The annual Lupercalia festival turned society upside down – and the location of its starting point is still hotly debatedScenes from films like Gladiator and series such as HBO’s Rome might lead you to think that the ancient Romans were liberal in their view of nudity. In fact the opposite was true. It was only during exceptional occasions that Romans were freed from their social norms – and the most spectacular occasion was the annual Lupercalia festival.

Findings suggest increased consumption of ultra-processed foods tied to rise in cancers, but scientists say more research is needed“Ultra-processed” foods, made in factories with ingredients unknown to the domestic kitchen, may be linked to cancer, according to a large and groundbreaking study.Ultra-processed foods include pot noodles, shelf-stable ready meals, cakes and confectionery which contain long lists of additives, preservatives, flavourings and colourings – as well as often high levels of sugar, fat and salt. They now account for half of all the food bought by families eating at home in the UK, as the Guardian recently revealed. Continue reading...

Questioning the hidden power of elites – whether big pharma or secret societies – is really quite saneIf the Illuminati is real, it’s got to be the least secret secret society in the universe. It’s so bad at keeping itself hidden that its existence is proclaimed all over the internet by people whose investigative toolkit consists entirely of Google and a lively imagination.The most recent would-be whistleblower, however, is far from your usual ex-sports commentator. Paul Hellyer, a former Canadian minister of defence, has blamed the Illuminati for suppressing technology brought to Earth by aliens that could end our reliance on fossil fuels. Continue reading...

Doctors hail breakthrough and say case shows ‘modest but functional lactation can be induced in transgender women’A 30-year-old transgender woman has been able to breastfeed her child, the first ever case of induced lactation in a transgender woman to be documented in academic literature.Doctors said the case shows “modest but functional lactation can be induced in transgender women”. The account was published in Transgender Health. Continue reading...

Shellfish reefs, formed by oysters or mussels in or near estuaries, have declined by up 99% since British colonisationMarine scientists are lobbying the federal government to ensure protection for Australia’s most endangered – but least known – ocean ecosystem.Shellfish reefs, formed by millions of oysters or mussels clustering together in or near the mouths of estuaries, have declined by up 99% since British colonisation. Continue reading...

Recent fossils in amber tell us how spiders evolved into their modern groups, but the fossil record for arachnids goes much deeperThe discovery of a 100m-year-old spider ancestor with a whip-like tail, bearing a more than slight resemblance to everyone’s favourite parasitoid alien – the facehugger – gained a lot of media interest last week. Some arachnologists were upset by both the language of fear in the coverage (“creepy” and “horrifying” were popular descriptions) and by some folks expressing a desire to nuke it from orbit. It seems that despite (or perhaps because) of the intense responses that spiders evoke in people, there is always an interest in where and how they evolved.The newly described species, Chimerarachne yingi, was based on two specimens found in amber of about 100 My old from Myanmar. Unusually, the new find was revealed in two simultaneously-published papers in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution. The rules for the naming of species mean that only one of the papers, by Bo Wang and colleagues, gets to be the formal description and naming of the species (and new genus, the next level up in classifying organisms). Both Wang’s paper and that of Diying Huang and colleagues, aimed to place the new find in terms of the spider family tree. The new species has features of modern spiders, known as the Araneae: a male pedipalp (sensory appendage) modified for sperm transfer, and well-defined spinnerets for silk spinning. But, it also has its distinctive tail, a feature not found in modern spiders, but associated with an ancient grouping of “almost-spiders” known as the Uraraneida. Continue reading...

Concerns over the addictive properties of video games are reasonable but there is a lack of rigorous research behind the WHO’s expected classificationVideo games played on smartphones, tablets, computers and consoles have been a popular form of leisure for some time now. In Europe, recent figures indicate that games are played by more than two thirds of children and adolescents, and a substantial number of adults now play games – 38% in the UK, 64% in France, 56% in Germany and 44% in Spain.

With its new Reply system the firm is taking the art of conversion one step forwards – or should that be backwards?Are you tired of the constant need to tap on a glass keyboard just to keep up with your friends? Do you wish a robot could free you of your constant communication obligations via WhatsApp, Facebook or text messages? Google is working on an AI-based auto-reply system to do just that.

