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...

This lively study explains how embracing embarrassing conversations or exposing situations can improve your lifeI read part of this book in somebody else’s reserved seat on an overbooked train; do train companies have any idea of the anxiety they cause when they suddenly announce that all seat reservations are suspended? As each stop triggered another mortifying conversation about seats, the book explained what was going on in our brains to make the situation feel so painful, why that matters so much to us and what we can learn from it.Melissa Dahl is an American science journalist who has been writing about psychology for 10 years, and her book, about the very specific phenomenon of awkwardness, “began as an attempt to permanently banish the feeling from my life with science!” Like all good scientists, though, she has changed her opinion based on the evidence she collected. Dahl now seeks out and embraces awkwardness, and she thinks that we all should, too. Continue reading...

From passive-aggressive notes on ambulance windscreens to bilious political discourse, it feels as though society is suddenly consumed by fury. What is to blame for this outpouring of aggression?A neighbour objected to a young couple from Newcastle being naked in their own home. “We are sick of seeing big bums, big boobs and little willy,” was the core message of the note, crescendoing to: “We will report you both for indecent exposure.” It is such a small thing, banal, without consequence. It connects to no wider narrative and conveys nothing but the bubbling discomfort of human beings living near each other. Yet when Karin Stone (one of the nakeds) posted the note on Facebook, 15,000 people pored over it. An Australian radio show interviewed her. I have got to be honest, I am heavily emotionally invested in the story myself and I do not regret a second of the time I have spent reading about it.There is a through-line to these spurts of emotion we get from spectatorship: the subject matter is not important. It could be human rights abuse or a party-wall dispute; it does not matter, so long as it delivers a shot of righteous anger. Bile connects each issue. I look at that note, the prurience and prissiness, the mashup of capital and lower-case letters, the unlikeliness that its author has a smaller bum or a bigger willy, and I feel sure they voted for Brexit. The neighbours are delighted by their disgust for these vigorous, lusty newlyweds, I am delighted by my disgust for the neighbours, radio listeners in Australia are delighted. We see rage and we meet it with our own, always wanting more. Continue reading...

People with disrupted 24-hour cycles of rest and activity more likely to have mood disorders, research suggestsPeople who experience disrupted 24-hour cycles of rest and activity are more likely to have mood disorders, lower levels of happiness and greater feelings of loneliness, research suggests.While the study does not reveal whether disruptions to circadian rhythms are a cause of mental health problems, a result of them or some mixture of the two, the authors say the findings highlight the importance of how we balance rest and activity. Continue reading...

Raising awareness of mental health problems should be the start of the process of tackling them, not the endIt’s mental health awareness week, 2018. And that’s good. It’s important to be aware of something that affects literally everyone, and that a quarter of the population regularly struggle with. It’s weird that anyone wouldn’t be when you put it in those terms, but that does seem to the case.Perhaps the term is a bit misleading, or not specific enough. It’s not exactly mental health that people need to be made aware of, so much as the fact that mental health can, and regularly does, go wrong. And when someone’s mental health does falter or fail, they should receive the same concern and help that someone with a more obvious “physical” ailment should get, not scorn and stigma, as often happens. Continue reading...

Twenty years ago, Tom Wolfe made predictions about how advances in neuroscience would transform our understanding of human behaviour. So, how much did he get right?

Scientists find physically demanding jobs are linked to greater risk of early deathMen who work as labourers or in other physically demanding roles have a greater risk of dying early than those with more sedentary jobs, researchers say.The finding, from scientists in the Netherlands, reveals an apparent “physical activity paradox” where exercise can be harmful at work but beneficial to health when performed in leisure time. Continue reading...

Government allocates new funding after recommendations from chief scientist Alan FinkelSign up to receive the top stories in Australia every day at noon Nanotechnology, genomics and remote ocean sensors to improve the health of the Great Barrier Reef are among the projects that will benefit from $393m over five years in new federal research funding.On Tuesday, the federal government released its response to the national infrastructure roadmap, allocating funding to its research priorities after recommendations by an expert group led by the chief scientist, Alan Finkel. Continue reading...

EU’s chief negotiator says Galileo participation will continue after Brexit but ‘on a new basis’The EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, has said Britain is not being pushed out of the Galileo satellite navigation programme, but that only “a little progress” had been made in recent talks on the UK’s EU exit.Barnier said British participation in the EU satellite programme would have to change as a result of Brexit. “The UK decided unilaterally and autonomously to withdraw from the EU,” he told an audience of foreign policy experts in Brussels. “We need to put the cooperation on Galileo between the EU and the UK on a new basis.” Continue reading...

