Method of preserving 18th-century Austrian vicar has never been seen before, say researchersThe mystery of a mummy from an Austrian village has been solved, according to researchers who say it was embalmed in an unexpected way - via the rectum.Intrigue had long swirled around the mummified body stored in the church crypt of St Thomas am Blasenstein. The remains were rumoured to be the naturally preserved corpse of an aristocratic vicar, Franz Xaver Sidler von Rosenegg, who died in 1746 at the aged of 37, gaining the mummy the moniker of the air-dried chaplain". Continue reading...

Kosmos 482, weighing 500kg, was meant to land on Venus in the 1970s but it never made it out of orbit because of a rocket malfunctionA Soviet-era spacecraft meant to land on Venus in the 1970s is expected to soon plunge uncontrolled back to Earth.It's too early to know where the half-ton mass of metal might come down or how much of it will survive re-entry, according to space debris-tracking experts. Continue reading...

Ethel Caterham, who lives in a care home in Surrey and takes life in her stride, is first Briton to claim title since 1987The secret of longevity is to do what you like, according to the 115-year-old British woman named the world's oldest living person.Ethel Caterham, born in 1909, is the first Briton to claim the title of world's oldest person since 1987, when 114-year-old Anna Williams was the record holder. Continue reading...

Linzagolix hailed as a possible gamechanger' in tackling the painful condition for some patients in EnglandMore than 1,000 women a year in England could benefit from a new pill for endometriosis.The condition occurs when tissue similar to the womb lining grows elsewhere in the body, such as the pelvis, bladder and bowel. It can cause chronic pain, heavy periods, extreme tiredness and fertility problems. Continue reading...

Aluminium emissions from satellites as they fall to Earth and burn up is becoming more significant as their numbers soarRight now there are more than 9,000 satellites circumnavigating overhead, keeping track of weather, facilitating communications, aiding navigation and monitoring the Earth. By 2040, there could be more than 60,000. A new study shows that the emissions from expired satellites, as they fall to Earth and burn up, will be significant in future years, with implications for ozone hole recovery and climate.Satellites need to be replaced after about five years. Most old satellites are disposed of by reducing their altitude and letting them burn up as they fall, releasing pollution into Earth's atmosphere such as aerosolised aluminium. To understand the impact of these growing emissions from expired satellites, researchers simulated the effects associated with an annual release of 10,000 tonnes of aluminium oxide by 2040 (the amount estimated to be released from disposal of 3,000 satellites a year, assuming a fleet of 60,000 satellites). Continue reading...

The narrative of ancient tribes around the world regularly using ayahuasca and magic mushrooms in healing practices is a popular one. Is it true?Beginning in 2001, the Austrian anthropologist Bernd Brabec de Mori spent six years living in the western Amazon. He first arrived as a backpacker, returned to do a master's thesis on ayahuasca songs, and eventually did a PhD on the music of eight Indigenous peoples in the region. Along the way, he married a woman of the local Shipibo tribe and settled down.I did not have a lot of money," he told me, so I had to make my living there." He became a teacher. He built a house. He and his wife had children. That rare experience of joining the community, he said, forced him to realise that many of the assumptions he had picked up as an anthropologist were wrong. Continue reading...

Authorities are still trying to understand what triggered the massive power outage that left the majority of the Iberian Peninsula without electricity on Monday. To understand what might have been at play, and whether there's any truth to claims that renewable energy sources were to blame, Ian Sample hears from Guardian energy correspondent Jillian Ambrose. And Guardian European community affairs correspondent Ashifa Kassam explains what it was like to experience the blackout and how people reactedShipwrecked in the 21st century': how people made it through Europe's worst blackout in living memorySupport the Guardian: theguardian.com/sciencepod Continue reading...

Focus on overuse contributes to antibiotics reaching less than 7% of people with drug-resistant infections in poorer countries, say researchersLess than 7% of people with severe drug-resistant infections in poorer countries get the antibiotics they need, a new study suggests, with researchers warning that not only is this causing suffering and deaths, but is also likely to be driving antimicrobial resistance (AMR).With AMR forecast to cause 1.9m deaths a year by 2050, they are calling for urgent action, akin to the fight earlier this century to get HIV drugs to Africa's virus hotspots. Continue reading...

