better for patients and health workersTechnology helps us live better and for longer; in fact it has been doing so since the birth of modern medicine. And as each new technology comes into use, it turns out to have medical uses, even though these are not always the ones that are sold hardest: in the 1920s the American press was full of advertisements for the health benefits of radium, which was then a mysterious and powerful substance just as artificial intelligence (AI) is today. AI won’t work miracles or make death unnecessary by letting people upload their minds into silicon, but it might catch cancers earlier. The prime minister on Monday said that 30,000 lives a year would be saved by 2030, mostly through earlier and more accurate diagnosis. This is about 10% of the annual cancer death rate in Britain. It is possible to object that the money would be better spent on less glamorous initiatives, such as hiring enough care workers, nurses and doctors and paying them all properly. But while that is certainly very urgent, there is no need to choose between the two approaches. We need both.At the same time, one of Britain’s biggest health trusts, University College London Hospitals (UCLH), announced a partnership with the Alan Turing Institute, a body that collects the AI expertise of British universities, which looks realistically promising. It starts from the question of how the NHS can use AI, rather than asking how AI can rescue the NHS, which of course it can’t. There is a huge contrast here with some of the earlier attempts in this direction, in particular the partnership between Google’s subsidiary DeepMind and the Royal Free hospital, which was widely and rightly criticised because Google gained access to the benefits of data that had been collected from patients and by the trust without any of the patients having consented to this. Indeed, they could not have given informed consent in many cases, because the use to which their data would be put was literally unthinkable at the time when it was collected. Privacy alone is an inadequate framework in which to place all the problems that arise with the collection and exploitation of data. Continue reading...

Childhood acute leukaemia is caused by genetic mutations and a lack of childhood infection, scientists sayClean modern homes, antiseptic wipes and the understandable desire to protect small babies against any infection are all part of the cause of the most common form of childhood cancer, a leading expert has concluded after more than 30 years of research.Childhood acute leukaemia, says the highly respected Prof Mel Greaves, is nothing to do with power lines or nuclear fuel reprocessing stations. Nor is it to do with hot dogs and hamburgers or the Vatican radio mast, as have also been suggested. After the best part of a century of speculation, some of it with little basis in science, Greaves – who recently won the Royal Society’s prestigious Royal Medal – says the cancer is caused by a combination of genetic mutations and a lack of childhood infection. Continue reading...

Up to 10 provinces, mostly in west of country, affected by mass fungi poisoningAt least 11 people have reportedly died in Iran after eating toxic mushrooms.

Either the PM is playing a canny long game on Brexit or self-destruction is her default settingMaybe it was too much time in front of the TV watching the royal wedding. Or maybe it was just too long in the sun. Whatever it was, our politicians appeared to have returned from their weekends even less able to think straight than normal. Even the four pot plants, who can normally be relied upon to be the sole repository of sanity, were beginning to wilt.Theresa May had woken up desperate to talk about something other than how her government was failing to deal with Brexit. So she had hopped on a train to Macclesfield to stand in front of Jodrell Bank – beam me up, Scotty! – where she could give a regulation off-the-peg speech about how British science was going to save the world. In particular, artificial intelligence. Continue reading...

The solution to today’s puzzleIn my puzzle blog earlier today I set you the following problem:Ariel, Balthazar and Chastity are great mates, genius logicians and they always tell the truth. Neither Ariel nor Balthazar know the day or the month of Chastity’s birthday, so she decides to tell them in the following way: Continue reading...

For the first time, a permanent member of our solar system has been found to have originated elsewhereA permanent visitor from interstellar space has been found in our solar system, astronomers studying an asteroid orbiting our sun have revealed.While collisions with Earth by comets and asteroids from within our solar system are thought to have brought organic material and water necessary for life to emerge, experts say the latest discovery suggests bodies from beyond the solar system might have also have played a role. Continue reading...

The long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific conceptsGiven a theoretically perfect set of mirrors reflecting into each other and a perfect set of eyes, can you see infinity?Francois Pittion Continue reading...

UCLH aims to bring ‘game-changing’ benefits of artificial intelligence to NHS patients, from cancer diagnosis to reducing wait times

Join in the celebrationsUPDATE: Read the solution hereHi guzzlers,My Monday Puzzle column celebrates its third birthday this week. What better way to mark the occasion than a puzzle about a birthday! Continue reading...

