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...

The latest UK entry in the race to revolutionise roads goes for a spin despite the first such vehicle death in the US last weekHow many people does it take to drive a driverless car? Five: a safety driver behind the wheel, an operator to program the route, and three engineers monitoring it in another car behind.It is, to be fair, barely even a prototype. The autonomous car unveiled in Milton Keynes last week is bleeding-edge engineering, Britain’s entry in a global race to get the first driverless car on the road. Continue reading...

Preventative measures, like poverty reduction, could be just as effective in tackling the disease as drugs and vaccinesProgrammes to tackle poverty could be just as effective in the fight against tuberculosis as medicines and vaccines, research has found.Eradicating extreme poverty would lead to an 84% reduction in TB cases by 2035, according to a report published to coincide with World Tuberculosis Day on Saturday. Continue reading...

Hannah Devlin speaks to neuroscientist Prof Sarah-Jayne Blakemore about her groundbreaking research into the adolescent brainSubscribe and review on Acast, Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Audioboom and Mixcloud. Join the discussion on Facebook and TwitterYour teenage years may have faded to a distant or hazy memory, or perhaps you’re in the thick of adolescence right now. Wherever you are on life’s timeline, I think most of us can agree that being a teenager is complicated. There are new emotions to navigate and new pressures and expectations are seemingly thrust upon us. Continue reading...

The new national security adviser appeared in videos for experiment targeting videos to different ‘psychographic’ profilesDonald Trump’s new national security adviser John Bolton collaborated with the data analytics firm Cambridge Analytica on an experiment to target YouTube videos to different “psychographic” profiles of US voters, the Guardian can reveal.Related: Who is John Bolton, Trump's new national security adviser? Continue reading...

In a world where companies have a monopoly over our eyeballs, the Facebook scandal is the tip of the icebergIn 2007, a Facebook application popped up that allowed users to take a quiz that would tell them exactly what kind of person they were: how emotionally stable they were compared with their friends, or how friendly they were. They were invited to tick a little box to share their information – including photographs, likes and political interests from their Facebook pages. The information would go to researchers David Stillwell and Michal Kosinski at the University of Cambridge to help with their research. Users were told this when they agreed to using it. No big deal.

A thirsty wolf, an albatross chick and a family of capybaras are among this week’s pick of images from the natural world Continue reading...

Plenty of people say they’re going to do it, but in the end can’t. So why do social networks have such a hold?The recently exposed Cambridge Analytica scandal, where intrepid Observer journalists revealed that more than 50 million Facebook profiles were harvested without consent for political ends, has shaken the worlds of media, politics, even international relations. Facebook itself has also taken quite a hit, with its share value dropping considerably, and many people, even the co-founder of WhatsApp, joining the #DeleteFacebook movement.Related: The Cambridge Analytica saga is a scandal of Facebook’s own making | John Harris Continue reading...

A run-in with Cathy Newman, a Twitter meltdown … maybe the would-be philosopher’s problem is being challengedWhy is Jordan Peterson so angry? For someone whose whole routine is based on telling men to “toughen up”, the clinical psychologist and author of the bestseller 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, who rose to prominence in the UK after his run-in with Cathy Newman on Channel 4, seems to unravel at the slightest provocation. After a brutal but perfectly polite and clinical takedown in the New York Review of Books by Pankaj Mishra, where the rudest thing said about Peterson is that his latest book is packaged for people who have grown up on BuzzFeed listicles, Peterson had a meltdown. He called Mishra a “sanctimonious prick”, an “arrogant racist son of a bitch”, said he would “slap him” if he was in the room, and rounded it up with a final “fuck you”. Somewhere along the tantrum, he tweeted that Mishra was a “dealer in lies and half-truths”. The responses that followed can only be summarised as a mass sideways look to camera.Related: Jordan B Peterson: the self-help guru we love to hate. But why join the herd? | Oliver Burkeman Continue reading...

