Study sheds light on breed evolution and why certain types of dog are prone to the same diseases despite appearing to be very differentIt sounds like the ultimate shaggy dog story, but scientists say they have created the definitive canine family tree.The study not only sheds light on the evolution of different breeds, but also reveals why certain breeds are prone to the same diseases even though they appear to be very different.

Lambs born at equivalent of 23 weeks human gestation kept alive and developing in advance could transform outlook for very premature babiesAn artificial womb designed to support critically premature babies has been demonstrated successfully in animals for the first time, in an advance that could transform the lives of the most fragile newborns.Lambs born at the equivalent of 23 weeks in a human pregnancy were kept alive and appeared to develop normally while floating inside the transparent, womb-like vessel for four weeks after birth. Doctors said that the pioneering approach could radically improve outcomes for babies born so early that they cannot breathe, feed or fight infection without medical help. Continue reading...

Astronaut Peggy Whitson, who broke the US record for the most time in space, has received a congratulatory call from Donald Trump. The US president has urged Nasa to ‘speed up’ its Mars mission despite announcing plans to cut the space agency’s spending by about $200m

Wax moth larvae are usually bred as fish bait, but a chance discovery has revealed their taste for plastic – which could be used to beat polluting plasticFor caterpillars that are bred as premium fish bait, it must rank as a better life. Rather than dangling on the end of a hook and wondering what comes next, the grubs are set to join the war on plastic waste.The larvae of wax moths are sold as delicious snacks for chub, carp and catfish, but in the wild the worms live on beeswax, making them the scourge of beekeepers across Europe.

Support for ‘machine learning’ depended on what it would be used for, with mass unemployment among main fearsApart from fears of mass unemployment, accidents with machinery, restrictions on freedom, increased economic inequality and a devalued human experience, the public are broadly optimistic about the arrival of artificial intelligence, according to one of the first surveys of British opinions about the technology.Research by the polling firm Ipsos Mori found nearly a third of people believe the risks of “machine learning” outweigh the benefits, while 36% believe the risks and benefits are balanced. Continue reading...

Peggy Whitson, who broke the US record for most time spent in space, received praise from president, who plans to cut Nasa’s budget and certain programsAstronaut Peggy Whitson broke the US record for most time spent in space on Monday, and received a phone call from Donald Trump in which the president congratulated her and urged Nasa to reach Mars ahead of his own proposed schedule.Whitson, 57, reached her 534th day in space early on Monday morning. The president called her from the Oval Office, where he sat flanked by his daughter and senior adviser, Ivanka Trump, and Dr Kate Rubins, another Nasa astronaut. Continue reading...

Psychology research shows people mistrust those who make moral decisions by calculating costs and benefits – like computers doTechnologies built on artificial intelligence are revolutionising human life. As these machines become increasingly integrated in our daily lives, the decisions they face will go beyond the merely pragmatic, and extend into the ethical. When faced with an unavoidable accident, should a self-driving car protect its passengers or seek to minimise overall lives lost? Should a drone strike a group of terrorists planning an attack, even if civilian casualties will occur? As artificially intelligent machines become more autonomous, these questions are impossible to ignore.There are good arguments for why some ethical decisions ought to be left to computers—unlike human beings, machines are not led astray by cognitive biases, do not experience fatigue, and do not feel hatred toward an enemy. An ethical AI could, in principle, be programmed to reflect the values and rules of an ideal moral agent. And free from human limitations, such machines could even be said to make better moral decisions than us. Yet the notion that a machine might be given free reign over moral decision-making seems distressing to many—so much so that, for some, their use poses a fundamental threat to human dignity. Why are we so reluctant to trust machines when it comes to making moral decisions? Psychology research provides a clue: we seem to have a fundamental mistrust of individuals who make moral decisions by calculating costs and benefits – like computers do. Continue reading...

