Science | The Guardian

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...

The success of Avengers: Infinity War shows just how much people enjoy seeing familiar faces doing vaguely new things. Why is this so appealing?Current data suggest that Avengers: Infinity War is well on course to being Marvel’s biggest UK hit to date. Given how many successful movies Marvel has produced over the last decade, that’s really saying something.But the current glut of superhero movies has led to many complaints that studios are playing it “too safe”, and that the viewing public aren’t being challenged by anything new. Continue reading...

A study at Macquarie University in Sydney found that sharks could recognise jazz – if there was food on offerResearchers at Sydney’s Macquarie University have discovered that sharks can recognise jazz music.In a paper published in Animal Cognition, the researchers, led by Catarina Vila Pouca, trained juvenile Port Jackson sharks to swim over to where jazz was playing, to receive food. It has been thought that sharks have learned to associate the sound of a boat engine with food, because food is often thrown from tourist boats to attract sharks to cage-diving expeditions – the study shows that they can learn these associations quickly. Continue reading...

When I started losing my long, obsidian, Linkin Park hair, I shaved it all off. It’s one of the best decisions I’ve ever madeIn news that will be mostly of no use to anyone but ennui-ridden middle-aged men now contemplating their lost youth in the wake of their own fading good looks, it looks like a potential cure for baldness has been found. Scientists from the University of Manchester used a drug originally intended to treat osteoporosis on samples containing scalp hair follicles from more than 40 male hair-transplant patients, and found that the drug had a impressive effect on hair follicles, reviving their ability to grow.Related: Seven ways … to avoid hair loss Continue reading...

The award-winning writer and Edinburgh GP combines patient case studies with cultural history in this profound study of how humans change“My aim is to sing of the ways bodies change.” Ovid, in The Metamorphoses, provides one of six epigraphs to Gavin Francis’s ambitious book on the same theme. Among the other authors Francis quotes at the outset are Hume, Thoreau and Marina Warner, who writes: “Metamorphosis governs natural phenomena.” He might also have invoked John Berger’s 1967 study of the work and life of a country doctor, A Fortunate Man. Writing about that book a few years ago, Francis noted that a sensitive physician “is rewarded with endless opportunities for experiencing the possibilities inherent in human lives”. Shapeshifters is an effort to inventory some of that potential, both glad and malign. It’s a book that bristles with insight into human bodies and the ways they remake themselves, or undo their owners.Change may seem a broad category inside which to corral the infinitely detailed ways our bodies work, don’t work, develop and decline. But feeling, or appearing to be in some way altered is surely the fundamental experience of being embodied. There is no static corporeal condition in life, or in death. (As John Donne puts it in his Devotions: “Variable, and therefore miserable condition of man! This minute I was well, and am ill, this minute.”) Francis, who works as a GP in Edinburgh, is interested in physical changes wrought by time, illness and accident – hormonal slumps and rages, anorexia’s chilling progression, the fantastical inventions of a florid psychosis – but also in the bodily metaphors that have “preoccupied poets, artists and thinkers for millennia”. While his literary reference points are mostly classical, he includes Borges on memory, Ursula K Le Guin on menopause and the essayist Anatole Broyard on the black comedy of his prostate cancer. In a consideration of the ambiguities of human gender, Francis turns to TS Eliot’s version of Tiresias, “throbbing between two lives”. Continue reading...

For-profit nursing-home providers to answer allegations they are shifting profits offshore while receiving vast sums of government funding• Sign up to receive the top stories in Australia every day at noon

Scientist says half the population of Britain and US would prefer a country ‘where intellect might be appreciated’The British scientist Richard Dawkins has said he would like to move to New Zealand as a refuge from the “madness” of a post-Trump, post-Brexit northern hemisphere.“America had just gone mad, and Britain had gone mad in a slightly less dramatic way with Brexit,” he told The Project, a New Zealand current affairs program. Continue reading...

Two missions ‘are supportive of each other’, says agency’s new head after Trump signed directive aimed at returning to moonThe US effort to return to the moon will not undermine its mission to be the first country to put a human on Mars, the new head of Nasa insisted on Wednesday.

