Nicola Davis asks: can we increase the window of brain plasticity in the later stages of life? And what do we know about the implications of doing so?Subscribe and review on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Audioboom, Mixcloud and Acast, and join the discussion on Facebook and TwitterIn early development, the brain is hard at work making new connections between neurons, based on the new experiences we’re having. But the science around brain plasticity – ie the mind’s ability to learn, change and reorganise itself – is advancing. Research looking at people with severe neurological or physical damage tells us a lot about the possibility of enhancing the ability for our brain to rewire.

Sulston won the Nobel prize for medicine in 2002 for his work on genome sequencingThe pioneering geneticist Sir John Sulston has died, it has been confirmed.The scientist led the UK side of the landmark Human Genome Project and founded and directed the Wellcome Sanger Institute near Cambridge, one of the country’s leading biomedical institutions. Continue reading...

Evidence is growing that the ‘sunshine vitamin’ helps protect against a wide range of conditions including cancersVitamin D is having quite a moment. In the past few months, evidence has been growing that the “sunshine vitamin” not only has an important role in bone and muscle health, but might also help prevent a range of cancers, reduce the chance of developing rheumatoid arthritis, protect against multiple sclerosis and cut the risk of colds and flu.But is vitamin D truly a cure-all? And if the benefits are real, should we all be taking vitamin D supplements or even fortifying our foods? Continue reading...

The ingredients for the lethal substances apparently involved in the poisoning of Sergei Skripal are easy to obtain and are usually absorbed quickly through the skin or inhalationAfter days of analysis, police investigators announced on Wednesday that they believe a nerve agent was used to poison former Russian agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter on Sunday, raising questions of how it was created and how the attack was carried out.Related: Suspected Skripal poisoning: who might have ordered it and why? Continue reading...

After the mass die-off of starfish, it’s easy to despair. But conservation success stories show what ordinary people can doI recently helped to organise an environmental meeting and found myself checking our video link by calling home. Beamed on to the screen was my four-year-old son, hair sticking out and school jumper on back to front. As we checked the sound, I asked him what message he would like to send. Without hesitation he said: “Why do people have to throw rubbish in the sea and hurt marine creatures?” His worried little face, now filling the 2m-wide screen, stayed with me throughout the meeting (along with the hope that he’d turned his jumper round before going to school).His message was with me again as I watched distressing footage of thousands of dead starfish and other creatures washed up on the beaches of Kent and the east coast. Conservationists believe last week’s freezing weather was behind the mass die-off. Continue reading...

We should listen to experts such as Cancer Research, but I’m the expert on my heart – and its connection with my healthWhat starts with an “o”, has an “s” in the middle, and ends with death? If you like crosswords and puzzles, you’ll love the posters that have been springing up around the country in the last few days. They’re like the billboards in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. But the culprit in this murder mystery is you.Related: Millennials set to be the fattest generation of Britons, research shows Continue reading...

Defunct module expected to scatter debris over thousands of kilometres in fiery descentIt launched as a potent symbol of Chinese ambitions in space, but in the coming weeks the nation’s first orbital outpost will come crashing down to Earth in a fireball that could scatter debris over thousands of kilometres.The Chinese space agency lost control of its Tiangong-1, or Heavenly Palace, spacecraft in 2016, five years after it blasted into orbit to make China only the third nation to operate a space station after the US and Russia. Continue reading...

Project hopes to get more than 250,000 drone images tagged to record type and extent of plastic pollutionFood wrappers, fishing nets, bottles, straws and carrier bags are among the top 10 plastic items littering British beaches, according to new research.Related: Is there life after plastic? The new inventions promising a cleaner world Continue reading...

Carbon-free fusion power could be ‘on the grid in 15 years’The dream of nuclear fusion is on the brink of being realised, according to a major new US initiative that says it will put fusion power on the grid within 15 years.The project, a collaboration between scientists at MIT and a private company, will take a radically different approach to other efforts to transform fusion from an expensive science experiment into a viable commercial energy source. The team intend to use a new class of high-temperature superconductors they predict will allow them to create the world’s first fusion reactor that produces more energy than needs to be put in to get the fusion reaction going. Continue reading...

