Those in favour of leaving the EU are more categorical and ‘think outside the box’ less than remainers, researchers sayBoris Johnson’s call to “take back control” in the 2016 EU referendum was a rallying cry that cut across political parties and split families, but quite why it had such a wide appeal has had academics puzzled. Now researchers say a fervour for Brexit could at least in part be linked to the way individuals process information.Research has revealed that those in favour of cutting loose from the EU are more categorical and “think outside the box” less than those who favour remain, with a stronger dislike for uncertainty and a greater love of daily routine.

The breakthrough, spurred by the discovery of plastic-eating bugs at a Japanese dump, could help solve the global plastic pollution crisisScientists have created a mutant enzyme that breaks down plastic drinks bottles – by accident. The breakthrough could help solve the global plastic pollution crisis by enabling for the first time the full recycling of bottles.The new research was spurred by the discovery in 2016 of the first bacterium that had naturally evolved to eat plastic, at a waste dump in Japan. Scientists have now revealed the detailed structure of the crucial enzyme produced by the bug. Continue reading...

Forensic scientists a step closer to predicting a suspect’s hair colour from crime scene DNA aloneForensic scientists are a step closer to predicting the colour of a suspect’s hair from their DNA alone after the discovery of more than 100 new genes that influence the shade of a person’s locks.A test based on the new genetic markers was 10-20% more accurate than existing forensic tests and was most reliable for red or black hair, with brown or blond hair proving harder to predict, researchers said.

The idea of a depressed computer may seem absurd – but artificial intelligence and the human brain share a vital featureDepression seems a uniquely human way of suffering, but surprising new ways of thinking about it are coming from the field of artificial intelligence. Worldwide, over 350 million people have depression, and rates are climbing. The success of today’s generation of AI owes much to studies of the brain. Might AI return the favour and shed light on mental illness?The central idea of computational neuroscience is that similar issues face any intelligent agent – human or artificial – and therefore call for similar sorts of solutions. Intelligence of any form is thought to depend on building a model of the world – a map of how things work that allows its owner to make predictions, plan and take actions to achieve its goals. Continue reading...

A new book about the 1950s Robbers Cave experiment details how subterfuge and manipulation were used to turn ‘upstanding 11-year-olds’ into ‘brutal savages’• The inside story of the Robbers Cave experimentAfter the sun had gone down, the boys raced one another from the swimming hole to their cabins. They were still jubilant from their win, fizzing with excitement, eager to get back and pass around their prize again, the handsome silver knives fanned out on a stiff cardboard stand. Will shouted: “Told y’all!” triumphantly when he reached the cabin first. Panting and laughing, he threw open the cabin door – and stopped dead. Mattresses hung drunkenly from the bunks; pillows and clothes and comic books spilled across the floor. The knives, which they’d put on a makeshift table by the window, were gone. He let his breath out in a rush, then turned and started running, pushing past the group of dismayed boys who had crowded in behind him.Outside, the long twilight was fading. He heard the others calling to him to wait up, but he didn’t stop. He ran along the dusty track, feet pounding, and across the stream, his heart racing so hard he could hear his blood thrumming in his ears. Behind him the others had almost caught him up. The jumble of their voices quietened and the air was full of the sound of panting breaths. No need to stop and think, they just followed their instincts – an animal need to retrieve what was theirs. Will raced past the mess hall, where the sounds of a cowboy tune twanging on the radio and the clatter of dishes reminded him of home, of his parents’ heads bowed as they said grace over supper. But he ran faster, thrusting those images behind him. When he first came here, he tried not to think about what animals were moving through the dark. Now he bared his teeth as he ran. Tonight he wouldn’t be scared if a mountain lion stepped out of the shadows, or a bear climbed down from a tree. Behind him, the other boys rushed. They were a single panting pack, zigzagging in and out of trees, feet flying, crushing pine needles, startling birds. Continue reading...

