The most persistent fear for healthcare in 2100 was about the exploitation of genetic data. But health data could be a huge force for good. We need an open debate nowThe NHS lurches its way through funding crises and organisational dilemmas. It faces the challenge of antibiotic resistance and it must ponder the deeply conflicted question of the uses and abuses of new technology. Its short-term horizon is so thronged with urgent problems that it would be a surprise if anyone had the spare capacity to consider how things could look by the end of the century.A new social enterprise, Kaleidoscope Health & Care, however, decided it would be useful to try to raise the collective medical gaze into the very long term. Last year it organised a science fiction short story competition and invited writers to consider healthcare in 2100. The winners are announced on Thursday. Continue reading...

Cholesterol-lowering drugs are also being overprescribed to people at low risk of having a heart attack or stroke, researchers findStatins are being overprescribed to low-risk groups and underprescribed to high-risk groups, research by the British Journal of General Practice (BJGP) has shown.The report found potential “undertreatment” among people who have at least a 20% chance of cardiovascular disease (CVD) within a decade, who are considered high-risk patients.

Jodrell Bank is famous for the monumental Lovell telescope – but alongside all the serious science there are plenty of fun activities and hands-on experiments to inspire kidsThe Lovell telescope, centrepiece of the Jodrell Bank Observatory, which has dominated the Cheshire countryside since it was constructed in 1957, was listed as a UK candidate for Unesco world heritage site status this month. As well as the world’s first fully steerable radio telescope, Jodrell Bank is home to a science discovery centre and for the past two summers has hosted the Bluedot festival of electronic music. Continue reading...

Demand for 1966 PhD work, made freely available for the first time, crashes Cambridge’s repository website

A rare and fatal disease will be now treated on the NHS. But the real problems come from common and unglamorous complaintsThe NHS is to fund a very expensive treatment for a very rare but terrible childhood disorder that leaves babies condemned to life in a sterile bubble. This is a triumph for medical science but it should also provoke some deep and careful thought. The treatment in question, strimvelis, qualifies as the second most expensive drug ever put on the market (the only one more expensive was withdrawn due to lack of demand). A single dose costs nearly £500,000 plus VAT, and can only be administered in Milan, where the preparation is made. On the other hand, that one dose is literally life-saving, and as far as we now know, is the only treatment the disorder will ever need. At the rate that the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice), is prepared to pay for treatments of rare diseases – £100,000 a year of good life – this represents good value. The calculation may seem heartless, but it is unavoidable. Money spent on one patient is unavailable for all others. Someone, somehow, must decide who benefits.Looked at purely as a medical advance, this is great. The babies born with this syndrome have two defective copies of a gene essential to the functioning of white blood cells. They are therefore unable to defend themselves against infection and unless kept in wholly sterile surroundings will die of a variety of horrible diseases and developmental disorders before they reach school age. Until now the only treatment was with a stem cell transplant, which was only effective in about three quarters of the cases, and relied on finding matched donors, who are rare. The new treatment removes defective stem cells and replaces their genes with properly functioning versions before returning these to the patients. Once these are incorporated into the bone marrow, they produce healthy white blood cells and the immune system functions as it should. This is how genetic medicine is supposed to work, but has not done reliably until now. Continue reading...

The animals reduce the size of their brains and skulls as winter approaches and regrow them in the spring, say researchersThey use echolocation to explore their habitat and produce an unpleasant scent to avoid being eaten by cats. But the common shrew has another survival trick: as winter approaches, its skull shrinks and then regrows in the spring.Dubbed “Dehnel’s phenomenon” after the scientist who first spotted the effect, the shrinkage has previously been studied by looking at the skulls of shrews that died at different times of year.

The answers to today’s puzzlesOn my puzzle blog earlier today I set this question from Brazil’s State School Mathematics OlympiadHomero is clutching three identical pieces of string in his fist, as illustrated below left. He asks Sofia to tie two ends of the string, chosen at random, at either side of his fist, as illustrated below centre, so that there is one free end at either side. Continue reading...

Researchers hope new discoveries will help explain why some women are predisposed to breast cancer, as well as why certain forms are harder to treatCommon inherited genetic variants that together increase the risk of breast cancer by about a fifth have been identified by scientists.A huge team of researchers working together around the world uncovered 65 new variants. On their own, they contribute around 4% of the two-fold heightened risk of women with a strong family history of breast cancer developing the disease. Continue reading...

