Board of education chairman says subject is debatable, controversial and too complicated for studentsEvolution will no longer be taught in Turkish schools, a senior education official has said, in a move likely to raise the ire of the country’s secular opposition.Alpaslan Durmuş, who chairs the board of education, said evolution was debatable, controversial and too complicated for students.

Nasa astronauts-aquanauts have made a temporary underwater home to prepare for future missions. An Aussie space engineer is part of the teamOn Sunday a group of six astronauts, engineers and scientists submerged 19 metres to the bottom of an Atlantic Ocean reef to live underwater for Nasa’s extreme environment mission operations (Neemo) expedition.

Three craft, millions of kilometres apart and linked by lasers, will watch out for minute ripples in the fabric of spacetimeThe European Space Agency (ESA) has formally embarked on a mission to search for gravitational waves from space.The Lisa (laser interferometer space antenna mission) will use three spacecraft to detect these minute ripples in the fabric of spacetime. The spacecraft will be stationed millions of kilometres apart in space, and linked via laser beams. Continue reading...

Ninety-tonne cyclotron at Christie hospital will give NHS patients access to treatment that is currently only available abroadA 90-tonne machine that will allow cancer patients to receive state-of-the-art high-energy proton beam therapy on the NHS for the first time is to be installed at a hospital in Manchester.The cyclotron delivers a special type of radiotherapy currently only available overseas. The NHS has been paying for patients to travel abroad for the treatment since 2008. Continue reading...

The English colonial legacy has left its mark in Wales, and it sticks in the craw that otherwise liberal people might criticise minority-language activists in the UK

After Uganda’s president said he and Queen Elizabeth were ‘friends with mutual benefits’, I was inspired to investigate some other confusing idiomsUganda’s president, Yoweri Museveni, recently tweeted that he and Queen Elizabeth II were “friends with mutual benefits”. I sympathize: English expressions are confusing, some of them feel almost deliberately obscure – designed to exclude non-native speakers from the joke.Museveni later deleted his tweet. I wish he hadn’t. We should celebrate linguistic ambiguity and explore the universe of meanings in words. Continue reading...

It is a plant that millions depend on for survival. But another, identical variety can be lethal – and desperate people turning to the black market can’t tell them apartVenezuela has suffered food shortages for several years but things only seem to be getting worse. People are resorting to the black market for food, skipping meals and rummaging through garbage in search of sustenance. Last year, three quarters of adults involuntarily lost an average of 19lb (8.6kg). Malnutrition is on the rise and people are being exposed to lethal foods. At least 28 people have died as a result of eating bitter cassava, having mistaken it for the sweet variety.Cassava, also known as manioc and yuca, is a staple food for about 700 million people worldwide. The perennial plant is native to South America but was brought to Africa by 17th-century explorers and later introduced to Asia. It thrives in tropical climates. The plant is very resilient, surviving where many other crops fail, and involves less human investment per calorie than potatoes. It is often poorer communities that rely on cassava for their survival. Continue reading...

‘After two hours of drinking vodka, General Boris suggested we just do the shoot at his house’Star City is a self-contained city for cosmonauts about an hour from Moscow. Astronauts still come from all over the world to get trained there. It might look dated but, underneath, the important stuff is all working. As well as a training centre, it has a launch site, a technical department, a school, and a hospital – everything really. During the cold war, when there was a lot of money going into the space race, it was an important place. That’s not so much the case now.We are all awed by space – and, although there is something old-fashioned, even funny, about this image, it is still noble. The subject’s name is General Boris V and I took his portrait back in 2007. Originally, the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre had agreed to let me shoot on their premises, but when I got there they asked for money. Continue reading...

