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?

In 5 billion years our dying sun will transform into a stunning planetary nebula visible for millions of light years around, scientists sayEnjoy the sun while it lasts: in 5 billion years’ time, our host star will burn out, rip itself apart and turn into a massive glowing ring of interstellar gas and dust, scientists say.Astronomers have long known that the sun will die when it runs out of fuel, but the precise nature of its death throes has been far from clear, even to the most morbid of the field’s practitioners. Continue reading...

In his final paper on the multiverse hypothesis, the world’s best-known atheist made a supernatural creator more plausibleScientists have discovered a surprising fact about our universe in the past 40 years: against incredible odds, the numbers in basic physics are exactly as they need to be to accommodate the possibility of life. If gravity had been slightly weaker, stars would not have exploded into supernovae, a crucial source of many of the heavier elements involved in life. Conversely, if gravity had been slightly stronger, stars would have lived for thousands rather than billions of years, not leaving enough time for biological evolution to take place. This is just one example – there are many others – of the “fine-tuning” of the laws of physics for life.Related: Stephen Hawking's final theory sheds light on the multiverse Continue reading...

NSW coronial inquest examines how addictive painkillers prescribed and the dramatic increase in opiate-related overdoses in past decade• Sign up to receive the top stories every morningThe effectiveness of pill-testing at music festivals will be examined to see if it can help to prevent opiates deaths in New South Wales.A special coronial inquest examining the deaths of six people from opiate-related overdoses in May 2016 began in Sydney on Monday. The inquest, before deputy state coroner Harriet Grahame, is examining the way addictive painkillers such as fentanyl are prescribed in NSW and the dramatic increase in opiate-related overdose deaths in the past decade. Continue reading...

Keep calm and follow the arrowsUPDATE: Read the solution hereHi guzzlersToday’s puzzle is for escapologists. Continue reading...

Leading Australian researchers back world-first campaign for activity to be part of any treatment• Sign up to receive the top stories in Australia every day at noon

On Wednesday 9 May, the Sun, the Earth and Jupiter will all line up, with Earth in the middleThe giant gas planet Jupiter reaches its closest point to Earth this year on 9 May. A planet beyond Earth’s orbit, such as Jupiter, is known as a superior planet, and the closest approach of a superior planet is called opposition. This is because the sun is always 180° away from the planet at the moment of its closest approach. In effect, the sun, Earth and the planet in question all line up with Earth in the middle. Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system and takes almost a dozen years to orbit the sun. Earth travels faster on its shorter orbit, catching up with Jupiter and creating an opposition every 399 days. On 9 May, Jupiter will be 5.4 times further from the sun than Earth, meaning it will be 6.6m kilometres (4m miles) away. At opposition, Jupiter is brighter than at any other time. This year, the planet will lie in the constellation of Libra. The chart shows its position at 00.00 BST on 9 May. Continue reading...

Antiquities ministry says radar scans give conclusive evidence there are no hidden roomsEgypt’s antiquities ministry has said new radar scans provide conclusive evidence that there are no hidden rooms inside King Tutankhamun’s burial chamber.

Is chronic fatigue syndrome physiological or psychological? The medical world remains divided – leaving millions unsure about the efficacy of the treatment they receiveThe point at which I realised just how confounding some illnesses – and the human beings that suffer them – are was when, three years into a mysterious illness, someone told me that I could beat it by eating a clove of garlic each morning.This person – not a medical professional, it is perhaps unnecessary to point out – swore by its efficacy. By this stage, I had tried all sorts of things to get better – yoga, meditation, kinesiology, hypnotherapy – none of which had worked. So I took the garlic suggestion with the pinch of salt it deserved and resumed my search for a cure elsewhere. Correspondingly, I began to sympathise with poor doctors. No wonder they have such a hard time treating people like me. Continue reading...

