Results of Australian study will provide carriers with greater confidence in decisions they make about prevention strategiesWomen who carry the BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene mutations now have the clearest picture yet of their risk of developing breast and ovarian cancer.An Australian study led by the University of Melbourne, Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre and Cancer Council Victoria tracked almost 10,000 women with these mutations for up to 20 years. Continue reading...

Study of Gobi sand blowing over east China finds air stagnates and human-made pollution rises when dusty winds die downPeople in China breathe more easily when dust-laden winds blow in from the Gobi desert. Paradoxical as it sounds, desert dust helps to keep human-made pollution down, a new study shows.Air pollution is a big issue in China, with hundreds of millions of people suffering from respiratory problems. An estimated 1.6 million deaths (17% of mortalities) a year are attributed to China’s dirty air. Continue reading...

Making a decision not to apologise can feel empowering. But – as my teenage sons have learned – it can also leave you with the sense of being a complete arseI’m terribly sorry about this. I mean, I do realise the last thing you need right now is another piece of opinion. If you’ve been upset by the headline, I can only apologise. With luck we will be able to put this behind us, while agreeing that this one is very much on me.Related: Sorry, but it’s time for women to stop apologising so much | Viv Groskop Continue reading...

After a decade of policy backflips and uncertainty, we are now being sold ‘technology neutral’ energy policy. But we need it to be discriminatory – and favour clean powerTen years ago today Malcolm Turnbull was getting stuck in to a debate in Parliament House with Peter Garrett about climate change.Climate change, said Turnbull, was “an enormous challenge and probably the biggest one our country faces, the world faces, at the moment.” Continue reading...

Researchers claim boys born to older fathers score higher on a scientifically devised ‘geek index’, which takes in non-verbal IQ and social aloofnessOlder men tend to have “geekier” sons who are more aloof, have higher IQs and a more intense focus on their interests than those born to younger fathers, researchers claim.The finding, which emerged from a study of nearly 8,000 British twins, suggests that having an older father may benefit children and boost their performance in technical subjects at secondary school.

Wednesday is the longest day of the northern hemisphere’s year – but few realise that it also marks a monumental achievement in rational thinkingIf you live in the northern hemisphere, Wednesday is the summer solstice – the longest day of the year. In London, the sun will rise at 04:43 and then creep across the sky for 16 hours, 38 minutes and 18 seconds before setting at 21:21. For some cultures, the solstice is seen as the beginning of the summer, while others think of it more as midsummer. It is marked with celebrations across the northern hemisphere, most famously at Stonehenge.Traditionally, such revels were conducted in skyclad fashion. But these days turning up starkers at an English heritage site is probably not the best course of action. Not that I object to the odd bit of pagan revelry, but for me the summer solstice is the anniversary of one of the greatest achievements of the human mind: it marks the day we first calculated the size of the Earth. Continue reading...

The first University Archaeology Day marks a point of crisis in British archaeology. As student applications fall, threatening university departments with cuts, commercial demand for archaeologists is soaring, leaving a looming skills shortageOn 22 June, the first ever University Archaeology Day will be hosted by University College London. The event aims to promote archaeology as a university subject and as a career to prospective students, bringing together archaeology departments from around the country and various organisations who employ archaeology graduates. The intention is to paint an inspiring picture of archaeology as an exciting field of study leading to a hearty spread of career opportunities, but University Archaeology Day is also a response to a growing crisis in UK archaeology, both for university departments and for the commercial sector. This crisis is likely to have repercussions well beyond the world of academia.Archaeology is a great subject to take at university; it brings together a mix of humanities and sciences, and combines social theory, critical thinking and hard practical skills. Adventure abounds, both intellectual and actual. Why then are fewer and fewer students applying to study it? This is the question plaguing beleaguered archaeology departments across the UK which are seeing student numbers drop year on year. Continue reading...

Carcharhinus longimanus return annually to the waters around Cat Island in the Bahamas. I went to take a closer look at this once-abundant top predatorMy face is pressed up against the window and my brow is furrowed. For someone about to land in the Bahamas I look surprisingly troubled. I am trying to figure out the size of the swell and the prevailing wind direction from 10,000ft up in the air. For the last week I have been obsessively refreshing the forecast page for Cat Island, hoping that a small weather window will appear.I’m here to dive with the oceanic whitetip shark – Carcharhinus longimanus, the migratory circumtropical pelagic apex predator. Historically, the oceanic was a highly abundant species, but more recently it has undergone severe population declines. Globally across its range, it is listed by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) red list as vulnerable, and critically endangered in the north-west and western central Atlantic. This reduction in numbers is a result of fishing pressures, most likely related to the global shark fin trade, for which it is targeted and highly prized due to its large pectoral fins, from which the shark gets its name: “longimanus”, meaning “long hands”. Continue reading...