GlaxoSmithKline’s Strimvelis is the first such treatment to be funded in the UKThe NHS will fund gene therapy for the first time after the UK’s healthcare cost watchdog approved treatment for the so-called “bubble baby” syndrome, despite a price tag of more than £500,000.The treatment is used against adenosine deaminase deficiency, or ADA-SCID, which disables the immune system and means that children with the illness have to be kept in isolation to avoid infection – hence the “bubble baby” name. Continue reading...

Agricultural consultant who developed a system for rapidly assessing the quality of crops that could be used to warn experts of impending food crisesIan Robinson, who has died aged 72, helped to improve the lives of millions of people across the world with his work on monitoring crops and livestock in developing countries and conflict zones. In particular he developed a scoring system for rapidly assessing the quality and quantity of crops and farm animals, which could then be used to alert UN experts and aid organisations to impending food crises.Apart from the creation of such pioneering systems, Ian’s life as an agricultural consultant included work on finding tactical solutions to food security in the wartorn Horn of Africa, helping with the development of agricultural colleges and training centres in the Philippines and Syria, and improving food production in post-conflict territories such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Kosovo, Rwanda and Somaliland. Continue reading...

The benefits of the project go far beyond genetic testing, it could enable new medical discoveries and diagnosesAs chief executive of the British Heart Foundation (BHF), talking publicly about cardiovascular research and its life-saving effects is something I’m used to. But I never expected to find myself sitting on the other side of the bench, participating in a life-changing study.

Our pets have specific expressions they reserve for humans, it’s been revealed. But as a dog owner, I have to say that news comes as no surprise to meSitting at my desk, I stealthily peel open a packet of biscuits, hardly daring to breathe as I carefully reach inside. Even as my fingers close triumphantly around the coveted malted milk, the clip-clip of claws in the hall announces my failure. A small furry beast trots into my line of vision and arranges itself patiently by my feet. When eventually, biscuit disposed of, I dare to turn my head to meet its burning eyes, the dog cocks his head winsomely to one side, and, on cue, my heart melts. Once again, he’s played me like a fiddle, and without even opening his mouth.Dealing with such blatant emotional manipulation on a daily basis, I was unsurprised by the news that dogs use their facial expressions to interact with the human world. A study recently published in the journal Scientific Reports found that dogs move their faces far more when humans are looking at them than otherwise, suggesting that those expressions are attempts to communicate with us – though the scientists involved were keen to emphasise that they don’t know exactly what the dogs are trying to say. Continue reading...

A question from the tropics about stringUPDATE: To read the answers click hereGuzzlers, tudo bem?Here’s a question from Brazil’s State School Maths Olympiad, one of the largest and most remarkable maths competitions in the world. Continue reading...

With the rise of bugs that are resistant to virtually everything medical science can throw at them, scientists are now hoping to re-engineer existing antibiotics to make them thousands of times more powerfulWarnings about an impending post-antibiotic apocalypse have, over the last five years, grown increasingly stark, with estimates placing the annual number of mortalities from antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections at 700,000 worldwide, a number that could rise to 10m in the next three decades.The need for new classes of antibiotics has repeatedly been emphasised, with researchers turning to some of the most extreme environments on Earth in the hunt for new molecules. But finding broad-spectrum antibiotics that work against all classes of bacteria is challenging – and even if we discover new narrow-spectrum ones that work against particular strains, the likelihood of them becoming clinically available is slim. The economic realities of drug development mean that narrow-spectrum antibiotics aren’t cost-effective for pharmaceutical companies to produce. Continue reading...

Items from codebreaker’s life – and death – go on display at Fitzwilliam Museum in CambridgeIn 1929, a teenager’s end-of-term report noted that his English reading was weak, his French prose was very weak, his essays grandiose beyond his abilities, and his mathematical promise undermined by his untidy work.The report gave few clues that Alan Turing would come to be seen as a genius, a mathematician and computer pioneer whose codebreaking work at Bletchley Park helped shorten the second world war and whose name is given to a test for artificial intelligence. Continue reading...

