Sunspots come and go in 11-year cycles with fluctuations in solar magnetic activityThe sun is our nearest star. Now that the spring equinox has passed, back on 20 March, it will increasingly dominate the sky in the northern hemisphere. Days will get longer, and nights shorter until summer finally arrives. The sun’s bright surface usually displays transitory dark blemishes known as sunspots. Every 11 years or so, the sunspots become much rarer. Between 2011 and 2015, there were only 3 sunspot-free days. In 2017, 104 days were free. Already this year, spots have been absent for more than 50 days. This clearly shows we are heading for solar minimum, expected to arrive next year. Sunspots are produced by solar magnetic activity. This is the same force that creates space weather, which can short-circuit spacecraft and interfere with communications and power lines on Earth. Never look directly at the sun through any optical instrument or with the naked eye. The fearsome light can cause permanent blindness. Continue reading...

From thinking on your feet in job interviews to negotiating with children, here are some top tips to up your conversational gameWhether it’s Michel Barnier and David Davis talking themselves to a standstill in Brexit negotiations, or the impending face-off between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un, the vexed topic of good – and bad – communication is on our minds. But is there a way to make your conversations and interactions better? As communication theorists, we examined how to make friends, influence people and reach agreements. Here are some tips: Continue reading...

The US researcher on exploring the bond between dogs and humans and why animal testing needs to be questionedGregory Berns is a distinguished professor of neuroeconomics at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. His current work involves taking brain scans of dogs to probe what goes on between canine ears, as well as using scanning techniques to probe the connections within brains of dead animals, including the extinct Tasmanian tiger, the thylacine.In your new book, you say a dog’s brain is about the size of a lemon…

Geologists aim to tap reservoir in tunnels under GlasgowScientists are finalising plans to exploit the vast reservoir of warm water that fills a labyrinth of disused mines and porous rock layers underneath Glasgow. They believe this subterranean store of naturally heated water could be used to warm homes in the city. If the system proves successful, such water could then be exploited in other cities and towns across Britain, they say.The £9m project will initially involve drilling narrow boreholes filled with instruments to survey temperature, seismic activity, water flow, acidity and other variables to establish the state of the water in the rocks below the city. The aim will be to establish whether this warm water can be extracted for long periods to heat Glaswegian homes. Continue reading...

Self-described ‘serial entrepreneur’ behind the Aurora Station says it is selling the astronaut experience and plans to open in 2021

In recent years, genome sequencing has changed everything we thought about our origins and how we relate to early human speciesFor David Reich, research can be a harrowing experience. The 44-year-old Harvard University geneticist says he now goes to bed terrified he will wake up to find his team’s recent, stunning discoveries about human ancestry have been proved wrong. “We are now making so many startling insights I sometimes fear it must all be incorrect,” he says.To be fair to Reich, no one has yet found any hint his results are invalid. “That still doesn’t stop me worrying,” he insists. Continue reading...

Researchers and scientists say new discoveries and drug creation could be beneficial to future astronauts on deep space missions

A widely reported crack in the Rift Valley was not formed by tectonic movement, but by erosion of soil from recent heavy rainsGlobal media outlets have been abuzz recently about a large “crack” which appeared in the Kenyan Rift Valley. Many of these news pieces have tried to get to the bottom of what caused this feature, with many reports concluding that it was evidence for the African continent actively splitting into two. However, many articles cited limited expert comment, much of which was taken out of context and was based on minimal hard evidence. Other articles fed directly off previous reports, propagating unsubstantiated rumours and losing sight of original sources.

Fossils collected by Darwin on his global voyages on the Beagle will be digitally scanned and made available onlineOn 23 September 1832 a young naturalist, thousands of miles from home and frequently seasick and homesick, found the fossil of an enormous skull embedded in soft rock. It took Charles Darwin three hours to chip it out of the cliff face at Punta Alta in Argentina, and hours more to lug it back to base. He arrived with it long after dark at the ship which became the most famous in the history of natural science, the Beagle.Darwin was only 24, a college dropout from his medical degree who had done a crash course in geology in order to join the voyage. He was wild with excitement about the chase, writing in a letter to a friend: “I have just got scent of some fossil bones of a Mammoth, what they may be I do not know, but if gold or galloping will get them, they shall be mine”.