The solutions to today’s puzzlesEarlier today I set you the following riddles:1. A retired professional wrestler boards a crowded train in Chicago when a young man stands up to offer his seat. The wrestler is not injured and is only 36 years old. All week, riders on the train offer to give up their seat so that the famous wrestler can sit down instead. Why do people keep offering their seat to this muscular former athlete? Continue reading...

Live grenades, graffiti, Australian toffees and a 1930s red sports car among finds at site being cleared for housingA vast battlefield landscape of tunnels and trenches dug to train troops for the first world war has been discovered on army land being cleared for housing.Archaeologists who worked on the site at Larkhill, in Wiltshire, said the century-old complex was a valuable discovery – although it posed hazards. Continue reading...

After events across the world on Saturday we asked readers working in or involved in science to tell us why they were taking action

An eight-year project at Teotihuacán, once the western hemisphere’s largest city, failed to locate its rulers’ tomb but findings offered tantalising clues to its originsFor decades, the hunt for a royal tomb at the ancient Mexican city of Teotihuacán has gripped archaeologists trying to unravel the secrets of the kingdom’s extraordinary political power.It is a mystery investigators thought they were on the verge of solving in 2015, when large quantities of liquid mercury were found amid a treasure trove of precious artefacts in a secret tunnel. Continue reading...

Stargazers were treated to a spectacle when the Lyrid meteor shower lit up the night sky over the north-eastern province of Jilin at the weekend. The annual event usually occurs between 19 and 23 April when the Earth passes through the dusty tail of comet Thatcher

Four years ago, Gavan Naden nearly died from anaphylactic shock after being stung by wasps. He became fearful of going outside, but a drastic immunotherapy regime has saved himOver the past three and half years, I’ve had 70 wasp stings injected into my left arm. Voluntarily. This hasn’t been an exercise in masochism, but rather to ensure I can go outside without screaming from fear.Every year in the UK, there are between two and nine deaths from anaphylaxis caused by bee and wasp venom. In 2015-16, there were 4,451 hospital admissions for anaphylactic shock. In an effort to avoid adding to these statistics again, I’ve completed an immunotherapy programme. Fingers crossed “the cure” is never put to the test. Continue reading...

Three riddles that will wrestle you to the groundUPDATE: Read the solutions hereHi guzzlers,I have a different type of puzzle for you today: three riddles suggested by Adam Rubin, a magician, bestselling-writer and puzzle designer. Read the following stories and answer the questions. Continue reading...

New research suggests southpaws are more likely to have traffic incidents than right-handers. But perhaps our roads are simply rigged against the leftName: Left-handed people.Also known as: Lefties, southpaws. Continue reading...

Cancer Research UK says disease has risen 40% in last decade, and threatens to become one of the fastest growing cancersObesity is to blame for a surge in kidney cancer in the UK, causing an extra 20,000 cases in the last 10 years, according to a leading charity.Cancer Research UK says that new cases of kidney cancer have risen steeply, by 40% over the past decade. Continue reading...

We all love science when it’s making life better, longer and easier. It’s a much harder sell when it points to inconvenient truths about our way of lifeThere is an old joke about being able to tell an extroverted scientist: instead of staring at their shoes when they talk to you, they stare at yours. This is no longer true. Scientists are the new rock stars. Tonight Einstein gets the full soft-focus Crown-style treatment as National Geographic launches a 10-part series about the man described by the actor Geoffrey Rush, who portrays him in Genius, as a “stud-muffin theoretical physicist”.Related: Why I marched for science Continue reading...

Fake objects Nightingale rated highly to join ancient Egyptian amulets she thought ‘shabby’ at World Museum in LiverpoolA collection of ancient Egyptian amulets acquired by Florence Nightingale in the winter of 1849 when she went on an adventurous Egyptian holiday are going on display for the first time – and the curator at the World Museum in Liverpool is rather more impressed by them than the Lady of the Lamp herself was.Five years before she sailed to Scutari, Istanbul, during the Crimean war, Nightingale travelled to Egypt at a time when mass tourism there was in its infancy. She wrote vivid letters home to her older sister, Parthenope, who later published them, but described her little amulets as “rubbish”. Continue reading...