Cambridge University says Properties of Expanding Universes is already most-requested item in open access repositoryAnyone in the world can now download and read the doctoral thesis of a 24-year-old Cambridge postgraduate student, written in 1966; how many will fully understand Properties of Expanding Universes is another matter.Stephen Hawking hopes that giving free access to his early work will inspire others, not just to think and learn but to share research. He said: “By making my PhD thesis open access, I hope to inspire people around the world to look up at the stars and not down at their feet; to wonder about our place in the universe and to try and make sense of the cosmos.

Originally published in the Manchester Guardian on 26 October 1917In the damp wood, where the fallen leaves ooze moisture underfoot, clusters of toadstools and other fungi rise out of decay. They are white, yellow, brown, red, or crimson with chalky spots; some are a deep forbidding purple, but all alike are interesting or beautiful in form, suggesting to the children the table, stools, or umbrellas of fairy-spirits of the woodlands. On many fallen leaves are sooty spots and purple blotches, and other rusts and mildews are working on the foliage; when fungoid growths attack the fallen twigs, often covering them with ruddy pimples, and quickly turn their wood to moist red tinder and later into the soil. Flourishing on the decay, the fungus works in autumn for the growth of spring; the dormant but healthy seed, buried beneath this life in death, receives its food and shelter from the useless matter upon which the fungus thrived.Related: 100 years ago: Beautiful fungi Continue reading...

Study finds risk of postpartum depression among new mothers also affected by other factors such as length of pregnancyWomen who give birth in winter or spring are less likely to suffer postnatal depression than at other times of year, a study has shown.Other factors affecting the risk of postnatal depression, also known as postpartum depression (PPD), included the length of pregnancy, whether or not an epidural was given during delivery, and body mass index. Continue reading...

A global struggle to find the cause of the rare condition that causes uncontrollable sleepiness has a long and strange history, but there’s hope of a cure at handOne of my first jobs was to keep a lookout for lions. There are some occupations that are not suitable for someone with untreated narcolepsy and this is probably one of them. I was 22, a recent zoology graduate studying meerkats in the Kalahari desert in South Africa. We worked in pairs, one of us on foot, walking with meerkats, the other in the jeep scanning the horizon for danger. On many occasions, I awoke with the imprint of the steering wheel on my forehead, realising that meerkats and colleague had wandered out of sight. I would look for signs of life and, as the panic grew, signs of death. I can tell this story now only because no one got eaten.I have not always been like this. For the first 20 years of my life, I had a healthy relationship with sleep. Shortly after my 21st birthday, though, I began to experience symptoms of narcolepsy, a rare disorder thought to affect about one in every 2,500 people. If people know one thing about narcolepsy, it’s that it involves frequent bouts of uncontrollable sleepiness. This is true, but the condition is so much more disabling, often accompanied by cataplexy (where a strong emotion causes loss of muscle tone and a ragdoll-like collapse), trippy dreams, sleep paralysis, frightening hallucinations and, paradoxically, fractured night-time sleep. There is no cure. Yet. Continue reading...

Damage to the amygdala, not bad parenting, is to blame for psychopathic children, believes Abigail MarshThe concept of a psychopathic child makes people queasy. The two categories seem incompatible. Children, even badly behaved ones, are viewed as maintaining some fundamental innocence, whereas psychopaths are seen as fundamentally depraved. Neither stereotype is totally true. Children, just like adults, are capable of cruelty and violence, and even highly psychopathic people are not cruel or violent all of the time.Psychopathy is a developmental disorder. It doesn’t emerge out of nowhere in adulthood – all psychopathic adults show signs during adolescence or childhood. Continue reading...

Fossil discovered after 70 million years shows Jurassic group sleeping peacefully togetherThe three young dinosaurs had snuggled together to sleep when disaster struck. A thick layer of ash or soil, probably from a volcanic eruption or sand storm, poured over them and the animals, each the size of a large dog, died within minutes.For 70 million years they lay entombed, cradled beside each other within a slab of rock, until US scientists uncovered their remains earlier this year. Subsequent analysis of the fossilised bones – which come from the Gobi desert – reveal the first known example of roosting among dinosaurs. Continue reading...