I recently decided to abandon the rules that govern nature for the rules that govern people and markets: economics. Why would I do such a thing?I love physics. Brick by brick, you can build new theories from established ones and know that they will apply not just on Earth but throughout the entire universe. The upsides are incredible: I worked on the theory and simulation of plasmas (the stuff stars are made of) for nuclear fusion. If nuclear fusion succeeds in its objectives, it could mean the end of our reliance on fossil fuels, the end of climate change, and energy security for at least millions of years. The experiments in fusion push the limits of nature. Every time Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s Ignition Facility in California fires its fusion laser, the world’s most energetic, material is heated from 18 degrees above absolute zero to hotter than the centre of the sun in just a few nano-seconds. The work was as exciting and intellectually rewarding as you might expect.As quantum mechanics brought down classical mechanics, the financial crisis has led to a reappraisal of macroeconomics Continue reading...

Huge and unexplained bloom has fishers racing to save their nets, and scientists hurrying to study the rare animalA rare, tiny marine creature known as the “unicorn of the sea” has swarmed in its millions on the west coast of America, ruining fishermen’s nets and baffling scientists who are scrambling to find out more about them.Fishers along the west coast have told researchers that in some places they are unable to catch anything because the pyrosome clusters are so dense and tightly packed. Their hooks, when pulled from the ocean, wriggle with the odd-looking creatures, which are sometimes referred to as “sea pickles” or “fire bodies”. Continue reading...

Scotland is home to majority of 4,000 sites on database – but many are not on hills and are not really forts, say researchersSome soar out of the landscape and have impressed tourists and inspired historians and artists for centuries, while others are tiny gems, tucked away on mountain or moor and are rarely visited.Related: First world war training tunnels and trenches discovered in Wiltshire Continue reading...

Ian Sample explores research on cellular senescence and the role this therapeutic approach can play in age-related diseases and health issues

Previously unknown Anglesey landscape possibly includes cairn cemetery in what experts described as ‘really exciting stuff’Archaeologists have uncovered a prehistoric ritual landscape that possibly includes a cairn cemetery around a 5,000-year-old burial mound aligned with the summer solstice sun on Anglesey.Though far less famous than Stonehenge, the spectacle of sunlight shining down a long narrow passage to light up the inner chamber of Bryn Celli Ddu on the longest day of the year is unforgettable. Excavation now suggests the site had significance for prehistoric people that lasted for millennia after the earth mound was raised over a stone passage grave. Continue reading...

Every day millions of internet users ask Google life’s most difficult questions, big and small. Our writers answer some of the commonest queriesDinosaurs dominated terrestrial life on this planet for over 130m years. If it hadn’t been for a wayward asteroid, the reign of Tyrannosaurus rex and its ilk could have lasted for at least another 66m. In fact, let’s presume for a moment that the cosmic boulder that ended the Cretaceous period totally missed Earth and allowed dinosaurs to survive to the present. What would life be like now? Continue reading...

Despite dinosaurs having met extinction long ago, our dreams of reviving them refuse to die. Recent events imply we may have to settle for resurrecting poultryThere are some ideas that just won’t die. Like the villain in a movie, even when they’ve been shot with the bullets of refutation, scalded by heated discourse, and pushed off into the pool of disproven theories, these ideas still claw their way back, bedraggled and screaming, to attack us one more time.If there is one idea in palaeontology that typifies this tiresome cycle, it is the resurrection of the dinosaurs. “Can we ever bring them back?” it is so often asked. Despite scientists repeatedly saying no, the question lives on. This is due in part to the rehashing of a handful of studies that seemed for a moment to offer promise of a real-life Jurassic Park, but have all been shown to be flawed. Continue reading...

Scientists in Paris come up with unexpected answer to the age-old problem of running to the departure gate with a two-wheeled suitcaseHalf a century after the American businessman Bernard D Sadow shocked travellers with the invention of “rolling luggage”, scientists have worked out why suitcases tend to to rock violently from one wheel to the other until they overturn on the race through the airport.This most pressing of modern mysteries was taken on by physicists in Paris, who devised a scale model of a two-wheeled suitcase rolling on a treadmill and backed up their observations with a pile of equations and references to holonomic restraints, finite perturbations and the morphing of bifurcation diagrams. Continue reading...

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...