It’s not just about the flavour – or even the pain. In this extract from his new book, Bob Holmes uncovers the pharmacology and psychology behind humanity’s heat-seeking desireI’ve been procrastinating. On my dining room table I have lined up three hot peppers: one habanero, flame-orange and lantern-shaped; one skinny little Thai bird’s eye chilli; and one relatively innocuous jalapeño, looking by comparison like a big green zeppelin. My mission, should I choose to accept, is to eat them.In ordinary life, I’m at least moderately fond of hot peppers. My fridge has three kinds of salsa, a bottle of sriracha, and a jar of Szechuan hot bean paste, all of which I use regularly. But I’m not extreme: I pick the whole peppers out of my Thai curries and set them aside uneaten. And I’m a habanero virgin. Its reputation as the hottest pepper you can easily find in the grocery store has me a bit spooked, so I’ve never cooked with one, let alone eaten it neat. Still, if I’m going to write about hot peppers, I ought to have firsthand experience at the high end of the range. Plus, I’m curious, in a vaguely spectator-at-my-own-car-crash way. Continue reading...

Science will not make moral and political choices for us, or tell us what our goals should be. But it will help delineate the possibilities for achieving themLike many others, I marched for science on Saturday 22 April. I also spoke at the rally in Parliament Square, London, along with several excellent and varied speakers. We all had our own take on what we were there for, and why it was important, as did our fellow marchers and speakers around the world. This is the gist of what I said.I am a particle physicist, so I think it is ok to start by paraphrasing one of our heroes, Richard Feynman. Science is a way of trying not to fool ourselves. Continue reading...

British scientists are exploring ways to use the steel industry’s waste to capture carbon dioxide in the atmosphereThe Industrial Revolution left a deep mark on our world. Its dawning saw the start of the widespread burning of coal for factories and steam engines and, as a result, the beginning of significant outputs of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Our climate is now warming noticeably as these emissions have accumulated across the planet.The British landscape has also been changed dramatically. In particular, the countryside is now peppered with piles of slag left over from old steel mills. Landscaping these piles of industrial waste has required major efforts by local authorities in recent decades. Continue reading...

Our brains evolved to make sense of uncertainties, so there’s no need to fear doubt

$100m spent and still there is no sign of extraterrestrialsVery sad news for fans of aliens (should they exist). After more than a year of listening for signals, astronomers working on the $100m Breakthrough Listen project, funded by Silicon Valley billionaire Yuri Milner, have found no evidence of extraterrestrials. The only “intelligent signals” came via satellites, mobile phones and other “earthly devices”.The good news is that the “ET phone home” scene packs an even greater punch now that we know about all those strong mobile signals. A tiny negative: $100m is rather a lot for what sounds like the equivalent of holding your phone in the air and yelling: “No UFOs as yet, but I’ve got three bars.” Continue reading...

As linguists celebrate English Language Day and Shakespeare’s birthday, what does the ever-changing way we speak reveal about us?It is a division as entrenched and as bitter as the split between Brexit backers and EU Remainers – though in this case, the issue is truly personal. Do you pronounce the word “scone” to rhyme with “cone”, or to rhyme with “gone”?To those in the latter group, it is a posh affectation to use a long vowel for this staple item of afternoon tea. By contrast, those in the former group believe they are merely following a logical extension of the pronunciation of the word cone by adding an s as a prefix. Continue reading...

Thousands of people gathered in demonstrations across the globe for the ‘March for Science’ on Saturday, in a rebuke of Donald Trump’s dismissal of climate science and his attempts to cut large areas of scientific research. People congregated in cities such as London, Sydney and Berlin, with more than 600 marches planned across the US, Europe, South America and Australia

Some say that the March for Science risks making science political. But it already is – and not addressing that is a problemTens of thousands of scientists and supporters of science are pouring into the streets of Washington DC and other cities around the world on Saturday in a massive March for Science, aimed at highlighting the importance of science to society and the need for basing government policies on evidence.

