A laser weapons physicist has come up with a novel treatment for the disease – blowing up the cancer cells in infinitely small explosionsIn a small laboratory, not far from southern California’s Pacific coastline, Dmitri Lapotko is using lasers to conduct on-demand explosions on a scale almost infinitely small. These explosions are carefully designed to obliterate cancer cells at a nanoscale, with a level of efficiency and safety which far outmatches the current treatments of choice. The technology, pioneered by the company Masimo, is about to undergo clinical trials for both the diagnosis and treatment of cancer in the next few years. But the story of how the idea was first conceived originates from one of most defining moments of the 20 century.In the late 1980s, Lapotko was a laser weapons physicist for the Soviet Union, living and working in what is now Belarus. His particular expertise was in using airborn ultrasound to steer the laser beam of a weapon in the upper atmosphere, as the Soviets tried to match the threat of Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, nicknamed ‘Star Wars.’ Continue reading...

We know that babies don’t just see in black and white. But what colours can they see – and how key is it to their development?

What can we see when we’re born? How does this develop with time? And how can our culture and language affect the way we perceive the world around us?Subscribe & Review on iTunes, Soundcloud, Audioboom, Mixcloud & Acast, and join the discussion on Facebook and TwitterTo celebrate the launch of ‘First Impressions: a virtual experience of the first year of life’ from The Guardian this week, Nicola Davis delves into infant vision and asks: what happens to our vision in the first six months of life? What capabilities are we born with? And what can insights into infant colour vision tell us about human cognition? Continue reading...

Real robots look nowhere close to their fictional avatars, but those on show at the Science Museum ask pertinent questions about who we are and what we’re doing“How can it not know what it is?”For me this question has always been the defining moment of Ridley Scott’s sci-fi classic, Blade Runner. Deckard, the policeman anti-hero played by Harrison Ford, has just discovered that Rachel, the self-possessed personal assistant to the founder of the Tyrell Corporation, is in fact one of the company’s advanced replicants: a robot. His question to Dr Eldon Tyrell is loaded with the certainty of bigotry — that repeated “it”. But Deckard’s uncertainty about Rachel, and the essential differences between humans and machines, is just the beginning of a process of disorientation that pursues him all the way to the film’s brutal but surprising climax. Continue reading...

Red list entries swell to 67 species as conservationists call for urgent action to save birds of Britain including warblers, curlews and puffinsMore than a quarter of UK birds, including the puffin, nightingale and curlew, require urgent conservation efforts to ensure their survival, according to a new report on the state of the UK’s birds.Since the last review in 2009, an additional 15 species of bird have been placed on the “red list”, a category that indicates a species is in danger of extinction or that has experienced significant decline in population or habitat in recent years. The total number of species on the red list is now 67 out of a total of 247. Continue reading...

Nivolumab deemed too expensive for the benefits but cancer specialists urge NHS and manufacturers to reach compromiseA gamechanging immunotherapy drug that can extend the life of patients with advanced head and neck cancer has been turned down for use in the NHS because of its high cost.Nivolumab is one of a new class of drug that stimulates the patient’s own immune system to fight the cancer. Immunotherapy drugs have had some spectacular successes in some patients with some cancers. But although nivolumab can give people with advanced head and neck cancers an extra three months of life – when survival expectancy at present is around six months – the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) has rejected it. Continue reading...

Aids campaigners say move puts pressure on England to end delays in providing the medication despite two court rulingsPeople at risk of HIV in Scotland are to be given drugs on the NHS that will protect them from infection, it has been announced, in a move that Aids campaigners say will put pressure on the authorities in England to end delays in providing the same medication despite two major court rulings.In a major victory for campaigners, the Scottish Medicines Consortium (SMC) said pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) would be free on the NHS to those who need it because they were at risk – for instance, if they have a partner with HIV. Access to the drugs could begin within weeks. Continue reading...

The “wow” solution to today’s puzzleEarlier today I set you the following puzzle, about the intriguing mathematical cube that is the Menger sponge. (To find out how to construct it, you can read the original post here.)When you slice the Menger sponge in two, what does the hexagonal cross-section look like?

Experts say findings are ‘astounding’ and could help understand the purpose of dreams and predict whether people are dreamingScientists have unpicked the regions of the brain involved in dreaming, in a study with significant implications for our understanding of the purpose of dreams and of consciousness itself. What’s more, changes in brain activity have been found to offer clues as to what the dream is about.Dreaming had long been thought to occur largely during rapid eye-movement (REM) sleep, a period of slumber involving fast brain activity similar to that when awake, but dreams have also been reported to occur during non-REM sleep, leaving scientists scratching their heads as to the hallmark of dreaming. Continue reading...

