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...
by Presented by Hannah Devlin and produced by Sandra on (#3JZRY)
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.
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 upâ€, 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 prickâ€, an “arrogant racist son of a bitchâ€, said he would “slap him†if he was in the room, and rounded it up with a final “fuck youâ€. Somewhere along the tantrum, he tweeted that Mishra was a “dealer in lies and half-truthsâ€. 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...
by Hannah Devlin Science correspondent on (#3JXG7)
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 Remoteâ€sensing Infrared Exoplanet Largeâ€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...
Courtroom showdown in San Francisco pitted liberal cities against oil corporations, and saw judge host unusual climate ‘tutorial’The science of climate change was on trial on Wednesday when leading experts testified about the threats of global warming in a US court while a fossil fuel industry lawyer fighting a high-profile lawsuit sought to deflect blame for rising sea levels.
Scientists hope it will help children with neurological and mental disorders and reveal how brains handle social situationsThe world’s first brain scanner that can be worn as people move around has been invented, by a team who hope the contraption can help children with neurological and mental disorders and reveal how the brain handles social situations.
Vast numbers of people receive high-tech interventions that actually worsen the conditionVast numbers of people with lower back pain across the world are being harmed, not helped, by the surgery, injections and dangerous opioid drugs they are given, according to a major new report.More than 540 million people suffer low back pain, the commonest cause of disability in the world. But their condition is often being made worse by costly high-tech interventions and bed rest in what could amount to medical negligence on a global scale. Continue reading...
by Lisa O'Carroll Brexit correspondent on (#3JR35)
Committee calls on government to commit to next round of EU funding for science and clarify immigration policyBritain cannot take for granted that it will retain its world-leading position in science and innovation after Brexit, a committee of MPs has warned.The House of Commons science and technology select committee is concerned that the UK has not yet committed itself to the next round of EU funding which will start accepting bids for research finance in the next few weeks. Continue reading...
It may not feel like spring has arrived, but the days are getting longer and the sun has crossed the celestial equatorWith patches of snow still covering the ground in parts of Britain, it may not seem like the first day of spring. But as of 4.15am Tuesday morning, winter was officially over for another year.The spring, or vernal, equinox marks the point in space and time when the sun moves across the celestial equator, an imaginary circle projected into the sky above the real equator.
A new £48m chemical weapons defence centre is welcome, but the scientists keeping us safe have faced years of funding cutsThe city of Salisbury has been thrust into the international spotlight after the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia.The area is also home to one of the UK’s most important government defence agencies – the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl). The facility is over 100 years old and houses more than 3,000 scientists, engineers and technology specialists. Continue reading...
Under Trump, US science policy is on autopilot and largely directionless. Here is how to tackle this lack of leadershipThe first time the word “science†appeared in a tweet by Donald Trump was on 13 September 2012, long before he became US president, when he wrote: “Wake Up America! See article: ‘Israeli Science: Obama Birth Certificate is a Fake’.†Since becoming president, Trump has not mentioned the words “science†or “technology†in his tweets, reflecting not so much disdain for these issues but an abject lack of interest.After the 2016 election, the benign neglect of science policy was not an option anticipated by many, including Jack Stilgoe and me on this blog (though Robert Cook-Deegan did). It may not be a bad thing for the scientific community, but it does leave policy gaps that need to be filled. Continue reading...
Scientists in the US used DNA-editing software to splice in genes from mint and basil plantsScientists in the US have created a more sustainable pint after discovering a way of getting the distinct hoppy taste into craft beer without the need for water-intensive hops.
My mind was blown away when learning about Kamilaroi and Boorong astronomyI like to talk about astronomy a lot. No, scratch that, I love to talk about astronomy. All. The. Time. Thank goodness I do just that for a living. I’ve worked at Sydney Observatory for the past two years as an astronomy educator, which is essentially my glorified term for a tour guide. My favourite part about being an astronomy educator is answering questions, although there is one question that I often find difficult to answer, “What is your favourite part about space?â€When you have a passion for such a huge subject with so many great subtopics it really is hard to pick just one. If you go outside on a clear night, the air whistling with a cool evening breeze, no matter whether you’re in the city or out in country, you can look up and see some amazing things. The stars are a gorgeous sight just by themselves, but for an astronomer like me they are just the beginning of an endless cosmos. Continue reading...
The conservation sector requires postgrads with passion, curiosity and a commitment to scienceGiving a new tamarin monkey a health check or investigating why a gemsbok died are some of the more hands-on activities on the MSc in wild animal health at the Institute of Zoology, Zoological Society of London (ZSL). Wild animal care and conservation are fiercely competitive areas and a postgraduate course combined with volunteering in the field will boost your career chances no end, say course leaders.As awareness of the fragility of ecosystems grows, universities around the country are seeing a rise in interest in conservation-focused postgraduate degrees. Continue reading...