How do our bodies regulate themselves – and is it even true that we have a single body temperature? New technology will tell usI’m one of those people who always feels cold. Maybe it’s my upbringing in the chilly north, or maybe it’s down the quirks of my own physiology, but I’m reliably found next to the fire, hiding from draughts that no-one else had noticed, or buried inside enough jumpers to stock a small shop. At the other end of the scale, when everyone else is sweating buckets, I’m basking smugly because I’m finally at a comfortable temperature.Like most of us, my attitude towards my body temperature is similar to Goldilocks’ attitude to porridge – it’s either too cold, too hot, or 37C, which is just right. But I’ve rarely considered the fascinating details of exactly how our bodies regulate their temperature, and whether it’s even true that we have a single body temperature anyway. Continue reading...

Technology behind thermal imaging is advancing, enabling cameras to produce a detailed heat map of the human body. In this sequence the blood vessels of a badminton player can been seen expanding, becoming brighter and lighter as the body becomes hotter with movement

Every day millions of people ask Google life’s most difficult questions. Our writers answer some of the commonest queries‘A woman’s tongue wags like a lamb’s tail”, so an old English saying goes, and if you deign to type “why do women …” into Google’s search bar, the search engine will finish your sentence accordingly with “talk so much”. We’ve been brought up to believe that women are the talkative ones, the ones whose words, both soothing and scolding, are the social glue of small communities and families alike. We assume women talk more than men. But there’s also the more sinister notion that women must be silenced for risk of what they might say about men, a belief Mary Beard traces back to the classical world in her recent tract Women and Power – and something we’ve seen in full contemporary flourish with the eruption of #MeToo.Because of the prohibition on women’s speech, which continued right through the middle ages and up through the mass growth in western female literacy, it took until the 20th century for a more positive, parallel notion to take hold: that women might be biologically better with words. Today scientific study has even found the odd bit of evidence that girls may indeed find it easier to acquire language than boys. But does the idea of women’s super- (and superfluous) loquacity actually hold up to scientific scrutiny? Continue reading...

Researchers have observed African Matabele ants treating their wounded comrades. The ants, frequently injured by termites, appear to apply an antibiotic saliva to the wounds of their injured.

Alternative material could replace current controversial implants, which have prompted many complaints of pain and discomfort

The social insects have been seen cleaning wounds and possibly administering antibiotics to prevent infectionWhen the battle is done the victors head home, their march broken only to gather the wounded, who are hauled back to base for life-saving treatment.Not a heroic scene from the second world war, but the daily grind for African Matabele ants, which leave their nests in the hundreds to launch raids on feeding termites – and risk life and limb in the process. Continue reading...

Studies have also linked compounds called perfluoroalkyl substances to cancer, high cholesterol and immune problemsChemicals used to make non-stick pots and pans, stain-resistant carpets, and food packaging may contribute to high levels of obesity by disrupting the body’s ability to burn calories, scientists say.Researchers at Harvard University examined the effects of compounds called perfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs), which have already raised concerns among some health experts after animal experiments and other studies linked them to cancer, high cholesterol and immune problems.

Readers air their views on news of bullying in a Somerset care home and the treatment of autistic children in FranceWe were shocked, as the family of a 26-year-old autistic son who has been in four residences since leaving school, to read of the abuse in a National Autistic Society care home (Somerset care home staff bullied autistic residents, review finds, 9 February). To think that this could occur within an NAS home is almost unimaginable. There are two clear problems in homes looking after adults with autism in England.First, there is no system of compulsory registration of individual support workers/carers as exists in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. This enables a public record to be kept of all support worker qualifications, as well as any concerns around their conduct or standard of work. Removal from the register means carers cannot be employed in that role. The English government currently refuses to introduce such a register. Continue reading...

Votes for women | Obtaining the pill | Henry Moore sculpture | Asma Jahangir | Ballet reviews | EvolutionIn 2013 Pitcairn islanders celebrated 175 years of women’s right to vote (Letters, 10 February). Pitcairn may be small and remote but the islanders are justifiably proud of this contribution to world history.