Academics and industry workers rally in British cities amid fears that ‘post-truth’ era is devaluing evidence-based research

People around the world are taking to the streets to stand up for science on Earth Day. We’ll be updating this gallery with photos from the UK marches throughout the day Continue reading...

When politicians smear science, real people get hurt. I’m marching because we must fight for communities who are harmed by bad science policyI’m marching for science today because I’m mad. Yes, I’m a mad scientist. I became a scientist because I wanted to help people. In my career I’ve researched gene therapy, how to engineer new antibiotics and how to make better cancer drugs. But now what I do and care about has come under attack. I’m mad at politicians for hijacking science for their own selfish interests.I know that many people just love debating whether science should be political or not. But personally I’m not really too interested in spinning my wheels in this pyrrhic war. Science has always been political ever since we first used it to show that the Earth orbits the Sun. And right now, we haven’t any time to waste. Continue reading...

Ahead of a massive March for Science in Washington, the popular TV educator attacked the Trump administration’s dismissal of ‘objective truths’Bill Nye, the face of science in US popular culture, has attacked Donald Trump’s “dangerous” dismissal of climate change and planned cuts to research ahead of the first March for Science in Washington DC.

Stories about feral children always seem to go viral. But are they true? And what does our fascination with the story of a monkey girl really reveal?In 2011, I made a TV documentary series for Discovery, researching the truth behind stories of feral children. Are they ever true? How might a child be affected by growing up in a jungle, or chicken coop, or with dogs? We found witnesses and scraps of evidence to support or debunk the stories that had grown around these strange girls and boys. We explored human developmental psychology, the anthropological ideas that could explain a family or community’s reaction to a particular child, and the traits of ‘host’ species that might determine whether survival (and acceptance) was at least possible.The tales were murky, fantastical and frequently harrowing. Vulnerable children in dangerous places, inevitably carrying the scars of their experiences. The extraordinary thing was not that they were supposedly protected by monkeys, or that they could run on all fours, it was that they’d survived at all. Continue reading...

President Xi Jinping has prioritised advancing China’s space programme to strengthen national securityChina’s first cargo spacecraft docked successfully with the Tiangong-2 space lab on Saturday, the official Xinhua news agency reported, marking a major step towards Beijing’s goal of establishing a permanently manned space station by 2022.President Xi Jinping has prioritised advancing China’s space programme to strengthen national security. Continue reading...

The science community – and reason – is facing an unprecedented attack. This march is about defending the place of evidence, method and rigor in our lives

March for Science organisers hope the mobilising thousands around the world can help restore science to its rightful place. But marching may not be enoughThe placards are made, the speeches prepared. On Saturday, crowds in their thousands are expected at 500 marches in more than 35 countries to remind the world, and its many politicians, that society cannot thrive without science. It will be the largest show of solidarity for science the globe has ever seen.Arranged to coincide with Earth Day, the anniversary of the modern environmental movement, organisers hope that the mobilisation of so many can help restore science to what they consider to be its rightful place. But despite healthy support for the events – more than 100 professional societies and organisations have endorsed them – marches alone will not be enough, according to researchers who study protest movements.

Immune to some of the last-line antibiotics available to hospitals, cases of carbapenemase-producing Enterobacteriaceae are on the rise, NHS data reveals• Read the Bureau of Investigative Journalism’s report on the rise of CPEDoctors are warning that the rise of an almost untreatable superbug, immune to some of the last-line antibiotics available to hospitals, poses a serious threat to patients. Continue reading...