My father, Gustav Jahoda, who has died aged 96, carried out pioneering research into cross-cultural psychology. He was one of five inaugural professors at Strathclyde University when it opened in 1963 and a founder member of the European Society of Experimental and Social Psychology.It was a move to University College of the Gold Coast (now Ghana University) in 1952 that set my father on the path to becoming “perhaps the first modern cross-cultural psychologist”, as he was described in the Encyclopedia of the History of Psychological Theories. Most earlier research had considered the attitudes of white people to black, but for his book White Man (1961), Gustav researched attitudes of black Africans to white Europeans in pre-independence Ghana. Continue reading...

Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh

Archaeologists and anthropologists don’t just study the dynamics of power and politics. They are actively mired in political systems - a position which they need to embraceThe 82nd annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology (SAA) just took place last week in Vancouver, British Columbia. It was well attended, and with the political climate being what it is in the United States right now, many of the conversations I had centred around advocacy. Most of the professional archaeologists I know (I dare say all the professional archaeologists I know) are committed to fighting efforts that weaken protections for cultural resources. It is not cynical to say that as a discipline we are committed to the continuing protection for sites that are hundreds or thousands of years old, to ensure that such sites continue to exist for hundreds and thousands years more. There are dissonant voices, however, questioning just how political archaeologists should be, how deeply into the fray we should delve. As scientists should we not be above politics, focusing on our studies of the past?To me, there is no question about our place in the fray. Politics is about the practice of achieving and asserting power. Archaeology and anthropology have long played an important role in both reinforcing and subverting the dominant mythologies upon which such power is built. In many ways modern American Archaeology- focused on the systematic recovery of data to answer research questions about past human behavior- was born out of challenges to nineteenth century justifications for eradicating American Indian populations. As Euro-Americans raced across the north American continent, they found great earthen mounds in the southeast and mid-west that were the remnants of ancient cities like Cahokia. Continue reading...

Chloe Narbonne’s heart failed when she was 11, starting a near-hopeless fight for survival. A year on from groundbreaking surgery, she is alive and this is her story

Daring operation saved Chloe Narbonne after a failed transplant meant the device was the only way to keep her alive

Born with a serious heart condition called dilated cardiomyopathy, Chloe Narbonne had five major operations – and four hearts – by the age of 12. She defied the odds to become the youngest person in Europe to receive an artificial heart thanks to groundbreaking surgery involving 30 NHS staff. Now Chloe, her mother and medical personnel tell her amazing story for the first time Continue reading...

This brainteaser will wring out your brainUPDATE: To see the answer and have your mind blown* click here*hyperbole justified IMHOHi guzzlers.For today’s puzzle, let me introduce you to the Menger sponge, a fascinating object first described by the Austrian mathematician Karl Menger in 1926. We’ll get to the problem as soon as I explain what the object is. Continue reading...

Skeletons: Our Buried Bones exhibition includes woman buried in expensive stone coffin with throat slit 2,000 years agoAn exhibition bringing together stories of deaths over centuries in London and the West Country includes the skeleton of a woman buried in an expensive stone coffin with her throat slit and her head severed almost 2,000 years ago.When the stone sarcophagus, discovered under school playing fields at Mangotsfield on the outskirts of Bristol, was opened it revealed two adult bodies. In 1996 all the focus was on the exceptionally tall man. He would have stood more than 6ft tall, and his feet have had to be turned back slightly to fit into the display case at the M Shed museum in Bristol. Continue reading...

Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin pose a fundamental challenge to the notion of money itselfIt started with the best of intentions: in 2015 a group of programmers inspired by the success of Bitcoin launched a new software platform called Ethereum that allowed users to conduct transactions without a central bank or currency authority using “tokens” called Ether instead of dollars or pounds. Even more exciting, their platform allowed for “smart contracts” so a deal could be made conditional in all sorts of ways, allowing for everything from options contracts tied to future commodity prices to elaborate corporate governance and voting schemes. Having developed this platform and—they thought—worked out the bugs, they decided to create the cleverest smart contract of them all: a “Digital Autonomous Organization” that functions something like a venture capital firm run by algorithm. In 2016 some 11,000 people crowdfunded the DAO with over $150 million in startup funds, many of them developers who had contributed to the core open-source Ethereum codebase.And then, just as the experiment was about to get underway, a hacker exploited a flaw in the code to make off with roughly a third of the kitty. What happened next is a kind of parable for the future of value in the age of algorithms. Continue reading...

