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...

I’m standing up with protesters to draw attention to this crisis – I can’t watch while fellow citizens die because of our filthy airFor more than 50 years I have loved living in London: but I am now more and more worried about the pollution. I’m worried about the pollution in the water, the pollution in the ground, and the pollution in the air from the busy arterial roads and airports. It’s affecting me and it will affect the crops on my allotment. I have a bike, but in order to go out on a bike now I have to wear a mask which, with my asthma, makes it difficult. When I was arrested last week for spraying “air pollution is criminal” on City Hall, the mayor of London’s office, I was singing “maybe it’s because I’m a Londoner” – I don’t believe Londoners should have to suffer these conditions any longer.I am taking visible action, and risking time in prison, to pressure our politicians into acting now Continue reading...

Ex-Harrow head Barnaby Lenon says 100 hours over fortnight ideal for GCSE and A-levelsAn expert recommendation that GCSE and A-level students should study for seven hours a day throughout the Easter holidays has been greeted with a variety of scepticism, concern and mild horror by psychologists, teachers and pupils.Barnaby Lenon, a former headteacher of Harrow, the prestigious independent boarding school that educated the likes of Winston Churchill, Benedict Cumberbatch, the singer James Blunt and the rugby player Billy Vunipola, suggests in a much discussed list of revision tips, a total of 100 hours study over the fortnight long holiday.

Scientists are tasked with helping us understand our world. When the science is right, they help move humanity forward. But what about when science is wrong?Subscribe and review on Acast, Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Audioboom and Mixcloud. Join the discussion on Facebook and TwitterOver the years, flawed scientific studies have been called out across the entire breadth of research. Dubious claims in the name of science have led to scores of papers being retracted, while others turn out to be unreplicable. But what lies at the heart of this worrying trend? And what can scientists do to solve the problem? Continue reading...

An art installation designed to tap into common psychological needs is getting people talkingIn Sydney’s Martin Place, a vending machine selling various abstract concepts is running low on Imagination but has plenty of Structure.

Decision-makers must acknowledge the pivotal role that water, sanitation and hygiene play in preventing infection, writes WaterAid’s Margaret Batty. Meanwhile Matt Ball of the The Good Food Institute says moving to plant-based and clean meat is the best thing we can do to avoid pandemics of antibiotic-resistant superbugsWith drug-resistant infections now causing the deaths of half a million people a year, access to clean water and decent sanitation has never been more vital in the race to prevent a global antimicrobial resistance catastrophe. As Dame Sally Davies poignantly highlighted in your report (Experts issue new warning on overuse of antibiotics, 27 March), “the importance of clean water, sanitation and vaccination must not be forgotten to avoid infections occurring in the first place”. This point, alongside the critical role of hygiene, is absolutely key.This is already a global health emergency, with 844 million people lacking access to clean water and 2.3 billion without safe, private toilets. In developing nations almost 40% of healthcare facilities do not have a water supply, 19% do not provide adequate sanitation and 35% do not have soap and water to sustain good hygiene practices. Without these basics in place, infection prevention and control in healthcare settings becomes almost impossible. So it is no surprise that hospital-acquired infections are the third major driver of antimicrobial resistance globally. Continue reading...

Researchers plan to save lives by identifying the sound of malaria-carrying speciesArtificial intelligence researchers have developed a mosquito early warning system that raises the alarm when the insects are near by detecting the whine of their wingbeats.The system uses an app that can run on a £20 mobile phone to analyse sounds in the environment and issue a warning if it hears the telltale buzz as a mosquito swoops past.

New model explains how pressure changes in joint fluid air bubbles create the noiseThe sound of popping knuckles has long been a source of bafflement for scientists. Now researchers say they might have cracked its origins.While previous research has shown that not all joints can make the sound, and that those that do can only be cracked once every 20 minutes or so, quite what is behind the auditory pop has been a topic of hot debate.

Using advances in DNA sequencing, the geneticist shows the effects of migrations and the mongrel nature of humanity in this fascinating study“Arrival of Beaker folk changed Britain for ever, ancient DNA study shows”, ran a Guardian headline in February, concerning the people whose ancestry lay in central Europe and further east to the steppes. Now comes the author of that study, Harvard geneticist David Reich, with his book that gives us, at last, the first draft of a true history of the last 5,000 years.Genetics first started to complement the work of archaeologists and linguists in the 1990s in the work of Reich’s mentor, the Italian-born population geneticist Luca Cavalli-Sforza. But genetics was the poor relation at the time because its data was so thin. Not any more. The genome is a palimpsest that retains strong traces of the past, so current populations can reveal something of previous population movements. What has changed everything has been the ability, beginning as recently as 2010, to sequence DNA directly from ancient human remains, sometimes as old as 40,000 years. Continue reading...