Corroboree frog belongs to 100m-year-old family of amphibians but is now found only in the puddles and peat bogs of Kosciuszko national park

Wealthy nations are slashing funding for essential services such as the HIV/Aids response, but poorer countries cannot absorb the impact overnightCountries across the world are cutting aid budgets, abandoning the decades-old consensus that supporting health and development is both a moral duty and a strategic interest. But the end of aid cannot mean the end of global solidarity - because our global economy is stacked against low- and middle-income countries to such an extent that they simply cannot afford to respond to global crises alone.Developing countries are drowning in debt, facing interest rates up to 12 times higher than wealthy countries. When interest rates shot up after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the global south was worst hit. Low- and middle-income countries now pay $4 (3) to the richest in the global north for every $1 they receive in aid. Thirty-four of Africa's 54 countries spend more on debt than on healthcare. Continue reading...

Exclusive: British team exposed live cells to toxic proteins to gather rare insight into how dementia developsScientists have used living human brain tissue to mimic the early stages of Alzheimer's disease, the most common form of dementia, in a breakthrough that will accelerate the hunt for a cure.In a world first, a British team successfully exposed healthy brain tissue from living NHS patients to a toxic form of a protein linked to Alzheimer's - taken from patients who died from the disease - to show how it damages connections between brain cells in real time. Continue reading...

Findings of survey on happiness, health, finances, meaning in life and relationships raise concerns for young peopleBritain ranks among the poorest countries for human flourishing", according to a major study that raises questions about the nation's wellbeing and younger people in particular.The survey, which spanned 22 countries on six continents, rated the UK 20th based on a combined score that considered a range of factors from happiness, health and financial security to relationships and meaning in life. Continue reading...

Exercise such as aerobic and resistance training and yoga found to reduce heart and nerve damage and brain fogExercise can counter the detrimental effects of cancer treatment, according to the most comprehensive review of its kind.Several studies have evaluated how physical activity affects the health outcomes of patients with the disease, but significant gaps in the evidence have remained until now. Continue reading...

Scientific recipe for cacio e pepe avoids a lumpy sauce but uses powdered starch instead of reserved pasta waterIt may be only pasta, pecorino and black pepper, but cacio e pepe is not nearly as easy to make as some would imagine.Now, researchers have come up with a scientific recipe that avoids a lumpy sauce every single time - but it all gets a lot more complicated. Continue reading...

First 27 satellites launched into space from Florida, part of $10bn effort to beam broadband internet globallyThe first 27 satellites for Amazon's Kuiper broadband internet constellation were launched into space from Florida on Monday, kicking off the long-delayed deployment of an internet from space network that will rival SpaceX's Starlink.The satellites are the first of 3,236 that Amazon plans to send into low-Earth orbit for Project Kuiper, a $10bn effort announced in 2019 to beam broadband internet globally for consumers, businesses and governments - customers that SpaceX has courted for years with its powerful Starlink business. Continue reading...

Oral medications are in development to provide alternative to injectables such as Wegovy that must be kept in fridgeNewly developed weight loss pills could have a big impact on tackling obesity and diabetes in low- and middle-income countries, experts have said.Weight loss jabs such as Wegovy and Mounjaro, that contain the drugs semaglutide and tirzepatide respectively, have become popular in countries including the UK after trials showed they can help people lose more than 10% of their body weight. Medications containing semaglutide and tirzepatide can also be used to help control diabetes. Continue reading...

Maintaining a positive mood and eating more fruit may also help lower risk, researchers findDrinking champagne, eating more fruit, staying slim and maintaining a positive outlook on life could help reduce the risk of a sudden cardiac arrest, the world's first study of its kind suggests.Millions of people worldwide die every year after experiencing a sudden cardiac arrest (SCA), when the heart stops pumping blood around the body without warning. They are caused by a dangerous abnormal heart rhythm, when the electrical system in the heart is not working properly. Without immediate treatment such as CPR, those affected will die. Continue reading...