The big lie propagated by government and big business is that it is possible to turn things around for the reef without tackling global warming• Great Barrier Reef at ‘terminal stage’: scientists despair at bleaching dataOnce upon a time, in the distant 60s and 70s, the Great Barrier Reef faced imminent destruction. Tenement applications for drilling and mining covered vast swathes of the reef, with both government and industry enthusiastically backing the plans for mass exploitation.In the face of the reef’s impending doom a motley collection of ordinary Australians shared a common determination that something had to be done. But the odds didn’t look good. The poet turned campaigner Judith Wright wrote that “if it had not been for the public backing for protection of the reef that we knew existed, we might have given up hope”. Continue reading...

‘Last year was bad enough, this is a disaster,’ says one expert as Australia Research Council finds fresh damage across 8,000km• ‘Australia’s politicians have betrayed the reef and only the people can save it’Back-to-back severe bleaching events have affected two-thirds of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, new aerial surveys have found.The findings have caused alarm among scientists, who say the proximity of the 2016 and 2017 bleaching events is unprecedented for the reef, and will give damaged coral little chance to recover. Continue reading...

‘The combined impact of this bleaching stretches for 1,500km, leaving only the southern third unscathed,’ says Prof Terry Hughes, director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, who undertook aerial surveys in 2016 and 2017. He has warned Australia faces a closing window to take action on climate change in time to save the reef.

The seven planets in orbit round a red dwarf star 39 light years away will provide valuable data about exoplanets and their atmospheres, but the latest data suggests that they are unlikely to be homelyRed dwarfs are thought to be the most common types of star, but all are dim. Even the red dwarf and the nearest star to the Sun, Proxima Centauri at 4.2 light years, is some 70 times too faint to be naked-eye-visible under the darkest sky. It was reported last summer that Proxima had a planet slightly larger than the Earth which orbited within its habitable zone where liquid water might survive on its surface given an adequate atmosphere.The news of another red dwarf, Trappist-1, broke in February. It boasts seven Earth-class planets, of which three lie in or close to its habitable zone. At 39 light years, it is a thousand times dimmer than Proxima but, whereas Proxima is never visible from Britain, Trappist-1 lies in Aquarius below the Square of Pegasus, albeit swamped by our predawn twilight in the E and near Venus at present. Continue reading...

Biologist and historian best known for Hooper’s Law, used to estimate the age of a hedgerowMax Hooper, who has died aged 82, was a biologist and historian who pioneered the ecological study of hedges. His best remembered discovery was what became known as Hooper’s Hedgerow Hypothesis, or more simply as Hooper’s Law. By examining the composition of a large number of hedges across Britain, he realised that there was a strong connection between age and diversity.As hedges grew older, the number of constituent species increased at a steady rate, a gain of roughly one species every 100 years. Hence you could estimate a hedge’s age simply by counting the number of woody constituents over a 30-metre stretch. Hooper would have been the first to admit that his hypothesis does not run to planted hedges, and seems to work better in the south than the north. Nonetheless it has become an important tool of landscape surveyors and is a classic demonstration of the value of historical investigation in science. It has also influenced the more mixed hedgerow plantings of recent years. Continue reading...

Google’s billion-dollar belief that it can crack the DNA code to immortality reveals a dangerous mindset‘In this world,” wrote Benjamin Franklin, “nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” This proposition doesn’t cut much ice in Silicon Valley, where they take a poor view of paying taxes. What’s interesting is that they are also coming to the view that perhaps death is optional too, at least for the very rich.You think I jest? Well, meet Bill Maris, the founder and former CEO of Google Ventures, the investment arm of Alphabet, Google’s owners. Three years ago, Maris decided to create a company that will “solve” death. He pitched the idea to Google’s co-founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page and, according to a lovely piece by Tad Friend in the New Yorker, Brin, who has a gene variant that predisposes him to Parkinson’s disease, loved the idea and Page declared that Google should do it. Continue reading...