Animal studies suggest the anti-allergy drugs may affect the production of male sexual hormonesCommon allergy drugs have been linked to fertility problems in men.Antihistamines are often used to relieve symptoms of allergies such as hay fever, hives, conjunctivitis and reactions to insect bites or stings and are available either over-the-counter or on prescription. Continue reading...

Electric thruster sucks in the scarce air molecules at the top of the Earth’s atmosphere, using them as propellant to fight dragThe European Space Agency (ESA) has test-fired an engine that opens the path for a novel class of low-flying Earth-orbiting space missions. Called an air-breathing electric thruster, it is designed to work at the top of the Earth’s atmosphere. It sucks in the scarce air molecules and uses them as propellant. Low-flying satellites, those in orbits of about 200-300km altitude, are gradually pulled out of orbit by the drag of the residual atmosphere.For example, ESA’s GOCE mission operated in this region of space. It flew for five years thanks to an electric thruster that used xenon fuel to counteract the atmospheric drag. When the 40kg of xenon ran out, however, the spacecraft fell to Earth and burned up in the atmosphere. Continue reading...

‘When we assessed particular chains, it was really clear that there was no systematic change,’ researcher saysFast food sold in Australia is just as unhealthy as it ever was, despite the introduction of mandatory menu labelling, according to new analysis.A study by Cancer Council New South Wales and the George Institute for Global Health found the kilojoule content of foods sold at the top five food chains – Hungry Jack’s, KFC, McDonald’s, Oporto and Red Rooster – has not changed since 2009. Continue reading...

Martin Yuille, Steven Rose, Jonathan Bard, John Wilson and Iain Climie on the controversy over race and intelligenceGavin Evans’s criticisms of attempts to demonstrate a robust association between surrogate measures of ill-defined concepts (“race” and “intelligence”) are to the point (The unwelcome return of ‘race science’, The long read, 2 March). However, the dogma underpinning these attempts – genetic determinism – is left unchallenged. This determinism asserts that sequences of nucleotides comprising our chromosomes specify the characteristics – in their entirety – of the individual. It is a sad fact that the confusing phrase the “selfish gene” originated from a former professor for public understanding of science at the University of Oxford.Today, this reductionist approach to biology – and therefore to human biology – has been displaced by a more profound interpretation of the facts. “Systems biology” (see Denis Noble’s proposals on “biological relativity” in his new book Dance to the Tune of Life) sees an organism as comprising levels of relatively autonomous organisation each interacting with their total environment. Critical features of each of these levels cannot be predicted from the sequences of nucleotides. Genetic determinism is just plain wrong. Continue reading...

Impurities found in nerve agent may be key to identifying where it was made – if experts can locate a pure sampleForensic experts will be looking for traces of nerve agent on the clothes of Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, and in the area where the two were attacked, in an effort to track down where the deadly substance was made, researchers say.Related: Russian spy attack: police officer left ill named as DS Nick Bailey Continue reading...

Scientist who shared the 1990 Nobel prize in physics for establishing that protons and neutrons are made up of quarksRichard Taylor, who has died aged 88, won a share of the Nobel prize in physics for establishing that protons and neutrons are made up of quarks. His discovery, in the late 1960s with Jerome Friedman, Henry Kendall and a team of researchers, was a fundamental breakthrough in the understanding of the nature of matter, and encouraged a 50-year quest for the final link in the puzzle, the Higgs boson, which was found in 2012.Taylor and his colleagues discovered quarks by building on the work of Ernest Rutherford, who, around 1910, had found that atoms have a nucleus – later shown to consist of protons and neutrons – but did not have the tools to probe any deeper. By contrast, Taylor was able to use a powerful accelerator of electrons at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) in California to reveal the deep structure of first the proton and later the neutron. Continue reading...

The sport also preserves muscle and helps maintains stable levels of body fat and cholesterolCycling can hold back the effects of ageing and rejuvenate the immune system, a study has found.Scientists carried out tests on 125 amateur cyclists aged 55 to 79 and compared them with healthy adults from a wide age group who did not exercise regularly. Continue reading...

The idea of a poison that can’t be detected is terrifying, but there is no such thingThe news of the apparent poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia produced a lot of speculation over what might have made two people very ill so suddenly. All sorts of wild theories can emerge in situations like this where so little information is known for certain.