Vaccine to be trialled by humans could be effective alternative to statinsA vaccine jab that prevents heart attacks could be imminent after promising early research shows how the immune system can be directed to lower cholesterol.Patients have already been enrolled into a phase one trial to see if the approach, so far tested on mice, will work in humans. Continue reading...

Rocky worlds discovered by Kepler telescope are right distance from their parent stars for water to pool on the surfaceAstronomers have added 219 candidates to the growing list of planets beyond our solar system, 10 of which may be about the same size and temperature as Earth, boosting their chances of hosting life.

Study of ancient genetic material from Egypt to Viking graveyards reveals all tamed cats descended from one rodent-catching African subspecies first tamed by Near East farmers 9,000 years ago

The solutions to today’s puzzlesIn my blog earlier today I set you the following three problems from Pythagoras Magazine.1) Dollar bills. In a bag are 26 bills. If you take out 20 bills from the bag at random, you have at least one 1-dollar bill, two 2-dollar bills, and five 5-dollar bills. How much money was in the bag? Continue reading...

Why do some people chase noble dreams while others torture to stay sane? Barrister Dexter Dias’s new book draws on ‘moral cognition’ to explain FGM, the crimes of child soldiers – and why we happily pay to punish a cheatWhy do human beings hurt other human beings? That, says the barrister and sometime judge, Dexter Dias QC, is the most fundamental question in his book Ten Types of Human. In it, we meet sex traffickers, the sex-trafficked, a woman whose career was very nearly ended when she blew the whistle in Bosnia, a man whose life very nearly was, when he tried to stage a rescue. We go from the post-earthquake shanty towns of Haiti, where Hobbesian brutality meets human dignity, to the living room of a woman with locked-in-syndrome; we meet women whose features have been destroyed by acid attacks, whose lives have been changed by FGM, men whose minds have been rewired by violence, we meet people who don’t survive to the end of the book. But this isn’t a story about victimhood.Dias tells the story of human behaviour through 10 tropes. The Kinsman will protect his or her own gene pool at the expense of any other. It’s illustrated in the first instance by a thought experiment in which there is a gunman in your child’s school (how many classmates are you prepared to sacrifice for the sake of your own? One of his colleagues got to, “all the other children in the world, except for one, for my child to play with) and moves into a detailed consideration of FGM as an iteration of parental love twisted by cultural norm. Continue reading...

Three teasers from the vaultsHi guzzlers,The most famous theorem in maths is named after the Greek thinker Pythagoras. So is the most famous recreational mathematics publication in the Netherlands. Continue reading...

Revolutionary three-in-one blood test could change treatment for advanced stages of disease, say scientists.A new three-in-one blood test could pave the way to precision-personalised treatment for advanced prostate cancer, say scientists.The test has the potential to transform the way the disease is tackled by targeting specific gene mutations, it is claimed. Continue reading...

Three-in-one test reveals which men with advanced cancer are suitable for treatment with ‘precision’ drug olaparibScientists have developed a simple three-in-one blood test they believe could transform treatment of advanced prostate cancer, helping to extend or save lives.The test, developed by researchers at the Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) in London and the Royal Marsden NHS foundation trust, picks out men suitable for treatment with olaparib, part of a revolutionary class of drugs called “PARP-inhibitors”, which stops damaged cells from repairing themselves. Continue reading...

Hardly any British children can identify a red clover, and few students take plant science for a first degree. The charity Plantlife is determined to change thatThe summer flowers are in bloom, but a recent survey of 2,000 people found that 80% didn’t know a common dog violet, even though it’s found across nearly the whole UK. Less than half of young people could name a bluebell and hardly any could identify a red clover. And another sign of how children are losing touch with the names of common flowers is that the Oxford Junior Dictionary, has dropped plant names such as bluebell and blackberry from its latest edition.Related: Five simple ways to help your child get into the wild | Patrick Barkham Continue reading...