A Twitter argument about how many hours academics should work prompted Lucy Foulkes to seek out advice for early career researchersLast week a tweet about academics’ working hours went viral:I tell my graduate students and post-docs that if they’re working 60 hours per week, they’re working less than the full professors, and less than their peers. https://t.co/mapWtvmBWp Continue reading...

Claims that cheese, sex and Facebook affect your brain in the same way as drugs fundamentally misunderstand how it all worksThe internet is a weird place. Part of this is due to how things linger rather than disappear, as they tended to do with more “traditional” media. Nowadays, people’s jobs can (rightly or wrongly) be endangered for tweets they wrote years ago. The adage about “today’s news is tomorrow’s fish and chip papers” seems no longer to apply.This is particularly true when a headline or story from years ago can be found by a group or community on a social network that missed it previously, so they share it widely and it ends up in your feeds long after it’s been “forgotten”. It can be a bit confusing for those of us who grew up solely with televised news. It’s like watching the weekend football roundup when it’s suddenly interrupted by a report that the Berlin Wall has come down. Continue reading...

Study suggests link between eating slowly and lower waist circumference and BMI, though some experts are scepticalWhile you might be tempted to wolf down a sandwich or gobble up your dinner, researchers say there may be advantages to taking your time over a meal.

Scientists track global statistics and conclude past events are not reliable predictors for future riskFor the inhabitants of the Cumbrian village of Glenridding, the winter of 2015/16 was a miserable one. Storm Desmond brought the first deluge in December, turning the river into a raging torrent, sweeping through many properties, and cutting the village off from the outside world for a full two days. Storm Eva barrelled in a few weeks later, and Glenridding ended up awash three times in the space of four weeks.So what is going on? Are extreme climate events becoming more frequent, or were the residents of Glenridding suffering a series of unlucky rolls of the dice? Continue reading...

Most of those goals, if realized, would come after the end of the Trump administration, which has allocated little of its budget for NasaThe Trump administration unveiled its 2019 budget for Nasa on Monday, promising an outpost on the moon, “Jetson cars” and new attempts to cut funding for the international space station, earth science and astrophysics.Robert Lightfoot, Nasa’s acting administrator, said on Monday that Nasa will move forward with plans to create a new space station around the moon, a base long called the Deep Space Gateway, but renamed the Lunar Orbit Platform-Gateway. Continue reading...

Anaesthetists respond to a recent Guardian articleAccidental awareness (when a patient becomes conscious during a general anaesthetic) is an incredibly important issue to both patients and anaesthetists (The long read, 9 February). Patients undergoing surgery can be assured that it is highly uncommon to wake up during a general anaesthetic.The largest ever research study (NAP5) performed on this topic was carried out in 2014 by the Royal College of Anaesthetists and the Association of Anaesthetists of Great Britain and Ireland. It showed that approximately one person in 20,000 reported awareness, and it most commonly occurred before surgery started or after it finished. Continue reading...

The solutions to today’s puzzlesOn my puzzle blog earlier today I set you the following three problems about this grid: Continue reading...

The winning entries from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) photo competition 2018, which allows researchers and doctoral students to share another side of their work Continue reading...

I grew up being told that a prerequisite for our national identity was white skin – that prejudice has been proved falseThe results of 10,000-year old Cheddar Man’s DNA analysis have hit the headlines in the past few days, accompanied by a striking portrait that needed no words. Here was this bona fide European – indeed, an ancestral Brit – and the man was black. Genetic analysis suggests he had blue eyes, and that his skin was probably darker, even, than the portrait shows. Three hundred generations later, allowing for a little variation between individuals, about 10% of the genome of many white British people alive today comes from this man’s dark-skinned population.Contrary to some comments made on the story, Cheddar Man was no anomaly – no lost, tanned tourist to the British Isles. Rather, he was of a group known as the western hunter-gatherers, who migrated into Europe at the end of the last ice age, like other ancestral Europeans found in Spain, Hungary and Luxembourg. As with our British ancestor from Cheddar, their DNA has also been analysed, and the results show that these Europeans, too, had the same dark skin. Continue reading...

Dot-to-dot puzzles that hit the spotUPDATE: For the solutions click hereHi guzzlers,Today, three challenges using this grid of 16 dots: Continue reading...

