Artificial mouse cells grown from outside body in a blob of gel shown to morph into primitive embryos, roughly equivalent to one third of way through pregnancy

Our friend and colleague Borislav Dimitrov (“Bobo” to his close friends and family), who has died aged 50 after a stroke, was associate professor of medical statistics at the University of Southampton.Borislav was passionate about clinical research and teaching, and had accomplished much in his academic career. Organised and reliable, he used his clinical knowledge in both applied and biomedical research, and established collaborations with leading clinicians in Southampton, Dublin, Bulgaria, Italy and the US. Continue reading...

With eleven publications already under scrutiny, new evidence emerges of duplicate publication and data irregularities in the work of Professor Brian WansinkThe head of Cornell University’s Food and Brand lab is facing renewed allegations of academic misconduct, including self-plagiarism and potential data misrepresentation. Professor Brian Wansink, who has authored hundreds of scientific papers and is a former agency director in the US Department of Agriculture, is famous for promoting the concepts of “mindless eating” and the idea that people find it easier to control their food intake when eating from smaller plates. However, an investigation by University of Groningen PhD student Nick Brown has apparently revealed repeated cases of duplicate publication in Wansink’s research, as well as unusual data irregularities across two studies.Wansink’s research first fell under scrutiny in late 2016 when, in a blog post called “The Grad Student Who Never Said No”, he appeared to champion the use of grey research practices as career tools for young scientists – practices such as selectively reporting positive results from a dataset of primarily null outcomes, and presenting data fishing as hypothesis testing. Analyses of the published results by Tim van der Zee, Jordan Anaya and Nick Brown later identified what appear to be hundreds of statistical inconsistencies in four of the articles where Wansink admitted deploying such practices, and Anaya later raised concerns about the accuracy of seven additional publications. After refusing to share the raw data, Wansink promised to conduct an internal investigation of four of the eleven publications. Continue reading...

As more countries relax their laws and with drug potency rising, it is crucial to take steps to reduce harm from cannabis use, researchers sayScientists are calling for a major effort to make cannabis use less harmful as a rising number of countries look to replace long-standing and outright bans on the drug with more relaxed legislation.A number of countries and US states have softened laws around cannabis use against a backdrop of rising drug potency and an apparent increase in the number of people in treatment for cannabis-related problems. Continue reading...

David Head (Letters, 23 February), referring to your obituary of Sir Peter Mansfield, picks up on the fact that he studied for A-levels at evening classes. Point well made. However, I would have thought that at least as interesting was the fact that he “failed” the 11-plus. That he went on to win a Nobel prize suggests the “failure” lay in the system. Proponents of this archaic and socially divisive examination, about which our prime minister seems so nostalgic, will no doubt object to the use of such anecdotes to attack it, but anecdotes about the odd unprivileged child going to a grammar school are all that they offer us to justify it. No, I’m not grinding an axe here; I passed the exam – but, sadly, the Nobel prize has eluded me.

Researchers say 208 of more than 5,200 officially recognised minerals are exclusively, or largely, linked to human activity merely in last 200 years to indicate Anthropocene age

Successful freezing and rewarming of tissue sections by US team avoids damage by infusing the them with magnetic nanoparticles, paving way for entire organs

A team of scientists working at University College London say they have discovered the world’s oldest fossils in rocks on the Canadian coastline. The fossilised remains of bacteria were found to be 300m years older than any fossils previously uncovered, leading to questions about whether similar imprints could be found on other planets, including Mars

If correct, the microfossils, thought to have formed between 3.77bn and 4.28bn years ago, offer the oldest direct evidence of and insight into life on EarthScientists say they have found the world’s oldest fossils, thought to have formed between 3.77bn and 4.28bn years ago.Comprised of tiny tubes and filaments made of an iron oxide known as haematite, the microfossils are believed to be the remains of bacteria that once thrived underwater around hydrothermal vents, relying on chemical reactions involving iron for their energy.

Auction house Bonham’s sells mould which was instrumental in the discovery of the world’s first antibioticThe international auction house Bonham’s has sold a small, patchy disc of mould for $14,597 (£11,863).The off-white, nearly 90-year-old swatch of mould was first created by Alexander Fleming to make penicillin, a revolutionary discovery that brought the world its first antibiotic.