We might all be sleeping easier following the discovery of the gene and ‘ancient mechanisms’ that aid a good night’s slumberSleep is that golden chain that ties health and our bodies together. Thus wrote the English playwright Thomas Dekker in the 16th century, reflecting a view that has persisted through the centuries. Sleep is crucial to our wellbeing. Disturb it and you will find your constitution troubled and twisted out of joint.It is a view supported by science. Experiments in which men and women have endured periods of up to 11 days without shut-eye have shown that if we cannot sleep we develop increasingly severe symptoms: progressive decreases in concentration, perception and other higher mental processes. Intriguingly, these problems vanish once subjects are allowed a couple of nights curled up in their beds in a state of blissful unconsciousness. Continue reading...

Can your sense of humour tell us how clever you are? Read this dark joke to find outDo you have a dark sense of humour? And what does this tell us about your personality? See if you find this funny:A businessman in a suit has just hanged himself from a light-fitting with his tie. His wife and her friend come in and find him. The man’s wife turns to her friend and says: “I can’t believe it. A green tie with a blue suit.” Continue reading...

Most of western Europe and north America also consumes more calories from packaged food than fresh according to analysis of data from 54 countriesThe UK eats almost four times as much packaged food as it does fresh produce, according to new data, with most of western Europe and north America following a similar pattern.The packaged food revolution – which includes ready meals and calorific cakes and biscuits – is held at least partly to blame for the rise in obesity in the US and Europe. Fresh food has played a smaller and smaller part in some families’ lives as the pace of life has speeded up over recent decades, working hours have increased and more women have entered the workplace. Set against this is the rise of ever more tasty instant meals. Continue reading...

Forensic Architecture to present findings after rebuilding German cafe crime scene where man of Turkish origin was shotNearly five years into the trial of a German neo-Nazi gang who went on a killing spree against immigrants, relatives of the victims have become so frustrated with the police’s inability to untangle the case they have turned to a an unlikely profession in search of clues: architects.Forensic Architecture, a London-based organisation started by architect Eyal Weizman have previously investigated war crimes in Syria, Palestine and the former Yugoslavia, using modern technology to search urban areas for evidence. Continue reading...

Is there life on the Earth-like planet GJ 1132b? Well, most probably not, but what it does have is a hot and steamy atmosphere, astronomers have discovered. It’s one of the first times an atmosphere has been spotted around a small, rocky world. Back on our own rocky planet, geologists have revealed how catastrophic flooding separated Britain from Europe 125,000 years ago (I particularly loved the artist’s impression, do check it out!). And although a group of dermatologists released a study this week examining the role of skin conditions in film portrayals of villains, the horror film fanatic in me was far more excited by archaeologists’ revelation that medieval villagers mutilated the dead to stop them rising. Running that story a close second for gory thrills was the detailed calorie counts given for human flesh and organs in a paper released this week on prehistoric cannibalism. Stick to the leg of lamb for Easter, honestly. Continue reading...

Erica is 23. She speaks with a synthesised voice and has a lot of freedom – but can’t move her arms yet. Hiroshi Ishiguro is her ‘father’ and the so-called bad boy of Japanese robotics. Together they plan to redefine what it means to be human and reveal that the future is closer than we might think

Julie Freeman is an artist who creates forms, animations, and soundscapes from tracking data. She created a multifaceted installation – A Naked Mole Rat Eutopia – at London’s Somerset House, featuring kinetic sculptures, an animation and a visualisation, all using live data from the naked mole rat communityWhat can we do with data gathered from naked mole rats? Could we gain a new lens on nature, society and ourselves? Continue reading...

The ability of autonomous vehicles to navigate our cities is impressive. But their potential will only be realised when these cars are interdependentThe crash of an Uber Volvo in Tempe, Arizona has dragged a regulatory spotlight back onto self-driving cars. The Uber car, in driverless mode, ended up on its side after being shunted by a Honda that was turning left. Such incidents bring the hype surrounding automotive autonomy bouncing back to earth. But they also remind us of the need for smart regulation.The true believers at Wired magazine used the crash as another illustration of human incompetence and called for for an acceleration of self-driving. As with almost all crashes involving self-driving cars, it appears that the humans were legally at fault. However, casting the blame when computers mix with humans is not easy, and can impede opportunities for social learning. (For Uber, the crash could also have been an opportunity to take responsibility and change its frat boy narrative). Continue reading...

