Bones found in a Somerset cave have been linked to human cannibalism 15,000 years ago, but new analysis of markings suggests symbolic meaningEngraved bones unearthed in a Somerset cave have revealed new evidence of macabre cannibalistic rituals carried out by early humans in Britain.The latest analysis of the bones, which were first discovered in the 1980s in Gough’s Cave in the Cheddar Gorge, show signs of having been filleted using sophisticated butchery techniques, decorated and gnawed by fellow humans around 15,000 years ago. Continue reading...

Cephalopods such as octopuses and squid have been known for their ink since antiquity. But what do we know about the evolution of ink and inking?Cephalopods, the group of molluscs that includes octopuses, cuttlefish, squids, ammonites, nautiluses and belemnites, are a weird bunch. Not only are they strange when anatomically compared to their shelled relatives like bivalves, snails and chitons but their evolution, physiology and behaviour makes them almost as interesting as vertebrates (I’m kidding, they’re way more interesting).Despite there only being around 700 living species of cephalopods, biologically, they have evolved an array of adaptations that modern science is still only just unpicking. Neurologically, they are head (and shoulders if they had them) above all other invertebrate animals, sometimes called honourary vertebrates for their cognitive ability and potential conciousness. They are famed for their ability to change colour, shape and size. Many of them are fast growing but short lived. They have adapted to live in the cold depths of the ocean, warm shallows and some species even “fly”. In terms of diversity, cephalopods include the egg case making argonauts, shelled nautiluses, venomous blue-ringed octopuses and enigmatic giants like the giant and colossal squid. Their anatomy has widely inspired art and design and research on their nervous system has lead to breakthroughs in our understanding of how the neurology of all organisms functions. However, before most of this was experimentally and observationally discovered, they were perhaps best known for their “almost unique” ability to squirt ink when harangued, creating a smokescreen before jetting off to safety. Continue reading...

There are many reasons why a genetic legacy might not be seen in contemporary populations – Mary Beard was right to defend the BBC’s cartoonIf you have been on social media at all for the last couple of weeks, you are likely aware of what may be one of the silliest controversies ever: whether a dark-skinned man should be present in a BBC cartoon for children about life in Roman Britain. Critics have raised multiple objections on the theme: whether dark skin was “typical” (even though no scholar has claimed that it was), what percentage of the population must be nonwhite before it can be called “diverse,” and statements like this.People upset by the cartoon have shifted goalposts, ignored or distorted cogent arguments, and mocked the knowledge of experts. It’s been ugly, particularly the attacks on Professor Mary Beard, a renowned classicist. The theme uniting all these efforts is rhetoric accusing scholars and the BBC of “rewriting history” while simultaneously projecting contemporary notions of race backwards in time onto a society that didn’t share them. Continue reading...

Language is crucial to how we perceive the natural world. Help me to find better ways of describing nature and our relationships with it so we can better defend itIf Moses had promised the Israelites a land flowing with mammary secretions and insect vomit, would they have followed him into Canaan? Though this means milk and honey, I doubt it would have inspired them.Related: The word-hoard: Robert Macfarlane on rewilding our language of landscape Continue reading...

An engineer at the company has suggested male domination of Silicon Valley is down to biological differences between the sexes. But the root causes are much more complicatedIt is time to be “open about the science of human nature”. This was the assertion of software engineer James Damore to his colleagues at Google, in an internal memo that has since led to his sacking. “I’m simply stating,” Damore wrote, “that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership.” He went on to imply that women’s “stronger interest in people” and “neuroticism” might make them less naturally suited to being coders at Google.The company’s leadership viewed the matter differently, firing Damore and sparing his female colleagues the need to prove their biological aptitude for working with computers. Continue reading...

Diane Munday says vasectomy and female sterilisation operations should not have funding withdrawn, Diane Chandler says IVF ought not be restricted to those who can afford to pay for it, and Clare Munks says the ‘turkey baster’ method – properly called intrauterine insemination (IUI) – may be worth consideringEven worse than the postcode lottery on IVF treatment being introduced by clinical commissioning groups (Report, 7 August) is the short-termism and lack of joined-up thinking in deciding what patient services to axe in order to save money.In my area (Herts Valleys), at a recent public consultation event, proposals were not only to cease providing “IVF and specialist fertility services” but also to stop funding vasectomy and female sterilisation operations. But funding of pregnancy/birth/postnatal care as well as abortions will continue. Continue reading...