In the early 1950s, the psychologist Muzafer Sherif brought together a group of boys at a US summer camp – and tried to make them fight each other. Does his work teach us anything about our age of resurgent tribalism?• Read an extract from The Lost BoysJuly 1953: late one evening in the woods outside Middle Grove, New York state, three men are having a furious argument. One of them, drunk, draws back his fist, ready to smash it into his opponent’s face. Seeing what is about to happen, the third grabs a block of wood from a nearby pile. “Dr Sherif! If you do it, I’m gonna hit you,” he shouts.The man with the raised fist isn’t just anybody. He is one of the world’s foremost social psychologists, Muzafer Sherif. The two others are his research assistants. Sherif is angry because the experiment he has spent months preparing for has just fallen apart. Continue reading...

Discovery by a 13-year-old and an amateur archaeologist leads to hoard linked to king who brought Christianity to DenmarkA 13-year-old boy and an amateur archaeologist have unearthed a “significant” trove in Germany which may have belonged to the Danish king Harald Bluetooth who brought Christianity to Denmark.René Schön and his student Luca Malaschnitschenko were looking for treasure using metal detectors in January on northern Rügen island when they chanced upon what they initially thought was a worthless piece of aluminium. Continue reading...

The UK’s research ecosystem is fragmented. We need more collaboration to pool expertise and improve public healthGood public health is central to the success of our cities, nations and regions. It’s an area in which higher education has a key role to play, since working to address local and global health challenges and develop cutting-edge drug therapies is deeply rooted within academic institutions. Yet universities are still an underused resource in tackling local public health problems.The main obstacle is the absence of organisations that connect universities and the NHS. In the UK, there are just six Academic Health Science Centres, which bring together research, education and clinical practice to translate research swiftly into patient care and ensure that patient interactions contribute to the generation of new knowledge. These AHSCs are not spread evenly around the country: three are in London, and one in Oxford, Cambridge and Manchester. Continue reading...

For too many years Suzanne Moore has not been able to board a flight without a stiff drink and, preferably, tranquillisers. Could a ‘Fearless Flyer’ course at Stansted help her overcome her terror?

Buruli ulcer cases surging and now at epidemic proportions in parts of Victoria, researchers sayA severe tissue-destroying ulcer once rare in Australia is rapidly spreading and is now at epidemic proportions in regions of Victoria, prompting infectious diseases experts to call for urgent research into how it is contracted and spread.In an article published in the Medical Journal of Australia (MJA) on Monday, authors led by associate professor Daniel O’Brien from Barwon Health said incidents of Buruli ulcer were on the rise but researchers were baffled as to why Victoria was being particularly affected. There have been no reported cases in New South Wales, South Australia or Tasmania. Continue reading...

Telescope hitching ride on a SpaceX rocket designed to spot alien worldsIf the vagaries of weather and rocket science do not intervene, the most ambitious search for alien worlds around the brightest stars in the sky will begin on Monday with the launch of Nasa’s newest planet-hunting spacecraft.After final preparations at the weekend, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or Tess, is on course for take off as early as 6.32pm local time (11.32pm UK) from Cape Canaveral in Florida, the first opportunity mission controllers have to launch in a window that remains open until June.

The grains of dust that originated in Comet Thatcher will be making their annual visit at the weekendThe Lyrid meteor shower will reach its peak in the pre-dawn sky on 22 April. This is the oldest known meteor shower, with records stretching back more than 2,500 years. The meteors appear to originate from a point in the constellation Lyra, hence the shower’s name. On Saturday night/Sunday morning this “radiant” will be in the eastern sky. So, wrap up warm, look east and be patient. Estimates suggest that between 15 and 20 meteors an hour will be visible. Some may be bright enough to cause brief shadows. Occasionally, outbursts of 100 meteors an hour have been recorded for the Lyrids. The last reported outburst came from the US in 1982. Before then, Japan reported one in 1945, and Greece in 1922. The Lyrids are tiny dust grains that once formed the tail of Comet Thatcher. This icy visitor from the outer solar system orbits the Sun every 415 years. It is next due to pass by in 2276. Continue reading...

