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...

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?”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 altogether”. 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 castration”, 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 hormone”, 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...

Titles vying for £30,000 award for books on health and medicine include Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀’s novel Stay With Me and Sigrid Rausing’s memoir MayhemA reflection on death from a palliative care consultant sits alongside a Nigerian novel tackling the heartbreak of infertility on the female-dominated Wellcome book prize shortlist.Chair of judges Edmund de Waal praised the six contenders for the £30,000 award for adding to public discussion about what it means to be human. The panel of judges, he said, were looking for “books that start debates or deepen them, that move us profoundly, surprise and delight and perplex us, that bring the worlds of medicine and health into urgent public conversation”. 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.

As the UK disentangles itself from European regulation, it will have to find its own sources of expertise

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...

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 stubborn”. 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...

Intergalactic plans by Elon Musk and others have little to do with looking up at the starsWhile no one would rank it among the greatest of Professor Stephen Hawking’s achievements, he plainly had a unique impact on Richard Branson, founder of, among other things, Virgin Galactic, a space tourism company.“I heard Stephen say in a radio interview,” Sir Richard wrote in a tribute, “that his ultimate ambition was to fly into space, but he thought no one would take him. I was on Necker Island and called him up straight away to offer him a seat. We have a strict no free tickets policy, but he was the exception that would prove the rule.” Continue reading...

Could prejudice explain why research into sperm counts fails to win funding?Are men ignoring their “biological clocks”? Or is it rather that they are not adequately served by science, which, in turn is being stymied by lack of funding?The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority’s 2014-16 report reveals, among other findings, that male infertility is the most common reason (37%) for British couples seeking IVF. Meanwhile, elsewhere, it’s revealed that male infertility is considered such an “unsexy” research area that it’s nigh-on impossible to get funding. While pooled 2017 research found that sperm counts in the US, Europe, Australia and New Zealand had halved in 40 years, and one in 20 young men had a low sperm count, the science of male infertility remains stuck at the 1950s level of counting sperm on laboratory slides. Continue reading...

Even if we assess the value of treatment in monetary terms, the investment could be worth itMary Warnock is right that consent has to be assumed from the child if genetic modification can avert a serious and often distressing condition (“We need to use gene editing wisely but also embrace its vast potential,”Comment, last week). The test is of whether the procedure is “in the child’s best interest” and, if confined to serious diseases, as Warnock alludes to, then I believe that most appropriately informed parents will agree that it is.Cost is harder to assess. Not all serious conditions are immediately fatal or life-threatening and the initial expense of testing must be balanced against that of potentially many years of expensive medical care and, quite likely, social support and special educational needs. In addition, the cost of many tests becomes relatively cheaper as they become better established and more readily available. Continue reading...

This year’s despatch from Moriond. Inconclusive LHCb data are already stimulating some strange new ideas...In the middle of the Rencontres de Moriond particle physics conference in Italy, the scientific talks stopped to allow a standing ovation dedicated to the memory and achievements of my inspirational colleague Stephen Hawking, who we heard had died earlier that day.The talks quickly resumed, which I think Stephen would have approved of. The most striking thing about the scientific content of the conference this year was that a whole day was dedicated to the weirdness in bottom particles that Tevong You and I wrote about last November. As Marco Nardecchia reviewed in his talk (PDF), bottom particles produced in the LHCb detector in proton collisions are decaying too often in certain particular ways, compared to predictions from the Standard Model of particle physics. Their decay products are coming out with the wrong angles too often compared with predictions, too. Continue reading...

Breeders will soon be able to produce animals that are immune to disease, says UK’s top animal scientistFarming is poised for a gene editing revolution that could overcome some of the world’s most serious livestock diseases, the UK’s top animal scientist has said.Prof Eleanor Riley, director of the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh, said new techniques will soon allow breeders to genetically engineer disease resilience and, in some cases, immunity into pedigree animals, saving farmers millions of pounds a year. Continue reading...

Ian Sample talks to two fellow Guardian reporters and a professor of environmental toxicology about the Salisbury spy poisoningSubscribe and review on Acast, Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Audioboom & Mixcloud. Join the discussion on Facebook and Twitter and email us at Scienceweekly@theguardian.comLast week, the city of Salisbury was thrust into the spotlight when two people were found in critical condition in a local park. Details began to emerge that the man, in his late sixties, was a former Russian spy. The woman found in a comatose state beside him, his daughter. Speculation mounted that they were poisoned, but by what? And by whom? Continue reading...