Exclusive: In his new book, James DiNicolantonio claims salt could make us healthier. But experts have condemned the advice as potentially dangerousPublic health experts in the UK have spoken out against a new book that claims many of us should be eating more salt, not less – claiming the advice could endanger people’s health.New York scientist James DiNicolantonio says in his book The Salt Fix that the World Health Organisation and the US and UK advisory bodies on diet have got it wrong with their advice to cut down on salt. Continue reading...

AN Wilson’s ‘exposé’ is the latest in a long line of attempts to undermine evolutionary biology. Now scientists must decide how best to counter themI can save you the effort of reading AN Wilson’s “exposé” on Darwin, which did the rounds over the weekend, characterising the famous scientist as a fraud, a thief, a liar, a racist and a rouser of nazism. Instead, head over to Netflix and watch the creationist made-for-TV movie A Matter of Faith, which covers many of the same arguments – and also includes a final scene in which a fictional evolutionary biologist, standing alone in his study, holds a rubber chicken in his hands and finds himself deliberating over the question of which came first, the chicken or the egg. At least that was an original take on these tiresome accusations.Related: Turkish schools to stop teaching evolution, official says Continue reading...

August’s full moon, known as the sturgeon moon, featured a partial eclipse as it was slightly covered by the Earth’s shadow Continue reading...

The US Department of Agriculture has forbidden the use of the words ‘climate change’. This say-no-evil policy is doomed to failIn a bold new strategy unveiled on Monday in the Guardian, the US Department of Agriculture – guardians of the planet’s richest farmlands – has decided to combat the threat of global warming by forbidding the use of the words.Under guidance from the agency’s director of soil health, Bianca Moebius-Clune, a list of phrases to be avoided includes “climate change” and “climate change adaptation”, to be replaced by “weather extremes” and “resilience to weather extremes”. Continue reading...

There is a saying in computer science: garbage in, garbage out. When we feed machines data that reflects our prejudices, they mimic them – from antisemitic chatbots to racially biased software. Does a horrifying future await people forced to live at the mercy of algorithms?In May last year, a stunning report claimed that a computer program used by a US court for risk assessment was biased against black prisoners. The program, Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions (Compas), was much more prone to mistakenly label black defendants as likely to reoffend – wrongly flagging them at almost twice the rate as white people (45% to 24%), according to the investigative journalism organisation ProPublica.Compas and programs similar to it were in use in hundreds of courts across the US, potentially informing the decisions of judges and other officials. The message seemed clear: the US justice system, reviled for its racial bias, had turned to technology for help, only to find that the algorithms had a racial bias too. Continue reading...

Finding highlights the need for increased investment in the north, warn experts, as research into mortality rate reveals the widening north-south divideMore young adults are dying before their time in the north of England than the south – and the gap is widening, a study has revealed.Researchers say that since 1965, about 1.2 million more people have died before the age of 75 in the north of England than in the south, taking into account differences in population. Continue reading...

Amsterdam says in its bid to house the EMA that two of Britain’s top research agencies would lose much of their businessTwo of the UK’s foremost research organisations will lose much of their business to Amsterdam if the city is successful in securing the relocation of the EU’s medicines regulator, the Netherlands’ formal bid for the prized agency claims.Amsterdam, which has been tipped as an early favourite to secure the European Medicines Agency (EMA), says in its application submitted to the European commission that losing the agency will prove a double blow to London when Brexit forces its move. Continue reading...

Support for the anonymous Google ‘manifesto’ on gender difference is reminiscent of the thinking behind the eugenics era

With the sexually transmitted disease fast becoming drug resistant, successful lab tests of closthioamide show potential as an effective new treatmentA new class of antibiotic has been found to work in the lab against the sexually transmitted infection gonorrhoea, which can cause infertility and damage to babies and is fast becoming resistant to all existing drugs.Although it is early days, because the antibiotic has yet to be tried in animals or humans, researchers say they are excited by its potential. The World Health Organisation has listed gonorrhoea as a high priority infection that poses a great threat to human health, estimating that there about about 78m gonorrhoea infections worldwide each year. In the UK, gonorrhoea is the second most common bacterial STI after chlamydia, with 35,000 cases in England in 2014 alone. New drugs are urgently needed. Continue reading...