Overuse of the PSA test can lead to painful and unnecessary biopsies as well as over-diagnosis and over-treatment

The particles of which the universe is made don’t much care which way time goes. But we do, and so do the stars and the planets.At what we might call the most “fundamental” level, the laws of nature do not much care in which direction time flows. Yet from our point of view, as participants in the physical universe, the arrow time is an inescapable and supremely important fact. Put briefly, some things cause other things, and we get old.A snooker, or pool, game provides a good image to help understand the problem¹. Film the moment of impact of any shot, or any collision between two balls, and run the video forwards and backwards. Assuming the cue and the player are out of frame, the video looks just as realistic backwards as forwards. With one exception. The break, the opening shot, will look ridiculous when played backwards. In the correct time direction, an orderly triangular array of balls is shattered. In the other direction, it spontaneously assembles out of nowhere. This never happens, and so the correct time direction is determined. Even though the fundamental physical laws that cover the collisions run the same backwards as forwards. Continue reading...

After more than 40 years of widespread use, new scientific tests show formulated weedkillers have higher rates of toxicity to human cellsUS government researchers have uncovered evidence that some popular weedkilling products, like Monsanto’s widely-used Roundup, are potentially more toxic to human cells than their active ingredient is by itself.These “formulated” weedkillers are commonly used in agriculture, leaving residues in food and water, as well as public spaces such as golf courses, parks and children’s playgrounds. Continue reading...

Facebook and Twitter analyses confirm we are grumpier on cold days, happier when it’s sunny – prompting tip for advertisersIt may seem extraordinary that it took collaboration between six top quality universities to prove that we are all happier when the sun comes out. Between them academics analysed 2.4bn Facebook messages and 1.1bn posts on Twitter, between 2009 and 2016, measuring the content against the weather conditions. They came to the conclusion that we were all more positive on warm sunny days than when it was cold and wet.Related: Sun + people = happiness? Continue reading...

It has not been shown to affect women’s life expectancy overall, but does increase invasive interventions, say Susan Bewley, Nick Ross and Margaret McCartney of HealthWatchThe announcement that thousands missed out on mammography tests caused distress to many women and their families (Report, 4 May). The implication was that they now risked premature death from cancer. In fact, as many experts have been pointing out, mass screening for breast cancer has not been shown to have any impact on women’s life expectancy overall – but it does increase invasive interventions like mastectomy. This is why Prof Mike Baum, one of the first proponents of mass breast-cancer screening, now opposes it, as does the growing consensus among epidemiologists.If Public Health England thinks otherwise, it should publish its modelled estimates so scientists and statisticians can check them. In the absence of good evidence it was disgraceful to suggest women died needlessly. Continue reading...

A former speech therapy lecturer defends In the Night Garden from accusations that the children’s TV programme encourages egocentric language learningAs a former lecturer in speech and language therapy who once set students the task of researching the appeal of Teletubbies and drawing inferences for their practice with disabled children, may I mount a defence of In the Night Garden in the face of Catherine Shoard’s onslaught (Is children’s TV raising a crop of raving narcissists?, 7 May).As it happens, I watched it regularly last week with my 13-month-old granddaughter, and was struck again by how brilliantly the programme is designed. The sound-making and onomatopoeia that Shoard so dislikes reflect the very early emergence of words from babble and draw attention to what happens on screen; the way Igglepiggle and the other characters use their own names serves as identification. Continue reading...

Major study suggests Britain could lower its rates of cancer, diabetes and cardiovascular disease by promoting the dietsBritain could lower its rates of cancer, diabetes and cardiovascular disease by embracing Mediterranean- or Nordic-style diets, a major study into the benefits of healthy eating suggests.A review by the World Health Organization found compelling evidence that both diets reduce the risk of the common diseases, but noted that only 15 out of 53 countries in its European region had measures in place to promote the diets. Continue reading...

The solution to today’s escapology problemIn my puzzle blog earlier today I set you the following puzzle:Imagine you are in a grid 100 squares long and 100 squares wide. (The grid is fixed to the compass directions: up/down is N/S, and left/right is W/E.) On each square of the grid, there’s an arrow. Each arrow is pointing either N, S, W or E. Continue reading...

Study across 24 countries suggests the fossil fuel industry has reshaped conservative political values in the US and Australia• Sign up to receive the latest Australian opinion pieces every weekdayIf you reckon the 11 September terrorist attacks might have been an “inside job” or there is a nefarious new world order doing whatever it is the illuminati do, what are you likely to think about the causes of climate change?