Experiment shows some memories are encoded in molecules that form part of an organism’s genetic machinery, researchers sayScience may never know what wistful memories play on the mind of the California sea hare, a foot-long hermaphrodite marine snail, as it munches on algae in the shallow tide pools of the Pacific coast.But in a new study, researchers claim to have made headway in understanding the simplest kind of memory a mollusc might form, and, with a swift injection, managed to transfer such a memory from one sea snail to another. Continue reading...

Scientists working on human cells in a dish find new way to tackle rhinovirus – though a cure is a long way offIt’s a conundrum that has stumped scientists for centuries, but now researchers say they have taken a tantalising step forward in the quest to tackle the common cold.The scourge of workplace, home and school playground, the common cold is predominantly caused by the rhinovirus. But attempts to thwart the pathogen by vaccination or antiviral drugs face a number of difficulties – not least because the virus comes in many forms and can mutate rapidly leading to drug resistance. Continue reading...

Nasa’s Galileo spacecraft flew through a giant plume of water that erupted from the icy surface of Europa, new analysis showsA Nasa probe that explored Jupiter’s moon Europa flew through a giant plume of water vapour that erupted from the icy surface and reached a hundred miles high, according to a fresh analysis of the spacecraft’s data.The discovery has cemented the view among some scientists that the Jovian moon, one of four first spotted by the Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei in 1610, is the most promising place in the solar system to hunt for alien life. Continue reading...

UN health agency says trans fats in snack foods, baked foods and fried foods are responsible for 500,000 deaths each yearTrans fats used in snack foods, baked foods and fried foods are responsible for half a million deaths worldwide each year and must be eliminated from the global food supply, the World Health Organization says today.

‘Little Dragon’ can chat to customers, accept bank cards and check accounts. She joins a growing army of robot workers in China’s citiesXiao Long, the latest employee at the Jiujiang Road branch of the China Construction Bank is never late for work. “Welcome to China Construction Bank,” she chirps to customers arriving at the Shanghai branch, flashing her white teeth. “What can I help you with today?”Xiao Long, or “Little Dragon”, is not your typical employee – she’s a robot at China’s first fully automated, human-free bank branch. Continue reading...

Research funding will double to £40m and all NHS hospitals will perform gold standard tumour diagnosis testsBrain cancer research will have its government funding doubled to £40m and gold standard tumour diagnosis tests will be rolled out to all NHS hospitals, in tribute to Dame Tessa Jowell, Downing Street announced on Sunday.No 10 announced it would fulfil two key campaign aims of the late former Labour cabinet minister, including a national rollout of a brain cancer diagnosis test, gold standard dye, used to identify tumours. Continue reading...

Another lunar cycle begins on Thursday as the thin crescent moon shares the evening sky with glittering VenusThere is a beautiful sight to keep an eye open for after sunset on 17 May. Venus is visible in the evening sky as a glittering, unmistakeable “evening star”. It will be joined by the thin crescent of the new moon, creeping eastward from the sun to begin a new lunar month. Continue reading...

Former Labour cabinet minister praised for Sure Start, London Olympics and campaigning for cancer researchThe dignity and courage of Tessa Jowell was praised by politicians across the spectrum on Sunday, after her family revealed she had died of brain cancer.Paying tribute to Jowell, Downing Street announced it would double its investment in brain cancer research to £40m and roll out a new gold standard of tests for brain cancer to all NHS hospitals, a key focus of Jowell’s campaigning in the last months of her life. Continue reading...

Former Labour cabinet minister, described as ‘the ultimate sensible loyalist’ by Tony Blair, was not afraid to speak her mindUntil the revelation of her brain tumour last September, Tessa Jowell, Lady Jowell, the former secretary of state for culture, media and sport, who has died aged 70, was best known outside Westminster as the minister for the Olympics in the run-up to the hugely successful London games in 2012. It was directly as a result of her enthusiasm and personal pressure on the then prime minister, Tony Blair, that the UK first mounted its bid and then subsequently won the competition to stage the event. As an MP in the House of Commons, Jowell was best known as the unfailing cheerleader for Blair’s leadership of New Labour: “The ultimate sensible loyalist”, as he described her in his memoirs.After the unexpected death of John Smith in May 1994, Jowell was one of the first Labour MPs to assert Blair’s claim to inherit the Labour leadership. Her steadfast support thereafter was rewarded with her uninterrupted tenure of a seat on the party’s frontbench for the next 18 years. “She is a great person, Tessa, just a gem,” wrote Blair. “She represents the best of political loyalty, which at its best isn’t blind, but thoroughly considered.” She nonetheless spoke her mind to the prime minister, notably over the Olympics. She upbraided him for having doubts about making a bid: “Of course we may not win,” she told him, “but at least we will have had the courage to try.” She was also one of those close to him who persuaded him not to stand down in 2004. Although she later tried to deny it, Jowell did once say of Blair in an interview: “I would jump in front of a bus to save him.” Continue reading...