Immortalised for its beauty by Henry David Thoreau, the Massachusetts pond is under threat from increased human activity and climate change according to a new studyThe water of Walden Pond, which Henry David Thoreau described in 1854 as “so transparent that the bottom can easily be discerned at the depth of 25 or 30 feet”, is no longer quite so clear according to a new study.The Massachusetts pond was made famous in Walden, the transcendentalist writer’s account of the years he spent next to it in order to “live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life”. The pond has been greatly affected by human activity. Everything from forest fires in the 19th century, to wood-cutting operations, the use of pesticides in the 1960s and increasing tourism have affected the water quality, according to the paper. Over half of the phosphorus in the lake in the summer “may now be attributable to urine released by swimmers”, while a footpath to Thoreau’s cabin “caused large amounts of soil to wash into the lake”. Continue reading...

This week, Nicola Davis asks: what clues do our teeth hold about our species? And what can they tell us about our past?Subscribe and review on Acast, Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Audioboom and Mixcloud. Join the discussion on Facebook and TwitterScientists have been digging up clues about the origins of humans for centuries, and remains of human species continue to come to light. But while fossilised skulls and bones are exciting, one of the greatest clues is right under our noses. Continue reading...

We need to show the public the high welfare standards and care all research animals receive to help build trust in scientistsIf you have ever taken a medicine, you have benefited from the humane use of animals in medical research. My research at the University of Bath focuses on understanding how the brain responds to stress and how we can use that knowledge to develop new and better antidepressants. We use mice to study how their behaviour changes in response to stress, or potential new drug treatments, and then we analyse their brains to identify affected brain circuits and the molecules involved in those behaviours.Over four million UK adults experience depression at any one time, and only around half of those will respond to the existing medications. There is a vital need to understand more about the brain mechanisms that cause depression in order to develop new and better antidepressants. Animal research plays a key role in this. Continue reading...

GSAT 6A, primed for a 10-year mission showed no signs of malfunctioning before going silentAn Indian communications satellite has stopped talking to ground controllers. The spacecraft went silent so suddenly that an unnamed official was quoted by the Times of India as saying that it was like the satellite had suffered a “cardiac arrest.”Normally ground controllers see things start to go wrong before a spacecraft stops communicating. This time, however, according to the quoted official, there were no signs at all. This is making it difficult to diagnose the error and try to bring the spacecraft back online. Continue reading...

The only thing more frightening than an advancing glacier may be one that is shrinking and raising sea levels round the worldBoth the north pole and the south pole are situated in the middle of huge ice deserts which are melting around the edges under the influence of human activity. The difference that matters between them is that the ice of the Arctic floats: if it melted nothing much would happen to aggregate sea levels. The ice of Antarctica, like that of Greenland, rests on land. If it all were to melt, as it has done in the far distant past, sea levels could rise by as much as 60 metres. That is most unlikely to happen. What is possible, though, is that the smaller portion of the continent, west Antarctica, which is divided from the rest by a mountain range, could lose much of its ice. Even that would be catastrophic. A significant retreat in west Antarctica, as seems to be already under way, could raise sea levels by between one and three metres by the end of this century. Children now alive will see that happen across their lifetimes. That is what is meant by the urgency of global warming.This week saw the publication of fresh research showing that the glaciers of west Antarctica are retreating faster than they were at the end of the last ice age, when water levels also rose significantly. The ice sheet is not one homogeneous mass, but a collection of glaciers all moving slowly but inexorably towards the sea. Their retreat is happening underwater, and invisibly, as the ocean erodes the foot of the glacier, known as the “ground line”, where its contact with the sea floor ends. Beyond that point, long tongues of ice stick out into the ocean, providing the coastline that we can see and map. But the capacity of the ice sheet to lock up water depends on the position of the ground line. As that retreats, invisibly, the sea level rises and the whole of the ice sheet grows less stable, something which makes further sea rise still more likely. Continue reading...