Scientists say the findings could help devise new approaches to losing weight, with a greater focus on taste perceptionObesity dulls the sense of taste, according to research that offers new insights into why some people enter a persistent cycle of weight gain.Researchers found that within eight weeks of becoming obese, mice lost 25% of their taste buds. The findings suggest that weight gain not only changes appetite but may also fundamentally alter the way taste is perceived. Continue reading...
Physicist’s remains to be interred in thanksgiving service near memorials to other famous scientistsStephen Hawking’s ashes will be interred at Westminster Abbey
By identifying which genes are key to the bugs’ survival, scientists hope to find ways to better control themThe secrets of the cockroach’s ability to thrive in some of the most disgusting places on Earth have been discovered in its DNA.The American cockroach spread around the world after it was introduced to the US from Africa in the early 16th century. Its population exploded as the insects made themselves at home in the dark and moist corners of houses, restaurants and offices, where toilets and kitchens became their favourite haunts.
British institutions face questions over donations from Sackler familyThe National Portrait Gallery is facing scrutiny over a proposed £1m donation from the Sackler family following allegations that the American dynasty’s fortune is tainted by the US opioid crisis.The gallery is one of a number of British cultural and academic institutions in line for substantial donations from members of the Sackler family, which is locked in a growing controversy over its connection to one of the worst drug crises in US history. Continue reading...
Author and the Centre for Inquiry planning free ebook versions of his books in Arabic, Urdu, Farsi and Indonesian following a ‘stirring towards atheism’ in some Islamic countriesRichard Dawkins is responding to what he called the “stirring towards atheism†in some Islamic countries with a programme to make free downloads of his books available in Arabic, Urdu, Farsi and Indonesian.The scientist and atheist said he was “greatly encouraged†to learn that the unofficial Arabic pdf of the book had been downloaded 13m times. Dawkins writes in The God Delusion about his wish that the “open-minded people†who read it will “break free of the vice of religion altogetherâ€. It has sold 3.3m copies worldwide since it was published in 2006 – far fewer than the number of Arabic copies that Dawkins believes to have been downloaded illegally. Continue reading...
Canadian-American wins ‘maths Nobel’ for the Langlands program, which predicts unexpected connections between different fieldsSome mathematicians are immortalised by a theorem. Others by a conjecture.But of the great mathematicians only Robert P Langlands is immortalised by a program. Continue reading...
There are now twice as many people as 50 years ago. But, as EO Wilson has argued, they can all survive – in citiesDiscussing cities is like talking about the knots in a net: they’re crucial, but they’re only one part of the larger story of the net and what it’s supposed to do. It makes little sense to talk about knots in isolation when it’s the net that matters.
The role of women in conflict is often lost to the archaeological record – but Breffu’s story illustrates how sometimes we catch a glimpse of themEarly one November morning in 1733 on St Jan, a small island in the Danish West Indies, two slaves waited outside a small stone house belonging to a family of plantation owners, the Krøyers. The slaves, Breffu and Christian, were listening for the sound of a cannon to be fired by their compatriots at the island’s fort, signalling the defeat of the fort’s soldiers and the beginning of a slave rebellion. The cannon fired and Breffu entered the house, killing the entire Krøyer family.In May the following year, as the slave rebellion was collapsing, St Jan’s governor, Phillip Gardelin, noted in his correspondence that he had learned with surprise that “one of the leaders of the rebellion, Baeffu [sic], whom none of us knew, and whom we assumed to be a man having murdered my son Pieter Krøyer and his Wife, is a woman!†Continue reading...
The ‘risk-taking’ male hormone is blamed for everything from sexual violence to the financial crisis, but some researchers are starting to question the supposed linksCharles Ryan has a clinic in San Francisco at which he regularly relieves men of their testosterone. This “chemical castrationâ€, as it is sometimes known, is not a punishment, but a common treatment for prostate cancer. Testosterone doesn’t cause the disease (currently the third most deadly cancer in the UK), but it fuels it, so oncologists use drugs to reduce the amount produced by the testicles.Ryan gets to know his patients well over the years, listening to their concerns and observing changes in them as their testosterone levels fall. Because it involves the so-called “male hormoneâ€, the therapy poses existential challenges to many of those he treats. They know that every day, millions of people – from bodybuilders and cheating athletes to menopausal women – enhance their natural levels of testosterone with the aim of boosting their libido, muscle mass, confidence and energy. So what happens when production is suppressed? Might they lose their sex drive? Their strength? Their will to win? Continue reading...
People able to identify others’ feelings from changes in facial blood flow alone up to 75% of the time, study saysSubtle shifts in blood flow colour around the face provide key insights into a person’s emotions that fellow humans are able to interpret, a study suggests. Continue reading...
Unless, that is, you’re directly next to an infected person, or a steward is contagiousFlyers who live in fear of catching bugs on every flight, take heart: the risk of picking up respiratory infections while cruising at 35,000 feet may be slimmer than you think.