Speculative fiction and real research have long fed into each other. Here, five leading scientists tell us about books and films that inspire themProfessor of Palaeobiology, University of Leicester

The leading fossils expert says we are learning new things daily about the dinosaurs thanks to technological advances – and that film…There are a few precautions to bear in mind when approaching a palaeontologist. The first, and perhaps most crucial, is don’t mention Ross from Friends. It’s not funny and it’s not clever and it really won’t be appreciated. Don’t suggest that dinosaurs couldn’t have been evolutionary successes because they’re extinct. And do not, under any circumstances, refer to someone with outdated attitudes as a “dinosaur”.“I hate this idea that because dinosaurs are old, they’re out of touch, they’re out of tune, they’re failures. That’s ridiculous,” says Steve Brusatte, a palaeontologist at the University of Edinburgh and author of a new Jurassic blockbuster, The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: The Untold Story of a Lost World. Continue reading...

New exhibition shows how the writer used his medical knowledge to help change Victorian attitudesIn the opening paragraph of his novel Bleak House, Charles Dickens envisages meeting “a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill”. It is a startling image, one that depicts Victorian London as a place of mud, corruption and disease.Prehistoric concerns and scientific interests are not normally connected with this author, who is known best for his depictions of social injustice, eccentric characters and occasional bouts of sentimentality. Indeed, Dickens is generally thought today to have been suspicious of science. Continue reading...

The death of the lead singer hits hard those who loved the band’s bittersweet musicThe death of Frightened Rabbit’s frontman, Scott Hutchison, has torn a hole in the Scottish creative scene. For someone like myself who grew up in Edinburgh, his music always had that beautiful, distinct element of nostalgia, even before it became the music of my past – evoking messy 2010 nights at T in the Park, a now-defunct festival that was once our equivalent to Glastonbury, where we would drink lukewarm cider and kiss boys we shouldn’t.It was that bittersweet characteristic, found in both the arrangements that Frightened Rabbit produced and the yearning, terrifying quality of some of their lyrics, which kept us angsty teenagers coming back for more. There is something alluring about music that lets you feel complex emotions based on memory for the first time, especially tinged with the familiarity of experience, “dissolving in Scottish rain”. Continue reading...

In 1973, the Observer tracked down the 12 men who had once stood on the moonWhat is there to do after you’ve walked on the moon? Other than confirm once and for all that it is not made of cheese, not a lot. In 1973 the Observer Magazine tracked down the 12 space heroes who had gained international acclaim for being the only mortals to walk on the moon and, it seems, it wasn’t just their spacecrafts that had come crashing back down to earth.Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon and a notorious recluse, was living on a remote farm 30 miles from the space station when our reporter Daniel Greene tracked him down. Armstrong was both monotone and prickly, and insisted that ‘the feat’ had changed him in no way. He was too busy doing his job – including landing the lunar module manually, with 30 seconds of fuel left, after an overloaded computer nearly caused disaster – to ponder cosmic meanings of what it was all about. Continue reading...

Investigators feared the deaths might have been linked to a bad batch of imported opiates. The truth may be more unsettling

The bestselling author and activist has been exploring the use of psychedelic drugs in medical research for his book How to Change Your Mind. And yes, he had to try them for himselfMichael Pollan first became interested in new research into psychedelic drugs in 2010, when a front-page story in the New York Times declared, “Hallucinogens Have Doctors Tuning in Again”. The story revealed how in a large-scale trial researchers had been giving terminally ill cancer patients large doses of psilocybin – the active ingredient in magic mushrooms – to help them deal with their “existential distress” as they approached death. The initial findings were markedly positive. Pollan, author of award-winning and bestselling books about botany, food politics and the way we eat, was born in 1955, a little too late for the Summer of Love. That New York Times story, however, was the beginning of an “adventure” that saw him not only explore the new research, but also detail the history of psychedelic drugs, the “moral panic” backlash against them and – partly through personal experiments with LSD, magic mushrooms and ayuhuasca, the “spiritual medicine” of Amazonian Indians – to examine whether they have a significant part to play in contemporary culture. The result of that inquiry is a compulsive book, How to Change Your Mind: Exploring the New Science of Psychedelics. This interview took place by phone last week. Pollan was speaking from his home in northern California.Do you see this book on psychedelics as a departure in your writing, or part of a continuum?