Just Stop Oil, the climate activism group behind motorway blockades, petrol station disruption and tomato soup attacks on major artworks, has disbanded after staging a final action in London this weekend. To find out why the group has decided to hang up the famous orange high-vis, Madeleine Finlay hears from our environment correspondent Damien Gayle who has been covering Just Stop Oil since its inception. He explains how policy wins and policing crackdowns combined to bring the movement to a close, and what the future of climate activism could look like in its wakeWhat next for climate activism now Just Stop Oil is hanging up the hi-vis'?Support the Guardian: theguardian.com/sciencepod Continue reading...

The solutions to today's puzzlesEarlier today I set you these puzzles about straws. Here they are again with solutions.1. Lift-off Continue reading...

The Lunar Hatch project aims to blast eggs into space, hoping that aquaculture will provide protein for astronauts on missionsAt first glance, there doesn't seem to be anything special about the sea bass circling around a tank in the small scientific facility on the outskirts of Palavas-les-Flots in southern France. But these fish are on a mission.When fully grown, they will produce offspring that will be the first to be launched into space as part of a scientific project called Lunar Hatch that is exploring whether sea bass can be farmed on the moon - and eventually Mars - as food for future astronauts. Continue reading...

Riddles with long paper cylindersUPDATE: To read the solutions click hereThe most heated puzzle about the drinking straw is does it have one hole or two?" (This debate periodically goes viral and for those who want to suck up its delicious complexities I recommend this chat with mathematician Jordan Ellenberg.)Today's puzzles are also about straws, but are much less controversial. Continue reading...

Using Arcturus, Spica and Regulus as points, you have a marker for faint constellations

Each year, hundreds of potentially world-changing treatments are discarded because scientists run out of cash. But where big pharma or altruists fear to tread, my friend and I have a solution. It's repugnant, but it will workBy Alexander Masters. Read by Tom Andrews Continue reading...

Donald Trump ignited a scramble that is transforming space from shared frontier to private asset - raising questions about law, equity and ethicsIn 2015, a rare moment of US congressional unity passed the Space Act - to mine asteroids as if they wereopen seams of ore and harvest planets like unclaimed farmland. Quietly signed by PresidentBarack Obama, it now reads as a premature act of enclosure: staking titles in a realm we scarcely understand. Though some expressed concerns at the time, it was justified by the idea of inevitable progress. Such naivety evaporated with Donald Trump. Space had been humanity's last commons, shielded by a 1967 Outer Space treaty. MrTrump declared it dead in 2020, signing the ArtemisAccords and enlisting 43allies, including the UK, in the legalisation of heaven's spoils. In March, MrTrump vowed to plant the stars and stripes on Mars - and beyond. The age of celestial commons was brief, if it ever began.A new report by the Common Wealth thinktank, titled Star Wars, warns that a powerful coalition - composed of private corporations, billionaires such as Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, and neoliberal" thinktanks - is working to extend earthly ownership structures to space. The report's author, Durham University's Carla Ibled, calls it the transfer of shared resources into the hands of a few". The 1967 treaty bans state exploitationof space, but is vague on private claims -aloophole now fuelling a tycoon-led scramble for thestars. The aim is obvious: to act first, shape norms and dare others to object.Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...

Intriguing advances hold out the possibility - but first we have to agree on what life' meansCreation of Life", read the headline of the Boston Herald in 1899. Lower Animals Produced by Chemical Means." The report described the work of the German-American marine biologist Jacques Loeb, who later wrote: The idea is now hovering before me that man himself can act as a creator, even in living nature."In fact, Loeb had merely made an unfertilised sea urchin egg divide by exposing it to a mixture of salts - he was not even close to creating life in the lab. No scientist has ever done that. But that ancient dream hovers today over the discipline called synthetic biology, the very name of which seems to promise the creation of artificial life forms. Take one of the most dramatic results in this field: in 2010, scientists at the J Craig Venter Institutes in Maryland and California announced they had made the first self-replicating synthetic bacterial cell". Continue reading...