Astronomers studying the interstellar asteroid ’Oumuamua find that it probably formed around a binary starThe mysterious, cigar-shaped object now called ’Oumuamua was found crossing the solar system last October by robotic telescopes on Hawaii. The trajectory showed it had come from another star system and was already on its way back into interstellar space. This sparked a race against time. Astronomers had just a week before it faded from view.Identifying its home star system seemed like a hopeless task. Our galaxy contains hundreds of billions of stars. Now, however, a new study narrows things down a bit. It concludes that ’Oumuamua, meaning “scout†in Hawaiian, probably came from a binary star. Continue reading...
Drugs targeting similar brain networks as LSD could help with a variety of mental disordersApart from the wide-eyed bike ride home from the lab, his neighbour turning into a witch, the threatening behaviour of his furniture and the futile battle to save his ego from collapse, Dr Albert Hofmann appeared to enjoy his first trip on LSD.
Treatment for common cause of blindness could be available within five years, scientists sayA treatment for the commonest cause of blindness could be available within five years, scientists believe, after revealing the first two patients given a revolutionary stem cell therapy have regained enough vision to be able to read.
The phenomenon of ‘Steve’ - a glowing arc seen in Alberta, Canada by amateur scientists – has now been named by NasaA group of citizen scientists in Alberta, Canada, weren’t sure what the glowing purple (sometimes green) arc in the night sky they had been photographing was. Nor were the scientists Elizabeth MacDonald, a space physicist at Nasa, and Eric Donovan, an associate professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Calgary; the group – known as the Alberta Aurora Chasers, who photograph the aurora borealis, or northern lights – showed them their pictures in a pub. It wasn’t, Donovan told them, a proton aurora (the northern lights are normally a result of electrons colliding with gases in the Earth’s atmosphere), as they had thought. “They pulled up this beautiful photograph of this thing,†Donovan told the New York Times last year. “And I’m like, ‘I don’t know what that is, but it’s not the proton aurora.’†It needed a name: “Steve†sounded as good as any. [It was inspired by a scene in the 2006 animation Over the Hedge, in which the animal characters are confronted with a mysterious row of shrubs.] Continue reading...
It’s not just antibiotics that affect our microbes – a quarter of drugs designed to act on human cells do so tooA wide range of drugs from cancer therapies to antipsychotics affect the growth of microbes that are found in our gut, researchers say, highlighting that it is not only antibiotics that can have an impact on our internal flora.These microbes, whose genes taken together are known as the gut microbiome, play an important role in our health, including for our immune system and our digestion, and have been linked to a host of diseases such as autoimmune conditions, obesity and mood disorders.
Researchers target further breakthroughs after using space imaging to estimate number of bonded labourers in south Asia’s ‘brick belt’It has been used to identify suspected weapons sites, monitor troop movements, and chronicle war damage and allegations of genocide. Now, however, satellite imagery is being used to tackle one of the developing world’s most persistent problems – the scourge of modern slavery.An innovative programme involving space imaging and anti-slavery experts at the University of Nottingham has established the prevalence of sites in industries associated with slavery, including Asian brick kilns and fishing camps, in an approach they suggest may be applicable to other forms of compelled labour. Continue reading...
Half the world lives in urban areas, yet environmental concerns about megacities often focus on developing economies. But consumption is as important as populationIt is just 50 years since the publication of Paul Ehrlich’s book The Population Bomb galvanised the global discussion on overpopulation. Published in 1968, his million-selling Malthusian polemic suggested that over-breeding poor countries were killing the planet. And it began in a megacity: India’s capital, Delhi.Related: The 100 million city: is 21st century urbanisation out of control? Continue reading...
by Presented by Daniel Glaser and produced by Max San on (#3JHKJ)
Daniel Glaser apprehensively revisits an article of his that saw some fallout due to a study he cited. But that study was not the only one involved in what is now being called a crisis for psychology and further afieldSubscribe 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...
In occultation events on 22 March in Europe, 75 Tauri – and then Aldebaran – in the Hyades cluster will seem to disappear from viewThe waxing crescent moon passes through the rich naked-eye star cluster known as the Hyades during the evening of 22 March. Continue reading...
Science journalist Roger Highfield remembers Stephen Hawking’s great determination – a steely defiance of the odds that took him to infinity and beyondYes, he was the world’s best-known scientist, the galaxy’s most unlikely celebrity, a brilliant mind trapped in a failing body, a global inspiration to disabled people, and so much more.But there was also a glint of steel in Stephen Hawking. All the accounts that try to capture the spirit of Hawking’s work tend to gloss over a grittier ingredient that was harder to convey: a relentless drive and unquenchable zest for life that has allowed him to achieve so much despite his huge physical challenges. As his daughter Lucy would often say, he was “enormously stubbornâ€. Continue reading...
We live in a world where ‘yes’ is the default. But we need to tame our inner ‘chimp’ and embrace the power of ‘no’My old friend Mick calls me with an invitation to his 50th birthday party. It sounds brilliant. Mick has rented a house for a week. Lots of people I know will be there. I want to go. I really, really want to go.“So is that a yes?†Continue reading...