Findings could help hunt for treatment for degenerative conditions such as Alzheimers, and psychiatric problemsHumans continue to produce new neurons in a part of their brain involved in learning, memory and emotion throughout adulthood, scientists have revealed, countering previous theories that production stopped after adolescence. The findings could help in developing treatments for neurological conditions such as dementia.

Researchers find that warmer temperatures are upsetting the seasonal relationship between the early spider orchid and pollinating beesIt is one of the most cunning and elaborate reproductive deceits: the early spider orchid (Ophrys sphegodes) wafts a floral bouquet into the air that mimics the irresistible scent of a virgin female solitary mining bee, tricking gullible male bees into attempting intercourse with several flowers, thereby ensuring the plant’s pollination.But the sexual success of this rare and declining orchid in Britain is imperilled by climate change, researchers have found.

Yes, our genes affect everything we do, from educational attainment to health, but they are only a contributing factorThe cost of DNA sequencing continues to fall, and the scale and reach of genetic research continues to grow with it. We can use genetics to study not just health and fundamental biology but many things humans do – education, behaviours, parenting skills – leading to interesting scientific papers and sometimes breathless headlines in the mainstream press. But what can DNA really tell us about our potential and our behaviours? Is the science sound? How should society use this knowledge?Broadly speaking, yes, the science is sound. The human genome varies slightly between all of us. Once you study enough people – often more than 10,000 – genetic variation will have some kind of impact on nearly anything we do. There are many factors that contribute to complex measurements or behaviours, such as performance in school, so lots of weak effects can add up to a substantial impact. However, the degree to which this variation affects individuals can be quite different depending on what you are looking at. For example, up to 80% of what determines height lies in our genetic code, but only 30% of the causes of multiple sclerosis are genetic. Reasonably complex outcomes, such as the score in an IQ test, or whether you stay in education beyond the age of 16, also have quite substantial genetic components – between 50 to 60%. Continue reading...

Scholars from developing countries call for greater say in solar geoengineering research, arguing poor nations have most at stakeIt sounds like the stuff of science fiction: the creation, using balloons or jets, of a manmade atmospheric sunshade to shield the most vulnerable countries in the global south against the worst effects of global warming.But amid mounting interest in “solar geoengineering” – not least among western universities – a group of scientists from developing countries has issued a forceful call to have a greater say in the direction of research into climate change, arguing that their countries are the ones with most at stake. Continue reading...

Scientists from the Natural History Museum have revisited the spot where Scott and his team took samples to make a comparisonThey look like shrivelled pieces of leather – in fact they are dried communities of microbes scooped up by Captain Robert Falcon Scott’s team of polar explorers. And they could help scientists keep tabs on how Antarctica is changing.While perhaps most famous for the ill-fated Terra Nova expedition from 1910-13, Scott also led the 1901-4 Discovery Expedition to Antarctica that was proclaimed a success, largely due to the pioneering scientific studies carried out on the trip. Among the research carried out during this earlier mission, the team collected a host of specimens including samples of microbial mats – layered, sheet-like structures that can grow in lakes and ponds. Continue reading...

On the eve of the UK introduction of a sugary drinks levy, experts urge global adoption of ‘sin taxes’ to deter unhealthy habits and check the spread of diseaseSo called “sin taxes” on sugary drinks, alcohol and tobacco not only work, but will help rather than unduly penalise the poor, according to a major new international analysis.Just a day before the UK brings in a levy on sugary drinks, experts are urging every country in the world to use taxes to deter people from the eating, drinking and smoking habits that will damage their health. They warn of the urgent need to check the spread of cancers, diabetes, heart disease, stroke and other conditions caused or exacerbated by our lifestyles which have overtaken infectious diseases as the biggest killers of the modern age. Continue reading...

Scottish-born John Giannandrea joined search firm in 2010 and helped it become market leaderApple has poached Google’s AI chief, John Giannandrea, to run its machine learning and AI operations, in the clearest sign yet that the iPhone creator is attempting to fix the problems that saw its early lead in the field crumble.Scottish-born Giannandrea, who joined Google in 2010 after his startup, Metaweb, was acquired, has led the search firm’s push to become market leader in AI and machine learning. Under his command, Google Brain, the company’s main AI research team, has rebuilt the technology that underpins some of Google’s landmark products, including search, translation and voice recognition. Continue reading...