Christina Patterson used to be ashamed about being single, but after hearing others’ stories, that feeling has goneFor most of my adult life, I have been ashamed of being single. At weddings, I have felt my smile crack. I once walked out of a friend’s book launch when he gave a speech about finding the love of his life. I felt sick with envy, physically sick. But when I got home, what I felt most of all was shame. I didn’t understand why my friends had managed to succeed in an area where I had so spectacularly failed.When I was a child, I thought it was easy. You fell in love, you got married in a lovely church, in a lovely dress, and then you had children. Probably three, but possibly just two. I had my parents’ example. They met on a hill in Heidelberg in Germany when my father was 21 and my mother was 18. It was, they always said, love at first sight. My father had just finished reading classics at Cambridge. My mother was just about to go and read languages at Lund University in Sweden. For the rest of their three-week German course, they wandered through the cobbled streets of the old town, quoted Goethe and talked about Kleist. Continue reading...

Speaking a foreign language is prone to pitfalls, but it’s a skill we should all haveThe French president, Emmanuel Macron, never ceases to surprise his audience, especially when he speaks in English. While some of his compatriots were shocked that he should address the US Congress in its native tongue, it pleased a large number of French people who appreciated how he engaged directly in version originale.A few days later, however, when President Macron thanked the Australian prime minister’s wife, Lucy Turnbull, for being “delicious” – conjuring up images of cannibalism and Hannibal Lecter – some commentators suddenly thought of Macron as creepy. It was hours before somebody thought to tell the Australians that the word “délicieuse” actually means delightful. Continue reading...

After five years of renovations the Temperate House has been restored to its full Victorian gloryIt would have been very difficult to find a more glorious corner of England than Kew Gardens on Saturday. Under a perfect blue sky that banished all memories of the sodden start to the year, pilgrims were paying homage at the botanists’ equivalent of Valhalla.They had returned to their gleaming cathedral to perform a very secular form of worship. After five years of renovations the Temperate House, home to more than 10,000 plants from the world’s “Goldilocks zones” where temperatures are not too hot or too cold, was open again. Continue reading...

The Mars InSight lander will take more than six months to travel the 300m miles to Mars where it will start geological excavations. It will dig deeper into Mars than ever before – about 5 metres – to record the planet’s temperature. It will also place a hi-tech seismometer on the surface of the planet to try to measure quakes• Nasa launches InSight spacecraft to explore the insides of Mars Continue reading...

Dutch twins Adrie and Alfons Kennis are showing their uncanny models in museums all over Europe. Adrie discusses how their creations are realised and the extreme reactions they can provokeIdentical twins with a combined age of 102, Adrie and Alfons Kennis are among Europe’s most sought-after – and controversial – hominid palaeo-artists: sculptors of lifesize reconstructions of early humans.Working from a studio in their home town of Arnhem in the Netherlands, the brothers bring a surplus of exuberance to their creations, which are richly animated, expressive and – how better to put it? – human, even when they aren’t quite human. “If we have to make a reconstruction,” says Adrie, “we always want it to be a fascinating one, not some dull white dummy that’s just come out of the shower.” Continue reading...

The author of Seven Brief Lessons on Physics has written a vivid account of how we make time and other profound puzzles

How did Saladin, Darwin and Lenin die? And could we have saved them if they were struck by the same ailment today? Historical pathologists meet to find outWhether it is a mysterious fever or sudden incapacitation – even today, diagnosing quite what has carried someone off can leave doctors scratching their heads.But every year a group of academics gather to embrace an even tougher challenge: casting a verdict on how and why some of the most famous names in history died. Continue reading...

In his late teens, my father, David Doel, had a Damascene experience when he climbed Todmorden moor in West Yorkshire. Depressed, he lay down in the bracken, surrendered to his fate and, as he wrote in a later poem: “Love found me like water from a spring, not open to my grasp but flowing as a gift through arid ground, refurbishing and making new.”The course of his life changed. David, who has died aged 87, determined to become a minister of religion and rose to be a leading light in the Unitarian denomination. Continue reading...

