Experts call for more work to be done to develop vaccine for infection commonly carried by pregnant women, which can cause stillbirth and deathMore than 100,000 stillbirths and baby deaths worldwide could be prevented by the development of a vaccine against an infection commonly carried by pregnant women, according to a groundbreaking report.The impact of disease caused by group B streptococcus (GBS) has not been properly chronicled before and only in relatively recent years has anyone taken seriously its role in the deaths of babies in the womb as well as in the early days of life. Continue reading...

Dog unearths Périgord black truffle successfully grown in Wales, the furthest north the delicacy has ever been foundAn expensive Mediterranean black truffle has been cultivated in the UK for the first time, the farthest north that the species has been found.Researchers believe the truffle, mostly found in northern Spain, southern France and northern Italy, was able to grow in Wales due to climate change. Continue reading...

Just 10 river systems transport more than 90% of all plastic waste to the world’s seas, new research showsEvery minute one rubbish lorry’s-worth of plastic is dumped into the sea. If we continue at this rate, some estimate that our oceans will contain more plastic than fish by 2050. So where does all the plastic come from? New research reveals that just 10 river systems transport more than 90% of plastic waste to the world’s oceans.Rivers are the arteries of our planet. From tiny tumbling streams to vast sluggish deltas, rivers are the link between the atmosphere, land and oceans. Since time immemorial people have clustered near rivers, taking advantage of the fresh water, fertile land, ready-made transport links and plentiful fish. And of course rivers are also excellent conveyor belts for whisking rubbish away. Continue reading...

Big pharma companies are charging over the odds for medicines developed with public funding, write Heidi Chow and Tabitha HaIt is shocking, but not surprising, that big drugs companies are threatening to sue the NHS for using cheaper versions of drugs that could save people from going blind (Drug firms trying to stop cheap eye treatment on NHS, 1 November). Another part of this story is that the two medicines in question – Lucentis (known generically as ranibizumab) and Avastin (bevacizumab) are based on the groundbreaking discovery of monoclonal antibodies, which were developed with UK public funding.The NHS itself funded the trials to show that off-licence use of Avastin is as good as Lucentis, a finding that benefits patients not just in the UK but also globally. So the taxpayer is paying twice, first for public investment in the original research and clinical trials and then for the high prices being charged by the pharmaceutical companies. It is high time for conditions to be attached to publicly funded research and development to prevent these excessive profits and ensure crucial drugs are accessible and affordable for all.

Soane spent £2,000 transporting 3,000-year-old carved sarcophagus of Seti I to his home for exhibition, and museum has recreated its eerie illuminationWhen the architect Sir John Soane finally managed to install his greatest treasure in his extraordinary combined home, studio and museum in London, he threw a three-day party to celebrate.The sarcophagus of the pharaoh Seti I, carved from a single vast block of translucent alabaster, cost Soane £2,000 after the British Museum turned it down as too expensive. Getting in the 3,000-year-old relic, the size of a small boat and weighing several tonnes, involved knocking down a sizeable chunk of his back wall, and demolishing his unfortunate housekeeper’s sitting room. Continue reading...

As powerful AIs proliferate in society, the ability to trace their decisions, challenge them and remove ingrained biases has become a key area of researchIn October, American teachers prevailed in a lawsuit with their school district over a computer program that assessed their performance.The system rated teachers in Houston by comparing their students’ test scores against state averages. Those with high ratings won praise and even bonuses. Those who fared poorly faced the sack. Continue reading...

Republican-controlled Congress ordered destruction of vital sea-ice probePresident Trump has been accused of deliberately obstructing research on global warming after it emerged that a critically important technique for investigating sea-ice cover at the poles faces being blocked.The row has erupted after a key polar satellite broke down a few days ago, leaving the US with only three ageing ones, each operating long past their shelf lives, to measure the Arctic’s dwindling ice cap. Scientists say there is no chance a new one can now be launched until 2023 or later. None of the current satellites will still be in operation then. Continue reading...