We join the keepers at Sydney’s Taronga zoo as they nurture and train their newest arrivals, including Maiya the red panda and Kamini the pygmy hippo. A photo-essay by Jonny WeeksLily and Blossom are about to be toilet trained at Taronga zoo. The two young sugar gliders are curled up together inside a wooden box within a staff bathroom while trainer Suzie Lemon is trying to coax them out with the promise of a sugary, sap-like treat. Lily eventually emerges and promptly pees all over the floor but Lemon doesn’t seem to mind. After all, they’re not here for that kind of toilet training.“We’re training them to glide over to us on cue to demonstrate their natural gliding behaviour,” Lemon explains. “We needed an enclosed space, somewhere with four solid walls, because in future they’re going to be doing this for education purposes in the new learning centre. Continue reading...

Anthony Warner – alias blogger turned author the Angry Chef – is on a mission to confront the ‘alternative facts’ surrounding nutritional fads and mythsA few minutes into my encounter with the Angry Chef, I begin to wonder if his moniker might be ironic, like the big guy whose friends call him “Tiny”. On the basis of his excoriating blog – which exposes “lies, pretensions and stupidity in the world of food” – I had been expecting a bilious, splenetic man with wild eyes, his skin covered in tattoos. Instead, I’m sat across from a mild-mannered nerdy type with a tidy beard and black-framed spectacles. Unlike his writing, which is showered with profanities, he hasn’t sworn once. In fact, he picks his words very deliberately, as if there’s a legal and fact-checking team working overtime in his brain.“I expected you to be a bit more … furious,” I finally say. “Do you have a temper?” Continue reading...

The scientist at the Institute of Cancer Research – and a singer-songwriter with two albums – reflects on her two loves and motivating forcesI’ve had an exciting and unusual few weeks. My group published a scientific paper revealing a new genetic cause of a childhood kidney cancer called Wilms’ tumour. This discovery has been of immediate benefit to families, providing an explanation for why their child got cancer, and information about cancer risks for other family members. During the same period, I also released my second album of original songs, called Answers No Questions. On one day, I found myself singing live on Radio London in the morning and talking genetics to the World Service in the evening.Over the past few weeks, I have found it increasingly difficult to know quite how to answer the ubiquitous question – what do you do? Continue reading...

After 30 years’ experimentation, farmers in Washington state are ready for the biggest ever planting of a new variety of appleNearly 30 years ago, Dr Bruce Barritt was jeered when he branded the apple industry in Washington state a dinosaur for growing obsolete varieties such as red and golden delicious. Now, farmers in the state, where 70% of US apples are grown, are ripping up millions of trees and replacing them with a new variety, the cosmic crisp, which Barritt, a horticulturalist, has created in the decades since.With 12m trees to be planted by 2020, and the first harvest of apples due in the shops in 2019, it is the biggest ever launch of a new apple. Around 10m 40lb boxes are expected to be produced in the next four years, compared with the usual 3-5m for a new variety. It’s a gamble for growers: replanting costs up to $50,000 per acre, so the cosmic crisp needs to fetch top dollar to make their investment worthwhile. Continue reading...

Do you have good recall? Within your mind’s eye are things clear or hazy? Take this test and find out what it says about youDo you have a good imagination? When you picture something, how clear is it? Take the “vividness of visual imagery” test below, then, using the following scale, ask yourself if the image was: (1) not there at all; (2) very vague; (3) moderately clear and vivid; (4) clear and vivid; or (5) as clear and vivid as real life.Think of a friend or relative you see often. How clearly can you picture: (a) their face and body; (b) how they hold their head and body; (c) how they walk; and (d) the colours of clothes they often wear? Continue reading...

This is an invaluable account, by Doudna and Samuel Sternberg, of their role in the revolution that is genome editing

The sensible thing to do is calm down, figure out how to take care of planet Earth and all be a bit better about not making ourselves extinct. But who cares about sensible: Elon Musk has revealed the details (well, let’s call them that) of his colonisation vision for Mars, including an “intentionally fuzzy” 10-year timeframe for flights. So once you’ve got yourself all signed up, to prepare for the trip you’ll need a tan, right? You’ll be a long way from any salons, and indeed the sun, so what about using a newly-created tanning chemical? It causes the release of dark pigment in skin, creating a real ‘fake’ tan without the need for sunbathing, so for Earthlings that also means it should protect against skin cancer. It won’t be commercially available for a while, but by the time it is, you could be Googling the cheapest place to buy it via the quantum internet. Scientists this week made a huge leap towards a new, secure type of internet by using a satellite to beam “entangled” light particles to ground stations more than 700 miles apart. For the present, however, we have more weighty problems to consider, overweight and obesity being chief among them. This week experts have warned that being overweight – not just obese – kills millions a year and a major Swedish study has concluded that women who are obese when they conceive are more likely to have babies with serious birth defects. On a happier note, men most at risk of testicular cancer could be identified using newly discovered group of genes. So that’s something. Continue reading...