Scientists are comparing the songs sung by bowhead whales to the music of Thelonious Monk. But from cicada techno to bonobo gabber, they have competition for who’s top of the pops

Every day millions of people ask Google life’s most difficult questions. Our writers answer some of the commonest queries

Advanced DNA techniques shows the critical role extinct birds played in New Zealand’s ecosystem.Extinction is a sad process, as it means the irreversible loss of a species. However, as species do not exist in a vacuum, the effects of extinction do not simply extend only to the loss of species X or Y, but ripple through a whole ecosystem. Particularly for island ecosystems, which have a limited number of species, the loss of one species can lead to ecosystem collapse.For instance, the Hawaiian Islands suffered dramatic extinctions of bird species with the arrival of Europeans. Microscopic studies showed pollen grains adhering to the head feathers on preserved specimens of these extinct birds. Not only did we lose a large number of unique bird species, the Hawaiian ecosystem also lost many of its pollinators (Cox, 1983). The result? Dwindling numbers of many native plants. Continue reading...

Bowheads serenade each other off Greenland with a vast repertoire of improvised jazz-like song, study saysHow do bowhead whales in the unbroken darkness of the Arctic’s polar winter keep busy during breeding season?They sing, of course. Continue reading...

Study appears to rule out theory that Neanderthals’ facial shape was adapted for a powerful biteWith their prominent noses, protruding faces and swept-back cheekbones, Neanderthals were nothing if not striking. Now researchers say they have unpicked why our big-browed cousins had such distinctive features.Previous research has suggested a number of possible explanations for Neanderthals’ facial shape, including that it enabled a forceful bite with the front teeth – a theory based on their relatively large incisors and signs of tooth wear.

In Germany, scientists are using drones equipped with sensors to locate metals needed for wind turbines and solar panelsWe know that renewable energy can help the world to wean itself off fossil fuels, but keeping up with green-energy demand is creating another problem. Countries such as Germany, which has committed itself to a low-carbon future, are finding themselves short of the raw materials required to manufacture wind turbines and solar panels. In particular, metals such as copper, cobalt, platinum-group metals and rare-earth elements such as indium and germanium are in short supply. Continue reading...

Expats are often shaky in their mother tongue. But fear not: the fight in the brain known as language attrition can be stopped

Tracks of meat-eating dinosaurs found on Scottish island, shedding light on behaviours during Middle Jurassic period

Icarus is a blue supergiant, a rare type of star that is larger than the Sun and far more luminous

A new breed of robotic bees co-created by Japanese scientists could be dispatched to the red planet to look for signs of life, or rather flatulenceName: MarsbeesAge: Embryonic. Continue reading...

When it comes to perceiving the world around us, how much of it is due to ‘bottom-up’ sensory data and how much comes from the ‘top-down’ predictions we make? Most importantly; how can the delicate dance between the two lead to hallucinations?Subscribe 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, Dr Daniel Glaser and producer Max Sanderson 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...

The long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific conceptsIs there a law of physics to explain why I always end up with odd socks after I have done the washing?Jonathan East Continue reading...

Tributes on Weibo as officials say craft, which had been out of control since 2016, mostly burnt up on re-entryAs China’s Tiangong-1 space station hurtled toward Earth on Monday, burning up as it entered the atmosphere, Chinese residents wished the spacecraft a final farewell.“Goodbye Tiangong-1. You are our hero,” one user wrote on the Chinese microblog Weibo, under the hashtag “Goodbye Tiangong”. Chinese news outlets posted photos and tributes to the 10.4-metre-long space station as it re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere over the south Pacific. Continue reading...

Scientists say Tiangong-1 will burn up on re-entry and poses only slight risk to anyone on the groundChina’s defunct Tiangong-1 space station hurtled towards Earth on Sunday and was expected to re-enter the atmosphere within hours.Most of the craft should burn up on re-entry, so scientists said it posed only a slight risk to people on the ground. Continue reading...