Your sporting life indicates whether you are you adventurous, agreeable and hard working, say Ben AmbridgeWe all know that psychology and personality play a crucial role in sport (just ask José Mourinho or Alex Ferguson). But psychologists have recently identified a link between your sport and your personality type. If you were a professional sportsperson, which sports or events would you go for? Rank the following in order of preference:a. 100m sprint

A huge, extraordinary machine will soon begin to study an elusive particle in a bid to reveal some of the deep secrets of the cosmosOn the outskirts of Karlsruhe, in south-west Germany, engineers have buried a giant, stainless steel device, bigger than a blue whale, inside the town’s institute of technology. The machine looks for all the world like a grounded zeppelin or a buried blimp.In fact, the apparatus is one of the world’s biggest vacuum chambers. Air pressure inside it is lower than that on the surface of the moon and it has been installed to help solve a single, intricate problem: finding the mass of the universe’s most insignificant entity, the neutrino. Continue reading...

As a trial for a radical schizophrenia treatment begins, the link between biological factors and some mental illnesses is becoming clearer than everDescartes’s notion of dualism – that the mind and body are separate entities – is wrong, but has proved surprisingly persistent, and until recently dominated attempts to understand mental illness. When the brain stopped working properly, a psychological origin was sought.Undoubtedly, life’s experiences and our personalities shape the way our brains function. But there is now a compelling body of evidence that brain disorders can also originate from things going awry in our basic biology. Continue reading...

Exclusive: as evidence emerges that schizophrenia could be an immune system disease, two-year trial will use antibody drug currently used for MSBritish scientists have begun testing a radically new approach to treating schizophrenia based on emerging evidence that it could be a disease of the immune system.The first patient, a 33-year old man who developed schizophrenia after moving to London from Cameroon a decade ago, was treated at King’s College Hospital in London on Thursday, marking the start of one of the most ambitious trials to date on the biology of the illness and how to treat it. Continue reading...

Using muon-detecting sensors, archaeologists have discovered a mysterious void deep within Great Pyramid of Giza. It’s the first major structural find since the 19th century and at 30 metres is nearly the same size as the grand gallery, a huge corridor that connects the royal chambers within the pyramid. Exciting is not even the word. Another discovery this week is that, rather unexpectedly, it turns out that there’s a third species of orangutan, which scientists have named Pongo tapanuliensis. Sadly, there are fewer than 800, and its survival is already in doubt thanks to illegal trade and habitat loss. A new great ape species is potentially good news for our understanding of evolution – but what about how theories of evolution can contribute to our understanding of life beyond Earth? A team of researchers have been looking at just that, examining at what Darwin’s theories can tell us about the potential shape of alien life. Bad news on language evolution for grammar pedants though: resistance to changes in grammar is futile, say researchers. They also say chance plays a bigger role than previously thought in the way language changes. Finally, some worrying news from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS): their research station will have to close for the second winter in a row, as cracks in the ice shelf it stands on have grown. BAS don’t want their researchers to get cut off (well, they’ve probably seen The Thing) so despite having changed location earlier this year, Halley VI station will close again for the winter from March 2018. Continue reading...

Collins Dictionary’s annual lunge for the zeitgeist is here again. But as I know all too well, sometimes the zeitgeist is best left alone“Fake news!” He shouts it so often that it’s become meaningless. We’ve learned to tune it out now, the way you do when your toddler bangs their fists on their high chair and yells “toast!” for so long the word has become divorced from the thing they thought they wanted, it’s just turned into a noise that means “give me attention!”Yet this now-empty phrase, which in his tiny hands has come to mean the exact opposite of what it was intended to mean, has just been declared Word of the Year by Collins Dictionary, which reports a 365% increase in its usage over 2017, ahead of other contenders such as “Corbynmania” (which seems so 2015, but apparently is enjoying a resurgence this year), “Insta” and “gender-fluid”. Continue reading...

All aliens must evolve, says a new study from scientists at the University of Oxford – and that gives us something to look for“It’s life, Jim, but not as we know it.” How many times did we hear Mr Spock say this back in the day when classic Star Trek ruled the airwaves?* What always interested me back then was how did he know that it was life if it was so barely recognisable by Earthly (or Vulcan) standards?Turns out a group of scientists from the zoology department at the University of Oxford may have the answer. Don’t look for faces, eyes, limbs or any of the large-scale things that are so familiar to life on Earth. Don’t look at the chemistry either. Instead, look for the hallmarks of natural selection. Continue reading...

Becky Parker, director of the Institute for Research in Schools, makes the case that we should – and that some schools are already getting students involvedIf an alien visited the science lab of a 1970s school, and a school now, they would not a see difference that is commensurate with the changes in the lives of young people over that period. Then, at O level, students had to learn a whole set of formula for physics, and they still do now, for the new GCSEs. As Feynman said:I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something. Continue reading...