The path from ape to modern human is not a linear one. Hannah Devlin looks at what we know – and what might be next for our speciesLet’s go back to the beginning. When did we and our ape cousins part ways?

The hunter stands bolt upright in the evening sky, with the nebula visible below the beltThis week is a good one for finding the constellation of Orion: it stands bolt upright in the evening sky. The chart shows the view looking due south at 20:00 GMT on 12 February. The most noticeable thing to look for is Orion’s belt comprising three stars: Alnitak, Alnilam and Mintaka. Look upwards from the belt and you find the red giant star Betelgeuse (famously pronounced beetle-juice). It marks one of Orion’s shoulders and is conspicuously red in colour. About as far below the belt is the bright blue-white star Rigel. The real prize, however, hangs just below the belt. Three fainter stars make up Orion’s sword. The lower one, Hatysa, is the brightest but look closely at the middle “star” and you will see it is not a star at all but a hazy pink blob. It is the star-forming region known as the Orion nebula, which houses thousands of nascent stars. Continue reading...

Documents show a plan to cease funding for the orbiting lab by 2024 and pitches running ISS ‘as part of a future commercial platform’The Trump administration is considering turning the International Space Station over to private enterprise, according to internal documents obtained by the Washington Post, and ceasing to fund the orbiting lab by 2024.While the plan doesn’t not recommend “deorbiting” the 1990s-vintage space station, which is currently contracted to Boeing and costs Nasa more than $3bn a year, the Nasa documents say “it is possible that industry could continue to operate certain elements or capabilities of the ISS as part of a future commercial platform”. Continue reading...

British DNA | The contraceptive pill | Deinocrates | G2 staples | London fatbergThe most interesting line in your article on Cheddar Man (7 February) is that only 10% of the white British population can trace their ancestry back to this ancient migrant group, who could well be termed indigenous. Finally, proof that almost everyone on these islands is an immigrant and that it’s time to stop all this isolationist nonsense: the ability to take in newcomers and absorb them is what had (note the past tense) made this country great.

It would be unthinkable to buy a chicken or lamb to kill at home – but you can have living crustaceans delivered to your door via Amazon. Has society gone to pot over shellfish?

The feather-ruffling Harvard psychologist’s new book, a defence of Enlightenment values, may be his most controversial yet

In an extract from his new book Enlightenment Now, the Harvard psychologist extols the relevance of 18th-century thinking

Rock singer Steve Ludwin has been injecting himself with snake venom for 30 years. In a strange twist, his bizarre habit could now save thousands of lives. His former partner Britt Collins tells his outlandish storySometime in 2006, when my ex-boyfriend failed to show up for dinner, I assumed something was wrong or perhaps he’d forgotten. About a week later, calling to apologise, he told me he’d had an overdose, accidentally injecting a lethal cocktail of venom from three snakes. A lot has been written about Steve Ludwin, widely known as the man who injects snake venom, and lately his life has turned into a non-stop frenzy of international journalists and film crews revelling in the seeming sheer insanity of it.Steve was once my great love; an animal lover, vegan and musician who wrote songs for Placebo and Ash, and played the Reading festival with Nirvana. In between tours and recordings he dabbled with snake venom. In his latest incarnation as a self-taught snake expert, moulding himself into the role of a lifetime, he appears as a kind of living specimen and star in a short film at the Natural History Museum’s new exhibition, Venom: Killer and Cure. Continue reading...

Rocket Lab entrepreneur Peter Beck’s recent launch into orbit of Humanity Star drew a barrage of flak. But he remains undauntedLast month, from its base in New Zealand, Peter Beck’s space company, Rocket Lab, conducted its first successful attempt to put satellites in orbit. The launch vehicle, the Electron, carried a payload including the Humanity Star, a very shiny, 65-sided, carbon-fibre satellite whose only function is to reflect the sunlight as it spins. Scientists didn’t approve: astronomers claimed it would interfere with their observations, others called it “space graffiti”, while the Scientific American described it as “satellite vermin”.Were you taken aback about the reaction your Humanity Star geodesic sphere satellite project got from some scientists?