To attract more girls to study Stem subjects at university, we need to tackle the stereotypes they are exposed to early onYou will no doubt be aware that women are underrepresented in Stem (science, technology, engineering and maths) occupations. They make up 14.4% of all people working in Stem in the UK, despite being about half of the workforce. This is well short of the country’s goal of a critical mass of 30%. Increasing women in Stem is forecast to increase the UK’s labour value by at least £2bn.There is a whole tangle of reasons why the gender gap in Stem exists. One is a pipeline issue – fewer girls than boys choose to study Stem subjects at secondary school and university. Interventions internationally mean the numbers of girls in Stem subjects are creeping up very slowly, but the gap remains surprisingly resistant nonetheless. Continue reading...

Study raises concerns about National Comprehensive Cancer Network, which publishes guidelines for American oncologistsGuidelines for American oncologists often recommend expensive and harmful cancer drugs for patients based on “weak evidence”, according to a new study in the British Medical Journal.Related: Cancer patients shed new light on rheumatoid arthritis Continue reading...

Experts remain split over whether it is worth taking supplementsVitamin D may offer protection against cancers, new research suggests, although experts are split over whether individuals should start taking supplements.The vitamin plays an important role in the body, including in bone health and muscle strength and in preventing conditions such as rickets. Continue reading...

How big can a star get? Why would a star only pretend to explode? Can you hide one star inside another?The Perimeter Institute public lectures are back, with, this evening (7 March), Emily Levesque talking about some of the strangest stellar phenomena in the universe.From the biggest, brightest, and most volatile stars to the explosive fireworks of core-collapse supernovae and the fascinating physics of gravitational waves, ‘weird’ stars serve as a common thread for exploring our universe’s history, evolution, and extremes. Levesque will discuss the history of stellar astronomy, present-day observing techniques and exciting new discoveries, and explore some of the most puzzling and bizarre objects being studied by astronomers today. Continue reading...

Juno mission paints dramatic picture of the turbulence within the solar system’s largest planetJupiter’s interior has been revealed in unprecedented detail in observations by Nasa’s Juno spacecraft that show it to be as strange and turbulent as the planet’s surface.Despite extensive studies of Jupiter’s surface, including its distinctive dark and light bands and “great red spot”, little had previously been known about what lies at the interior of the solar system’s largest planet. Continue reading...

But designer babies, micro-pigs and fluorescent carrots get the thumbs-down, Royal Society survey findsBritons are broadly in favour of rewriting the genetic code of human embryos to prevent children from inheriting devastating diseases – but draw the line at designer babies and creating “cosmetic” organisms such as micro-pigs, fluorescent fish and perfect carrots.The views were revealed in one of the first major surveys of public opinion on a new generation of genetic technologies that have given scientists the power to alter the DNA of living organisms with unprecedented ease and precision.

New research sheds light on the origins of domestic horses, and asks: just how many toes does a horse have?We’re so used to seeing horses, we often forget just what a bunch of weirdos they are. Let’s start with their feet: can you name another animal with only one hoof? If you said cow, sheep or goat, then you need to take a closer look next time you’re on the farm, because they all have two hooves per foot. Deer – likewise. The next curious question: how did such a powerful animal come to have an upstart ape lead it around by the mouth, and sit on it?The evolutionary history of horses is relatively well understood, but there are still some gaps in our knowledge, and new discoveries continue to be made. So where do these strange animals come from, and how did we end up with the domesticated breeds so familiar to us today? Continue reading...

Rosy worldviews that rely on avoiding inconvenient truths should always set alarm bells ringingOne of the curiosities of our age is the way in which celebrity culture comes to dominate every aspect of public life. Even the review pages of the newspapers sometimes look like a highfalutin version of gossip magazines. Were we to judge them by the maxim “Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people”, they would not emerge well. Biography dominates. Ideas often seem to come last. Brilliant writers such as Sylvia Plath are better known for their lives than their work. Turning her into the Princess Diana of literature does neither her nor her readers any favours.Related: Steven Pinker: ‘The way to deal with pollution is not to rail against consumption’ Continue reading...

More than 800 die prematurely each year due to disparities in treatment across England, research suggestsHundreds of lung cancer patients may be dying prematurely every year as a result of disparities in rates of treatment across England, new research suggests.The team behind the study say more than 800 patients a year could have their lives extended if the rates of treatment in the top 20% of areas were applied across the country.