SpaceX entrepreneur outlines his plan to make humans a multi-planetary species, including an ‘intentionally fuzzy’ 10-year timeframeAs far as home planets go, the Earth ticks most of the boxes: oxygen, water, food and lovely views. But there are risks to be considered too. What if a nuclear war, an asteroid collision or a rogue AI sent it all up in smoke, blotting out our own fragile existence?Luckily, Elon Musk is one step ahead and last year outlined his ambition to send humans to Mars as a “backup drive” for civilisation. Now, the billionaire entrepreneur has provided further details of his vision to make humans a multi-planetary species in a breezy paper, published in the appropriately-titled journal New Space. Continue reading...

Hannah Devlin delves into the world of human faces and asks: how does the brain process them? And how do faces affect our ideas about people?Subscribe & Review on iTunes, Soundcloud, Audioboom, Mixcloud & Acast, and join the discussion on Facebook and TwitterRoman statesman Marcus Cicero once called the face “a picture of the mind with the eyes as its interpreter.” In the centuries since, humanity’s obsession with the clues hidden in our faces has grown. Once the preserve of mystics, the human face has now come under the scrutiny of scientific examination. We are now closer to understanding how our minds process a seemingly infinite array of face types, and what – if anything – faces can tell us about the people behind them. Continue reading...

At a cabin in the Washington state woods, the reSTART center helps residents withdraw from technology that has consumed their livesBy the time Marshall Carpenter’s father broke down the barricaded door of his son’s apartment and physically ripped him away from his electronic devices, the 25-year-old was in a bad way. He could not bear to live a life that didn’t involve hours upon hours of uninterrupted screen time.“I was playing video games 14 or 15 hours a day, I had Netflix on a loop in the background, and any time there was the tiniest break in any of that, I would be playing a game on my phone or sending lonely texts to ex-girlfriends,” Carpenter says. Continue reading...

More than 1 million people worldwide are killed on roads each year. Psychologists are working on ways to nudge drivers towards being saferImagine a world inhabited by rational people, motivated to serve the common good, whose perceptions stay the same and whose decisions are logical.The reality, of course is that people are guided by emotions, beliefs and biased perceptions. These human characteristics result in major social problems such as obesity, debt, climate change and more than 1.2 million people being killed on the road globally every year.

A global quantum internet is a major step closer as satellite beams ‘entangled’ light particles to ground stations more than 700 miles apartScientists have taken a major step towards building a global quantum internet by beaming “entangled” particles of light from a satellite to ground stations more than 700 miles apart.The feat paves the way for a new kind of internet which draws on the curious ability for subatomic particles to be connected to one another despite being far apart and even on opposite sides of the planet.

Recovering victims’ remains is a priority, with experts confident every person will be found. But establishing fire’s cause will take months, they sayForensic experts have spoken of the extraordinarily complex investigation that lies ahead at Grenfell Tower and predicted that establishing the causes of the devastating fire will take months.In the coming days, recovering victims’ remains would be a priority, they said, as investigators work against the clock to complete their search while the building remains structurally sound. Continue reading...

Huge extraterrestrial construction projects should leave detectable traces that astronomers could seeYou remember the alien megastructure. No? Let me refresh your memory. Back in October 2015, the internet nearly broke when astronomers announced they had detected a strange signal that stood a remote chance of being a vast extraterrestrial construction - dubbed the alien megastructure.It was discovered using Nasa’s Kepler Space Telescope, which was designed to look for the slight drop in light caused when a planet passes in front of its star. In this case, the telescope gave astronomers much more than they bargained for. Continue reading...