The trick is to find a good balance between self restraint and spontaneityHere is a list of statements. Choose the response, a) or b), that best applies to you:I more often

Experts say rocket emissions affect our climate and cause ozone loss, yet too few people seem to careDavid Attenborough’s Blue Planet series raised our awareness of rubbish tips traversing our oceans and choking some of our most beloved marine species.This has led to a global debate about how we manufacture and dispose of plastics. The Scottish government announced that it is to host an international conference in 2019 to discuss action on marine litter. It’s ideal territory for any government seeking to be regarded as edgy and cool on this year’s fashionable cause. No one could disagree with its aims and purpose and, more importantly, nothing that emerges from it will commit anyone to spending money or risking the growth of emerging industries. Continue reading...

Entrepreneurs such as Elon Musk hold the key to exciting and important possibilitiesThe sight of the giant Falcon Heavy rocket roaring into space after its launch last week will have brought, if nothing else, a nostalgic tear to the eyes of many experienced space hands who had gathered to witness the blast-off.From the same Kennedy Space Center launch pad that saw Apollo rockets soar towards the moon, a new launcher, built by Elon Musk’s SpaceX company and currently the most powerful in the world, made its dramatic maiden flight. Hopes that the great pioneering days of US space flight, in the 1960s and 1970s, would soon return were suddenly rekindled. The fact that Falcon Heavy’s cargo was ferrying an electric sports car, built by a different Musk company, Tesla, to Mars only added spice to an already extravagant event. Continue reading...

The study of a 10,000-year-old man surprised people when it revealed his blue eyes and dark skin – and few predicted he would reshape our view of our genetic heritageIn 1903 workmen digging a drainage trench in Gough’s Cave in the Cheddar Gorge, in Somerset, uncovered the remains of a young man, sealed under a stalagmite. The figure, feet curled up underneath him, was small, at about 5ft 5in, and would have weighed around 10 stone when he died in his early 20s. The cause of death has still not been determined by palaeontologists.The skeleton’s antiquity was revealed when fossil experts dated his bones and realised that Cheddar Man, as he quickly became known, was almost 10,000 years old. This is still the oldest virtually complete skeleton that has been unearthed in the British Isles, although it is unclear whether the young man died in the cave or was brought there by fellow tribesmen and was then buried there. Continue reading...

Sharon’s world is regularly reversed by a rare brain malfunction. Now neurologists, and Wonder Woman, have come to the rescueIn 1952, when she was a child, Sharon was playing in the front garden. She was blindfolded while her friends ran around her, laughing, trying not to be caught in a game of blind man’s buff. Sharon grabbed hold of someone’s sleeve and whipped off the scarf that covered her eyes. “You’re it!” she shouted.Then she blinked and looked around her. She panicked. The house and the street looked different. She had no idea where she was. Sharon ran into the back garden and discovered her mother sitting in a lawn chair. Continue reading...

Zapping his brain and taking ‘smart pills’, Adam’s fascinating history of how we define intelligence raises intriguing questions about our futureThe old myth that you only use 10% of your brain is obviously rubbish. If an iron spike went through the 90% you never use, why would you care? But what might be true is that we only typically use a small part of our brain’s potential function. What if you could zap your head or take a pill, like Bradley Cooper in the film Limitless, and become insanely clever? Over the last decade, this sci-fi possibility has started to approach reality, and David Adam’s book is a timely prologue to the brave new world that might await us.On the internet you can now buy gizmos to stimulate your brain with low doses of electricity. There is some evidence that this helps with depression and other disorders, but – as is usually the case with new therapies – it is already being used by healthy people just to get better at video games. (Zapping seems to make the affected brain areas more malleable, readier to form new connections, when the electrotherapy is combined with a course of cognitive behavioural therapy, or with deliberate practice of a physical skill.) Another big industry is that of “smart pills”, whereby medicines originally conceived to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, say, are being sold on the grey market to students and others who want a pharmaceutical boost to their powers of concentration. Continue reading...

UK weather group’s influence continues to be felt in everything from space missions to farmingFrozen ducks’ feet and the flight paths of midges: the uses of forecasts by the Met Office over the 160 years that it has quietly underpinned the fabric of the nation are many and varied. They played a crucial role in D-day and still serve our military today; they keep planes in the sky and space missions on course. Should a mountain ever fall off the side of the Canary Islands, they will warn us of a tsunami. As unlikely an event as the latter should prove, be assured the Met Office has our backs.In March, however, this long-established British institution will part company with another. After 95 years, the BBC will drop the national weather service in favour of an international private forecasting company, MeteoGroup, a move that the broadcaster says will save it millions of pounds.