A tiny device that sits on the skin and uses an electric field to reprogramme cells could be a breakthrough in the way we treat injured or ageing tissueA novel device that reprogrammes skin cells could represent a breakthrough in repairing injured or ageing tissue, researchers say.The new technique, called tissue nanotransfection, is based on a tiny device that sits on the surface of the skin of a living body. An intense, focused electric field is then applied across the device, allowing it to deliver genes to the skin cells beneath it – turning them into different types of cells. Continue reading...

Experts use 3D printing to restore mound of fossilised remains in Devon quarry plundered by thieves in 2015Future archaeologists may be seriously puzzled by Joint Mitnor, a cave in a Devon quarry. They will find a mound of fossil bones of animals, which about 120,000 years ago were unfortunate enough to fall through a sinkhole into the limestone cavern.Among bison and hippo bones they will find the teeth of wolves, bears and elephants, and the droppings of hyenas that probably came into the cave to feast on their rotting corpses, which appear to date from the 21st century. Continue reading...

On the anniversary of Hiroshima’s nuclear destruction, a walk through the city’s memorial park reveals a complex mix of devastation and rehabilitationHiroshima is flourishing. It has a population surpassing 1.19 million, a burgeoning gourmet scene, towering luxury shopping centres, and a trendy night life. It is a city of vibrant green boulevards and open spaces, entangled by the braided tributaries of the Ōta River. However it is also a city of memorialisation. Over 75 monuments, large and small, sprout like delicate mushrooms in parks and on sidewalks, scattered across the city as if by the wind. Whilst the city grows and evolves, the memory remains of Hiroshima as first place on Earth where nuclear weapons were used in warfare, on 6 August 1945.The number of fatalities is not known, due wartime population transience and the destruction of records in the blast. Estimates are in the region of 135,000 people, roughly equivalent to the population of Oxford. It is therefore unsurprising that many locals have Hibakusha veterans in their families. The Hibakusha community maintain a living collective memory of the bomb, sharing their atomic folktales similarly to the Kataribe storytellers, as a cautionary modern mythology against nuclear war. Continue reading...

Your internal chatter has a huge impact on the way you feel about yourself. Listen in, says Gary John BishopYou stumble through the door into your morning coffee ritual. As you make your way through a maze of chairs, tables and outstretched legs you finally arrive at your space at the end of the queue, and the deliberation begins…“Maybe I’ll have something different this time, hmm, let me see… Iced cranberry lemon tea? Nah, I need the jolt, I’ll get my usual. Good, now what else… What about one of those muffins? Nah, I’m piling it on, there’s about 6,000 calories in one of those… Bagel? Ugh no, I’ll stick to the coffee.” Continue reading...

Entire US will fall into shadow as eclipse passes, with darkest path, or ‘totality’, contained in 70-mile (113km) ribbon from Oregon to South CarolinaThe sun, moon and Earth will line up perfectly in the cosmos on 21 August, turning day into night for a few wondrous minutes, its path crossing the US from sea to shining sea for the first time in nearly a century.Never will a total solar eclipse be so heavily viewed and studied or celebrated.

A facility for research into decay process in British conditions would help detectives find missing bodiesForensic scientists are holding detailed talks with the government about setting up Britain’s first body farm, where researchers would study decomposing human corpses.The aim would be to understand the precise manner in which cadavers decay in water or in soil or in open air. The US has several such centres, which have waiting lists of people who have left their bodies to forensic science. Their corpses are buried, hung from trees or immersed in water and analysed in detail to understand how they break down in different conditions. However, geographical conditions in America are very different from Britain’s, so researchers want to establish a centre here. Continue reading...