From policing and healthcare to defence and dating sites AI is being woven into the fabric of our lives – for better and for worseAt Moorfields Eye Hospital in London, consultants are facing a familiar problem.Patient numbers are surging. Age-related eye diseases are becoming more and more common, and as the British demographic gets ever older, numbers are predicted to increase by between a third and one half. Continue reading...

Our fear is that a GM-style public backlash to AI might lead to a clampdown on its use in the public sector – leaving private companies to use it uncheckedFresh breakthroughs in artificial intelligence come thick and fast these days. Last month, Google’s DeepMind revealed its latest Go-playing AI which mastered the ancient game from scratch in a mere 70 hours. AI can spot cancer in medical scans better than humans, meaning radiotherapy can be targeted in minutes, not hours. We may soon use the technology to design new drugs, or repurpose existing ones to treat other, neglected, diseases.But as we begin to realise these opportunities, the potential risks increase: that AI will proliferate, uncontrolled and unregulated, in the hands of a few increasingly powerful technology firms, at the expense of jobs, equality and privacy. Already, mistakes over the sharing of patient records between DeepMind and the Royal Free Hospital in London have raised public concerns about technology firms being involved in digital healthcare.

Young male Ice Age mammoths probably roamed alone and got themselves into risky situations more often than their female counterparts, study findsScientists have solved the mystery of why the overwhelming majority of mammoth fossils are male.

The 19th century explorer sometimes felt that his efforts to record the natural world made his journeys more difficult and called unencumbered travellers ‘lucky’.The explorer Alexander von Humboldt is fed up, frustrated and far from home. He waits in a miserable village, by the Magdalena river in Colombia in 1801. “It was suffocatingly hot; at this time of year there is not a breath of wind. Feeling depressed, we lay on the ground in the main square,” he writes in his Personal Narrative of a Journey to the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent.“My barometer had broken and it was the last one I had. I had anticipated measuring the slope of the river and fixing the speed of its current and the positions of different stages through astronomical observations. Only travellers know how painful it is to suffer such accidents, which continued to dog me in the Andes and in Mexico; each time this happened I felt the same. Continue reading...

Thoughtful governmental action can make development of new drugs for small patient populations viable, says Prof David Roblin, while Dr Georgina Crayford responds to an article on efforts to cut the use of antibiotics in farmingDavid Cox reports on the “war on bugs” and development of “superantibiotics” (23 October). A blunderbuss is effective against the enemy, but what of the collateral damage? We humans contain more bacteria than human cells – our microbiome – which are key for many aspects of health. A more modern approach is to identify precisely the bacteria responsible for a disease, and use a narrow-spectrum antibiotic to target it. A neat example of the pitfalls of killing too wide a range of bacteria is provided by vancomycin, mentioned in the article, which is used to treat Clostridium difficile-associated diarrhoea. Unfortunately, it also kills the normal bacteria in the bowel, leaving a vacuum into which C difficile can recur, and studies have now shown vancomycin to be less effective than more targeted antibiotics in preventing recurrence.The current commercial landscape does not favour development of new antibiotics. Efforts, such as those discussed at the G20 in Hamburg, are being made to change this with “push and pull mechanisms” to create incentives for innovation. History shows that thoughtful governmental action can make development of new drugs for small patient populations viable: the Orphan Drug Act, signed into law in the US in 1984 and replicated in the EU, was followed by a rush of new drug approvals for rare diseases. This can incentivise the pharmaceutical industry in efforts to discover new antibiotics that can be deployed with precision and offer superior benefits over current medicines.

Group of Eight’s Vicki Thomson defends ‘blue sky’ research in the academic sector after Daily Telegraph labels some ‘nutty’The derision of academic research by tabloid newspapers risks undermining Australia’s research capabilities, the head of the Group of Eight has warned.This week the education minister, Simon Birmingham, announced the rollout of long-mooted plans to make the $3.5bn in funding that the Australian Research Council dishes out each year more focused on “impacts”. Continue reading...

What defines ‘another era’ – and how does the brain perceive and process the passage of time anyway? It’s actually more chaotic than you might thinkMichael Fallon’s recent and rapid fall from grace has been commented on substantially already. But one thing many are picking up on is his questionable claim that the incidents were more “acceptable” 10 to 15 years ago.Looked at one way, this is another example of the standard “of its time” excuse, often used to dismiss inappropriate (by present standards) behaviour and views that stem from the past, when cultural norms and expectations were different. In truth though, the argument is inherently questionable in many ways, even more so in the case of Michael Fallon, as the legal context around issues of sexual harassment hasn’t really changed in nearly 30 years. Continue reading...