The past decade has demonstrated when ‘choice architecture’ in politics can succeed and when it doesn’t workWe live in a time when government seems to have the Sadim touch: everything politicians lay their hands on turns into the opposite of gold. So it is a pleasant surprise when a significant piece of policy affecting the futures of millions of people is working as intended.Many folk park pensions in that segment of the brain where they keep things they know to be important, but find boring. Many folk would prefer to spend any surplus income today rather than save it for tomorrow. As a result, Britain has a serious problem. Its citizens are saving far too little for their retirement. Five years ago, the government did something to try to remedy this. It changed the way in which workers make pension decisions by introducing auto-enrolment. Where previously employees had to take a series of steps to opt into a company pension, now you are automatically signed up unless you actively choose to opt out. This subtle-sounding switch has had a rather dramatic result. More than eight million people have started saving for the first time, which means they also receive a pension contribution from their employers. Continue reading...

Programme may be rolled out nationwide to cut soaring risk to playersA series of exercises performed before rugby matches can dramatically reduce injury, according to a benchmark study that the game’s coaches hope will rebut the charge that they do not take the issue of concussion seriously.The programme, known as Activate, is the result of a project by health researchers at the University of Bath and England Rugby. The results, published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, suggest that the exercises can significantly reduce concussion and lower limb injuries. Continue reading...

Insects have triumphed for hundreds of millions of years in every habitat but the ocean. Their success is unparalleled, which makes their disappearance all the more alarmingThirty-five years ago an American biologist Terry Erwin conducted an experiment to count insect species. Using an insecticide “fog”, he managed to extract all the small living things in the canopies of 19 individuals of one species of tropical tree, Luehea seemannii, in the rainforest of Panama. He recorded about 1,200 separate species, nearly all of them coleoptera (beetles) and many new to science; and he estimated that 163 of these would be found on Luehea seemannii only.

South of the border, dialects are discussed as a matter of interest. North of the border, they really matterAccents might be seen as the failure of speech to match some imaginary norm. What’s odd in Glasgow seems ordinary in Essex, and vice versa; and what was ordinary yesterday seems extraordinary now. In Ma’am Darling, Craig Brown’s recently published (and very entertaining) biographical study of Princess Margaret, the author devotes a chapter to the princess’s stilted encounter in 1981 with Roy Plomley on Desert Island Discs. “Ma’am, have you a big collection of records?” the presenter begins reverentially. “Ears, quate,” says the princess. “Have you kept your old 78s?” Plomley ploughs on. “Oh, ears,” the princess replies, “they’re all velly carefully preserved.”The “ears” is baffling until Brown discloses that that’s how she says “yes”, just as she says “nyair” for “no” and “velly” for “very”; and of course the short “a” now commonly rendered as an “e” in comic transcriptions of Brief Encounter: “Eh hev them up in the ettic, eckshleh,” HRH says when Plomley wonders where her 78rpms are kept. Or rather, that’s what Craig Brown hears. When I find the recording of that episode in the BBC archive, I hear something different. “Yes” sounds more or less like “yes”. No matter how often I say “ears” aloud, I can’t hear a “yes” lurking inside it. Continue reading...

Orthopaedic surgeon whose ‘Exeter stem’ implant transformed hip replacement surgeryRobin Ling, who has died aged 90, was an orthopaedic surgeon at the Princess Elizabeth Orthopaedic hospital in Exeter whose contribution to hip surgery resulted in an improved quality of life for millions of people. His research and teaching had a profound influence on the development of hip replacement operations and of revision (re-do) hip surgery. He was responsible for establishing many of today’s surgical techniques.His research built on the work of Sir John Charnley, who pioneered the total hip replacement in the early 1960s. With Clive Lee, an engineer at Exeter University, Robin designed a tapered implant shape that he thought would help the stem remain firmly attached to the skeleton in the long-term. Their implant was first inserted in 1970 and is still used today, with some minor alterations. The “Exeter stem” has been shown to work well in patients of all ages, no matter the shape of their anatomy or the cause of their arthritic hip. Continue reading...

With the Orionids due to peak over the weekend, you can share your photos via GuardianWitnessWatch the skies! We are building to the peak time for spotting the Orionid meteor shower over this weekend.