Vast extent of the fortifications surprises archaeologists who used new technology and the knowledge of local historiansThe full extent of the networks of trenches and defensive fortifications built in England during the first world war has been revealed in the first major survey of its kind.Detailing how resources were concentrated along England’s eastern and southern coasts – where the main thrust by an invading German army was expected to come – the study draws on existing periodicals and local history as well as LiDAR (Light Detection And Ranging) data gleaned from the use of lasers by the Environment Agency to plot the bumps and dips of British topography. Continue reading...

Supermarket chain makes move ‘purely as a precaution’ but acknowledges it could lead to ‘market shortages’ for eggsDiscount supermarket Aldi said on Friday it was pulling all Dutch eggs from its shelves in Germany over an insecticide scandal that has spread to food stores across Europe.

If no action is taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions or protect citizens, weather disasters could kill 152,000 a year between 2071 and 2100, says studyDeaths from weather disasters could increase 50-fold in Europe by the start of the next century if no action is taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions or protect citizens, researchers have warned.A new study estimates a toll of 152,000 deaths a year between 2071 and 2100 as a direct result of hazards relating to extreme weather, with those living in southern Europe likely to be the hardest hit. Continue reading...

Even if legal barriers were lifted, the conditions genome editing would help are rare, and our understanding of genes is still too poor for it to be widely usedIt is hard to overstate the importance of the moment. For billions of years, life on Earth has been shaped, slowly and incrementally, by dumb evolution. But in research this week, scientists showed how that might change. With advanced genetic engineering tools, a US-Korean team mended dangerous heart disease mutations in human embryos for the first time. The feat paves the way for radical new treatments – and for humans to take control of their genetic destiny.The ability to edit human genomes may one day transform people’s lives, but in breaking new ground, it would cross a line that has long been controversial. Today, many countries prohibit the creation of genetically altered people, even if the procedure would spare them a devastating and life-shortening disease. The caution comes from the fact that changes to an embryo’s DNA affect not only the child in question, but their sperm or eggs. When the time came, they would pass on the modifications – and any harmful side-effects the procedure may cause – to their children and future generations. Continue reading...

Readers share their thoughts on electricity generation, cars, cycling, trains and garden citiesGeorge Monbiot makes some useful points in his article bemoaning the influence of the lobbying power of the motor industry (We must break the car’s chokehold on Britain, 2 August). He proposes a modal transport shift to more coach travel and investment in nuclear power plants to power our electric cars. He ignores completely, as usual, the solar option with smaller electric cars and electric bikes and charged by photovoltaics on homes, at work and in public places. In 1993, I bought Hannibal, the 750kg fibreglass Kewet El Jet electric car that we used for a decade to take the children to school, go shopping and to train and bus stations. This first British solar car was largely powered by the 4kWp PV roof on my Oxford ecohouse. Monbiot also ignores the huge trend towards using electric bikes that can be easily solar charged at home or work. We love our cars and bikes, but the trick is to make them much smaller, lighter and solar powered, used locally and to connect with public transport systems for longer distances, so decrying any need for building inevitably toxic new nuclear power stations at all. Car size does matter now if we, as a society, are serious about surviving safely into the 22nd century, so let’s have less of Jeremy Clarkson on TV and more solar-powered Good Lives. It’s the mindset that has to change first, then the hardware.

Dozens of UK drug deaths have been linked to the opioid fentanyl, but, when used legally, it can be a useful weapon in the fight against acute pain, say Margaret Gibbs and Conrad HodgkinsonPlease be mindful of your potential to frighten people unnecessarily (Report, 1 August). Fentanyl is indeed between 100 and 150 times as potent as morphine but when used in the microgram doses available in commercial products it is as safe as any other strong opioid for the management of severe pain whether post-operative, chronic or towards the end of life. Clearly lacing street drugs with this molecule is highly dangerous but a broad-brush approach is unhelpful. Healthcare professionals work hard to develop a trusting relationship with the people they are caring for. Many are fearful of strong opioid medicines but we know how to use them to good effect and it would be tragic if front-page articles worried some enough to stop taking it and revert to being in pain.

The career of my father, Peter Venables, who has died aged 94, spanned the entire development of modern psychology. He made landmark contributions to the fields of schizophrenia and psychophysiology.His most striking and innovative contribution in this area came in 2012, when he documented for the first time that early malnutrition at the age of three predisposed to schizotypal personality 20 years later in adulthood. His findings helped inform thinking about early-years support for disadvantaged families. Continue reading...