Relay station will eventually let teams on the ground talk to a lunar probe that China plans to launch this year in world-first missionChina is one step closer to being the first country to land on the dark side of the moon.At 5.28am on Monday, the Queqiao relay satellite was launched from Sichuan province, according to Chinese state media. With Queqiao in place, China will be able to send a lunar probe to the side of the moon that never faces the Earth. No space program has ever reached that part of the lunar surface because of communications difficulties. Continue reading...

My favourite Aboriginal constellation is the Great Celestial Emu, the dark clouds of our Milky Way manifesting as a huge emu in the skyRecently, astronomers have been calling for a “dark sky reserve” in Central Australia – minimising artificial light to make it a reclaimed area for astronomical observing. There are already 12 international dark sky reserve sites around the world, but it would be the first of its kind in Australia.If you’ve had any form of state education in Australia, I’m sure you must have heard an Indigenous dreamtime story at least once in your life. Maybe it was Tiddalick the Frog, or maybe even the Rainbow Serpent. These stories you may have heard as a child hold a wealth of astronomical knowledge – and there’s more where that came from. Continue reading...

Threat of space-based attack by hostile states is intensifying, says Gavin WilliamsonBritain must be ready to counter the “intensifying threats” to everyday life emerging in space, Gavin Williamson has said, as he announced the launch of the UK’s first defence space strategy.

Our largest planet, bright in the evening sky, can be seen close by the waxing gibbous MoonThe Moon joins Jupiter in the constellation of Libra for a close approach on 27 May. The Moon will be in its waxing gibbous phase, heading towards full on 29 May. Jupiter is now a few weeks past its closest approach to Earth and will remain a fabulously bright evening object visible for most of the night. The chart shows the location for 23:00 BST on 27 May. The Moon and Jupiter are exercises in opposites. Whereas the Moon’s entire surface is comparable in area to the continent of Africa, Jupiter’s surface area is more than 120 times larger that the whole Earth. Jupiter’s “surface” however is nothing but clouds. The gas giant has no solid surface, the atmosphere just gets denser with depth until it turns into a highly compressed metallic liquid. The NASA Juno mission is currently in orbit around the planet trying to determine whether there is a solid rocky/metallic core buried at the centre of the planet. Continue reading...

Studies date Shigir Idol to 11,500 years ago – and cast new light on hunter-gatherers at the end of the ice ageOn 24 January 1894, gold prospectors were digging in the Shigir peat bog, north of the town of Yekaterinburg in the Ural mountains, when they uncovered a strange collection of carved pieces of wood.A total of 10 fragments were found beside each other. When put together, a wooden idol more than five metres high was created, one that had clearly been carved from a single, carefully smoothed plank of larch wood. Its surface was covered with zigzag lines and human faces and hands. Continue reading...

New study also suggests regimes that include intermittent fasting may cause other long-term health problemsFasting every other day to lose weight could have damaging side effects. That is the conclusion of a group of scientists speaking this weekend at the European Society of Endocrinology’s annual meeting.Their findings suggest that fasting-based diets may impair the action of sugar-regulating hormone insulin, and lead to increased risk of diabetes. Care should be taken before starting such programmes, say researchers. Continue reading...

A modern blend of yoga, Zen Buddhism, hypnosis and psychology, it’s huge on the continent and it’s on its way hereMindfulness is the tried-and-tested tool of our times for anxiety, depression, chronic pain, addiction and more, but what if it’s not your thing? For those too twitchy to sit still and focus on breathing, the ubiquitous mindfulness apps, self-help sheets and courses in schools and workplaces are little more than totems of uselessness. But you wouldn’t have this problem if you lived in France, Italy, Spain, Switzerland or Portugal, because you’d be doing sophrology instead. It’s the dynamic mindfulness alternative, popular on the continent. The French rugby team and media-magnate-turned-wellbeing-guru Arianna Huffington swear by this westernised amalgamation of yoga, Tibetan Buddhism, Japanese Zen, hypnosis, psychology and neurology. And it’s becoming increasingly accessible in the UK, through group (or more costly one-to-one) sessions, and now via a new book with accompanying online audio guides.Sophrology isn’t dynamic enough to warrant a shower afterwards, but even closing your eyes to start a session comes with an action that zaps you into relaxation mode and zooms your attention into the body. At my first appointment with the Swiss-British sophrologist and author of The Life-Changing Power of Sophrology, Dominique Antiglio, she tells me to hold a thumb at arm’s length in front of my face, inhale and look at it as I slowly draw it to between my eyebrows, at which point my eyes involuntarily close as I audibly exhale, as though to blow my mental cobwebs away. “It’s quite funny,” she warned me before she demonstrated it, her eyes crossing as they tracked her thumb, but it’s also a surprisingly powerful start to the 15-minute guided practice. Continue reading...