As the nuclear option looks less and less sensible, it becomes harder to explain Whitehall’s enthusiasm. Might it be to do with the military?Against a worldwide background of declining fortunes for nuclear power, UK policy enthusiasm continues to intensify. Already pursuing one of the most ambitious nuclear new-build agendas in the world, Britain is seeking to buck 50 years of experience to develop an entirely new and untested design of small modular reactors (SMRs). In 2016, then energy and climate secretary, Amber Rudd, summed up the government’s position: “Investing in nuclear is what this government is all about for the next 20 years.”Despite unique levels of long-term policy support, this nuclear new-build programme is severely delayed, with no chance of operations beginning as intended “significantly before 2025”, Costs have mushroomed, with even government figures showing renewables like offshore wind to already be far more affordable. With renewable costs still plummeting, global investments in these alternatives are now already greater than for all conventional generating technologies put together. With worldwide momentum so clear, the scale of UK nuclear ambitions are an international anomaly. Continue reading...

A cheap, rapid test to tell if an infection is caused by a virus or bacteria would be a huge prize for the developing worldWe cannot hope to address antibiotic resistance in developing countries in the same way that we approach this global health crisis in the developed world. Strict policy interventions to reduce use of antibiotics, as employed in the UK, cannot be upheld to the same extent in countries where the burden of disease is much higher, antibiotics are accessible without prescription, and access to healthcare is much reduced.Related: Calls to rein in antibiotic use after study shows 65% increase worldwide Continue reading...

Rare mutation associated with breathing muscles is key to sudden infant death syndrome, says study in LancetScientists have uncovered a new and potentially important genetic mutation implicated in cot deaths, which they say could take research for ways to prevent such tragedies in a new direction.The rare genetic mutation is associated with the breathing muscles. “Previously the whole focus of trying to understand it was either the heart or the brain cells controlling breathing,” said Professor Michael Hanna of the MRC Centre for Neuromuscular Diseases at University College London, one of the authors of a new paper in the Lancet medical journal. Continue reading...

Public Health England say case is first global report of strand resilient to main antibiotic careA man in the UK has contracted a super-strength strand of gonorrhoea believed to be the first case globally to resist the main antibiotic treatment.

Scientists find 29 prints on island in British Columbia, supporting theory that early Americans arrived from AsiaWhether it was a family day out at the beach, complete with prehistoric equivalent of a bucket and spade, we’ll never know, but one thing is for sure: about 13,000 years ago a little band of humans were pottering about on a shore in western Canada.Researchers have unearthed 29 footprints in a layer of sediment on the shoreline of Calvert Island in British Columbia. Between 11,000 and 14,000 years ago, as the world was coming towards the end of the last ice age, the sea level there was 2m to 3m lower than today. Continue reading...

Scientists surprised to find NGC 1052-DF2 devoid of mysterious substance, but say its absence strengthens case for its existenceA distant galaxy that appears completely devoid of dark matter has baffled astronomers and deepened the mystery of the universe’s most elusive substance.The absence of dark matter from a small patch of sky might appear to be a non-problem, given that astronomers have never directly observed dark matter anywhere. However, most current theories of the universe suggest that everywhere that ordinary matter is found, dark matter ought to be lurking too, making the newly observed galaxy an odd exception. Continue reading...

New drug tested on mice could be used to treat human infections that no longer respond to routine antibiotics, say scientistsThe discovery of a new class of antibiotics that can wipe out persistent infections of the hospital superbug MRSA has raised fresh hopes for progress in the fight against antimicrobial resistance.Health officials around the world have seen a steady rise in bacterial infections that no longer respond to routine antibiotics. With resistance emerging faster than new drugs can be developed, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has called for urgent action to combat the problem.