Genome editing has taken another giant leap forward: a groundbreaking project has managed to correct faulty DNA in human embryos that is linked to a fatal heart condition. It raises hopes for parents who risk passing on genetic diseases, although there’s obviously still a long way to go technically and ethically before this becomes clinically available. There might also be some extraordinarily good news for those living with Parkinson’s disease. It looks like a drug currently used to treat diabetes improves movement-related issues and might also slow the progression of the disease. Now, that’s exciting, but this is my favourite story of the week for oh-so-many reasons: new analysis done on a thin film of organic material found on a 110-m-year-old nodosaur (itself an extraordinarily exciting story from earlier this year) shows that it sported ginger-coloured camouflage as well as its intimidating spikes and armour. Not only is this intriguing, but also might change the way we think about predators including T rex. Don’t even bother to calm down after that, because there’s more ancient news to dig (ahaha, see what I ... never mind). Archaeologists have uncovered a site they’ve dubbed a ‘little Pompeii’ south of Lyon in France. The homes and public building are incredibly well-preserved and has been described as an exceptional find by France’s culture ministry. And finally, if you were wondering what happened next to the trillion-tonne Larsen C iceberg, here’s your answer ... Continue reading...

Hijacked by the free market, human gene editing will lead to greater social inequality by heading where the money is: designer babies

Study suggests that exenatide, currently used to treat type 2 diabetes, improves movement-related issues and might also slow the progression of the diseaseA drug commonly used to treat diabetes could help those living with Parkinson’s disease, research has revealed.By 2020 it is predicted that 162,000 individuals in the UK will be living with the condition. While existing drugs help to control its symptoms, there are currently none available which slow or halt its progression. Continue reading...

In a new exhibition, Heather Dewey-Hagborg used hair clippings and cheek swabs from Manning, collected during a two-year correspondenceIn the center of the room at New York’s Fridman Gallery are multiple faces – white, black and brown, each bearing an almost imperceptible resemblance to one another – suspended on wires from the ceiling.The 30 portraits were created by the artist Heather Dewey-Hagborg from cheek swabs and hair clippings sent to her by Chelsea Manning. Manning sent the clippings from the Fort Leavenworth prison, where the former intelligence analyst was serving a 35-year sentence after famously leaking classified diplomatic cables through the website WikiLeaks. Continue reading...

A hope that embryos could be purged of a genetic disease has been fulfilled in part. However, we are some way off reimplanting modified embryos into their mothers – for all the right reasonsThe news that a team of scientists from America and Korea have corrected a genetic defect in single-cell embryos is tremendous. In the short term it affirms the revolutionary principles of the gene editing technique known as Crispr – or, formally, Crispr-Cas9 . In the medium term it holds out the prospect – if the law changes – of eliminating some single-gene defects from entire families, since embryos treated in this way will no longer transmit the defective form of the gene. In the long term, the prospects for widespread genetic manipulation of humans are chilling as well as exhilarating.Crispr makes it possible to manipulate a genome in the way that we can alter the words in a word processor. Very small identifying stretches of DNA around a defective gene can be targeted and then deliberately broken. The hope is that when the cell repairs the break, it does so without the original error. When the DNA is copied at the next cell division, only a functioning version of the gene is reproduced. When this is done early enough, at the embryo stage, the change does not last only for the patient’s lifetime, but is transmitted to all their descendants, too. Continue reading...

Recalls in Germany, Netherlands and Belgium and criminal inquiry launched as tests show high levels of insecticide fipronilMillions of eggs are being recalled from shops and warehouses in Germany and the Netherlands and being blocked from sale in Belgium after some were found to contain high levels of a toxic insecticide banned from use in the production of food for human consumption.About 180 Dutch farms have been temporarily shut down and a criminal investigation has been launched as authorities seek to establish the scale of the problem. Continue reading...

Analysis of organic material from the 110m-year-old nodosaur suggests it had red and white camouflage, indicating its spikes alone did not put off predatorsIt was built like a tank, covered in armour, and weighed about the same as a caravan – but this beefy dinosaur was still at risk of being gobbled up by predators, scientists have discovered.Thought to have lived about 110m years ago, the giant herbivore is believed to be a type of heavily armoured dinosaur known as a nodosaur and would have reached up to 5.5 metres in length.