Obstetrician best known for his revolutionary 1974 book, Birth Without Violence“Do you think babies like being born?” So opened Birth Without Violence, a book that in 1974 was to change obstetrics. Its author was a French doctor who, having delivered thousands of babies, had come to a startling realisation – that while the requirements of the mother, the father and medical staff were all catered for in the delivery room, the needs of the one other person involved were being entirely overlooked. The baby, said Frédérick Leboyer, was being ignored. Some even claimed newborn babies had no feelings. “The newborn baby … a person?” he wrote. “Now, really. Medical books will tell you quite the opposite.”In an age during which television programmes are made about the life of babies in utero, and when children have a commissioner and a UN convention to guard their rights, it seems odd to remember that when Birth Without Violence was written, the baby was not considered central to the business of childbirth. Beyond being physically alive, he or she had pretty much a bit part in the drama – the doctor’s trophy, sometimes held aloft by his or her feet, encouraged to breathe with a slap or two on the buttocks. Continue reading...

Increased risk of health problems including heart defects, digestive anomalies and malformations of genitals or limbs revealed by major studyWomen who are obese when they conceive are more likely to have a baby with serious birth defects, a major study has found.The research revealed a sliding scale of risk for health problems including congenital heart defects, anomalies of the digestive system and malformations of genital organs or limbs. Continue reading...

It’s easier than ever to spread myths and falsehoods, which shows how little we learned from one of the worst pieces of dezinformatsiya ever disseminatedThe 2016 US election and subsequent fallout seem certain to occupy a unique place in the history books. Donald Trump’s campaign against Hillary Clinton was marked by incredible events and statements, from racism to misogyny. But perhaps the most startling and remarkable revelation is that a growing body of evidence indicates that Russia tampered with the election, and questions are being raised about President Trump’s ties with Russia.Related: 'Nervous' Jeff Sessions' attempt at Trump-like bravado falls flat Continue reading...

Despite being among the most recognisable, common fossils, not one has been found that gives us an accurate idea of how the animals looked in lifeThink of a generic fossil and – alongside dinosaur skeletons or trilobites – it’s likely that the coiled shells of ammonites spring to mind. Ammonites are an extinct group of cephalopods, the mollusc group that contains octopuses, vampire squid, ‘squids’ (there are many different kinds of squid, so squids will be used to generically refer to them all throughout), cuttlefish, nautiluses, the extinct belemnites and other forms.You can see ammonites everywhere; they’re widely used as an icon for company logos from publishers to construction companies, museums and fossil shops. Visit the Jurassic Coast World Heritage Site in the UK, and ammonite road signs greet you at every town and city and even the lampposts on the seafront feature a familiar coiled shell. Continue reading...

Research suggests 3,000 people die a year in UK from long-term use of aspirin or similar drugs, but also taking heartburn medication could help reduce riskThe risk of long-term aspirin use causing major bleeding and death is higher than previously thought, with over-75s particularly vulnerable, a study suggests.Around 40% of adults aged 75 or over in the UK take a daily aspirin and lifelong treatment is recommended for patients who have previously had a heart attack or stroke. Continue reading...

The highest noise levels, particularly at night, are associated with a greater risk of high blood pressure and heart flutter, say scientstsPeople who live close to an airport and are constantly barraged by the sound of planes taking off are at increased risk of heart disease, research suggests.

The Cochrane analysis casting doubt on this life-saving therapy is flawed and may deter patients from seeking it, say clinicians and scientistsWe are clinicians and scientists who have studied and treated patients with chronic hepatitis C virus infection over many years and patient groups that represent those affected by hepatitis C. We write in response to your article on the effectiveness of antiviral therapy (Hepatitis ‘wonder drug’ may be clinically ineffective, say experts, 9 June). The Cochrane review that you highlight analysed clinical trials, which are by nature short term, where the sole purpose was to evaluate the virological efficacy of new antiviral drugs. The trials were neither designed, nor powered, to assess mortality, so it is hardly surprising that the Cochrane review was unable to identify any impact on mortality.Regulatory authorities and clinicians all recognise that clearing hepatitis C virus reduces mortality. Indeed, UK-based research demonstrates that oral antiviral treatment for patients with hepatitis C who also have cirrhosis substantially decreases mortality and morbidity (Cheung et al Journal of Hepatology 2016). Continue reading...