From places unpolluted by streetlights, the planets will be visible, grouped with the moon, in the hours before dawnAll this week, the planets Mars and Saturn will make a nice pairing in the pre-dawn sky. As seen from London, they will be low in the south; Mars is the brighter, slightly lower of the pair whereas Saturn is the yellow, dimmer one. Mars is 17 times smaller than Saturn but six times closer, which is why it appears brighter than its larger planetary cousin. Mars is currently approaching Earth and, by July, will be at its brightest for 15 years. Continue reading...

Experts recreate 3D version of medieval bone store beneath Northamptonshire churchDown steep narrow stone stairs beneath Holy Trinity church in Rothwell, Northamptonshire, there is a small, damp chamber crammed with human bones – believed to be one of only two medieval charnel houses in England still holding their original human remains.The 13th-century charnel house – or bone store – at Rothwell, described as being of international importance, has been scanned and recreated digitally by scientists and archaeologists at the University of Sheffield, and their 3D model has now gone online. It includes an image of a skull rack, a wall lined with human skulls, which can’t be seen as easily in the real building because the chapel is so stuffed with wooden racks of bones, the remains of at least 2,500 people. Continue reading...

‘Hereditarian’ science seeks to link genetics to cleverness and could have profound changes on the social policy debate. That would be wrongHumans are fascinated by the source of their failings and virtues. This preoccupation inevitably leads to an old debate: whether nature or nurture moulds us more. A revolution in genomics has poised this as a modern political question about the character of our society: if personalities are hard-wired into our genes, what can governments do to help us? This is a big, creepy “if” over which the spectre of eugenics hovers. It feels morally questionable yet claims of genetic selection by intelligence are making headlines.This is down to “hereditarian” science, a field dominated in this country by Robert Plomin, a psychologist at King’s College London. His latest paper claimed “differences in exam performance between pupils attending selective and non-selective schools mirror the genetic differences between them”. With such a billing the work was predictably greeted by a raft of absurd claims about “genetics determining academic success”. What the research revealed was the rather less surprising result: the educational benefits of selective schools largely disappear once pupils’ innate ability and socio-economic background were taken into account. It is a glimpse of the blindingly obvious – and there’s nothing to back strongly either a hereditary or environmental argument. Continue reading...

The British Museum is training female archaeologists on the site of the world’s oldest bridgeThe world’s oldest-known bridge, an ancient Sumerian structure in Iraq, is to be used by the British Museum as a training site to teach two groups of female archaeologists the skills to restore the country’s Islamic State-ravaged heritage.After a conflict that saw Isis jihadists destroy large parts of Iraq’s archaeological heritage – including the historic sites at Nimrud and Nineveh – the museum will in April begin a training programme for eight women from the Mosul area, most of whom have been living as refugees. Continue reading...

Wayward space station finally set to re-enter atmosphere, with debris landing anywhere between New Zealand and midwest USA defunct Chinese space laboratory is set to become a “splendid” meteor shower as it re-enters Earth’s atmosphere on Monday, Chinese authorities maintain.Hitting speeds of over 26,000km an hour before disintegrating, the Tiangong-1 is expected to make an uncontrolled earthbound plunge on Monday Beijing time, China’s Manned Space Agency said on Sunday – an estimate roughly in line with European Space Agency projections. Continue reading...

Twenty years after hailing antidepressants in her memoir Prozac Diary, a now jaded, sceptical Lauren Slater revisits the psychopharmacological industry – with uneven resultsIn Prozac Diary (1998), Lauren Slater wrote powerfully of the way fluoxetine had transformed her previously chaotic life. While the author recorded a handful of negative side-effects – a profound loss of libido, for instance – the reader was left with the sense that Prozac had pieced back together the shards of Slater’s existence. In some ways, The Drugs That Changed Our Minds is a sequel to that book. Slater is now in her mid-50s, recently divorced, and on a cocktail of antidepressants. She’s “a consumer of polypsychopharmacy”, having taken fluoxetine, venlafaxine, olanzapine, aripiprazole, clonazepam, lisdexamfetamine “and probably one or two other tablets I’m forgetting because there are so many”.The book weaves between Slater’s personal history and a wide-ranging narrative of the development of the psychopharmalogical industry, with each chapter following a new evolution in the antidepressant market. Where Prozac Diary was a (measured) celebration of the power of mood-altering drugs, the tone here is far more jaded. Slater has seen her mental and physical health eroded by the hedonic logic of pill-popping: she needs to take more and more with each passing year just to stay (more or less) sane. Continue reading...