Lessons are not being learned from the deaths of hundreds of mental health patients, despite the warnings of coronersMore than 270 mental health patients have died over the last six years after failings in NHS care. These cases are more devastating to those who loved these people because in many cases the deaths could have been prevented; better care might have saved them. Too often, services did not respond to the concerns of GPs, families, and patients themselves. The Guardian’s figures, drawn from coroners’ warnings – known as reports to prevent future deaths – are if anything conservative. A forthcoming report on the issue from the NHS ombudsman is expected to raise similar issues.There is no doubt that services are overstretched. In one in six of the cases, coroners linked the deaths to the lack of staff, beds and specialist services, or to long delays for treatment. Mental health services have been desperately underfunded for too long, and the promised increase in spending is insufficient given the historic shortfall and the surge in demand. The current government, and the coalition before it, promised to prioritise mental health; these figures show how little progress has been made. A leaked green paper recently revealed that the promise of a maximum four-week wait for children (currently left as long as 18 months without care) will not be fully implemented until 2021 due to lack of staff and funding. A dearth of early intervention also leads to heavier demand for more expensive crisis services. It is impossible to provide adequate care without adequate resources. But funding is not a guarantee of quality. Cash alone cannot ensure that agencies and staff communicate as they should (the issue cited most frequently in these coroners’ warnings); nor can it foster a culture of learning from errors. Some NHS bodies are clearly failing to apply the necessary lessons – even when warned about them in the bluntest possible terms. Continue reading...

Pioneering dementia scientist Prof John Hardy to donate prize money to anti-Brexit groupA predicted exodus of European doctors, nurses and care workers following Brexit will be disastrous for Alzheimer’s patients and their families, according to a pioneering dementia scientist who was on Tuesday named as a joint recipient of the world’s most prestigious prize in neuroscience.Speaking at a press conference in London ahead of the announcement of the winners of the 2018 Brain prize, Prof John Hardy, of University College London, described the UK leaving the EU as an “unmitigated disaster for science and an unmitigated disaster for the health service”, adding that he planned to donate some of his prize money to the anti-Brexit campaign group Best for Britain. Continue reading...

How a subversive form of mapmaking charts the stories and customs of those who would traditionally be ignoredSara is a 32-year-old mother of four from Honduras. After leaving her children in the care of relatives, she travelled across three state borders on her way to the US, where she hoped to find work and send money home to her family. She was kidnapped in Mexico and held captive for three months, and was finally released when her family paid a ransom of $190.Her story is not uncommon. The UN estimates that there are 258 million migrants in the world. In Mexico alone, 1,600 migrants are thought to be kidnapped every month. What is unusual is that Sara’s story has been documented in a recent academic paper that includes a map of her journey that she herself drew. Her map appears alongside four others – also drawn by migrants. These maps include legends and scales not found on orthodox maps – unnamed river crossings, locations of kidnapping and places of refuge such as a “casa de emigrante” where officials cannot enter. Since 2011, such shelters have been identified by Mexican law as “spaces of exception”. Continue reading...

Experts say it is impossible to plot where module will re-enter the atmosphere, but the chance is higher in parts of Europe, US, Australia and New ZealandChina’s first space station is expected to come crashing down to Earth within weeks, but scientists have not been able to predict where the 8.5-tonne module will hit.The US-funded Aerospace Corporation estimates Tiangong-1 will re-enter the atmosphere during the first week of April, give or take a week. The European Space Agency says the module will come down between 24 March and 19 April. Continue reading...

This week’s events will mark the first time that the science used to justify certain pesticides will be analyzed under oath for all to seeOn Monday, a federal court hearing in San Francisco will turn a public spotlight on to the science surrounding the safety of one of the world’s most widely used pesticides, a weedkilling chemical called glyphosate that has been linked to cancer and is commonly found in our food and water, even in our own bodily fluids. Given the broad health and environmental implications tied to the use of this pesticide, we would be well served to pay attention.As the active ingredient in Monsanto’s branded Roundup and hundreds of other herbicides, glyphosate represents billions of dollars in annual revenues for Monsanto and other companies, and is prominently used by farmers as an aid in food production. It’s also favored by cities for keeping public parks and playgrounds weed free, and by homeowners who want a tidy lawn. But the chemical was deemed a probable human carcinogen by the World Health Organization’s cancer experts in 2015 in a finding that has since triggered waves of liability lawsuits against Monsanto. Continue reading...