The Cern scientist on her dual role in studying quarks and helping to train a new generation of scientists from Palestine to PeruKate Shaw is a physicist based at the University of Sussex, where she studies the data that pours out of the Atlas experiment, one of the huge detectors that forms part of the Large Hadron Collider at Cern, in Geneva. She is also the founder of Physics Without Frontiers, a Unesco-backed organisation that runs lectures, workshops and schools in war-torn nations to help kindle an interest in science and help local recovery.You work on the Atlas experiment at the Large Hadron Collider. What does that involve?

When St Bride’s church was damaged by lightning in 1764 George III contacted Benjamin Franklin for advice. But the two fell out over the best designSt Bride’s church in Fleet Street, London was a sorry sight on June 19, 1764 having been struck by lightning the day before. The top of Christopher Wren’s tallest spire came crashing down - losing the top 2.5 metres (8 ft) of its total 71-metre (234 ft) height. Continue reading...

Specialist in theoretical physics who investigated the structure of matterOn Roger Elliott’s 60th birthday, a conference in his honour displayed beneath his photograph the title: “Disorder in Condensed Matter Physics”. This reference to his speciality in theoretical physics, where he made important contributions to theories of optical, magnetic and semiconductor properties of the solid state, was ironic, for Elliott, who has died aged 89, was a man of the soundest judgment.His opinion was widely sought and highly regarded, as professor at Oxford University (1974-96), as chief executive of Oxford University Press (1988-93), and in national affairs, as physical secretary and vice-president of the Royal Society (1984-88) and vice-chairman of the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (1990-93). Continue reading...

The Cambridge fellow on what it means to be human, the neurological benefits of running, artificial intelligence and why a simulated version of her might miss gnocchiOn any given day in Cambridge, you may see numerous people jogging along the towpaths, and it’s not unreasonable to assume neuroscientists may be over-represented. “You see so many,” says Hannah Critchlow, a neuroscientist who likes to jog along the river. Physical fitness may be a secondary consideration, she says; what they are really trying to do is ramp up their neurogenesis – the birth of new nerve cells in the brain.“People used to think that once you were born, that was it, that was all the nerve cells you have throughout life,” she says. “Then, 20 years ago, Rusty Gage [a professor at the Salk Institute in California] discovered that you get neurogenesis in adults, in a region of the brain called the hippocampus, which is involved in learning and memory. It turns out that jogging is really good at increasing neurogenesis in the brain.” And so, Critchlow says with a laugh, she likes to run. “I go: ‘This is wonderful, my neurogenesis is really happy with me at the moment.’” Continue reading...

Making inflexible demands of the world, then flying off the handle when they’re unmet, is no path to happinessOne thing most people these days seem absolutely certain about – and yes, this is a bit ironic – is that absolutist thinking is bad. Making inflexible demands of the world, then flying off the handle when they’re unmet, is no path to happiness. Nor is seeing every issue in black and white, or refusing to be friends with anyone who doesn’t share every one of your views. Absolutism is no healthier when turned inwards, either, where it manifests as perfectionism. Yet we all engage in absolutist thinking anyway, because it’s easier: we’re what psychologists call “cognitive misers”, clinging to simple rules to navigate what would otherwise be an overwhelmingly complex planet. This explains why small children, still trying to get a foothold in the world, are such social conservatives (“Boys can’t play with dolls!”). Or, for that matter, why it would probably take physical force to get me to read a work of fantasy fiction. I don’t truly believe every book in that genre is terrible; it’s just that without a whole arsenal of such shortcuts, none of us would function.Unfortunately, this universal habit, when pushed too far, starts impeding our functioning instead: growing evidence suggests absolutist thinking may play a causal role in depression. That’s the view supported by a recent study by University of Reading psychologists Mohammed Al-Mosaiwi and Tom Johnstone, who analysed language used by 6,400 people in various online mental health forums. They found absolutist words such as “everything”, “completely”, “nothing” and “constantly” were about 50% more common in anxiety and depression forums, and 80% more common in suicidal ideation forums, than in control groups. (It’s well-known that depressed people use more personal pronouns – “I” and “me” – but the effect for absolutist language was bigger.) Correlation isn’t causation, of course. But they found that even non-depressed people with a history of depression used such words more often. That suggests absolutism may be a persistent trait, leaving you vulnerable to depression, as opposed to a mindset you get into only once you’re depressed. Continue reading...