David Tennant gives a brilliant performance as RD Laing, the radical psychiatrist who rewrote the rules on mental health treatmentDavid Tennant is on pugnacious, mercurial and beady-eyed form in this very interesting and absorbing film. It’s one of his best performances. He plays the psychiatrist RD Laing, who became a 60s counterculture hero for challenging what he saw as the profession’s heartless prison-hospital ethos of tranquillisers and electroconvulsive shock treatment. Instead, Laing proposed a holistic treatment without drugs (although medically licensed LSD was acceptable), using group therapy and communal healing. He set up a refuge at Kingsley Hall in east London, that was regarded suspiciously as something like a Bedlam cult.Related: Kingsley Hall: RD Laing's experiment in anti-psychiatry Continue reading...

Andrew Grey, a 26-year-old from Darwin, took part in the Stargazers Live event broadcast on ABCAn Australian mechanic is about to become a published scientific author after he contributed to the discovery of a four-planet solar system during a crowdsourced astronomy event.Andrew Grey, a 26-year-old from Darwin, took part in the Stargazers Live event broadcast over three nights on the ABC this week. Continue reading...

Cruise missiles launched from eastern Mediterranean against Assad have been favoured by US military for decades owing to long range and pinpoint accuracyA mainstay of US warfare for more than 20 years, the Tomahawk cruise missile had been considered the most likely weapon for any strike by the Trump administration against the Syrian military. And so it eventuated.The US launched its surprise attack on an inland airbase near Homs early on Thursday morning, with 59 of the missiles deployed from two naval destroyers. Continue reading...

Chris King describes getting his life back since surgery last year, as surgeon says he has progressed faster than anticipatedThe first person in the UK to undergo a double hand transplant has said writing a letter to thank his surgeon has been one the highlights of his first nine months since the operation – that, and being able to applaud his favourite rugby league team.

Goal of finding alien life a step closer with discovery, which marks one of the first times an atmosphere has been spotted around a small, rocky worldAstronomers have found evidence for a hot and steamy atmosphere around an Earth-like planet that circles a red dwarf star in the southern sky.

I visited Peru to find out more about an intriguing ayahuasca study – and to have my own experience with the psychedelic brewI’m sitting on a blue plastic, wipe-down mattress with my back to a wooden pillar. Within arm’s reach on the floor is a small torch to light my way to the toilet during the night, on the other side an orange plastic bucket to puke into. As the light fades my four companions, each with his or her own plastic mattress and bucket, disappear from view while on every side the barks, croaks, growls and cries of jungle life grow louder. Twenty minutes ago I gulped down a draught of the bitter psychedelic brew known as ayahuasca and I have convinced myself that I can feel its hot, unstoppable progress through my body, from my seething guts into my veins and onwards to my brain.This is hardly a recreational drug experience, what with the nausea, vomiting and diarrhoea, not to mention the possibility a truly terrifying trip, yet thousands now beat a path to Peru, Ecuador and Brazil every year to drink ayahuasca. Some are just looking for an exotic thrill, but others hope for enlightenment and healing from this ancient plant medicine. In the past few years, many of them have been war veterans desperate to escape the nightmares of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Our criticism of gender research has been portrayed as dogmatic feminism – thankfully the scientific community has looked beyond the headlinesAt a time when both science and feminism are under attack, there are welcome signs that neuroscience is showing new openness to critiques of research into sex differences. Mainstream journals increasingly publish studies that reveal how misleading assumptions about the sexes bias the framing of hypotheses, research design and interpretation of findings – and these critiques increasingly come with constructive recommendations, discussions and debates.For example, we, together with other colleagues, made recommendations in the peer-reviewed journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience on best practice in sex/gender neuroscience. Some of the errors and traps we identified included human neuroimaging studies with small sample sizes, and the common “snapshot” approach, which interprets neural associations with sex as a matter of timeless and universal male and female essences, without taking seriously the fact that biological associations might as easily be the effect of social differences as the cause of them. Continue reading...

Humans are less nutritious than other forms of meat, findings show, indicating complex social motivations may be behind our ancestors’ cannibalism

A diving expedition off Easter Island (or Rapa Nui) in the Pacific pushes the boundaries of both technology and the human body to reveal a world of unique species just waiting to be discovered Continue reading...

Jorvik centre opens its doors to public on Saturday after £4.3m restorationThe builders are sitting gossiping on a fence, the groaning man is back in the latrine and the unfortunate woman who has been pregnant for the last 10 years has been allowed to sit down: after 16 months and £4.3m, the Vikings of the Jorvik centre in York are back.The attraction, a recreation of the houses and streets of Viking York situated where archaeologists excavated the real foundations, reopens to the public on Saturday after extensive flooding in December 2015 forced it to close.