Hannah Devlin explores the research behind the recent announcement of seven Earth-size planets and asks how we might probe their nature, including a suitability for lifeExoplanet discovery: seven Earth-sized planets found orbiting nearby starSubscribe & Review on iTunes, Soundcloud, Audioboom, Mixcloud & Acast, and join the discussion on Facebook and TwitterOn 22 February, Nasa announced the discovery of seven Earth-sized exoplanets orbiting a faint star called Trappist-1 in the constellation of Aquarius. They also announced that three of the seven planets are thought to lie within the so-called Goldilocks zone, where temperatures are warm enough - but not too warm - for liquid water to be present on surface, making the planets potentially habitable. Continue reading...

Responding to comments below our recent story about orgasm probabilities, Mona Chalabi tackles your queries, some serious, others less so

Olympic swimmers admit to it and it seems many of the rest us are peeing in the water too, with a new scientific test finding up to 75 litres of urine in public poolsIt is an antisocial act that normally goes under the radar, but many swimmers have long suspected the truth: people are peeing in the pool.Now scientists have been able to confirm the full extent of offending for the first time, after developing a test designed to estimate how much urine has been covertly added to a large volume of water. Regular swimmers with a keen sense of hygiene may wish to stop reading now. Continue reading...

The long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific conceptsWill it ever be possible for humans to recreate the big bang?Sophie Domme, Berlin, Germany Continue reading...

The Hubble Space Telescope transformed our view of the universe; in the March 2017 lecture of this popular lecture series, NASA astrophysicist Amber Straughn will give an update in its successor, due for launch in 2018The idea of a telescope in space, free of the effects of the Earth’s atmosphere, is seductive and powerful, and was proposed at least as early as 1946. The Hubble Space Telescope was eventually launched in 1990. The Hubble deep field, revealing thousands of galaxies in a tiny segment of sky, is one of the most memorable of all scientific images. Many discoveries have been made with this fantastic instrument. (It was an special thrill when it was used for rapid follow-up observations when Steve Fossey and students in my department at UCL discovered a new nearby supernova in 2014.)Related: Most Wanted Particle: Live lecture at the Perimeter Institute | Jon Butterworth Continue reading...

Giant tortoises may not seem like high achievers, but their remarkable spread and diversification indicate otherwise“As I was walking along I met two large tortoises, each of which must have weighed at least two hundred pounds: one was eating a piece of cactus, and as I approached, it stared at me and slowly stalked away; the other gave a deep hiss, and drew in its head. These huge reptiles, surrounded by the black lava, the leafless shrubs, and large cacti, seemed to my fancy like some antediluvian animals. The few dull-coloured birds cared no more for me, than they did for the great tortoises.”

Government rhetoric about ‘global Britain’ is not matched by its limp response to proposals for securing the future of research and higher educationTheresa May’s Lancaster House speech on Brexit resounded repeatedly with declarations of her ambition to foster a new ‘global Britain’, a term mentioned no less than twelve times. But what precisely are her government’s plans for UK research, which has been launched into a fog of uncertainty by the EU referendum? Does it have the boldness and clarity of purpose to match her rhetorical bravado?The report by the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee on the future of UK science outside the EU is certainly a bold document. Published in December 2016, A Time for Boldness: EU Membership and UK Science After the Referendum is not without its flaws but it proposes clear actions to help UK research and higher education to face the challenges of Brexit. Continue reading...

Being christened Tim sets you up for a life of failure, it’s been claimed. I’d hoped this was nonsense, but sadly a new study suggests it may be trueA lot of baggage comes with the name Tim. I have not forgotten Martin Amis’s 20-year-old description of Tim Henman as “the first human being called Tim to achieve anything at all”. More recently Will Self wrote: “There’s little doubt that your life chances will be constrained should your otherwise risk-averse parents have had the temerity to Tim you.” This was in a review of the JD Wetherspoon pub chain, the many faults of which Self put down to founder Tim Martin never being able “to escape the fact of his Timness”.At the time I was summoned on to the Today programme to defend being called Tim, along with the wine writer Tim Atkin. He came armed with a roll call of accomplished Tims, which sounded like a list of people the programme editors might have rung before we finally said yes. Continue reading...