Findings are a cause for concern and symptom of the ‘over-medicalising of human distress’, says co-author of report using NHS dataThe use of electroconvulsive therapy to treat serious mental health problems is more prevalent in women and older individuals, researchers have found.The study, which looked at data from a group of NHS trusts in England between 2011 and 2015, found that, on average, two thirds of recipients of ECT were women, and 56% were people aged over 60. Continue reading...

A new frontier for science opened on Monday, when astronomers around the world witnessed neutron stars colliding – and resolved the debate about where gold and platinum come from. The extraordinary event, first picked up by the US-based observatory Ligo, in which the two ultra-dense stars spiralled inwards, violently collided and probably collapsed into a black hole, was “seen” for the first time, in both gravitational waves and light. In another first, Japan’s space agency Jaxa announced that its Selene probe had come across a 54km-long chasm beneath the lunar surface that could be turned into an exploration base for astronauts. In a breakthrough for artificial intelligence, Google DeepMind has unveiled AlphaGo Zero, which took just three days to master the ancient Chinese board game of Go. Representing a leap from its 2015 predecessor, the program can learn without human input, and is a milestone on the road to general-purpose AIs working in medicine and science. Researchers explained the ability of whales and dolphins to learn, play and use tools applying the “cultural brain hypothesis” normally applied to humans. They argued cetaceans’ intelligence developed, and their brains grew, as a way of coping with large and complex social groups. The acoustic design of theatres in Ancient Greece evolved to meet the cultural needs of a large group to hear the performance on stage. A study has made approximately 2,400 recordings at three sites, including the ancient theatre of Epidaurus, and concluded that the theatres’ famed ability to convey a stage whisper to the cheap seats is a myth. Continue reading...

The shocking collapse of insect populations hints at a global ecological meltdownWhich of these would you name as the world’s most pressing environmental issue? Climate breakdown, air pollution, water loss, plastic waste or urban expansion? My answer is none of the above. Almost incredibly, I believe that climate breakdown takes third place, behind two issues that receive only a fraction of the attention.Related: Warning of 'ecological Armageddon' after dramatic plunge in insect numbers Continue reading...

Emirate’s drive for food security is symbolic of its determination to make efforts to isolate it ‘a blessing inside a calamity’John Dore is off to Doha’s vast and luxurious Hamad International airport to greet the 8pm flight from Los Angeles via Liège, Belgium.Wearing a straw hat with a small metal shamrock badge in homage to his Irish roots, his imminent visitors are neither family nor friends. Nor are they human at all, but rather a herd of 120 cows. Continue reading...

Following his bestselling The Hidden Life of Trees, the author explores the emotions and intelligence of animals. The ‘new biology’ has big moral implicationsJohn Henry Newman, later Cardinal Newman, once told his congregation that they lived among spirits they could not see. He told them this in a sermon called “The Invisible World”. Angels and the souls of the dead were constantly active, but people’s senses could not perceive them. Anyone who found this difficult to believe should remember, Newman said, that, after all, there was another surrounding world of which people knew almost as little: the animal world. Animals were everywhere. Their presence was familiar. Yet the emotional lives of these creatures, their perceptions and the reasons for their behaviour, remained so hidden that Newman could compare this concealed life to a world of spirits.Peter Wohlleben is a Rhineland forester who became unhappy with industrial methods. Remarkably, he persuaded the municipal owners of his forest to end their commercial contracts and abandon those methods. He is scientific and secular, yet he too perceives that we live in a world of intelligence and emotional complexity that goes unseen. Traditional relationships with farm animals, hunted animals and pets have always provided insights into that world, but only science can reveal the depths. Combining scientific reports with tales of his own observations, Wohlleben tentatively begins to uncover that world and explore its implications for our behaviour. Continue reading...

Researchers say UK’s enthusiasm for bird feeders compared with mainland Europe responsible for increase in beak lengthThe reason some birds in Britain have evolved bigger beaks over the past 40 years may be down to the country’s enthusiasm for feeding them in their gardens, researchers have said.The report published on Thursday in the US journal Science compared beak length among great tits in Britain and the Netherlands, where bird feeders are less common. Continue reading...