DIY genetics testing is a growth industry. But I probably didn’t need it to tell me I’ll never be an elite athlete. And then there are the security implications …I have made a terrible mistake. I have sold all my DNA on the internet. Actually, it’s worse than that: I recently paid a not-insignificant sum to a technology company that could decide to sell my DNA on the internet.Why did I do this? Well, embarrassing as it is to admit, I did it because all my friends did. Direct-to-consumer genetic testing is all the rage these days and many a millennial gathering seems to include a discussion about your 23andMe or Ancestry.com test results – at least in the US, anyway, where the technology is most popular. The DIY DNA industry entered the mainstream last year and is projected to grow rapidly. Industry estimates suggest that roughly 1 in 25 adult Americans now have access to their genetic data. Continue reading...

Renowned psychoanalyst and philosopher alleged to have become collaborator in 1970sThe renowned Bulgarian psychoanalyst and philosopher Julia Kristeva worked as an agent and collaborator with the Balkan country’s secret services during the communist era, a state commission has claimed.Kristeva, 76, is the author of more than 30 books and worked alongside leading French intellectuals such as Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan and Roland Barthes. Continue reading...

81 settlements have been found in an area once thought to have been near-uninhabited, and research suggests there were hundreds moreOnce people thought the Amazon was a near-uninhabited rainforest before the Europeans turned up, but researchers say they have found new evidence that it was in fact a hive of human activity and home to millions of people.A new study has revealed details of 81 sites in the previously uncharted territory of the Amazon’s upper Tapajós Basin, with settlements ranging from small villages just 30m wide to a large site covering 19 hectares. Continue reading...

Footage of an elephant blowing ash has baffled wildlife experts, who say they've never seen behaviour like it before. The video released by the Wildlife Conservation Society may be an example of zoopharmacognosy, animal self-medication

Our media cycle of outrage is polarising people on opposite sides of the political spectrum. Research can offer insights and channels for changeWe live in an increasingly polarised society. With each emerging debate – immigration, tax law, sexual misconduct, gun control – it seems we are plunged ever deeper in a cycle of outrage, distrust and recrimination. Indeed, often the mere possibility that someone is a member of the “other side” is enough to garner vitriol and slander, regardless of their intentions.This behavior, known as “moral tribalism”, is hardly surprising when considered through the lens of social science. Indeed, research conducted in the last few years has shed new light on just how deeply such tribal tendencies may be ingrained in the human mind. Continue reading...

How argonaut cephalopods evolved their own architecture to return to the open oceanCephalopod molluscs, the group of animals that includes octopuses, nautiluses, bobtail squid and cuttlefish amongst its living members, is a small but highly diverse group of animals. The group boasts ocean giants, colour and shape changing octopuses, luminous ink squirters, transparent deep sea squid, aquarium escape artists, animals that mimic other animals, giant eyed vampire squid and they’ve even conquered the air in species that fly, yes fly (Muramatsu et al. 2013).In short, it’s really hard to stand out at a cephalopod party without doing something really spectacular and yet there’s one group of octopods, the argonauts, which have a remarkable evolution on a par with the evolution of flight in vertebrates or the many groups like whales and dolphins which evolved from terrestrial ancestors to return to the ocean. Continue reading...

Animal in India may have been trying to ingest wood charcoal and blowing away the ashFootage of an Asian elephant “smoking” in a forest in southern India has baffled wildlife experts, who say the behaviour has never before been observed.Vinay Kumar, a scientist with the Wildlife Conservation Society’s (WCS) India programme, captured the puffing pachyderm while visiting camera traps in the Nagarahole national park in Karnataka state. Continue reading...

Archaeologists uncover abandoned villages, prehistoric tools and seven tonnes of pottery in CambridgeshireIt’s taken more than 700 years, but the medieval villagers of Houghton in Cambridgeshire have had the last laugh: the foundations of their houses and workshops have been exposed again, as roadworks carve up the landscape they were forced to abandon when their woodlands were walled off into a royal hunting forest.Their lost village has been rediscovered in an epic excavation employing more than 200 archaeologists, working across scores of sites on a 21-mile stretch of flat Cambridgeshire countryside, the route of the upgraded A14 and the Huntingdon bypass. Continue reading...

Company claims that Milkybar Wowsomes contain 30% less sugar than regular MilkybarsNestlé is claiming a world first by “restructuring” the sugar it uses in its confectionery to produce a white chocolate bar with 30% less sugar than its usual Milkybar brand.Nestlé is the world’s leading producer of packaged foods, but the new “structured sugar” is being produced in its factory in Dalston in Cumbria, a result of UK government pressure on food companies to cut the sugar to help curb childhood obesity. Chocolate and confectionery companies are thought to have an uphill task, because sugar is intrinsic to their products. Continue reading...