A new laser-based system could allow vehicles to ‘see’ obstacles before they come into view, scientists sayWhether it’s a child running after a ball, a herd of cows or a broken-down car, unexpected obstacles can prove deadly to drivers. But scientists say the cars of the future might be able to anticipate such perils.A team of researchers have come up with a new laser-based system that efficiently produces images of objects that are hidden around a corner – a development they say could allow autonomous vehicles to see obstacles before they come into the line of sight.

Anaesthesia remains a mysterious and inexact science – and thousands of patients still wake up on the operating table every year.• Read the text version hereSubscribe via Audioboom, iTunes, Soundcloud, Mixcloud, Acast & Sticher and join the discussion on Facebook and Twitter Continue reading...

Dr Daniel Glaser is back. To kick off season two he asks whether there is a connection between reward and addiction. And can we really get addicted to Twitter?Subscribe and review on iTunes, and join the discussion on Facebook and TwitterA Neuroscientist Explains is finally back for its second season – meaning that in each episode, Dr Daniel Glaser and producer Max will 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...

Saturn, Mars and Jupiter are all in a row this week in the pre-dawn south-eastern skyEarly risers may have already noticed the beautiful planetary alignment taking place in the south-east before dawn. The bright planets of Saturn, Mars and Jupiter are strung out in a line. Saturn sits in Sagittarius, Mars in Ophiuchus and Jupiter in Libra. The colours of the planets are particularly notable. Jupiter’s bright clouds give it a brilliant white light, whereas Mars is distinctly red to the eye. Completing the trio, Saturn is a pale yellow that betrays the more muted tones found in its atmosphere. Just below this line of planets, filling in the gap between Mars and Jupiter, is the red giant star Antares. This alignment alone is worth keeping an eye open for but starting on 7 March the waning gibbous moon joins the tableau, making it even more special. The chart shows the view at 05:30 GMT on 8 March when the Moon is in the constellation Scorpius. Continue reading...

Silicon Valley is keen to exploit the brain chemical credited with keeping us tapping on apps and social mediaIn an unprecedented attack of candour, Sean Parker, the 38-year-old founding president of Facebook, recently admitted that the social network was founded not to unite us, but to distract us. “The thought process was: ‘How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?’” he said at an event in Philadelphia in November. To achieve this goal, Facebook’s architects exploited a “vulnerability in human psychology”, explained Parker, who resigned from the company in 2005. Whenever someone likes or comments on a post or photograph, he said, “we… give you a little dopamine hit”. Facebook is an empire of empires, then, built upon a molecule.Dopamine, discovered in 1957, is one of 20 or so major neurotransmitters, a fleet of chemicals that, like bicycle couriers weaving through traffic, carry urgent messages between neurons, nerves and other cells in the body. These neurotransmitters ensure our hearts keep beating, our lungs keep breathing and, in dopamine’s case, that we know to get a glass of water when we feel thirsty, or attempt to procreate so that our genes may survive our death. Continue reading...

Young people in mental distress need – and deserve – faster access to support services, as well as pillsNearly a decade ago I found myself perched on the edge of a hard chair in a dark doctor’s office. I was 13 and struggling a lot with self harm, body image, and the simple task of keeping myself alive. Shuffling my feet and wondering how I ended up here, I remember not fully understanding what was happening when I was handed a little green prescription for Fluoxetine – an antidepressant drug often better known as Prozac.Back then, my frame of reference for mental illness was pretty minimal. All I knew was that I felt numb and I wanted everyone to leave me alone. The thought of something being able to help felt so far away it was almost laughable. Antidepressants had never crossed my mind. Everything I knew about them was framed around the words of American emo bands or soap operas. As the doctor handed me the prescription, I remember it was talked about as the most natural thing in the world. “We’ll give you a course of pills and go from there.” What? Go where? Am I really hopeless enough that only drugs can fix this? Continue reading...