What gives someone without an incurable condition such as blindness the right to stand in the way of potentially life-saving treatments?A landmark US study by scientists at Oregon Health and Science University in Portland has for the first time successfully edited out a genetic mutation that could cause heart disease, but the fearmongering over designer babies rages on. Where would research into cures for genetic diseases be without a good old debate around the scary future of eugenics?For once, let’s not allow that rhetoric to take over the headlines, in the way that it did two years ago, when research into mitochondrial replacement therapy, so-called three-parent babies, made strides. This is a good and promising breakthrough, not something to fear. Continue reading...

Judges hail writers’ blend of eloquence and erudition on subjects ranging from the evolution of the octopus to the impact of technology on modern manFrom the vastness of infinity to the microbes that live within us, the shortlist for the Royal Society Insight Investment science book prize tackles “the big questions of our time”, according to chair of judges Richard Fortey.Palaeontologist and writer Fortey, with his fellow judges, read almost 200 books to come up with their lineup of six, which ranges from In Pursuit of Memory, Joseph Jebelli’s look at the quest to find a cure for Alzheimer’s, to Peter Godfrey-Smith’s Other Minds, which explores the evolutionary journey of the octopus. Also shortlisted are Cordelia Fine’s study of gender politics, Testosterone Rex, which tackles the myth that sex creates male and female natures and Mark O’Connell’s To Be a Machine, looking at how technology is changing the human condition. Completing the field are Eugenia Cheng’s Beyond Infinity, a study of the concept of infinity, and Ed Yong’s I Contain Multitudes, about the microbes in our bodies. Continue reading...

Role involves safeguarding Earth from extra-terrestrial infection, and stopping other planets being contaminated by robotic or human explorersNasa is looking for a planetary protection officer who will help safeguard Earth from alien bacteria.No, it isn’t the script of an elaborate science fiction film, but an actual job advertisement on the US government’s website. Continue reading...

Donald Trump’s nominee to be the department of agriculture’s lead scientist used to run a blog that also likened Obama to a ‘communist’ and ‘dictator’Sam Clovis, who has been nominated by Donald Trump to be the Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) top scientist, previously ran a blog where he called progressives “race traders and race ‘traitors’” and likened Barack Obama to a “communist” and a “dictator”.

The 5,000 funniest words have been revealed, but drop ‘gamification’ at a party and you may as well say ‘TED talk for one’Comedy is simple. Just give an egghead a tinkle, get them to waddle over to play some bebop on a twerp’s ass, and you’ve got yourself a laugh riot. Psychologists at the University of Warwick recently asked 800 people to rate 5,000 word on which were the most inherently comic. They include the aforementioned “waddle”, “bebop”, “twerp”, “ass”, “tinkle” and “egghead” (imagine, a man with an egg for a head!). Less predictably, it turns out that men and women find different words funny: “buzzard” and “czar” make the male charts, as do sex words such as “orgy” and “bondage”. Women – those demure little puddings – prefer “giggle” or “sweat”. If those are the words that make us puncture lumbar regions with guffaws, what about their opposites: those words that make the heart sink? Well, we can think of a few.Dunkirk Hot take incoming. Could it be Brexit-themed? Continue reading...

Groundbreaking project corrects faulty DNA linked to fatal heart condition and raises hopes for parents who risk passing on genetic diseasesScientists have modified human embryos to remove genetic mutations that cause heart failure in otherwise healthy young people in a landmark demonstration of the controversial procedure.It is the first time that human embryos have had their genomes edited outside China, where researchers have performed a handful of small studies to see whether the approach could prevent inherited diseases from being passed on from one generation to the next. Continue reading...

Science Weekly hosts the authors of Universal: a guide to the cosmos for a special live recording answering questions about the big bang, the multiverse and moreSubscribe & Review on iTunes, Soundcloud, Audioboom, Mixcloud & Acast, and join the discussion on Facebook and TwitterLast week, we recorded a very special edition of the Science Weekly podcast. For the first time ever, we went out live via the Guardian’s Facebook page and put your questions to University of Manchester professors Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw. How did our universe begin? What evidence do we have for the theory of inflation? And what might it all mean for life as we know it? Continue reading...