Set of five scientists, engineers and astronauts – including Katherine Johnson – wins Lego Ideas contest and will go into productionLego will release a set of five female Nasa scientists, engineers and astronauts based on real women who have worked for the space agency.Maia Weinstock, an American science writer who created @legoNASAwomen, tweeted the good news on Tuesday. Continue reading...

Study shows strong evidence of a link between excess body fat and cancers of the colon, breast, pancreas and ovary among othersBeing overweight could increase the risk of a host of cancers, including those of the colon, breast, pancreas and ovary, researchers have warned following a wide review of more than 200 studies.According to previous figures from two leading charities, almost three quarters of people are expected to be overweight by 2035, with 700,000 new cases of obesity-related cancer expected over the next 20 years. Continue reading...

Leaving Euratom treaty will shut down nuclear industry if international safety agreements are not made in time, MPs toldNuclear power stations would be forced to shut down if a new measures are not in place when Britain quits a European atomic power treaty in 2019, an expert has warned.Rupert Cowen, a senior nuclear energy lawyer at Prospect Law, told MPs on Tuesday that leaving the Euratom treaty as the government has promised could see trade in nuclear fuel grind to a halt. Continue reading...

Margery Kempe was known for religious fervour, and a list in the manuscript of her pioneering autobiography has been analysed as a prescribed cure for her fitsIt is a case that has intrigued historians, psychiatrists and theologians for the last 80 years, but an academic has found what may be the oldest known attempt to diagnose Margery Kempe’s erratic religious behaviour. A recipe for medicinal sweets, written 600 years ago in the back of the medieval mystic’s memoir, has been deciphered by Dr Laura Kalas Williams – and the Exeter University-based researcher is convinced that it reveals an attempt to prescribe a cure for Kempe’s notorious fits of devotion.Though the recipe, written in the final portfolio of the 1438 manuscript, has long been known to scholars, it had hitherto proved impossible to read. Dr Andrea Clarke, the British Library’s lead curator of medieval and early modern manuscripts, suggested multispectral-imaging technology be used to reveal its secrets. Kalas Williams and two colleagues, Professor Eddie Jones and Professor Daniel Wakelin, were then able to decipher the ingredients and discovered it was a cure for “flux”, defined in the Medieval English Dictionary as “a pathological flowing of blood, excretions or discharges from any part of the body, or dysentery”. Continue reading...

From car to rail, it’s hard to find a terrestrial journey that matches SpaceX’s astronomical costIt is a stratospheric sum but it does, at least, include the return journey. Elon Musk, the billionaire American transport visionary, has suggested that the first, so far unnamed, passengers on his SpaceX flight round the moon will pay about $70m (£56m).Musk says the journey, tentatively scheduled for 2018 on an untested Falcon Heavy rocket, will cover up to 400,000 miles, although the Apollo 13 crew, on their trip to the moon in 1970, were a record 248,655 miles from Earth, so this figure seems modest if anything. Either way, 400,000 miles (about 16 times the circumference of Earth) for £56m is equal to about £140 a mile, which is easier to fathom. But how does it compare with terrestrial journeys? Continue reading...

Two metal-detecting friends tell how they unearthed a hoard of iron age gold jewellery in a Staffordshire field. The four pieces of gold, which have been named the Leekfrith Iron Age Torcs, were found in December 2016 by Mark Hambleton and Joe Kania. The jewellery is some of the oldest examples of Iron Age gold, and of Celtic ornament, ever found in Britain

Meet Handle, the two-wheeled, four-legged creation from the Google-owned robotics firm that even company founder Marc Raibert says is frighteningGoogle-owned robotics firm and “nightmare” factory Boston Dynamics has released video of its latest creation: a two-wheeled, four-legged hybrid robot named Handle.The robot can stand on four legs, like Boston Dynamics’ previous creations such as BigDog and Spot. But at the end of its back two legs are two stabilised wheels, which let it stand up vertically and roll around at speeds of up to nine miles per hour. Think “Terminator riding on a hoverboard” and you’ll have a pretty good idea of the impression Handle gives off. Continue reading...