It’s time to start actively removing space debris from orbit or risk disaster, says the European Space AgencyIt was on 23 August at 17:07 GMT that spacecraft operators at the European Space Agency’s (ESA) control centre in Darmstadt, Germany, noticed something was going wrong. Their flagship Earth observation satellite, Sentinel-1A, had suddenly jumped into a slightly different orbit and a slightly different orientation.More seriously, the electrical power had dropped, and was not returning to normal. The spacecraft was only in its third year in orbit. Activating on-board cameras that had been used two years earlier to monitor the deployment of the solar panels, the operators found the problem.

What if you could increase the attention you paid to every moment, no matter how humdrum?In his new book The Science Of Enlightenment, the meditation teacher Shinzen Young claims that if you meditate for a few minutes a day, you’ll double your lifespan. There are two obvious possibilities here. One is that he’s a charlatan. The other is that he’s talking in an annoyingly metaphorical way, as when certain new age authors claim that “you are the universe”, which may be true in some sense, but isn’t much use when you’re trying to get out of a parking ticket. Actually, I think neither applies. I think he might be right. Bear with me.If you’re older than about 25, you’ll be familiar with the way time seems to speed up as we age. That’s probably because we encounter fewer novel experiences, so with less information to process, we pay less attention; and, in recollection, the months and years feel shorter. You can test this: just recall a recent time when you did expose yourself to lots of novelty. A five-day trip I made to Sweden last year still feels like a substantial episode in my life, but the five days either side of it have evaporated, lost to memory for ever. Continue reading...

German company Lilium beats Google and Uber to successfully test a VTOL jet that could be used as a city taxiThe once fanciful concept of flying cars appears to be a step closer to reality, after a German company completed successful test flights of a “flying taxi”.Munich-based Lilium, backed by investors who include Skype co-founder Niklas Zennström, said the planned five-seater jet, which will be capable of vertical take-off and landing, could be used for urban air-taxi and ride-sharing services. Continue reading...

In a week in which we discovered that a rather large river has disappeared (hat tip to anthropogenic climate change, you old rogue!) and that aliens so far seem to desire no encounters with us, let alone close ones, it might seem tempting to turn on, tune in and drop out. Certainly the brain scans showing the first evidence of a ‘heightened state of consciousness’ from psychedelic drugs might make this seem a reasonable alternative to facing the tactical voting and alternative fact awfulness currently everywhere. You could always go on a healthy March for Science this weekend instead, though (coming to a city in a country near you!). Or – and this is my my preferred option – you could spend your time marvelling at the incredible adaptability of naked mole rats, whose ability to survive without oxygen was revealed this week. If your weird threshold is particularly high you could give yourself a further treat and spend time looking with revolted fascination at the first living giant shipworm, discovered in the Philippines. It’s very, um. Yes. Um. You’re welcome. Continue reading...

Bone study shows there is no evidence the 1.1-metre tall Homo floresiensis had any links with the much larger Homo erectus

In this age of neoliberal competition we should all embrace this Hebrew concept of unselfish delight in others, just like rugby’s Dylan HartleyWe’ve had schadenfreude and weltschmerz, ennui and litost. For a while, we were captivated by glasnost and perestroika and more recently it has been all about hygge and lagom.One of the great things about foreign languages is the words they use for which there is no real translation. Often they tell us what we are missing in the anglophone world. This week there was a new one for me (and probably for you, too) but an idea that our times so badly need.

A Canadian river was the first observed case of ‘river piracy’. When nature’s thresholds are passed, landscapes can transform in the blink of an eye

Naturalist to help viewers ‘handle’ objects from Natural History Museum, as broadcaster also unveils new HBO dealSir David Attenborough is to be turned into a hologram for a virtual reality tour of the Natural History Museum in London that promises to allow users to “handle” rare fossils from the comfort of their own home.Sky has commissioned the new experience, called Hold the World, which it says is a marriage of interactive video game technology and TV documentary. The public will be able to take the tour, which offers an up close and personal experience with fossils, bones and skulls, with insights from Attenborough, if they have a VR set, controller and phone app.