Maverick biologist Aubrey de Grey has cracked the Hadwiger-Nelson problem which has flummoxed mathematicians worldwide since 1950An amateur mathematician has made the first breakthrough in more than 60 years towards solving a well-known maths problem.

The InSight lander will make contact on the Martian equator and dig deep down into the planet to examine its inner coreNasa’s latest mission to another planet is set to blast off on Saturday on a seven month voyage across the frigid depths of space to Mars, with the aim of mapping the planet’s interior for the first time.The InSight mission aims to drop a lander the size of a garden table on to Elysium Planitia, a broad, flat and largely rockless lava plain on the Martian equator, from where it will become the first robotic probe to survey the centre of the red planet. Continue reading...

Studies on young children have identified a genetic link for some such disorders, but environmental factors also have an effectHumans have succeeded as a species in large part because of our ability to cooperate and coordinate with each other. These skills are driven by a range of “moral emotions” such as guilt and empathy, which help us to navigate the nuance of social interactions appropriately.Those who lack moral emotions are classed as having “callous-unemotional” traits: persistent personality characteristics that make negotiating social situations difficult. The combination of callous-unemotional traits and antisocial behaviour in adolescents and adults is typically diagnosed as psychopathy. Continue reading...

Excavation proves early humans colonised the area hundreds of thousands of years earlier than previously believedThe discovery of a butchered rhino has led scientists to conclude early humans were in the Philippines as far back as 700,000 years ago.Dozens of human-made stone artefacts and tools, alongside the clearly bludgeoned and eaten remains of a rhino, were discovered in a clay bed in on Luzon, the largest and most northerly island in the Philippines. Continue reading...

Guest host Richard Lea reimagines time with theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli. What is time, after all? Should we be thinking about it differently?Subscribe and review on Acast, Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Audioboom and Mixcloud. Join the discussion on Facebook and TwitterTime is both deeply mysterious and perfectly obvious. Artists have attempted to capture it to explore its bewildering meanderings. Scientists have tried to measure it to explain its intricate workings. But does anyone really understand time? Continue reading...

Scientists hope latest mission will shed light on the similar processes believed to have formed both planets 4.5bn years agoNasa’s first lander to Mars since 2012 is set to launch on Saturday morning from Vandenberg air force base in California. The InSight spacecraft aims to listen for quakes and unravel the mystery of how rocky planets such as Earth form. If all goes as planned it should land on Mars on 26 November.Since the Earth and Mars were probably formed by similar processes 4.5bn years ago, the US space agency hopes the lander – officially known as Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport (InSight) – will shed light on what made them so different. Continue reading...

Robert Gallo says prevalence in Indigenous communities is ‘extraordinary’ and if he lived in Australia he would be tested

Amazon CEO retrieves New Shepard rocket and capsule after suborbital flight piloting way to paying passengersBlue Origin, the aerospace company owned by Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s chief executive, has completed the eighth test flight of its New Shepard reusable rocket and unmanned crew capsule, blasting off from West Texas on 29 April.After a 10-minute flight, during which the hydrogen-fuelled vehicle reached a velocity of almost 2,200 miles an hour and altitude of 66 miles, the rocket made a controlled touch down on Earth and the ejected crew capsule parachuted back down too. Continue reading...