Researchers trying to protect the Great Barrier Reef fabricate environmentally safe bait by harnessing the pheromones the marine pests use to communicateMarine biologists may have devised a new way to protect the Great Barrier Reef after decoding the pheromones of the coral-eating crown-of-thorns starfish.Researchers say the discovery can be used to create pheromone lures that attract the marine pest in large numbers and make them easier to remove. Continue reading...

Efforts to control tobacco have paid off, says study, but warns tobacco epidemic is far from over, with 6.4m deaths attributed to smoking in 2015 aloneOne in 10 deaths around the world is caused by smoking, according to a major new study that shows the tobacco epidemic is far from over and that the threat to lives is spreading across the globe.There were nearly one billion smokers in 2015, in spite of tobacco control policies having been adopted by many countries. That number is expected to rise as the world’s population expands. One in every four men is a smoker and one in 20 women. Their lives are likely to be cut short – smoking is the second biggest risk factor for early death and disability after high blood pressure. Continue reading...

Apes can tell whether a person has an accurate belief about a situation, showing the same level of understanding as human infants, research showsApes are on a par with human infants in being able to tell when people have an accurate belief about a situation or are actually mistaken, researchers say.

Nicola Davis asks theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and science communicator Professor Lawrence Krauss about the secrets of the universeSubscribe & Review on iTunes, Soundcloud, Audioboom, Mixcloud & Acast, and join the discussion on Facebook and TwitterWhy is there something rather than nothing? How did life begin? And what are the secrets of our universe? These are just a handful of the questions theoretical physicist and cosmologist Professor Lawrence Krauss takes on every day as the inaugural director of the Origins Project at Arizona State University. But what first inspired Krauss to become a scientist? What does the future hold for his own quest of discovery? And how important is science and scientific thinking in our modern world? Continue reading...

Film villains are often depicted with all manner of skin traits - and the association is damaging, say researchersBulbous noses, warts and dark circles under the eyes are among the skin conditions commonly used by filmmakers to indicate villains, researchers have found.A study by a team of US dermatologists has highlighted that while heroes of the silver screen typically have barely a mark on their features, characters with dubious morals are often depicted with all manner of skin traits – an association that, the researchers say, is damaging. Continue reading...

The relationship between physics and maths is deep and satisfying, even before cake gets involved, as Eugenia Cheng will demonstrate - with edible examplesThe power of mathematics to help us understand the natural world is remarkable. Physical laws and principles are very often expressed as mathematical equations. Practically, they allow us to predict real events and develop sophisticated technologies. Philosophically, the question as to whether mathematics is something we invent or discover, and why the physical world should seem to pay it so much respect, still fascinates.Related: Mathematician Eugenia Cheng: ‘We hate having rules imposed on us' Continue reading...

Egypt’s diving is spectacular, and could help revive the country’s tourism industry – but only if the value of its marine life is recognised and protectedTo say the Egyptian economy, much reliant on tourism, has seen a turbulent time of late, would be a woeful understatement. As you travel along the Red Sea coast from Hurghada, through Safaga, and El Quseir, the litter-strewn landscape of low hills and desert occasionally gives way to tourism developments and scattered international hotels. Their gardens are still maintained and the palm trees watered, but call in for a drink and the bars and pools are emptier than their designers expected. Equally, many hotels were never completed and desert-worn signs featuring smiling couples who will never visit, lend a post-apocalyptic air.Related: Tourism with bite: swimming with the great white shark Continue reading...

Early evolution of modern birds is fuzzy, so a fossil foot showing unexpected diversity in penguins shortly after the dinosaurs went extinct is big newsThe theory that birds descended from bipedal dinosaurs, Coelurosaurs to be exact, is now well-established within the palaeontological community. With that one out of the way, bird palaeontologists can focus on more pressing issues, such as the origin and evolution of Neornithes, the group of birds that comprises all living birds. Several groups of extinct birds are known to have existed alongside the dinosaurs, such as the aquatic diving birds Hesperornithiformes, the large, toothed Ichthyornithiformes, and the “opposite birds” Enanthiornithidae, named after the distinct anatomy of their shoulder girdle. None of them gave rise to the birds we see in our backyard today.The early evolution of modern birds is fuzzy, to say the least. Models based on molecular clocks place the origin of Neornithes as far back as the Early Cretaceous, whereas others suggest that modern birds did not diversify until the Late Cretaceous (see Brocklehurst et al., 2012 for a discussion). The sparse fossil record of Mesozoic Neornithes does little to clear things up. Continue reading...