Every year, more people die from asbestos exposure than road traffic accidents in Great Britain. Many countries still continue to build with this lethal substance – but why? Hannah Devlin investigatesSubscribe and review on Acast, Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Audioboom and Mixcloud. Join the discussion on Facebook and TwitterThe health effects of asbestos have been well documented for decades. Inhaling these fibres can cause mesothelioma, a very aggressive form of cancer with a poor prognosis. In Great Britain, more people die from this disease every year than road traffic accidents. And yet this material is still found in at least 12,600 schools in England.

Cutting down drinking is difficult, but could smaller servings of alcohol help? Our study suggests it mightMany of us worry about our drinking and want to cut down, but finding the motivation and willpower to stick to it is hard. But what if we could change our environment so drinking less became the default? Making small changes to the environment to nudge people to behave a certain way (sometimes called choice architecture) can be effective, because a lot of our behaviour happens without conscious deliberations. In our research, we found that reducing the standard serving size of alcohol could do exactly that.Portion sizes of food and alcohol glass sizes have increased over time and these increases have been linked with increased consumption at the population level. Experimental research shows that people eat more if they are served a larger portion of food and do not fully compensate for this by eating less later on. Conversely, reducing the portion size of food decreases how much people eat and people also don’t fully compensate for that. Based on this, we set out to experimentally test the effect of serving size on alcohol consumption. We expected that reducing the serving size of alcoholic drinks would reduce alcohol consumption. Continue reading...

Magpie Bridge relay satellite will communicate with lunar lander to be deployed later in the yearChina is aiming to launch its new mission to the moon on Monday 21 May.The Chang’e 4 relay satellite will be stationed about 60,000km behind the moon and provide a communications link for a rover that is designed to land and explore the lunar far side, which never faces Earth. The relay satellite has been named Queqiao, meaning Magpie Bridge, a name that comes from Chinese folklore in which a flock of magpies forms a bridge over the Milky Way to allow a separated pair of lovers to unite. Continue reading...

Insects are vital to ecosystems but will lose almost half their habitat under current climate projectionsGlobal warming is on track to cause a major wipeout of insects, compounding already severe losses, according to a new analysis.

VR companies around the world are planning to offer live views of the Earth from space within the next few yearsIt’s the dream of any would-be space tourist: seeing our home planet from above. First you see the Earth’s horizon curve away, and then the luminous thin envelope of atmosphere that keeps us all alive comes into focus.As you cross the daylight side of Earth, you look down to see gigantic landscapes – mountains and valleys – beneath you. As your orbit continues, so night falls and the city lights turn on. Now you can see the human landscape of the planet. Continue reading...

Proportion of young people who tried cigarettes as their first drug fell over the same period, US study saysThe proportion of young people using marijuana as their first drug doubled in the 10 years from 2004, a US-based study has found.The government study reveals that among people aged between 12 and 21, the proportion of those who tried cigarettes as their first drug fell from about 21% to just under 9% between 2004 and 2014. However, the proportion who turned first to marijuana almost doubled from 4.4% to 8%. Continue reading...

There is no justification for publicising material she had hidden – it dehumanises her and diminishes the facts of the HolocaustThere is a secret inside Anne Frank’s diary: two pages of musing about “sexual matters” written in 1942 by a 13-year-old girl, and hidden with brown paper so they could not be found. But they were found with digital technology and are now published. The dead girl who wanted to be a journalist had one more unwilling, posthumous scoop. “Anne Frank’s secret diary entries reveal more thoughts on sex and prostitution,” said Newsweek.I am squeamish about Anne Frank’s diary. I prefer to read Holocaust memoirs by adults who knew the ending to their stories: Primo Levi, Elie Wiesel. Frank didn’t write for publication – in fact the idea of it disgusted her – and I do not want to know the ending to her story if she didn’t. That is not enlightenment, or empathy. That is frisson, and sentimentality. Writers use, and summon, pain for their art. That is normal. But Frank had no such agency. Her pain was inflicted on her and, whatever apologists might say, her voice was heard against her will. Young enough to move us but too young – or too dead? – to choose for herself? Where does that leave her? I can forgive her father, Otto Frank, who lost his whole family and published the diary, but no one else. Continue reading...

Hannah Devlin’s reporting wins Association of British Science Writers award for best investigative journalismThe Guardian’s science correspondent Hannah Devlin has scooped a coveted prize in the Association of British Science Writers awards for her investigation into the vaginal mesh scandal.Her report exposing NHS data on how thousands of women have undergone surgery to have vaginal mesh implants removed won in the category of best investigative journalism. Continue reading...