The first plants to make it on to land altered mud production and where it formed rocks, changing our planet foreverHow and when the earliest plants made the first move on to land is always a hot topic for palaeobotanists. We know that early land plants likely evolved from freshwater algae, gaining a bunch of necessary adaptations in the process. Plants needed to support themselves, protect themselves from drying out and from the harmful effects of UV light, and gain water and nutrients from a finite supply on land. A study published last week by Mariusz Salamon and colleagues described fossils that push back the earliest evidence of land plants to around 445 million years ago.The new fossils come from mudstones in central Poland, in beds that have been dated using other, much more common and cosmopolitan, fossils. The plant remains are tiny, branched fragments, up to about 3mm long. Some specimens appear to have spore-cases at the top of their branches, similar to those seen in younger, better-known early land plants such as Cooksonia. The preservation of the plants means details are hard to discern, but Salamon and colleagues present a single, tantalising stoma, or air pore, on one of the fragments as a key piece of evidence. If this plant had stomata for gas exchange, it was likely to have been living in land, a good 15 million years earlier than previously known plant fragments. Continue reading...

Actions like drinking less alcohol and keeping weight down could help prevent 2,500 cases a week, figures show

Analysis undercuts argument that grammar schools are needed for the brightest pupils to reach their full academic potentialSelective schools make no difference to pupils’ GCSE results, according to a scientific analysis that undercuts the argument that grammar schools are necessary for the brightest pupils to reach their full academic potential.The study showed that the 7% difference in performance on GCSE results between selective schools (private and grammar) and comprehensives was almost entirely explained by differences in the ability and family income of the pupils. Once these factors were accounted for, the value added by selective schools dropped to less than 1%. Continue reading...

Siponimod offers hope for people with secondary progressive MS, in which disabilities get worse over timeA new drug for multiple sclerosis could slow the progression of symptoms of a form of the disease for which effective treatments have proved elusive, research suggests.It is thought about 100,000 people in the UK and 2,500,000 people worldwide have MS, a neurological condition that can affect speech, movement of limbs and vision, among other things. Continue reading...

The Ariel mission to study the composition of exoplanets is one of a number of exploratory missions at the ESAThe European Space Agency announced this week that its next science mission will be a space telescope to study the composition of planets around other stars.The Atmospheric Remote‐sensing Infrared Exoplanet Large‐survey mission (Ariel) was chosen as part of the Cosmic Vision programme to explore themes such as “What are the conditions for planet formation and the emergence of life?” Continue reading...

Using genetic engineering to eradicate livestock diseases will have hidden costs for human and animal health, warns Dr Julia WrightIt is very worrying not only to read about yet another blunder by the industrial farming sector (Pigs in the pink: gene editing is set to revolutionise the farming industry, 17 March) but also that the article didn’t attempt to counterbalance with a different viewpoint. We know that healthy, agroecological, farming systems support healthy animals and plants that are then, by and large, resilient to disease. The solution for a sick animal is not to edit genes, because this does not address the cause of the problem and only makes it worse, as the ill health will only find a different way to express itself. In the meantime we are supporting unhealthy farming systems and their associated diseases, and consuming sick pigs.This isn’t contributing to health or welfare, or saving money, but it keeps farmers lurching from one disaster to another and keeps them dependent on new technology. It is like myopically using a sticking plaster to stop a leak in a dam; another leak will spring if something’s wrong with the dam. It is also wrong to imply that this kind of technology is necessary if an African child is to obtain sufficient protein, when research shows that agroecological farming systems outperform industrial ones in such regions of the world. It is way past the time for agricultural scientists who have only been trained in a reductionist manner to teach themselves about farming systems and how to engender real health. For it is not sustainable livestock production that has a problem. The problem is this kind of unsustainable livestock production that emanates from industrialised mindsets.

Mummified remains from Chilean ghost town revealed to be baby girl with malformations so bizarre they led to speculation over alien lifeWhen the mummified remains of a six-inch humanoid were found in an abandoned mining town in Chile’s Atacama desert 15 years ago, speculation on its origins ran wild. The skeleton, which was sold to a private collector in Spain, was so bizarre it appeared in a documentary as potential evidence for alien life.Now scientists in California have extracted DNA from the mummy’s bones and pieced together the real and tragic story of the individual, known as Ata. Rather than a visitor from another world, Ata was a girl who appears to have been stillborn, or to have died immediately after birth, with devastating mutations that shaped her extraordinary body. Continue reading...

Traces of cocaine or heroin were found on 13% of people who said they did not take the drugsMore than one in 10 people who have never used class A drugs may have traces of cocaine or heroin on their fingertips, forensic scientists say.Researchers found tiny amounts of the illegal substances on 13% of volunteers who took part in a study after declaring they did not take the drugs. Continue reading...