Friends who returned to abandoned hobby find iron age gold jewellery – the Leekfrith torcs – in Staffordshire fieldTwo metal detecting friends have found a hoard of superb iron age gold jewellery after returning to a Staffordshire field where they previously found nothing and became so bored that they gave up the hobby and turned to fishing for 20 years.The four iron age gold torcs – three collars and a bracelet-sized piece, including two made of twisted gold wire, two with trumpet shaped finials and one with beautiful Celtic ornament – are of international importance. Continue reading...

CEO Elon Musk said the private journey would take about a week, nearing the moon’s surface without landing on itThe SpaceX CEO, Elon Musk, revealed on Monday that two people have paid for a private mission around the moon, tentatively set for launch in 2018 with the private company’s yet untested Falcon Heavy rocket.In a conference call with reporters, Musk declined to name the people or what they had paid, though he said the individuals know each other and are “very serious” about the flight. The “private citizens” approached the company late last year and will receive training and take health and fitness tests as early as this year. Continue reading...

In 1991, Shell produced a public documentary on global warming called Climate of Concern. It warned that trends in global temperatures raised serious risks of famines, floods and climate refugees. But in the quarter century since, Shell has continued to invest heavily in fossil fuels

Antibiotic resistance could make c-sections, transplants and chemotherapy too dangerous to perform, warns World Health OrganisationThe World Health Organisation (WHO) has published a list of the 12 bacteria which pose the greatest threat to human health because they are resistant to antibiotics.

Wipe away the sawdust, it’s the solution to today’s dissection riddleEarlier today I set you the following puzzle:A carpenter needs a square piece of wood measuring 30 inches by 30 inches. Unfortunately the only suitable piece in his workshop is a rectangle 25 inches by 36 inches. Continue reading...

The Teeth of Non-Mammalian Vertebrates by Barry Berkovitz and Peter Shellis offers a unique look at the teeth of fish, reptiles and amphibians teeth, from the hardened skin rasps of the lamprey to the fangs of the rattlesnake Continue reading...

Unfortunately, the links between online porn and Donald Trump’s successful campaign to become US president are easy to seeDonald Trump is the president of the United States. No matter how many times it’s said, to many it still sounds surreal, given our understanding of how the world is meant to work.Countless theories have been put forward to explain this shocking turn of events that took all seasoned pundits by surprise. It was because the Democrats embraced neoliberalism, because of misogyny, both outright and internalised, because of low democrat turnout, because of media bias, because of deeply-embedded racism, and many more factors. Continue reading...

The problem of fake data may go far deeper than scientists admit. Now a team of researchers has a controversial plan to root out the perpetrators Continue reading...

The extraordinary story of the man who risked his career to create vaccines against our worst diseasesIn March 1968, biologist Leonard Hayflick visited the basement of the Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology in Philadelphia. He was seeking a set of 375 vials, each bearing the code WI-38. Once found, he placed them in a nitrogen-cooled container and then hid them in a friend’s house. He informed no one at Wistar, his former employer, of his actions.A few days later, Hayflick transported the vials to Stanford University, where he had just been made professor of medical microbiology. There he started to sell them to drug companies. Continue reading...

Today’s riddle about a square piece of wood is a dissection puzzle. Don’t get too cut up if you can’t solve it ...UPDATE: Solution now posted here.Hello guzzlers.I’ve not set you a dissection puzzle before – that’s the name for puzzles about reassembling shapes – so here’s one to cut your teeth on. Continue reading...

What to look out in the coming weeks, including the best chance in eight years to follow Venus in transition from an evening to morning starThe Sun crosses northwards over the equator at our vernal or spring equinox on the 20th, when days and nights are similar in length around the Earth. As our days lengthen in March, the stars at nightfall shift almost 50° westwards, with Orion toppling from due S into the SW and Leo climbing from the E to the meridian where its leading star, Regulus, stands close to the Moon on the 9th.