Before the recurrence of the disease, the former Australian of the Year set himself the goal of 250 parkruns. On his 242nd, he reflects on life and cancer

Is Anthony Albanese charismatic? Peter Dutton? Charisma has been linked to electoral victory (just ask Bob Hawke), but defining it can be difficult

There's quiet optimism that gene-edited Peter Pan' tadpoles could help control one of the world's worst invasive speciesThe toad's eyes seemed to glow red, its warty and poison-soaked skin - normally splodged in browns - instead a porridge of creamy whites. This albino toad was produced by a team of scientists with one foot in a Sydney university laboratory and the other in a research station on the vast tropical savannahs and wetlands far away to the north near Humpty Doo.It was September 2023 and for the man who dreamed it into being, the toad was but an opening act in a radical new play against one of the world's worst invasive species.Sign up for a weekly email featuring our best reads Continue reading...

The health secretary has pledged to fight chronic illness, but experts say he risks increasing it with department cutsThe US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, entered office with a pledge to tackle the US's chronic disease epidemic and give infectious disease a break". In at least one of those goals, Kennedy has been expeditious.Experts said as Kennedy makes major cuts in public health in his first weeks in office, the infrastructure built to mitigate Covid-19 has become a clear target - an aim that has the dual effect of weakening immunization efforts as the US endures the largest measles outbreak since 2000. Continue reading...

Data indicates the Cosmos 2553 - which US officials claim is aiding Moscow's development of nuclear anti-satellite weapon - may no longer be functionalA secretive Russian satellite in space that US officials believe is connected to a nuclear anti-satellite weapons program has appeared to be spinning uncontrollably, suggesting it may no longer be functioning in what could be a setback for Moscow's space weapons efforts, according to US analysts.The Cosmos 2553 satellite, launched by Russia weeks before invading Ukraine in 2022, has had various bouts of what appears to be errant spinning over the past year, according to Doppler radar data from space-tracking firm LeoLabs and optical data from Slingshot Aerospace, shared with Reuters. Continue reading...

They can learn hundreds of words, count to five and read humans like a book, so why do we struggle to understand them? Scientists reveal the truth about our pets - and whether they ever feel guilty for eating our slippersThe thing that made me think my dog may be a genius was the word monkey. We'd developed a game where I'd hide her monkey toy - a sad, lifeless being, long lobotomised by my golden retriever puppy - and, when I asked her to find it, I realised she could differentiate the word monkey from other objects. A woman in the park had a similar story. On holiday in an unfamiliar cottage, she had misplaced the car keys. After hunting for them for over an hour, her dog, a border collie, overheard her and her husband talking about it, recognised the word keys" and immediately went and foundthem.So maybe my dog, Rhubarb, isn't a genius after all. Dogs, says Vanessa Woods, director of the Puppy Kindergarten project at Duke University in North Carolina, US, and writer of several books including Puppy Kindergarten: The New Science of Raising a Great Dog, can know hundreds of words for objects. Over 1,000, probably," she says. And actually it's more interesting than that, because they learn words the way children learn words, and that's not by repetition." Psychology professor Juliane Kaminski showed back in 2004 that a dog called Rico (another border collie), could learn, as children do, by inference - he didn't need to know the name of a new toy, he could work it out by excluding the toys he did know the names of. Continue reading...

Experts hope vessel's old timbers and nails will help shed light on how boats were built during medieval periodArchaeologists excavating the site of a former fish market in Barcelona have uncovered the remains of a large medieval boat that was swallowed by the waters off the Catalan capital 500 or 600 years ago.The area, which is being dug up in order to build a new centre dedicated to biomedicine and biodiversity, has already yielded finds ranging from a Spanish civil war air-raid shelter to traces of the old market and of the city's 18th-century history. Continue reading...

Product known as Adam implanted in sperm ducts could offer a reversible alternative to condoms and vasectomiesAn implantable, non-hormonal male contraceptive has been shown in trials to last for at least two years.The contraceptive, known as Adam, is a water-soluble hydrogel that is implanted in the sperm ducts, preventing sperm from mixing with semen. Continue reading...