Exclusive: breaches investigated involve dengue virus, anthrax and other deadly pathogensSafety breaches at UK labs that handle harmful bacteria, viruses and fungi have spread infections to staff and exposed others to potentially lethal diseases, the Guardian has learned.The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has investigated a series of mistakes over the past two years that led to scientists falling ill at specialist labs run by hospitals, private companies, and even Public Health England (PHE), the government agency which exists to protect and improve the nation’s health and wellbeing.

Some doctors say this is the worst flu season they have seen in decades. Some people are saying that, tooThe flu has further tightened its grip on the US This season is now as bad as the swine flu epidemic nine years ago.A government report on Friday shows one of every 13 visits to the doctor last week was for fever, cough and other symptoms of the flu. That ties the highest level seen in the US during swine flu in 2009. Continue reading...

Stonehenge tunnel | Ants and acid | Lost from the Guardian | Yorkshire pudding | Elon MuskWould it be possible to have a free gamble on which major public work will be completed first: the Stonehenge tunnel or Heathrow’s third runway (First proposals for Stonehenge’s £1.6bn road tunnel revealed, 8 February)?

The launch of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket into deep space has fired dreams of a new era of 21st-century discoveryScientists and aerospace veterans, many of them still in awe at the cascade of smoke and fire, the roar of a 20-story machine hurtling into the sky, and the sight of a billionaire’s electric car floating past Earth, welcomed Elon Musk to the podium in Cape Canaveral this week.

It really is good that he is out in natureSpending time in nature, as you’re surely aware by now, is good for your mental health. Like, really, really good. People criticise Donald Trump for whiling away so many hours on golf courses, but they’re wrong: imagine the damage he’d wreak if his rage and repressed self-loathing weren’t offset by the restorative benefits of all that greenery! So there’s nothing intrinsically surprising about a new study, led by Viren Swami of Anglia Ruskin University, in Cambridge, suggesting that natural environments improve people’s body image; after all, they improve everything. What remains debatable is why. One of the most beguiling answers – first given three decades ago by the US academics Rachel and Stephen Kaplan – is also maybe the most pleasingly named concept in psychology. In a world of relentless, aggressive demands on our attention, the Kaplans argued, nature does something different: it exerts “soft fascination”.Soft fascination has two crucial components. First, it’s effortless: you don’t need to “try to focus” on the wind in the trees, or a moor top blanketed in heather. Second, it’s partial: it absorbs some attention, but leaves some free for reflection, conversation or mind-wandering. The result is what the Kaplans called “cognitive quiet”, in which the muscle of effortful attention – the one you use to concentrate on work – gets to rest, but without the boredom you’d feel if you had nothing to focus on. This helps explain why nature’s benefits aren’t restricted to, say, trips to the Grand Canyon or Great Barrier Reef. Those places seize your whole attention, whereas your local park may seize just enough of it to let the rest of your mind relax. Continue reading...

Where to even begin this week? Could it be with the news that human eggs have been developed in the lab for the first time? Or that researchers think they may have spotted a link between asparagine – a compound found in asparagus and other foods – and the spread of breast cancer? Maybe that archaeologists have discovered an exciting new Neolithic monument in Windsor? All of those things are certainly exciting, but really the two most thrilling stories this week are certainly Cheddar Man and Falcon Heavy: not a crimefighting duo but an exciting double-header of science and archaeology. Cheddar Man is Britain’s oldest complete skeleton, and a groundbreaking analysis of his 10,000-year-old DNA has revealed that he had blue eyes, dark skin and dark curly hair, rather than the pale skin and fair hair that had always been assumed. By contrast, the incredible technological leap that has been made with the launch of Elon Musk’s giant SpaceX rocket, and the safe return to Earth of at least two of three reusable rockets, promises a new new chapter in humankind’s existence. Continue reading...

We look at some of the articles provoking reader conversation today, including the single market, space exploration and single-pilot planes