Philippa Perry on her struggle with total devotion… to her cat, KevinPets can highlight your mental health issues. Ask my late dad how he was, he would tell you, “Fine”. If you wanted more information, it was best to ask him how the dog was. “Oh, the dog is depressed.” My dad was doing what Freud described as projection. This is when you split off a part of you that is too shameful for you to own and project it on to someone else and you believe your stuff is their stuff. My father could not own his vulnerability, but he could dump it on his dog. I hope I would be far too self-aware to project on to my pet. I’d hate to think I was that dotty, but the magazine has just asked if they can send a photographer round. “Kevin isn’t too keen on photos,” I said.Our cat Kevin had been a stray and came to us from Battersea two years ago when he was around six months old. His body was the size of a can of extra-strong lager. That tubular torso would press against me all night, sometimes stretched alongside me, sometimes curled up in my armpit. In the evening, he would start on a lap but his thin body would elongate itself from your ankles to your thighs like a furry tube. He was playful, affectionate and excellent at being a cat. Continue reading...

Free vaccine program in schools leads to big drop in rates, although they remain high in the developing world

We have the unique opportunity to wipe out a cancer that kills 250,000 women worldwide each year

Side-effects in immunotherapy for cancer patients have given scientists an ally in the battle against rheumatoid arthritisThe human immune system is one of the most effective defence mechanisms known to nature. It can ward off myriad microbial invaders: bacteria, viruses and parasites. It is sometimes overwhelmed by disease, of course, but the billions of men and women who now live on Earth are a testament – at least in part – to the effectiveness of their immune defences.However, on occasions they go too far. Instead of killing off invading organisms, our immune systems turn on our own tissue and attack it. Conditions such as type 1 diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, and lupus are all triggered in this way, very often with deeply unpleasant consequences. Continue reading...

In the 1970s and 80s, 4,689 British haemophiliacs were treated with contaminated blood products. So far, more than half of them have died. The government knew there were risks involved. The patients didn’t. Will they ever get justice?It has been called the biggest treatment disaster in the history of the NHS, and a “horrific human tragedy”. But Su Gorman, whose husband has endured years of ill health as a result of haemophilia treatment, does not believe this adequately describes Britain’s contaminated blood scandal. As far as she is concerned, it is simply a crime.In the 1970s and 80s, 4,689 haemophiliacs became infected with hepatitis C and HIV after they were treated with contaminated blood products supplied by the NHS. Of those infected, 2,883 have since died. Continue reading...

The 42-year-old scientist is head of cellular genetics at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, CambridgeSleep I need seven or eight hours. My daughters, aged 10 and five, are in bed by 8.30pm. My husband and I have different methods of getting them to bed: he likes nature television programmes; I like reading in German. Both my father and husband are German, so we try to maintain the language. Before I go to sleep, I read books such as Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In, or essays from Harvard Business Review. I am usually asleep by nine and wake as early as 4am; it gives me a few hours to think about work before the rest of the family wakes at 7am.Eat I try to have a low-carb diet. In the morning, my husband cooks scrambled eggs and I’ll have lunch on the Wellcome Genome campus in Cambridge. I am a creature of habit so I always have a salad, melon and coffee – I drink too much coffee. I try to have supper with the family three times a week. Our nanny - a retired academic from Uruguay - often cooks whatever is in the fridge. At weekends we cook but it’s very much dominated by what the kids like: pasta and pizza. There are no phones at the table and we try to get information out of the kids about school, sports and friends; they are not always forthcoming. Continue reading...

We ask Prof Steven Pinker whether today’s doom and gloom headlines are a sign we’re worse off than in centuries gone by, or if human wellbeing is at an all-time highSubscribe and review on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Audioboom, Mixcloud and Acast, and join the discussion on Facebook and TwitterCognitive psychologist and linguist Prof Steven Pinker of Harvard University is no stranger to intellectual controversy. Since 1994, a series of bestselling books, including The Language Instinct, The Blank Slate and The Better Angels of Our Nature, have unleashed a torrent of criticism. Pinker’s determination to apply scientific thinking to politics, society and culture has left some accusing him of scientism – an overweening faith in the power of science in every sphere. His latest book, Enlightenment Now, is a vigorous defence of Enlightenment progress against the prophets of doom. Continue reading...