Elitism and opera | Neutron stars | Greek theatre acoustics | Jeremiah and the King James Bible | Three-legged stoolsHoward Jacobson (There is no excuse for a man not to wear a suit…’, Weekend, 14 October) reinforces the view that opera is elitist and unapproachable. Nothing could be further from the truth. If the music moves you it doesn’t matter what you wear. And if Mr Jacobson knew his Marriage of Figaro from his Don Giovanni, he would know that Mozart was one of the most anti-establishment of composers, and wouldn’t have cared what anyone wore.

Showing tongues and puppy eyes, and facial movement in general, was more likely when scientists faced the animals, suggesting conscious communicationDogs really do turn on the puppy eyes when humans look at them, according to researchers studying canine facial expressions.Scientists have discovered that dogs produce more facial movements when a human is paying attention to them – including raising their eyebrows, making their eyes appear bigger – than when they are being ignored or presented with a tasty morsel. Continue reading...

Japan says lunar chasm measuring 50km long and 100 metres wide could be used as a base for astronauts and their equipmentScientists have fantasised for centuries about humans colonising the moon. That day may have drawn a little closer after Japan’s space agency said it had discovered an enormous cave beneath the lunar surface that could be turned into an exploration base for astronauts.The discovery, by Japan’s Selenological and Engineering Explorer (Selene) probe, comes as several countries vie to follow the US in sending manned missions to the moon. Continue reading...

Hollingside Wood, Durham City Overnight, uncountable numbers of microscopic spores had drifted down to be made visible on the paper surfaceThere is something stealthy about toadstools. When we followed this path recently there were none. Today a dozen shaggy parasols (Chlorophyllum rhacodes) had appeared, shouldering aside the soil with their closed caps. One of these toadstools, with a newly expanded scaly canopy perched on its long frilled stalk, was at the perfect stage for preparing a spore print.Related: Weatherwatch: The cleverness of mushrooms Continue reading...

Data from GP practices between 2001 and 2014 showed rates of self-harm for boys stayed roughly steady – but soared upwards for girls in recent yearsSelf-harm reported to GPs among teenage girls under the age of 17 in the UK increased by 68% over just three years, research has revealed.The study also found that self-harm among young people aged 10-19 was three times more common among girls than boys, with those who self-harmed at much greater risk of suicide than those who did not.

Three-quarters of flying insects in nature reserves across Germany have vanished in 25 years, with serious implications for all life on Earth, scientists sayThe abundance of flying insects has plunged by three-quarters over the past 25 years, according to a new study that has shocked scientists.Insects are an integral part of life on Earth as both pollinators and prey for other wildlife and it was known that some species such as butterflies were declining. But the newly revealed scale of the losses to all insects has prompted warnings that the world is “on course for ecological Armageddon”, with profound impacts on human society. Continue reading...

The blue light, which can sometimes be seen by humans, is cast by tiny ridges of different height and spacing on petals, scientists have discoveredFlowers might seem like one of life’s simple pleasures, but it turns out there might be more to them than meets the eye.

In a major breakthrough for artificial intelligence, AlphaGo Zero took just three days to master the ancient Chinese board game of Go ... with no human helpGoogle’s artificial intelligence group, DeepMind, has unveiled the latest incarnation of its Go-playing program, AlphaGo – an AI so powerful that it derived thousands of years of human knowledge of the game before inventing better moves of its own, all in the space of three days.Named AlphaGo Zero, the AI program has been hailed as a major advance because it mastered the ancient Chinese board game from scratch, and with no human help beyond being told the rules. In games against the 2015 version, which famously beat Lee Sedol, the South Korean grandmaster, in the following year, AlphaGo Zero won 100 to 0. Continue reading...

Ian Sample speaks with two members of an ambitious project that hopes to crack one of neuroscience’s biggest mysteriesSubscribe & Review on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Audioboom, Mixcloud & Acast, and join the discussion on Facebook and TwitterFrom the most trivial to the most serious, decisions are central to our lives. But how the brain makes up its mind about what to do remains one of neuroscience’s greatest mysteries. Step forward the International Brain Laboratory (IBL). It’s a new, ambitious project that will combine scientific expertise from 21 labs across the globe, with the express aim to bring us closer to understanding what goes on in the brain when we make decisions – big and small. Continue reading...