Andrea Morgale recalls the theoretical physicist’s dry humour. Peter Mussard reveals how he used his work to shock parentsRoger Penrose’s reference to the difficulty of organising events for Professor Stephen Hawking (Obituary, 15 March) evoked memories of when, as PR for Dillons Bookstore, my colleagues and I organised one of his first public lectures in London, at the Institute of Education, as part of the promotion for A Brief History of Time. After the (pre-recorded) lecture, accompanied by slides on an overhead projector, Prof Hawking agreed to take questions, which naturally entailed long pauses while he composed his replies one letter at a time. One particularly extended hiatus after a detailed question was followed by what we can now recognise as a typically witty Hawking response: “Could you repeat the question please?” I will remember the glint in his eye, demonstrating his satisfaction at wrong-footing us all. RIP Stephen Hawking, in whatever universe you now inhabit.

If we want to improve how research tackles the world’s health problems, we need to be honest about our current priorities. Ismael Ràfols and Jack Stilgoe report on new data showing the imbalance.

Police matched Eric McKenna’s DNA to the cold cases after he urinated in neighbour’s pot plantA rapist who attacked two women in the 1980s was caught more than 30 years later through DNA evidence because he urinated in a neighbour’s plant pot, Northumbria police have revealed.

Black clay deposit indicates the London suburb was once a woodland marsh by the seaIt was a time when Britain boasted a subtropical climate, dense forests and parts of the south and east of country were under a shallow warm sea. But in Ruislip, west London, you would have needed your wellingtons: 56m years ago, the area appears to have been a wooded marsh.Experts working on exploratory excavations for the high-speed railway HS2 say that samples taken from up to 33 metres below the surface in Ruislip contained a previously unknown material which suggests that in the late Paleocene epoch the region was a swampy area, in close proximity to the sea. Continue reading...

A new study claims that the Nikumaroro Island bones are those of the famous aviator. But some researchers remain skeptical

Readers pay tribute to the theoretical physicist who died this weekRoger Penrose’s splendid obituary of Prof Stephen Hawking (15 March) overlooked one very important aspect. He was a passionate campaigner for peace and protester against nuclear weapons. I only had the privilege to meet him once, at the Royal Society, where he launched in the UK the internationally renowned Doomsday Clock from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. He would not have been pleased by the current hysteria of the cold war being resurrected in such a ghastly way.

Making up for years of delay and denial will not be easy, nor will it be cheap. Climate polluters must be held accountableFifty years ago, the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) delivered a report titled Sources, Abundance, and Fate of Gaseous Atmospheric Polluters to the American Petroleum Institute (API), a trade association for the fossil fuel industry.The report, unearthed by researchers at the Center for International Environmental Law, is one of the earliest attempts by the industry to grapple with the impacts of rising CO levels, which Stanford’s researchers warned if left unabated “could bring about climatic changes” like temperature increases, melting of ice caps and sea level rise. Continue reading...

In episode two of the second season of our A Neuroscientist Explains podcast, Daniel Glaser explores the evolutionary origins of social conformitySubscribe and review on Acast, Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Audioboom & Mixcloud. Join the discussion on Facebook and Twitter and email us at scienceweekly@theguardian.com.Daniel Glaser explores the evolutionary origins of social behaviour in humans, as per his column Does Our Social Behaviour Hold Us Back?. We hear from the University of Oxford’s emeritus professor of evolutionary psychology, Robin Dunbar, about what our evolutionary past can tell us about our behaviours in the here and now, and how it all ties in to social conformity. Continue reading...

Like no other scientist, Hawking was romanticised by the public. His death allows us to see past the fairytalePoignantly, Stephen Hawking’s death at the age of 76 humanises him again. It’s not just that, as a public icon as recognisable as any A-list actor or rock star, he came to seem a permanent fixture of the cultural landscape. It was also that his physical manifestation – the immobile body in customised wheelchair, the distinctive voice that pronounced with the oracular calm of HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey – gave him the aura of a different kind of being, notoriously described by the anthropologist Hélène Mialet as “more machine than man”.He was, of course, not only mortal but precariously so. His survival for more than half a century after his diagnosis with motor neurone disease shortly after his 21st birthday seemed to give him only a few years to live is one of the most remarkable feats of determination and sheer medical marvels of our time. Equally astonishing was the life that Hawking wrought from that excruciatingly difficult circumstance. It was not so much a story of survival as a modern fairytale in which he, as the progress of his disease left him increasingly incapacitated, seemed only to grow in stature. He made seminal contributions to physics, wrote bestselling books, appeared in television shows, and commanded attention and awe at his every pronouncement. Continue reading...