Court awards pension to employee who claimed work-related use of a mobile led to him developing a benign tumourAn Italian court has ruled that excessive, work-related use of a mobile phone caused an executive to develop a benign brain tumour.

Former science minister Barry Jones warns policy is increasingly divorced from evidence, as 12 Australian cities prepare for global marchBarry Jones, a Hawke government minister who held the science portfolio when the high court decided the Tasmanian dam case in 1983, despairs of an Australian government making the same decision in 2017.Instead of taking a principled opposition on the grounds of science, he said, the Labor party would probably do a photo opportunity pouring the concrete. Continue reading...

Only intelligent signals Breakthrough Listen project detected in first year are from mobile phones and other Earthly devicesAstronomers who have been listening for signals from alien civilisations in the most intensive hunt for extraterrestrials yet have found no evidence of life in its first year in operation.The Breakthrough Listen project began to eavesdrop on the universe with the Green Bank observatory in West Virginia in January last year, but the most intelligent transmissions the telescope has picked up so far appear to be from satellites or mobile phones and other Earthly devices.

The subterranean rodents are able to switch to a fructose-based metabolic system previously only observed in plants, a new study revealsThey feel no pain, don’t get cancer and look like baggy-skinned sausages with teeth: the naked mole rat is already famously weird. Now scientists have discovered what could be the subterranean rodents’ strangest trait yet: they can survive without oxygen by switching to a metabolic strategy normally used by plants.By switching from a glucose-based metabolic system, which depends on oxygen, to one that uses fructose instead, mole rats can cope with nearly twenty minutes in air with 0% oxygen. Under the same conditions, a human would die within minutes. Continue reading...

Archaeologist who was an expert on all aspects of the Roman roads of Asia MinorIn the early 1970s, a short article by a little-known US scholar reported the discovery of an ancient road near the site of Gordion, the capital city of the ancient kingdom of Phrygia. This article, and his own chance encounter on a family picnic with a batch of undocumented Roman milestones next to a stretch of Roman road west of the modern Turkish capital, Ankara, inspired the archaeologist David French, who has died aged 83, to start the project that occupied him for the rest of his life. This was a comprehensive study, based on field work which took him to every corner of Turkey, of all aspects of the Roman roads of Asia Minor: milestones, road surfaces, bridges, the imperial road stations, and military installations.He combined classical training with archaeological experience and an intimate knowledge of Turkey to acquire a more profound understanding of the topographical history of Anatolia – Asiatic Turkey – than any other scholar past or present. His passion for roads and routes extended from the Roman empire back to its Hittite and Persian predecessors and forward to the Ottoman period. At the start of his project, about 450 milestones were known from Asia Minor; by 2016, his discoveries had raised this number to more than 1,200. The research, carried out single-handed in the company of a series of Turkish government representatives, was a perfect match for his skills and character. Continue reading...

The effects of psychedelic drugs can lead to colours seeming more vivid and things seeming more beautiful, finds Rosalind Stone

Every few years, someone suggests forming a progressive coalition to beat the Conservatives. Could a Lib/Lab/Green alliance really beat Theresa May?Every time there’s an election, which is often, some bright spark on the left comes up with an amazing idea. “There are the Tories, right, and Labour, who are trying to stop them, and then there are all these other parties like the SNP and the Lib Dems and Caroline Lucas and the Welsh one. So here’s a thought: what if they all clubbed together and just decided to beat the Tories?”It’s a compelling thought, if you ignore political reality and you can genuinely imagine Nicola Sturgeon playing Nick Clegg to a Prime Minister Corbyn. If you could get the so-called ‘progressive coalition’ of Labour, the Lib Dems, the SNP and the Greens to vote in perfect harmony, with all their existing supporters voting tactically in perfect harmony to keep the Tories out in each seat, what would actually happen? Continue reading...