Natural selection can help us to understand life on other planets – and how much we have in common with alien speciesAliens could be everywhere. There are at least 100bn planets in our galaxy alone, and at least 20% of them could be habitable. Even if a tiny fraction of those planets – less than 1% of 1% – evolved life, there would still be tens of thousands of planets with aliens in our vicinity. But if we want to figure out where to start looking for these neighbours, we need to understand what they might be like and where they might thrive.Ultimately, we want to understand as much as possible about an extraterrestrial species before we encounter it. Yet making predictions about aliens is hard because we have only one example – life on Earth – to extrapolate from. Just because eyes and limbs have evolved many times on Earth doesn’t mean they will appear even once elsewhere. Just because we are made of carbon and coded by DNA doesn’t mean aliens will be – they could be silicon based and coded by “XNA”. Continue reading...

Muon-detecting sensors have revealed a huge cavity hidden within the pyramid – the first major structural find since the 19th centuryArchaeologists have uncovered a mysterious enclosure hidden deep inside the Great Pyramid of Giza, the oldest of the seven wonders of the ancient world.The massive cavity stretches for at least 30 metres and lies above the grand gallery, an impressive ascending corridor that connects the Queen’s chamber to the King’s in the heart of the historic monument. It is the first major structure found in the pyramid since the 19th century. Continue reading...

Recent studies linking people’s views on social inequality to how they think and act on environmental issues could prove crucial to changing their behaviourIn the 1990s, psychologists at the University of California, Los Angeles, developed a scientific theory to account for all the prejudice and violence in the world. Social dominance theory, which attributes sexism and racism (among other isms) to the way humanity organises its social structures, can be used to explain everything from opposition to welfare policies to why we go to war.Put simply, the theory states that people with power will always seek more of the desirable things in life (as they see it) at the expense of their subordinates. Continue reading...

High demand at companies such as Google could leave fewer talented scientists to teach next generation, academics fearBritish universities are being stripped of artificial intelligence (AI) experts in a brain drain to the private sector that is hampering research and disrupting teaching at some of the country’s leading institutions.Scores of talented scientists have left or passed up university posts for salaries two to five times higher at major technology firms, where besides getting better pay, new recruits can take on real-world problems with computer power and datasets that academia cannot hope to provide. Continue reading...

Linguists say that random chance plays a bigger role than previously thought in the evolution of language – but also that ‘English is weird’When it comes to changes in language, there’s no point crying over spilt milk: researchers charting fluctuations in English grammar say the rise of certain words, such as spilled, is probably down to chance, and that resistance is futile.Comparisons have long been drawn between evolution and changes in language, with experts noting that preferences such as a desire for emphasis can act as a type of “natural selection”, affecting which words or forms of grammar are passed on between generations.

Particles known as “bottom mesons” are not decaying in the way the Standard Model of particle physics says they should, and it’s causing some excitementMeasurements made by the LHCb experiment at CERN are showing some anomalies which, if confirmed by more data, would signal the breaking point of our most fundamental description of particle physics to date - the Standard Model.Using proton collisions from the LHC, LHCb has been carefully measuring the production of bottom mesons and how often they decay to kaon and muon particles. It looks like the answer is: not nearly often enough! In fact, this decay occurs at only about three-quarters of the frequency predicted by the Standard Model. Continue reading...

This week, Ian Sample and Nicola Davis explore the complex relationship between poverty, stress, and life expectancySubscribe & Review on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Audioboom, Mixcloud & Acast, and join the discussion on Facebook and TwitterIn 2016, the New Policy Institute estimated that 13.5 million people in the UK – that’s a fifth of the population – were living in poverty. For this shockingly large group, life doesn’t get much harder and the impact goes far beyond their financial position. Their general health takes a hit too, cutting short their life expectancy. And with a slew of recent scientific studies examining the issue, we ask: what does poverty do to our health and wellbeing? And what physiological processes might be at work? Continue reading...

A handful of companies are luring away top researchers, but academics say they are killing the geese that lay the golden eggsIt was the case of the missing PhD student.