Most of China’s broken eight-tonne space station will burn up, though there is a chance some parts will survive. Should you worry about getting hit?China’s prototype space station, Tiangong-1 or “heavenly place”, is falling to Earth and could re-enter the atmosphere as soon as this week.

• Drug resistant infections kill half a million people a year• Increase in antibiotic use is largely in developing worldA dramatic rise in global antibiotic consumption has led public health experts to call for fresh strategies to rein in excessive use of the drugs, and for major investments to provide clean water, sanitation and vaccines in countries where infectious diseases are rife.The unrestrained use of antibiotics is the main driver for the rise in drug-resistant infections which now kill more than half a million people a year worldwide, including 50,000 in Europe and the US combined. Left unchecked, the spread of drug resistance could claim millions of lives a year by 2050, according to a 2014 report for David Cameron, the former prime minister. Continue reading...

The solutions to today’s puzzlesIn my puzzle blog earlier today I set the following three questions:1) Which of the face up cards in the bottom row should replace the face down card in the top row to complete the pattern? Continue reading...

Wind, solar, and storage could meet 90–100% of America’s electricity needs

Puzzles to play your cards rightUPDATE: To see the solutions click here.Hello guzzlers,Today’s three problems require you to spot three different patterns in a set of playing cards. Continue reading...

A plethora of conditions, from obesity to anxiety, appear to be linked to the microbes inside us. Nicola Davis explains why the microbiome is such a hot topic of researchWhat are microbiomes?Both inside and out, our bodies harbour a huge array of micro-organisms. While bacteria are the biggest players, we also host single-celled organisms known as archaea, as well as fungi, viruses and other microbes – including viruses that attack bacteria. Together these are dubbed the human microbiota. Your body’s microbiome is all the genes your microbiota contains, however colloquially the two terms are often used interchangeably. Continue reading...

The second full moon of the month can aid starwatchers to identify the faint constellation of VirgoThe month ends this week with a blue moon. Last week was the equinox, when day and night are of equal length. It took place on 20 March. From now on in the northern hemisphere, spring has begun and the days will get progressively longer. In the southern hemisphere, the seasons are reversed. This equinox marked the beginning of autumn and progressively shorter days. On 31 March, the Moon is full. It rises as the Sun sets and takes the whole night to cross the sky, setting as the new dawn begins. This is the second full moon of the month, the first happened on 2 March. The second full moon of a calendar month is commonly referred to as a blue moon, although it is highly debated whether this is the correct usage of the term. The Moon sits squarely in the body of Virgo at 21:00 GMT on 31 March, allowing this faint constellation to be traced out around it. Continue reading...

The neuroscientist, who has written a book on the teenage brain, on the turmoil of adolescence and whether mindfulness can helpSarah-Jayne Blakemore, professor in cognitive neuroscience at University College London, is the author of a groundbreaking new book, Inventing Ourselves: The Secret Life of the Teenage Brain, in which she explains the development of the brain during the precarious, enriching and crucial years of adolescence.In a sense, your book is a defence of adolescents. Why, as a society, do we demonise our teenagers?

Grand health claims have been made about chocolate, but while it gives us pleasure, can it really be good for us?Chocolate has been touted as a treatment for agitation, anaemia, angina and asthma. It has been said to awaken appetite and act as an aphrodisiac. You may have noticed we’re still on the letter A.More accurately, and to avoid adding to considerable existing confusion, it is the seeds of the Theobroma cacao tree that have, over hundreds of years, been linked to cures and therapies for more than 100 diseases and conditions. Their status as a cure-all dates back over 2,000 years, having spread from the Olmecs, Maya and Aztecs, via the Spanish conquistadors, into Europe from the 16th century. Continue reading...

Books by Suzanne O’Sullivan and Helen Thomson offer fascinating insights into the ‘maverick brain’ and rare mental conditionsWhen I was a boy I had a recurring dream that Lilliputian figures were scurrying under my bed. I can’t recall if they bound my hands and feet like Gulliver, but I certainly found their activities fascinating and made no effort to resist, even when, on occasion, they succeeded in moving my bed slightly to the left or right.Every now and then, however, they would push the bed a little too close to the window. That I did not like, because it put me in range of the clown waiting on the balcony (I have always been terrified by clowns). Now, frozen by fear, I really was immobilised and it was only by screaming that I could snap myself awake and escape their night-time peregrinations. Continue reading...