OCR apologises again after third mistake in exam paper, with pupils uncertain they will reach grades needed for university placesOne of England’s main examination boards has been forced to issue an apology for the third time in a little over a fortnight after students and teachers spotted yet another error on one of its papers.The mistake occurred on OCR’s A-level biology paper, which was sat by almost 19,000 students on Monday. A question asked students to calculate a standard deviation but failed to provide the formula needed for the calculation, as required by the syllabus. Continue reading...

Scientists create chemical that causes release of dark pigment in skin, creating a real ‘fake’ tan without the need for sunbathingScientists have created the ultimate fake tan: a chemical that triggers the release of dark pigment in the skin without the need for sunbathing or a genetic predisposition for tanning.The substance would induce a tan even in fair individuals with the kind of skin that would naturally turn lobster pink rather than bronze in the sun, the scientists predicted. Continue reading...

Drones were 16 minutes faster than the emergency services, increasing the chance of survival for people who suffer cardiac arrest, study shows

The shock election result has been attributed to the youth vote, leading to claims that younger voters don’t/can’t understand the issues at stake. Are the concerns valid?So, the General Election happened. That was fun. What was meant to be a Conservative landslide turned into a chaotic hung Parliament situation. A lot of the blame for this surprising (hilarious) result has been placed on an unexpectedly large increase in turnout from pro-Labour younger voters. And I do mean “blame”, because according to many, this was something they shouldn’t have happened, because younger people can’t be trusted to make such important decisions. Apparently.Seriously, there have been phone-ins about it. Many articles. Letters to the editor. Lord knows how many below-the-line comments. All based around the point that young people voting is bad, and they shouldn’t do it, for reasons. Presumably many of these reasons a variations of “how they vote doesn’t correspond with how I’d vote and I cannot allow this”, but are there any valid ones? As in, scientifically speaking, are there any realistic arguments for younger people being denied a vote? Here are a few candidates Continue reading...

Discovery of 19 new genes could allow doctors to spot the 1% of men most at risk of the cancer, allowing closer monitoring or preventative treatmentResearchers believe they can identify the 1% of men who are most at risk from testicular cancer after they discovered a new group of genes linked to the disease.Screening men for the 19 new genes, along with 25 known already, would allow doctors to spot those who are 14 times more likely than usual to develop the cancer, the scientists said. Continue reading...

Described as a ‘growing and disturbing global health crisis,’ more than two billion adults and children suffer from weight-related health problemsBeing overweight – even without being obese – is killing millions of people around the world, according to the most extensive and authoritative study of the global impact ever carried out.More than two billion adults and children are suffering from health problems in the world because of their weight, says a team of 2,300 experts led by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IMHE), based at the University of Washington in Seattle. Continue reading...

Diaries give clue to location of pink and white terraces of Lake Rotomahana, previously thought destroyed in 1886The eighth natural wonder of the world may have been rediscovered, 131 years after it was buried by a volcanic eruption, New Zealand researchers believe.In the mid-1800s, the pink and white terraces of Lake Rotomahana in the North Island attracted tourists from around the globe. The terraces – dramatic cascading pools descending into the lake’s temperate waters – were lost in an eruption of Mount Tarawera in 1886. Continue reading...

The prospect of speaking in public can send people in to a tailspin of anxiety. But a simple change in posture can helpMost people at some point in their careers will present, pitch, be on camera or give a speech. Public speaking is a skill that cannot be overlooked– investor Warren Buffett believes it raises your value by 50%.Still, public speaking is nerve-racking and people turn down numerous opportunities because of the fear of it. Like physical training, public speaking requires attention and practice. But speaking opportunities do not come every day, so where do you start? The answer is in the body. Continue reading...

Men with prostate cancer have the right to be fully informed. But they don’t always get a balanced opinion about the best – and least invasive – treatmentIf you’ve just been told you’ve got prostate cancer then a pretty natural reaction is to want to have the prostate taken out, and to have that done as soon as possible.

Exclusive: Walking or cycling to school is better for children’s health as cars are ‘boxes collecting toxic gases’ says David King

Studies show pollution levels inside cars are higher than outside where NO2 emissions are dissipated into the wider atmosphere• Air pollution more harmful to children in cars than outside, warns top scientistBy now, if you are a pedestrian or cyclist you are probably aware that traffic pollution is a danger to your health, but there is one group of people who are perhaps more at risk: children in cars.

Every 12 June a grateful planet pauses to give thanks to those brave souls who bear the burden of knowing what the rest of us can’t stand to think about