Climate science workforce needs to grow by 77 positions over the next four years, according to report prompted by CSIRO redundanciesAustralia has a critical shortage of climate scientists, leaving it at serious risk of not delivering essential climate and weather services to groups like farmers, coastal communities and international organisations, a report has found.

Every day millions of internet users ask Google life’s most difficult questions, big and small. Our writers answer some of the commonest queries Continue reading...

The miscalculation politicians have always made in negotiating European treaties is that we’ll be welcomed with open arms. Time for a history lessonUntil recently, few of us were familiar with the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom), the international organisation that governs many aspects of nuclear energy activity in member states. Brexit, and the rapidly retracted “leak” that Britain may seek “associate membership” of Euratom has suddenly brought Euratom to the fore. The precise legal situation regarding the UK’s continued membership of Euratom is contested, but there is much to learn from the history of this relationship: over the past six decades the UK has attempted to become an associate member or full member of Euratom five times. Continue reading...

A new analysis using an unprecedented dataset reveals that major changes in frog diversity are linked to mass extinctionsAlthough Kermit the Frog has always struggled with body image, in evolutionary terms, the frog body plan is a rather successful one. With a short, stout body, protruding eyes and strong, flexible limbs with webbed feet, the world can be your swamp. The frog body plan has remained rather similar for almost 200m years, and with only limited tweaks in anatomy, frogs (Anura) have managed to occupy a range of different habitats, from muddy pools in Alaska to tree tops in the tropics. Currently, over 6700 species are known from all continents except Antarctica, which makes frogs one of the most diverse and species-rich groups of tetrapods. Never change a good thing. However, this limited variation in the frog body plan over time and space has made it difficult for biologists to reconstruct the evolutionary history of frogs and to sort out who is related to who.

Entrepreneurs are perceived to be creative, impulsive and risk-takers. But do you need a certain personality to succeed?Starting a business and becoming an entrepreneur is a dream that millions of people share. But what type of person do you have to be? Moreover, if you’re an investor, are some people better risks than others?Related: How to be resilient: 'self-awareness is fundamental' Continue reading...

Scientists have revealed exactly how the trillion-tonne A68 iceberg broke free of the Antarctic ice shelf last month – and say it has spawned smaller icebergsThe fate of the giant iceberg that broke free from Antarctica’s Larsen C ice shelf last month has been revealed.Twice the size of Luxembourg, the trillion-tonne iceberg known as A68 was found to have broken off the ice shelf on 12 July after months of speculation about a rift which had been growing for years, with the iceberg “hanging by a thread” for weeks. Continue reading...

Celebrating 60 years of the Lovell Telescope, Historic England has listed other parts of Jodrell Bank to honour the landmark research conducted at the siteIt is 60 years since the first great Jodrell Bank telescope was trained on the skies to peer into the secrets of the universe. To flag up the international importance of this landmark in science history, a modest collection of nondescript industrial sheds, as well as the second of the giant radio telescopes they were built to serve and the remains of a huge aerial adapted from wartime technology, are being given listed building status by Historic England.The Lovell Telescope has had the highest Grade I listing since 1988. The first giant telescope on the Cheshire site, it was built after Sir Bernard Lovell took his observatory from the murk and radio interference in the centre of Manchester to the clearer skies of Cheshire. The Mark I telescope – renamed the Lovell in his honour – was the first of its kind in the world, and with a height of just under 90 metres is still the third largest. Continue reading...

2 August 1922: Foreign pupils will learn to say a good, straightforward “nice” and an honest “time,” and will not attempt the popular “naice” and “taime”If Chaucer could come back to earth and attend the vacation course in English phonetics for foreign teachers of English which commenced at University College to-day he would probably understand less of the explanations than say, the visitors from Egypt and Czecho-Slovakia, who are attending in force. Professor Daniel Jones, head of the Department of Phonetics at the College, has often explained how “Cockney” has preserved many of the olds English speech sounds which are now taboo in polite society. Continue reading...