Girls’ subject choices in school are one clear symptom of their unequal experiences, says Julia Higgins of the Institute of PhysicsIt is astonishing that, in 2018, girls still grow up being treated very differently from boys through entrenched stereotyping and unconscious biases. Girls’ subject choices in school are one clear symptom of their unequal experiences. One example is that four times as many boys as girls take physics, a subject seen as having value by universities and employers alike. As a society we have become inured to such disparities in choices and also to the deeper malaise it reveals.Gendered stereotypes are pervasive in our culture – ingrained by long-standing biases (both conscious and unconscious). They affect all of our expectations and, at an early age, those of our youngsters. Many of the stereotypes relate to different expectations of boys and girls. Why does this matter? First, we are losing talent. We need many more good engineers, scientists and programmers. Second, there is a personal cost for young women as we limit their expectations. Continue reading...

Climate change is causing the season to start comparatively earlier the further north you go, say scientistsThe Arctic spring is arriving 16 days earlier than it did a decade ago, according to a new study which shows climate change is shifting the season earlier more dramatically the further north you go.The research, published on Friday in the journal Scientific Reports, comes amid growing concern about the warming of Greenland, Siberia, Alaska and other far northern regions, which have recently experienced unusually prolonged and frequent midwinter temperature spikes. Continue reading...

Physician who researched the effects of nuclear radiation and in the cold war years reached the peak of the new profession of radiobiologyPatricia Lindop, who has died aged 87, was one of Europe’s most brilliant medical radiobiologists and a physician driven as much by compassion and wisdom as by natural skill. As well as setting up the medical radiobiology department at St Bartholomew’s hospital in London in 1960, she was a key player in the Pugwash peace initiative, aimed at reducing the risk of nuclear conflict and co-founded by the physicist Joseph Rotblat, her colleague and friend, along with the philosopher Bertrand Russell, in 1957.Apart from her medical qualifications, Lindop had doctorates in physiology and biochemistry. As a departmental professor she researched and taught these specialties at St Bartholomew’s hospital for more than 30 years. During the postwar years, sidestepping the male dominance of medicine in Britain, she reached the peak of the then new profession of radiobiology alongside her older contemporaries Dame Janet Vaughan and Dr Alice Stewart. Continue reading...

To own an animal is to learn about the inevitability of dying – not that loved ones can be replicated if we cough up the cashBarbra Streisand might not brim with the white-hot cultural relevance she used to, but nobody can deny that she’s a trier. For example, when everyone’s back was turned, she went off and created her very own Black Mirror episode.In her episode, a broken-hearted millionaire realises that she cannot bear to part with her sick dog, so she spends an inordinate amount of money to have it cloned. However, with every passing day, the millionaire realises the futility of her gesture. The clones don’t behave like the original, and the differences between old and new tear at her soul until she drowns the puppies in a lake. Continue reading...

After up to two million years of separate evolution, two types of common raven have been ‘caught in the act’ of consolidation, say scientistsSpeciation, where one species diverges into two, is a well-known concept in the theory of evolution. But a new study based on almost 20 years of research has revealed that “speciation reversal”, the merging of two previously distinct lineages, may also play an important role.Scientists have discovered that two lineages of common raven that spent between one and two million years evolving separately appear to be in the process of such a consolidation. The findings raise intriguing questions about how science should define species – and whether the boundaries are as clearcut as once thought. Continue reading...

Its defenders claim to be standing up for uncomfortable truths, but race science is still as bogus as ever. By Gavin EvansOne of the strangest ironies of our time is that a body of thoroughly debunked “science” is being revived by people who claim to be defending truth against a rising tide of ignorance. The idea that certain races are inherently more intelligent than others is being trumpeted by a small group of anthropologists, IQ researchers, psychologists and pundits who portray themselves as noble dissidents, standing up for inconvenient facts. Through a surprising mix of fringe and mainstream media sources, these ideas are reaching a new audience, which regards them as proof of the superiority of certain races.The claim that there is a link between race and intelligence is the main tenet of what is known as “race science” or, in many cases, “scientific racism”. Race scientists claim there are evolutionary bases for disparities in social outcomes – such as life expectancy, educational attainment, wealth, and incarceration rates – between racial groups. In particular, many of them argue that black people fare worse than white people because they tend to be less naturally intelligent. Continue reading...