The next theatre of conflict is likely to be in Earth’s orbit – and may have dire consequences for us allWhen you hear the phrase “space war”, it is easy to conjure images that could have come from a Star Wars movie: dogfights in space, motherships blasting into warp speed, planet-killing lasers and astronauts with ray guns. And just as easy to then dismiss the whole thing as nonsense. It’s why last month’s call by President Trump for an American “space force”, which he helpfully explained was similar to the air force but for err… space, was met with a tired eye-roll from most. But there is truth behind his words. While the Star Wars-esque scenario for what a space war would look like is indeed far-fetched, there is one thing all the experts agree on.​“It is absolutely inevitable that we will see conflict move into space,” says Michael Schmitt, professor of public international law and a space war expert at University of Exeter in the United Kingdom. Continue reading...

The film director’s masterpiece, which has influenced scientists and artists alike, is 50 years old this monthAstronomers last week announced official names for the principal mountains and valleys of one of the solar system’s remotest objects, the tiny world of Charon. More than 3.6bn miles distant from the Sun, the moon – which orbits the dwarf planet, Pluto – was first observed closely in 2015 when the US probe New Horizons swept over its freezing, airless surface.Now the features revealed by the robot craft have been given titles by the International Astronomical Union. And key among the explorers and scientists honoured are the film director Stanley Kubrick and the writer Arthur C Clarke. Continue reading...

Jessica Huie turned her life around brilliantly. Now she’s helping other people – including her friend Meghan MarkleJessica Huie didn’t have the most promising start. She was expelled from school at 15 and pregnant two years later. Her father, a cab driver who had worked round the clock to give her opportunities, was devastated, as was her mum, a former model. But somehow she turned her life around to become a PR to A-listers – including an actor with whom she turned out to have a lot in common, Meghan Markle.And now, aged 37, Huie has written a book that overturns the PR notion that it’s what we project on the outside that matters. Instead, she argues, what we need to concentrate on is the interior search for fulfilment – finding our true purpose. Continue reading...

Blame the rain, the government or just geology, but extreme weather events are on the rise in ItalySo far this year, Rome has suffered an astonishing 44 sinkholes. Every two or three days, a new crater appears in the Italian capital’s asphalt. They’re normally the size of a small room, a few metres wide and a few metres deep. In February, though, six cars were sucked down into the bowels of the earth when 50 metres of via Livio Andronico fell away, causing entire buildings to be evacuated.It’s not a new phenomenon: there have been an average of 90 sinkholes a year in Rome since 2010. In 2013, there were 104 and 2018 will surely surpass even that record. The problem is clearly getting worse: the streets are beginning to look like black emmenthal and everyone in Italy is wondering why the earth seems, in the words of the Jewish prophet Isaiah, “to stagger like a drunken man”. Continue reading...

The clinical psychologist’s new book studies the negative effects and benefits of social anxiety in the age of social mediaEllen Hendriksen is a clinical psychologist, regular contributor to Scientific American and host of the award-winning podcast The Savvy Psychologist. Her new book about social anxiety, How to Be Yourself, has been described by Susan Cain (bestselling author of Quiet) as “groundbreaking”.What is your definition of social anxiety?

What does it really mean to say that time ‘passes’? Why does time pass faster in the mountains than it does at sea level? The physicist explains in this extract from his latest book• Interview with Carlo RovelliI stop and do nothing. Nothing happens. I am thinking about nothing. I listen to the passing of time. This is time, familiar and intimate. We are taken by it. The rush of seconds, hours, years that hurls us towards life then drags us towards nothingness ... We inhabit time as fish live in water. Our being is being in time. Its solemn music nurtures us, opens the world to us, troubles us, frightens and lulls us. The universe unfolds into the future, dragged by time, and exists according to the order of time. What could be more universal and obvious than this flowing? Continue reading...

Which? investigation finds standard ranges using cashew nuts instead of pine nuts, and parmesan substituteAn investigation into supermarket own-brand pesto has found that bamboo fibres, potato flakes and nut flour are being used as cheaper alternatives to traditional ingredients.Pesto, which is traditionally made from basil, pine nuts, parmesan, olive oil – and sometimes lemon juice and garlic – has become a staple food in the UK. Continue reading...

Following another fatal Tesla crash, accident investigators have announced that they have stopped working with the company. Self-driving cars urgently need ‘ethical black boxes’ so that we can all learn from their mistakes.