In a radical reassessment of how the mind works, a leading behavioural scientist argues the idea of a deep inner life is an illusion. This is cause for celebration, he says, not despairAt the climax of Anna Karenina, the heroine throws herself under a train as it moves out of a station on the edge of Moscow. But did she really want to die? Had the ennui of Russian aristocratic life and the fear of losing her lover, Vronsky, become so intolerable that death seemed the only escape? Or was her final act mere capriciousness, a theatrical gesture of despair, not seriously imagined even moments before the opportunity arose?We ask such questions, but can they possibly have answers? If Tolstoy says that Anna has dark hair, then Anna has dark hair. But if Tolstoy doesn’t tell us why Anna jumped to her death, then Anna’s motives are surely a void. We can attempt to fill this void with our own interpretations and debate their plausibility. But there is no hidden truth about what Anna really wanted, because, of course, Anna is a fictional character. Continue reading...

Dependence on the arms industry worries scientists as other funding dries upBritain’s universities are taking tens of millions of pounds from some of the world’s biggest defence contractors to help develop the next generation of military hardware.The close relationship between academia and the defence sector is credited with helping sustain tens of thousands of jobs in the UK but it is causing unease among some scientists, even as other sources of funding for universities dry up. Continue reading...

Huge turnout at service, as those who knew him reminisce about the great physicistRain had been promised but, as with many of the gloomiest predictions made for the young Stephen Hawking, the threatened deluge did not come.Indeed, despite the solemnity of the occasion, the Cambridge funeral of a man who throughout his life seemed to command as much admiration from the lay public as from his academic peers was something of a celebration. Continue reading...

A radical technique that makes mature cells act like stem cells is growing a mini brain from tissue I donated. One day it could produce whole organs for transplantLast week, I was told my other brain is fully grown. It doesn’t look like much. A blob of pale flesh about the size of a small pea, it floats in a bath of blood-red nutrient. It would fit into the cranium of a foetus barely a month old.Still, it’s a “brain” after a fashion and it’s made from me. From a piece of my arm, to be precise. Continue reading...

Protein called osteopontin found to nanostructure of shell, making it much easier to break from the insideIt’s been a tough one to crack, but scientists say they have zoomed in, to an unprecedented degree, on the structure of shells surrounding chicken embryos, revealing how they change to allow young birds to hatch.Before being laid, bird eggs form a hard calcium-rich shell with three main layers. While it was already known that these thin from the innermost out as a chick grows in preparation for hatching – with calcium from the shell being incorporated into its skeleton in the process – quite what happens at the molecular scale has been something of a mystery. Continue reading...

Low-Earth orbiting ‘constellation’ of satellites will provide broadband to hard-to-reach areas in USElon Musk’s SpaceX has been given formal approval by US telecoms regulators to build a global broadband network using satellites.“This is the first approval of a US-licensed satellite constellation to provide broadband services using a new generation of low-Earth orbit satellite technologies,” the Federal Communications Commission said in a statement. Continue reading...

The out-of-control spaceship will re-enter the atmosphere sometime between Saturday night and Sunday evening UK timeIt will all be over in a flash. At some point this weekend, a dazzling fireball will tear across the sky as China’s out-of-control space station tumbles back to Earth at 16,500mph and burns up in the atmosphere.The Tiangong-1, or “Heavenly Palace”, has been hopelessly adrift since the Chinese space agency lost control of the prototype space lab in 2016, five years after it launched as a bold symbol of the nation’s ambitions in orbit.

Coffee shops in California may soon have to display cancer warnings. But don’t worry, because new evidence points to the drink’s health benefitsName Coffee.Appearance: Brown. Continue reading...