Researchers say social, ethical and political concerns are mounting and greater oversight is urgently neededThe emerging field of artificial intelligence (AI) risks provoking a public backlash as it increasingly falls into private hands, threatens people’s jobs, and operates without effective oversight or regulatory control, leading experts in the technology warn.At the start of a new Guardian series on AI, experts in the field highlight the huge potential for the technology, which is already speeding up scientific and medical research, making cities run more smoothly, and making businesses more efficient. Continue reading...

To reinvigorate our economy and end the productivity crisis, our industrial strategy needs direction - and a rethink on the role science and technology can playFor a long time, industrial strategy was something that belonged in the 1970s, along with British Leyland and cars with square steering wheels. But after the decade of stagnation that followed the 2007 financial crisis, the idea that our economy might need some strategic direction no longer seems far-fetched.Later this month, the government is expected to publish its industrial strategy white paper. Ahead of that, the Industrial Strategy Commission – an independent initiative by the Universities of Manchester and Sheffield, of which I’m a member – has today published its own recommendations. Continue reading...

Using cheaper version of drug effective against blindness is preferable to cost-cutting measures such as rationing, say NHS commissionersTwo multinational drug companies are threatening legal action to prevent patients being offered a cheap version of an effective drug against blindness which could save the NHS millions of pounds.Twelve NHS clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) in the north-east of England say that saving money by buying a safe and effective – but 10 times cheaper – version of the licensed drug for wet macular degeneration is far preferable to cutting costs in other ways, for instance by rationing fertility treatment or cataract operations. Continue reading...

The influential evolutionary scientist, who coined such terms as ‘stem cell’ and ‘ecology’, was also a virtuoso illustrator. The editor of a new book celebrating this work introduces some highlights Continue reading...

There are more than 50m prescriptions for proton pump inhibitors in the UK, though they have previously been linked to side-effects and increased risk of deathA drug commonly used to treat acid reflux is linked to a more than doubled risk of developing stomach cancer, researchers have claimed.Proton pump inhibitors (PPIs) reduce the amount of acid made by the stomach and are used to treat acid reflux and stomach ulcers. Continue reading...

When I posed this question on Twitter, the stories poured out and patterns emerged. Real regrets are about bad choices in love, learning and loss, being held back by fear – and self-blame

It glows and burns and is associated with glowing skulls, graveyard ghosts and spontaneous human combustion – not to mention painful and fatal illnessI would like to tell you about phosphorus, my favourite element in the periodic table. Phosphorus is an excellent candidate for a poison blog as there are a surprising number of ways it can kill you. It is also the most appropriate element for a Hallowe’en blog as it is easily the spookiest member of the periodic table and associated with stories of alchemists, glowing skulls, graveyard ghosts and spontaneous human combustion.

Having changed location earlier this year to avoid being cut off, the Halley VI station will close again over fears that the ice shelf it stands on may breakA British research station in Antarctica is being shut down for the second winter in a row following concerns over growing cracks in the 150-metre thick ice shelf on which it stands.The Halley VI station, which is parked on the Brunt ice shelf, will be shut down between March and November 2018, with the 14-strong staff who had been gearing up for the winter stint redeployed elsewhere in Antarctica or brought home to the UK. Continue reading...

We tend to recall more memories from our youth than other times in our life. And recent work suggests that this reminiscence bump might help to explain one of Trump’s much-loved slogansIn 2016, as Donald Trump was busy securing the Republican nomination by promising to “Make America Great Again”, a survey of Americans asked a seemingly simple question: in which year was the country great in the first place? Unfortunately, the results were not so straightforward and instead of a consensus, respondents’ choices were spread out across the last 70 years. But an analysis by the Atlantic found one factor that seemed to influence people’s responses: their age. The younger a participant was, the more recent the year they tended to choose.

Doctors have revealed that millions are already suffering the effects, in the spread of infectious diseases, uneven crop yields and longer allergy seasons• Christiana Figueres is chair of the Lancet Countdown advisory boardWhen the doctor tells you that your cholesterol is too high, you tend to listen and change your diet. When the world’s climate scientists tell us that temperatures are rising to dangerous levels, we should heed their advice. It’s time to give up climate change, it’s bad for our health.I’m not talking about the health of our planet or the health of species such as the polar bear, so often associated with climate change – though they are suffering. I’m talking about human health. The health of you, your family, your neighbours – each and every one of us. Continue reading...