Skeleton of unknown theropod is 70% complete and expected to fetch more than €1.2m in Paris auctionAnyone with a spare million euros or two will have the opportunity to not only own a unique species of dinosaur skeleton next month, but to name it.Scientists say the skeleton of the species of theropod – or three-toed dinosaur – dates from the late Jurassic period about 155m years ago, give or take a million or so years. Continue reading...

Geneticists hope comparing prehistoric and modern biology will help them understand what makes humans uniqueScientists are preparing to create “miniature brains” that have been genetically engineered to contain Neanderthal DNA, in an unprecedented attempt to understand how humans differ from our closest relatives.

Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne (1789) by Rev Gilbert White inspired generations of naturalists including DarwinA book that influenced Charles Darwin and is reputedly the fourth most published work in the English language is to be made available online.The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne by the Reverend Gilbert White, first published in 1789, has inspired generations of naturalists with the vivid descriptions of the flora and fauna – as well as the weather and crops – the author encountered in the countryside around his Hampshire home. Continue reading...

Health agency issues MMR reminder after 440 laboratory-confirmed cases this yearOutbreaks of measles have been confirmed across England, health officials have said.

Study finds that 70% of London cyclists believe drivers mean them harm. But is it mainly the fault of the road system?As a cyclist in a busy urban environment, it can seem that some drivers are out to get you. And now a new study has concluded that for many bike riders, this is only too true: a sense of paranoia is a clinical reality.The research led by Lyn Ellet, a clinical psychology academic at Royal Holloway, University of London, studied 323 cyclists in London aged between 18-66, and used a series of questions to gauge their levels of paranoia when on a bike. Continue reading...

This week: Hannah Devlin explores how scientists are growing human brains in labs. Why are they so keen to explore the possibilities? What are the ethical concerns being raised by experts?Subscribe and review on Acast, Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Audioboom and Mixcloud. Join the discussion on Facebook and TwitterIn the mid-1990s a special little mouse crept its way into media headlines. Pink, hairless and fragile-looking, the little animal looked every bit as you would expect a mouse to – with one exception. He had a human ear growing from his back. “Ear Mouse”, as he came to be known, hinted that scientists were on the brink of extraordinary new capabilities that included being able to grow body parts in the lab. Continue reading...

Development could transform how one of the world’s most common materials is madeTechnology has been unveiled that could drastically cut greenhouse gas emissions from aluminium production, in a development that could transform the way one of the world’s most common materials is made.Aluminium is used to make cars, construction materials, industrial machinery, electrical products, drinks cans, foil packaging and much more. But its production relies on processes that have changed little since the 1880s when the first smelting processes were pioneered. Continue reading...

Skeletal analysis shows the oldest strains of the disease came from Europe, the oldest from Greater Chesterford, Essex circa 500ADLeprosy may have originated in Europe rather than Asia, according to the largest study to date on ancestral strains of the disease.The study has revealed that more leprosy strains than expected were present in medieval Europe, prompting scientists to reconsider the origins and age of the devastating disease. Continue reading...

A new estimate of the Hubble constant – the rate at which the universe is expanding – is baffling many of the finest minds in the cosmology communityA crisis of cosmic proportions is brewing: the universe is expanding 9% faster than it ought to be and scientists are not sure why.The latest, most precise, estimate of the universe’s current rate of expansion - a value known as the Hubble constant - comes from observations by the European Space Agency’s Gaia mission, which is conducting the most detailed ever three-dimensional survey of the Milky Way. Continue reading...

Goodall ate fish and chips and cheesecake and listened to Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in final hoursAustralia’s oldest scientist, David Goodall, has ended his own life at a clinic in Switzerland, surrounded by family and while listening to Beethoven’s Ode to Joy.The British-born 104-year-old professor was forced to travel on a one-way ticket from his home in Western Australia to Switzerland where liberal assisted dying laws allowed him to end his life legally, in contrast to Australia where it remains forbidden. Continue reading...