This week, Hannah Devlin asks: what are sceptics of alternative medicine saying about its rise? And what can their thoughts tell us about how the scientific sceptic movement is approaching the conversation?Subscribe and review on Acast, Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Audioboom and Mixcloud. Join the discussion on Facebook and TwitterPeople seek out healers in the face of illness. In the 17th century, physicians to Charles II tried to treat his seizures through bloodletting. And once upon a time, mercury was used as an elixir for life. Modern medicine eventually swept out many of the most dangerous and eccentric practices that were not firmly grounded in evidence. Continue reading...

Study of PM2.5 levels in Utah suggests increase in diagnoses of viral infections such as bronchitis follows even brief upticks in pollutionEven short-term increases in air pollution are linked to a higher risk of developing viral chest infections that turn into conditions such as bronchiolitis, new research suggests.The study, carried out by scientists in the US, looked at levels of tiny particles in the air known as PM2.5s across eight locations along the Wasatch Front in Utah, including Salt Lake City. This area features a string of towns and is home the majority of the state’s population and, due to various factors, experiences large variations in air pollution. Continue reading...

My dedication to watching woeful late-night TV is apparently a health hazard. Should society do more to cater to night owls?In my (admittedly self-regarding) opinion, I do my very best living between the hours of 11pm and, say, 3am. That’s when my children have been confined to their beds and I have the relative freedom that allows me to consume television until my eyes start to sting. Essentially, I’m talking about repeated episodes of Bullseye (the original Jim Bowen incarnation, not the abhorrent Dave Spikey reboot), maybe some BBC4 music documentaries that I’ve already seen seven or eight times, or one of the 45 episodes of A Place in the Sun that are clogging up my Sky box.Essentially nothing that represents challenging viewing, because I’m too done in to think properly by then – anything on Netflix feels like a chore, plus there’s the added time needed to scroll through endless menus, deciding on what to watch. Continue reading...

Drinking is as harmful as smoking, and more than five drinks a week lowers life expectancy, say researchersDrinking will shorten your life, according to a study that suggests every glass of wine or pint of beer over the daily recommended limit will cut half an hour from the expected lifespan of a 40-year-old.Those who think a glass of red wine every evening will help keep the heart healthy will be dismayed. The paper, published in the Lancet medical journal, says five standard 175ml glasses of wine or five pints a week is the upper safe limit – about 100g of alcohol, or 12.5 units in total. More than that raises the risk of stroke, fatal aneurysm (a ruptured artery in the chest), heart failure and death. Continue reading...

Researchers claim to have settled question of whether there was contact between islanders and Americas with construction of tuber’s ‘family tree’The sweet potato is ubiquitous enough to seem almost mundane – but its origins have long been shrouded in mystery. Now scientists say they have solved the puzzle, in the process scotching the idea that people in the Americas were in touch with Polynesians before the Europeans turned up in the New World in the 15th century.The research reveals that the sweet potato evolved just once, probably in central or northern South America, and originated from a single ancestor. What’s more, an analysis of part of a 250-year-old sweet potato plant collected during Captain Cook’s voyage to the South Pacific on HMS Endeavour suggests the spuds arrived in Polynesia by means of ocean currents.

Multimillion dollar project will scan and make public methane leaks from oil and gas plants that are a major contributor to global warming

Volcanologists use samples from Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland to recreate famous hexagonal columns in laboratoryAccording to legend, the Giant’s Causeway was built by the Irish giant, Finn MacCool, as a crossing to confront his Scottish rival. Scientists have an alternative explanation, and for the first time they have reproduced in the laboratory the process through which the causeway’s 40,000 near-perfect hexagonal columns were formed.Geometric columns are seen in a variety of volcanic rocks across the Earth and are known to form as the rock cools and contracts, resulting in a regular array of polygonal prisms or columns. But until now, geologists had been unsure of the threshold at which cooling magma suddenly fractures into a geometric pavement. Continue reading...

Exclusive: 71 million people stand to benefit from reduced price treatment for virus which can lead to liver cirrhosis, cancer and death

With its punky green mohican the striking Mary river turtle joins a new ZSL list of the world’s most vulnerable reptilesIt sports a green mohican, fleshy finger-like growths under its chin and can breathe through its genitals.The Mary river turtle is one of the most striking creatures on the planet, and it is also one of the most endangered. Continue reading...