Enigmatic ocean giants, giant squid and colossal squid are the largest living invertebrates but even larger suckered giants may have lived in the pastWe’ve already looked at ghosts and zombies in the fossil record but if you fancy your Halloween horrors a little more Lovecraftian then I’ve got some ancient suckered creatures from the depths of the ocean and time for you. Tenuous seasonal segue over, let’s look at giant cephalopods from the fossil record.Cephalopods are a class of molluscs that includes octopuses, “squid”, cuttlefish, vampire squid, nautilus and extinct forms such as ammonoids and belmnites. We’ve covered cephalopods in Lost Worlds Revisited before, in particular the difficulty in interpreting fossils of animal which lack hard parts. Octopuses have a very limited fossil record, there are still a lot of questions about what ammonites looked like in life, and living nautilus are sometimes unfairly labelled “living fossils”. Continue reading...

Comparatively little is known about exploding head syndrome and sleep paralysis, so we’re launching the first large-scale survey into both disordersOf all the sleep disorders, “exploding head syndrome” (EHS) has arguably the most intriguing name. EHS has been described as “a sensory parasomnia characterised by the perception of loud noises and/or a sense of explosion in the head when transitioning to or from sleep. These noises are not associated with significant pain, but lead to abrupt arousal and feelings of fright”.

Ignoring the body’s natural rhythms can affect our physical and mental wellbeing – and even the outcome of surgeryOur bodies have many clocks that control sleep, health and performance. If we do things at the wrong times, there can be dangerous consequences. This year’s Nobel prize was awarded to the three scientists who discovered the key genes in circadian (24-hour) body clocks. Their discovery enabled other scientists to discover the thousands of circadian times that control our health, our genes and even when we should have treatments: it can make the difference between life and death.Major heart surgery is common, but fraught with dangers. The most significant is the magnitude and duration of interrupting and restarting the body’s oxygenated blood supply. On Friday a study was published on the complications arising from morning and afternoon heart surgery. The time of surgery made a significant difference: 54 (out of 298) patients who had surgery in the morning experienced complications (18% of all patients) compared to 28 (of 298) patients who had surgery in the afternoon (9%). Heart surgery appears to be safer in the afternoon. Continue reading...

UN warns that drastic action is needed to meet climate targets set in the Paris agreementThe concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increased at record speed last year to hit a level not seen for more than three million years, the UN has warned.

According to Age UK, half of adults over 55 have experienced common mental health problems. The good news is the stiff-upper-lip approach to problems is breaking down – now all we need are widely available treatments and facilitiesI’m getting increasingly frightened lately. About anything and everything, whether it’s happening or not, because I’m sure it will. Especially when I’m awake at night, feeling sick and sweaty and knowing for certain that the worst will happen. Perhaps my mental health is a bit dicey. Why not? I’m getting on and, according to Age UK, half of adults over 55 have experienced common mental health problems, often depression and anxiety.No surprise there, then. We have plenty to be browned off or petrified about. Here I am, 75, with numerous chums going down like ninepins, struck with horrible illnesses, or, if we manage to keep going, there’s the looming possibility of dementia, or relegation to a nursing home, like the two friends I visited last week. Or nuclear war. Or I may drop dead, just like that. Continue reading...

Expert interrogators know torture doesn’t work – but until now, nobody could prove it. By analysing hundreds of top-secret interviews with terror suspects, two British scientists have revolutionised the art of extracting the truth• Read the text version hereSubscribe via Audioboom, Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Mixcloud, Acast & Sticher and join the discussion on Facebook and Twitter Continue reading...

Psychiatric diagnosis must serve an ethical purpose: relieving certain forms of suffering and disease. Science alone can’t do that

What to look out for in the coming month, including Jupiter and Venus at their brilliant best in the pre-dawn twilight and the annual Leonids meteor showerIn a month that has the Milky Way stretching almost overhead during most of Britain’s hours of darkness, the highlights are a conjunction in our pre-dawn twilight between the two brightest planets, Venus and Jupiter, and a return of the Leonids meteor shower under moonless skies. Continue reading...

If you like sitting in window seats, believe in God and go to the gym, science says you’re probably a self-centred monsterIn these trying times, when everything seems awful, it’s worth remembering that people are fundamentally good. Except, actually, they aren’t. According to a swath of recent studies, the world is full of terribly self-centred people, and I’m afraid you’re probably among them. Indeed, you probably think this article is about you, don’t you? Well, perhaps you don’t. Not all men are created equally awful and some people are more self-absorbed than others. For purely charitable reasons, I have carefully collated some of the latest selfishness science to help you quantify just how much of an egomaniac you are. Continue reading...