Graves’ groundbreaking genetic work includes the ‘throwaway line’ that the male Y chromosome may one day go extinctJenny Graves transformed our understanding of how sex chromosomes work, and led to the realisation that the human male Y chromosome may be on a path to extinction. For that and a slew of other groundbreaking work, Graves has been awarded Australia’s top science prize.

In people with the condition, light receptor cells are arranged in matching patterns in both eyes, which may confuse the brainFrench scientists claim they may have found a physiological, and seemingly treatable, cause for dyslexia hidden in tiny light-receptor cells in the human eye.

Study of ice-core records and Ancient Egyptian documents suggests environmental forces helped seal the last Ptolemaic ruler’s fate in 30BCThe fall of Cleopatra’s Egypt to Augustus, the first Roman emperor, is usually told as a melodramatic power struggle between elites on the world stage.

The case for the effectiveness of non-coercive interrogation was made in an 18th-century short story by Friedrich Schiller, writes David Head. What role does the invasion of other countries play in terrorist motivations, asks Rob BastoThe case for the effectiveness of non-coercive interrogation was made long before the examples given in Ian Leslie’s excellent essay on the subject (We have ways of making you talk, 14 October).In his late 18th-century short story The Criminal Driven by Lost Honour (Der Verbrecher aus verlorener Ehre), Friedrich Schiller tells of a petty criminal who goes on to become public enemy number one. When he is apprehended, the judge interrogating him initially opts for a decidedly aggressive and domineering tone. The criminal, when asked by the judge, “Who are you?”, replies: “A man who is determined to answer no question until it is put more courteously.” Realising that his rather brutal interrogation method is getting him nowhere, the judge eventually decides that perhaps it would be better to treat the suspect “with civility and moderation” and apologises for his harsh manner. The suspect then informs the judge that his previous behaviour would never have extracted anything from him, whereas the change of tone has given him confidence in and respect for his interrogator. He therefore reveals who he is. Continue reading...

People with better social skills tend to out-earn their colleagues, but what can you do to build your emotional IQ?While IQ remains a very strong predictor of career success, our research suggests that people with high emotional intelligence are more likely to have higher wages.The study, published in the Journal of Vocational Behaviour in August 2017, tested US university students for emotional intelligence, or EI, during their studies – and then looked at their career trajectory over the course of 10 years. The results showed us that students who scored highly for EI went on to have better salaries across all industries than their less emotionally intelligent peers. Continue reading...

My husband, Jeremy Taylor, who has died aged 70, was a television producer and science writer. A modest man of huge intellectual capacity, he had a gift for communicating complex scientific ideas with ease, whether on paper, film or face to face. For 30 years Jerry made science documentaries for television, particularly for the BBC’s Horizon series, and later wrote two popular science books on evolution.Born in Southport, Lancashire (now part of Merseyside), he grew up in a pub called the Lion near Montgomery, mid-Wales, and went to Welshpool grammar school. When his father, Crom, died, Jerry deferred his place at Liverpool University for a year to run the business with his mother, Wilma (nee White). At Liverpool, he gained a first-class degree in biology, a passion for explaining science and treasured friendships – he also enjoyed many evenings in the Philharmonic pub. Continue reading...

Researchers say the chef’s 10p levy on sugary drinks led to a significant drop in sales – boding well for the government’s sugar tax planJamie Oliver’s 10p tax on sugary drinks sold in his Italian restaurants has resulted in a significant drop in sales, a study has found.The Jamie’s Italian chain introduced the sugary drinks tax to set an example as part of a campaign to persuade the government to take action. In June 2015, Oliver announced that every drink containing added sugar would cost 10p extra and that the money would help pay for food education and water fountains in schools. Continue reading...

Australia’s chief scientist Alan Finkel leads a panel discussing the extraordinary astronomical event witnessed for the first time• New frontier for science as astronomers witness neutron stars colliding• Gravitational wave observation is astronomical alchemy11.52pm BSTAnd that concludes the press conference.You can read our full story here:Related: New frontier for science as astronomers witness neutron stars colliding11.47pm BSTA journalist asks why observation in radio waves is so significant.Tara Murphy explains: the radio emissions come from the shock as it passes through the gas and dust from the merger. “So you can build up a forensic picture of what the enviroment was like around the merger.” Continue reading...