After 150 years, biologists are untangling the history of the Indonesian island’s unusual fauna“We now come to the Island of Celebes, in many respects the most remarkable and interesting in the whole region, or perhaps on the globe, since no other island seems to present so many curious problems for solution.” (Wallace 1876)Wedged in between the continental landmasses of south-east Asia and Australia lies the vast island realm of Wallacea. Named after Alfred Russel Wallace, the 19th-century explorer and naturalist who traversed this area, it hosts floras and faunas that are incredibly rich and often include species found nowhere else on Earth. The natural history of Wallacea is complicated, and heavily dictated by geological forces such as plate tectonics and volcanism. Continue reading...

Keeping active helps prevent the onset of dementia, but once the disease has taken hold, working out more does nothing to slow its progressModerate to more intense exercise does not help people with dementia and may even make it worse, according to a major study which had hoped to find it slowed down the progress of the disease so that gym sessions could be offered as treatment by the NHS.Regular exercise and an active life are thought to help prevent or delay dementia, and some small studies have been done in dementia patients with positive results. Continue reading...

Weather satellites transformed forecasting, saving lives, but now rely on solar - not nuclear - powerWeather satellites transformed forecasting in the 1960s. By watching weather systems evolve in real time, meteorologists could predict storms and save lives. But 50 years ago, a nuclear-powered weather satellite threatened disaster. The Nimbus-B, launched on 18 May 1968, was to be the third in its series. The launch went terribly wrong.An installation fault caused the control system to go haywire, and the rocket carrying Nimbus-B veered in the wrong direction. The satellite had nuclear power packs filled with radioactive plutonium; if Nimbus-B broke up in the atmosphere, it could spread contamination over a wide area. Continue reading...

Author’s startlingly accurate descriptions of illnesses may have assisted advances in medicine, curators sayFat boy Joe, the messenger in The Pickwick Papers, is “always asleep... he goes on errands fast asleep, and snores as he waits at table”.

My friend and former colleague Sinclair Lough, who has died aged 62 following a stroke, was a clinical psychologist who specialised in the care of older people.I first met Sinclair at the Faculty of the Psychology of Older People conference in Birmingham in 2000, where he was giving a talk on frontotemporal dementia. This was in the days before PowerPoint and Sinclair was struggling with a projector, but it quickly became apparent that he was more than able to talk about the subject without the slides. Continue reading...

The self-help guru’s book You Are a Badass is a bestseller in the US and making waves in the UK. But can her brand of straight-talking positive thinking really help you escape your ‘sucky life’?Fifteen minutes before my interview with inspirational guru Jen Sincero, I nip into a chic boutique in downtown Manhattan, where I am drawn to a pair of conch shell-pink sandals. Exquisite as they are, I can think of no possible justification for buying them. Yet for the past few days I have been steeped in the work of Sincero, who in her bestselling You Are a Badass books, urges readers to stop accepting anything short of their wildest dreams. According to Sincero, it is necessary to live courageously and to “align” one’s actions with one’s deepest desires. That could mean quitting a humdrum job, buying a fancy car or investing in assistants to free up the time to devote to big-picture concerns. I visualise a more successful version of myself, writing Vanity Fair cover stories and turning down assignments while wearing the pale pink clogs, and hand over my credit card.Sincero’s books aren’t the sort of thing you hear about at dinner parties. Yet even in New York City, where image-conscious subway riders tend to listen to podcasts unless they have a Sheila Heti or Rachel Cusk volume to flaunt, candy-colored Badass volumes have become a mainstay, filling the void the Twilight books left. Initially published in 2013 to little fanfare, the first Badass instalment has gone on to sell millions of copies. It holds the No 3 spot on the New York Times bestseller list, after 121 weeks on the chart. Sincero’s British publisher, John Murray Press, has sold more than 150,000 copies, with a quarter of those sales in audiobook format. “I call it the yellow snowball,” Sincero says of her lemon-coloured hit when we meet for tea at a swish hotel bar. “It keeps growing and growing.” Continue reading...

It’s hard to attract research funding for this complex disease, with a mountain of patient experience going undocumentedMany people are grieving the untimely death of Tessa Jowell. She was an exceptional person. Tony Blair confirmed the impression she gave to those of us who only knew her from afar: “Tessa had passion, determination and simple human decency in greater measure than any person I have ever known.”For me, her death is personal for another reason. We found ourselves in the same elite club. Continue reading...