Warm current that has historically caused dramatic changes in climate is experiencing an unprecedented slowdown and may be less stable than thought - with potentially severe consequencesThe warm Atlantic current linked to severe and abrupt changes in the climate in the past is now at its weakest in at least 1,600 years, new research shows. The findings, based on multiple lines of scientific evidence, throw into question previous predictions that a catastrophic collapse of the Gulf Stream would take centuries to occur.Such a collapse would see western Europe suffer far more extreme winters, sea levels rise fast on the eastern seaboard of the US and would disrupt vital tropical rains. The new research shows the current is now 15% weaker than around 400AD, an exceptionally large deviation, and that human-caused global warming is responsible for at least a significant part of the weakening. Continue reading...

The emergence of new strains of bacteria which can resist antibiotics or digest processed foodstuffs in our guts shows the law of unintended consequences operates everywhereThe first case anywhere in the world of a strain of gonorrhea resistant to all known antibiotics was reported late last month. The diagnosis was made in England, but it appears that the infection came from an encounter in south-east Asia. Antibiotic resistance is a global problem, and can’t be confined to any one part of the world for long. Last autumn a woman died in the US of an infection apparently picked up in an Indian hospital which was impervious to all 14 antibiotics in her hospital; later tests showed it was also resistant to the other 12 drugs available to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.The dangers of antibiotic resistance are by now well understood, even if action to diminish them is slow and uncoordinated. The growth of superbugs is not just caused by overprescription in developed countries and completely uncontrolled usage in developing countries, where they are rationed only by price. It is also a product of the widespread use of antibiotics in factory farming, where they are used to keep animal populations at a density which would be impossible in nature. In all these cases, we have set up evolutionary pressures which favour the emergence of antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria, and evolution has responded in its usual creative way. Around half of the detected cases of infection with the campylobacter bacterium in chickens in British shops involve antibiotic-resistant strains. Campylobacter is unpleasant, but seldom deadly, and can in any case be killed by thorough cooking. Continue reading...

The fully autonomous AI weapons now being developed could disastrously transform warfare. The UN must act fastIt’s five years this month since the launch of the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, a global coalition of non-governmental groups calling for a ban on fully autonomous weapons. This month also marks the fifth time that countries have convened at the United Nations in Geneva to address the problems these weapons would pose if they were developed and put into use.The countries meeting in Geneva this week are party to a major disarmament treaty called the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons. While some diplomatic progress has been made under that treaty’s auspices since 2013, the pace needs to pick up dramatically. Countries that recognise the dangers of fully autonomous weapons cannot wait another five years if they are to prevent the weapons from becoming a reality. Continue reading...

Recent research on solenodon molecules reminds us the study of fossils is far from extinctWe can now extract DNA from pretty much anything. If US crime series are anything to go by (they are not), sequencing it only takes an afternoon at a desktop computer, and an expression of determination. DNA can not only help identify murderers, but tell us how animal groups are related to one another. In the last 50 years it has transformed scientific understanding of family trees and the evolution of life on earth.With such technology at our fingertips, you may be left wondering: when it comes to understanding evolution, do we still need palaeontology? If I want to know if a hedgehog is more closely related to a shrew or a mole, I can just DNA test them, can’t I? Continue reading...

Every day millions of people ask Google life’s most difficult questions. Our writers answer some of the commonest queriesA few months ago, my family and I went to a nearby cat rescue shelter to get a kitten. There were five in the available litter to choose from, but as we were watching them play, one of the two tabbies boldly decided to scale a nearby sack of bedding, then promptly fell in head-first and couldn’t get out. Obviously, we had to have that idiot. And that’s how we ended up with Pickle. Continue reading...

Stream of sarcasm and parodies about scale of bust to plinth leads to it being dismantledIn 1961, Yuri Gagarin’s legendary space flight lasted just 108 minutes. A monument in Belgrade to the first person in space did not last much longer, being swiftly dismantled after causing online hilarity owing to its curiously small head.On Sunday, a number of Serbian websites noticed that a monument to the cosmonaut had appeared on a street in the Serbian capital that beared his name. The large plinth and the small bust of Gagarin’s head prompted the website Noizz to quip: “The only way you can see it clearly is to launch yourself into the sky.” Continue reading...