Britain has played a key role in the development of Europe’s satellite navigation system. Brexit should not be an excuse for ending this vital security cooperationThe European Union’s Galileo network of satellites is the latest in a series of global satellite navigation systems providing precision data from space. America has had one since 1978, in the shape of the familiar GPS system. Russia has had one since 1982, and China since 2000. Galileo’s satellites have been circulating overhead since 2011 and the network is scheduled to be fully functional by 2020. Britain has been deeply involved in Galileo since the start, providing 12% of the overall costs, currently estimated at €10bn, and receiving about 15% of the work on the project. Now Britain’s participation is at risk.Brexit is the cause of this, but for once Britain is not the only guilty party. The European commission and member states must share the blame for what is developing into an expensive squabble with very disturbing implications for post-Brexit relationships. The immediate argument is about Britain’s possible exclusion from the next phase of Galileo-related contracts. Already the Galileo back-up centre has been moved from Hampshire to Spain. Much more damagingly, the EU is proposing the UK’s long-term exclusion from the “public regulated service” part of the network. This is an encrypted service for the police, security and emergency services of EU member states. Britain has been deeply involved in its development and British agencies are anxious to participate in it when it is operational. Since January, however, the commission has argued that Britain should be excluded because the system’s integrity would be compromised if it were accessible to a non-EU state. Continue reading...

After five years, 10,000 plants uprooted and replanted, 15,000 panes of glass replaced, 69,000 sections of metal, stone and timber repaired or replaced, enough scaffolding to stretch the length of the M25, and £41m spent, the largest Victorian glasshouse in the world is ready to open its doors again. The Temperate House in Kew Gardens is once again, as Sir David Attenborough describes it, ‘a breathtakingly beautiful space’ Continue reading...

US survey finds two-fifths of people between 65 and 80 report being sexually active, but topic is rarely discussedSex is not only a pursuit of the young and carefree but also a key part of life for adults in their later years, a new poll has revealed – putting paid to the trope that action stops as pensions loom.A US survey has found that 40% of those aged between 65 and 80 report being sexually active, with more than half of those who have a partner saying they still engage in steamy moments.

Five-year project involved moving 10,000 plants and replacing 15,000 panes of glassAfter five years, 10,000 plants uprooted and replanted, 15,000 panes of glass replaced, 69,000 sections of metal, stone and timber repaired or replaced, enough scaffolding to stretch the length of the M25, and £41m spent, the largest Victorian glasshouse in the world is ready to open its doors again. The Temperate House in Kew Gardens is once again, as the naturalist Sir David Attenborough describes it, “a breathtakingly beautiful space”.The great glass and iron doors to this botanical cathedral, first opened in 1863, closed in 2013 for the most complex restoration project in the history of Kew Gardens, and will reopen to the public on Saturday. Continue reading...

So many claim to know the secret of happiness. But what if there’s no such thing?Hello.Are you happy? Continue reading...

Money will be given to agency as ‘seed funding’ with most long-term funding expected to come from private sectorThe government will set aside $50m to fund Australia’s first dedicated space agency, according to senior insiders.The ABC on Thursday reported that funding for the space agency was guaranteed in the budget on Tuesday. It is understood $50m will be given to the fledgling agency as “seed funding”, with the intention that the majority of the agency’s funding will come from the private sector. Continue reading...

Test predicts likelihood of pregnant women developing the condition, which can be fatalA world-first blood test that can help predict the potentially deadly pregnancy condition pre-eclampsia is being introduced at Melbourne’s Royal Women’s hospital.The hospital helped develop the blood test, which predicts the likelihood of pregnant women developing the condition. Continue reading...

In the 1950s and 60s, a Montreal hospital subjected psychiatric patients to electroshocks, drug-induced sleep and huge doses of LSD. Families are still grappling with the effectsSarah Anne Johnson had always known the broad strokes of her maternal grandmother’s story. In 1956, Velma Orlikow checked herself into a renowned Canadian psychiatric hospital, the Allan Memorial Institute in Montreal, hoping for help with postpartum depression.She was in and out of the clinic for three years, but instead of improving, her condition deteriorated – and her personality underwent jarring changes. Continue reading...

Scientists says blood test could avoid costly, stressful, food tests for confirming allergyA new blood test could make it much easier and cheaper to identify children with peanut allergies, say scientists.The test, which looks for biomarkers released by mast cells, or white blood cells forming part of the immune system, made a correct diagnosis 98% of the time in a study involving 174 children. Continue reading...