Health secretary is planning wide-ranging monitoring of autistic people's health record and cuts to disability servicesAutism experts and autistic people are pushing back on Robert F Kennedy's terrible" approach to autism as the health secretary plans more expansive monitoring of autistic people's health records and proposes cuts to disability services.A huge study on autism proposed by Kennedy will draw upon private medical records from federal and commercial databases, and a new health registry will track autistic Americans, CBS News reported on Monday. Continue reading...

I need to stop dwelling on everything I get wrong, from sending my ball into the drink to squeezing the wrong bottomWhether you're into sport or not, there's wisdom to be mined from it. Once you've picked your way through the platitudes, banalities and cliche there's gold in there.Rory McIlroy's famous victory at the US Masters earlier this month yielded, for me anyway, a particularly good example. McIlroy's psychologist, Bob Rotella, has been credited with helping his man develop golf's key mental skill: putting your bad shots behind you and barely giving them a second thought. Continue reading...

Madeleine Finlay and Ian Sample discuss three intriguing science stories from the week. From a hint at alien life on a distant planet to a clue in the search for answers over why colon cancer rates are rising in the under 50s, and news from scientists who claim to have found a colour no one has seen beforeAre we alone? New discovery raises hopes of finding alien life

First clinical trial of its kind could be life changing' for those living in fear of severe peanut reactionAdults with severe peanut allergies can be desensitised by daily exposure, according to the first clinical trial of its kind.After being given steadily increasing doses of peanut flour over a period of months, two-thirds of the trial participants were able to eat the equivalent of five peanuts without reacting. Continue reading...

Stuart Semple is selling product for 10,000 (or 29.99 to fellow creatives) - but scientists say hue cannot be replicatedA British artist claims to have replicated in paint a colour that scientists say they discovered by having laser pulses fired into their eyes.Stuart Semple created his own version of the blue-green colour based on the US research published in Science Advances, which he is selling on his website for 10,000 per 150ml jar - or 29.99 if you state you are an artist. Continue reading...

Study offers rare insight into human-animal combat during Roman empireBite marks from a lion on a man's skeleton, excavated from a 1,800-year-old cemetery on the outskirts of York, provide the first physical evidence of human-animal combat in the Roman empire, new research claims.While clashes between combatants, big cats and bears are described and depicted in ancient texts and mosaics, there had previously been no convincing proof from human remains to confirm that these skirmishes formed part of Roman entertainment. Continue reading...

Is loads of muscle all you need for a long and healthy life? You'd think so, given the way everyone's fighting over the squat racksName: CardioAge: 64 Continue reading...

Researchers say mutations more often found in younger patients' tumours caused by toxin secreted by E coli strainsChildhood exposure to a toxin produced by bacteria in the bowel may be contributing to the rise of colorectal cancer in under-50s around the world, researchers say.Countries, including some in Europe and Oceania, have witnessed an increase in young adults with bowel cancer in recent decades, with some of the steepest increases reported in England, New Zealand, Puerto Rico and Chile. Continue reading...

The condition is more excruciating than childbirth or gunshot wounds, but little understood. An online community of clusterheads' are self-experimenting with psilocybin - with promising resultsPeter was working late, watching two roulette tables in play at a London casino, when he felt something stir behind his right eye. It was just a shadow of sensation, a horribly familiar tickle. But on that summer night in 2018, as chips hit the tables and gamblers' conversation swelled, panic set in. He knew he only had a few minutes.Peter found his boss, muttered that he had to leave, now, and ran outside. By then, the tickle had escalated; it felt like a red-hot poker was being shoved through his right pupil. Tears flowed from that eye, which was nearly swollen shut, and mucus from his right nostril. Half-blinded, gripping at his face, he stumbled along the street, eventually escaping into a company car that whisked him home, where he blacked out. Continue reading...