Carolina Reaper appears to have narrowed the arteries in the competitive eater’s brain, causing a series of thunderclap headachesA man who took part in a chilli pepper eating contest ended up with more than he bargained for when he took on the hottest pepper in the world.After eating a Carolina Reaper pepper, the 34-year-old started dry heaving before developing a pain in his neck that turned into a series of thunderclap headaches: sudden and severe episodes of excruciating pain that peak within a minute. Continue reading...

Being beautiful mainly seems a blessing. But it can be a curse – and the main problem is that you are just not allowed to complain about it

Many ‘American’ phrases are actually British but a new book argues why we say what we say reveals a lot about our culturesTo those dedicated warriors hunched over their keyboards or gripping their pens, ready to fire off an angry salvo about the Americanization of British English to their favorite newspaper, television channel or book publisher, linguist Lynne Murphy has a solemn warning: check a good dictionary first.Or consider her new book, The Prodigal Tongue: The Love-Hate Relationship Between American and British English, which assaults the British obsession of attacking US English with cold, hard facts. Continue reading...

Inspired by everything from The Shining to the aubergine-coloured bathroom suite of his childhood, artist Tom Hammick’s Lunar Voyage is a beautiful, mesmerising depiction of a lonely traveller’s journey to the moon and back Continue reading...

Publication will highlight pioneering work of scientists searching for cures to diseases like HIV and malaria and solutions to climate changeA new journal to showcase Africa’s often-overlooked scientific research has been launched to give the continent’s scientists better global recognition.Scientific African will be the first “mega-journal” in Africa. It was unveiled in Kigali last week at Africa’s biggest science conference, the Next Einstein Forum (NEF) conference, and the first issue is scheduled to be published at the end of the summer. Continue reading...

Project will see 40,000 men recruited for research into the disease, which kills more than 11,000 a yearThe prime minister is to launch a new drive against prostate cancer, which kills more than 11,000 men every year in the UK and causes great anxiety and sometimes suffering for the 47,000 men who get a diagnosis.Theresa May will announce £75m for research that will recruit 40,000 men into trials for better diagnosis and treatments for the disease, which recently overtook breast cancer to become the third biggest cancer killer in the UK. That is partly down to earlier detection and better treatment of breast cancer, and to men living to an older age. But campaigners have long argued that prostate cancer has not had the attention and funding it needs.

Distinguished mathematician who won the Fields medal for his contribution to number theoryIn 1966 the start of a new era in number theory was marked by Alan Baker, who has died aged 78, joining the department of pure mathematics at Cambridge University. With a cascade of papers, he had published solutions to a series of problems from a line of inquiry that went back to the third-century mathematician Diophantus of Alexandria. On the basis of this exceptional work, in 1970 Alan was awarded the Fields medal, one of the discipline’s highest distinctions.The interest of Diophantus’s approach to equations lies in whether they can be solved in ways that produce only whole numbers, or integers. From school, we know Pythagoras’s theorem for right-angled triangles: if the sides are 3, 4 and 5 units long, then 3 + 4 = 5, (9 + 16 = 25), and there are other whole-number solutions, or Pythagorean triples, that can be found with squared numbers (5,12,13; 7, 24, 25; and infinitely many more). But can the equivalent be done with cubed numbers, or numbers at higher powers? Continue reading...

The solutions to today’s puzzlesOn my puzzle blog earlier today I set the following questions:1) Two hipsters, Atticus and Abe, were arguing about whose electronic bicycle was the slowest. They decided to race them along a 100m track. They agreed that the bike reaching the finish line last would be the winner. The guys got on their bikes on the start line. But, predictably, they just stood there, since no one wanted to start first and risk being the first to finish. They had been immobile for hours when their pal Daisy showed up. She asked if anything was the matter, so they put down their bikes and walked over to her to explain. She said a few words, at which point they ran back, jumped on the bikes and sped to the finish line as fast as possible. What was her advice?