A bracingly hopeful call for high-flyers to ditch corporate drudgery in favour of something far more ambitiousThis is not a self-help book," the author tells us, firmly. Appearances might suggest otherwise: it is written and presented almost entirely in the familiar style of that genre, with largish print, short sentences, snappy maxims in italics and lots of lists and charts (six signs you may be on the wrong side of history"). Its proposals are delivered with all the annoyingly hectic bounciness ofthe genre.But it is worth taking Bregman (a thirtysomething historian and author labelled one of Europe's most prominent young thinkers" by the Ted network) at his word. He begins from the deep and corrosive anomie experienced by so many gifted young professionals who find themselves making substantial sums of money in exhausting and (at best) morally compromising jobs. The moral ambition" of the title is about recognising that serious financial, organisational, technological and analytical skills - the kind that in the US will get you through, say, law school with a secure ticket to prosperity - can be used to make tangible improvements in the lives of human and nonhuman neighbours. Continue reading...

As the UK Pandemic Sciences Network conference kicks off in Glasgow, virus expert Prof Emma Thomson says new technologies are boosting science's ability to fight novel strains of infectious diseasesProf Emma Thomson is someone who knows a thing or two about pandemics. As the recently appointed director of the Medical Research Council, University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research (CVR) and a World Heath Organization consultant, Thomson is one of the country's leading virus experts.We used to think that pandemics would occur maybe once in our lifetimes. Now, it's definitely within the next few years. It could even be tomorrow," she says. Continue reading...

Rock deposits provide first land-based evidence of Earth's largest flood, when water surged through strait of GibraltarThe event that refilled the Mediterranean basin 5m years ago is thought to have been the largest flood in Earth's history, with water surging through the present-day strait of Gibraltar 1,000 times faster than the Amazon River, filling the basin in just a couple of years. Now jumbled rock deposits on the top of hills in south-east Sicily provide the first land-based evidence for this flood.The megaflood theory emerged in 2009, when scientists discovered a massive eroded channel at the bottom of the strait of Gibraltar. Subsequent research has revealed scours on the sea floor, showing how the water forced its way through the shallow gap between Sicily and mainland Africa, to fill the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Continue reading...

Researchers surprised at impact that even small differences in sleep make to adolescents' cognitive abilitiesTeenagers who go to bed earlier and sleep for longer than their peers tend to have sharper mental skills and score better on cognitive tests, researchers have said.A study of more than 3,000 adolescents showed that those who turned in earliest, slept the longest, and had the lowest sleeping heart rates outperformed others on reading, vocabulary, problem solving and other mental tests. Continue reading...

Research into myalgic encephalomyelitis or chronic fatigue syndrome also reveals diagnosis postcode lottery'More than 150,000 more people in England are living with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) than was previously estimated, according to a study that highlights the postcode lottery" of diagnosis.The research, published in the peer-reviewed journal BMC Public Health, involved researchers from the University of Edinburgh analysing NHS data from more than 62 million people in England to identify people who had been diagnosed with myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME)/chronic fatigue syndrome or post-viral fatigue syndrome. Continue reading...

Blocking sunlight could temporarily slow the climate crisis but the technologies remain highly controversialUK scientists are to launch outdoor geoengineering experiments as part of a 50m government-funded programme.The experiments will be small-scale and rigorously assessed, according to Advanced Research and Invention Agency (Aria), the UK government agency backing the plan, and will provide critical" data needed to assess the potential of the technology. The programme, along with another 11m project, will make the UK one of the biggest funders of geoengineering research in the world. Continue reading...

Research into 717 people exposes the many roles canines play in their lives, from fur babies' to steadfast companionDogs are not simply fur babies" or best friend but a blend of both, researchers have found in a study they say highlights the special status of pets.The study suggests owners rate their relationship with their dogs as being as satisfying or more satisfying than their closest human relationships. However, the researchers did not find the owner-dog bond was stronger in people with weaker human relationships. Continue reading...

One day, life as a finance consultant stopped making sense for Peter Hahn, so he took to organic winegrowing in the Loire insteadOne Friday night 24 years ago, Peter Hahn was sitting in the back of a cab to Heathrow, sleepless after yet another 48-hour work bender.My computer's on my lap," the American-born organic winegrower from France recalls, the spring sun lighting up the deep pink walls of his study in his ancient manor house in the Loire Valley, his beloved vines outside, and I'm doing a spreadsheet. Continue reading...