Humans lost their strong brow ridges as social communication became more important, researchers sayModern humans might never have raised a quizzical eyebrow had Homo sapiens not lost the thick, bony brows of its ancient ancestors in favour of smoother facial features, a new study suggests.Researchers at the University of York believe early humans bore prominent brow ridges as a mark of physical dominance, and as the human face evolved to become smaller and flatter, it became a canvas on which the eyebrows could portray a much richer range of emotions. Continue reading...

Bone found in Arabian desert dates back 90,000 years, challenging view that we migrated into Eurasia 60,000 years agoA fossilised human finger bone dating to almost 90,000 years ago has been discovered in the Saudi Arabian desert, a find researchers say points to the possibility that our species ventured towards the east far earlier than previously thought.Until recently, evidence including genetic studies suggested that Homo sapiens migrated out of Africa and into Eurasia in a single, rapid wave about 60,000 years ago. But a number of finds have challenged this “single wave” view, including the discovery of a jawbone in Israel apparently from about 180,000 years ago and fossils from other sites in Israel dating from 90,000-130,000 years ago. Continue reading...

Ofcom says controversial claims, including on the frequency of extreme weather events, went unchallengedBBC Radio 4 broke accuracy rules by failing to sufficiently challenge the climate change denier Nigel Lawson’s controversial claims in an interview, the broadcasting watchdog has ruled.Lord Lawson appeared on a Radio 4 programme last summer denying the concept of climate change, which prompted complaints from the Green party and the prominent scientists Brian Cox and Jim Al-Khalili, who said it was “irresponsible and highly misleading” to imply there was still a debate around the science supporting it. Continue reading...

The author and activist’s sharp critique of what she calls an ‘epidemic of overdiagnosis’ is a joyous celebration of lifeYou may view your body as a temple – particularly if you exercise ferociously, detox regularly, desist from alcohol, tobacco, sugar and all processed foods and positivity seeps out of every pore – but the indefatigable Barbara Ehrenreich has news for you. No amount of mindfulness, self-discipline and denial can spare you from your macrophages, the large white blood cells in your tissues that are found especially at the site of infection. They are out to get you. If they so choose, you will depart this world early and possibly painfully; control is an illusion.Ehrenreich is a socialist, activist and fighter for universal healthcare, women’s rights and economic justice; she is a multi-award-winning investigative journalist and author of more than 20 books, including the seminal bestseller Nickel and Dimed: Undercover in Low-Wage USA (2001). She also has a surgically precise way with words, a sense of humour and a PhD in cellular immunology. So when, in Natural Causes: Life, Death and the Illusion of Control, she describes the civil war within our bodies that macrophages may wage – encouraging cancer cells to spread, apparently for no reason other than they can – it may persuade you to rip up your gym membership and eat nothing but cream buns for what’s left of your time on Earth. But that’s not Ehrenreich’s intention. Continue reading...

Testing for high blood pressure can save lives – but experts say that unnecessary tests, such as whole body scans, may just find problems that probably don’t need treatment. So what should you be tested for?Most health checks are designed to look for risk factors or early signs of diseases – the two most common being heart disease or cancer. A quarter of premature deaths are caused by cardiovascular disease (heart attacks and strokes) and an estimated 50-80% of them are preventable. So any checks that could help early detection are surely a good thing.Dr Matt Kearney, a GP and the national clinical director for cardiovascular disease prevention, welcomes the growing trend for people to take control of their own health, but he says that the challenge is judging which tests are likely to do more harm than good. “We should democratise health information so everyone has access to it; doctors need to welcome people knowing more and help them to navigate options. Screening is attractive to individuals who look for reassurance that they’re healthy.” Continue reading...

Five moustache-twiddling riddlesUPDATE: The solutions can be read hereHi guzzlers,Today, a spring selection of bite-sized brain food. Continue reading...

For our final episode of this series, Daniel Glaser (with a little misguided help from his producer Max) attempts to unpick what the brain does – and doesn’t do – when we readSubscribe and review on iTunes and Acast, and join the discussion on Facebook and TwitterA Neuroscientist Explains is back for its second season. In each episode, Daniel Glaser and series’ producer Max revisit a column from Daniel’s hugely successful weekly column in the Observer Magazine and explore the neuroscience within it. One subject, one interview and many, many interesting questions. Continue reading...