It would take a telescope as big as a planet to see the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way. But a team of scientists think they know how to do itAt the heart of our galaxy, a vast black hole is devouring matter from the dust clouds that surround it. Little by little, expanses of interstellar material are being swallowed up by this voracious galactic carnivore that, in the process, has reached a mass that is 4m times that of our sun.The Milky Way’s great black hole is 25,000 light years distant, surrounded by dense clusters of stars, shrouded by interstellar dust and, like all other black holes, incapable of emitting light. Continue reading...

Eugenia Cheng combines home baking with higher-dimensional category theory. She talks about pudding, infinity, and why geeks are the new alphasEugenia Cheng is a British mathematician who is senior lecturer at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her main interest is higher-dimensional category theory but she has also written a book about the maths of baking entitled How To Bake Pi. Her latest book is Beyond Infinity: An Expedition into the Outer Limits of Mathematics.What is higher-dimensional category theory? Can you describe it in a sentence?

Dr Daniel Glaser delves into the murky world of Artificial Intelligence and asks whether true intelligence can exist without an understanding of moralitySubscribe & Review on iTunes, Soundcloud, Audioboom, Mixcloud & Acast, and join the discussion on Facebook and TwitterThis week, Observer Magazine columnist and neuroscientist Dr Daniel Glaser visits old friend and former colleague John Morton – emeritus professor at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London – to discuss his modelling approach to the human brain. What can it tell us about the developing mind? Could it ever be replicated in silicon? And is true Artificial Intelligence (AI) even possible without crucial stages of development in early life? Continue reading...

In 1919, a tank holding 2.3m gallons of molasses burst, causing tragedy. Scientists now understand why the syrup tsunami was so deadlyIt may sound like the fantastical plot of a children’s story but Boston’s Great Molasses Flood was one of the most destructive and sombre events in the city’s history.On 15 January 1919, a muffled roar heard by residents was the only indication that an industrial-sized tank of syrup had burst open, unleashing a tsunami of sugary liquid through the North End district near the city’s docks. Continue reading...

The discovery of planets where other lifeforms might flourish makes the universe look more interesting – even if we never reach themLooked at in the right perspective, 39 light years is a trivial distance. In the imagination of science fiction writers it is only a hop and a skip away; even without faster-than-light travel, it is a distance that could conceivably be covered by a robot probe or even a colony ship. So the discovery that there are seven Earth-sized planets hurtling around a red dwarf star named Trappist-1 only 39 light years away, and that three of them may well have water oceans capable of nourishing life similar to that of primitive Earth, is deeply satisfying, as well as exciting.What took them so long? There are already nearly 4,000 planetary candidates known from earlier surveys of the neighbouring stars. The number of stars in our galaxy alone is ungraspably huge: just the margin of error in one estimate is a figure with 11 zeros after it. If even one in a million had planets around it, that would still leave anything between 20m and 40m planetary systems in our galaxy alone. If none at all holds life, that would be completely astonishing. But if some have developed life, we are left with the question named after the Nobel-winning physicist, Enrico Fermi: where are they? Where are the aliens? Continue reading...

Vilifying Sutton reserve goalkeeper for his FA Cup snacking is like berating windy Doris for Labour’s byelection defeatMondayA 60-year study conducted by researchers at the University of Edinburgh has revealed that personality is not, as had previously been thought, immutable. This may be good news for all those in their 20s and 30s who wake up most days feeling anxious and are hoping it won’t last forever, but it’s not so great for those of us who have reached our 60s and detect no discernible difference from our younger selves. Continue reading...

Awards season demands complexion perfection: no wonder some stars turn to a toxin seven million times more poisonous than cobra venomAwards season is fast accelerating towards its glamorous peak, the Oscars. It will be a fabulous evening of gorgeous gowns and flawless complexions. Those on the red carpet will be scrutinised by millions. The pressure to look perfect must be huge.

Deliberate ignorance helps explain why people don’t go to the doctor or check their bank balance; in the short term, it’s more comfortable to stay in the darkIt’s a cliche of modern tourism that no matter which hotel or B&B you plan to stay at, someone will have described it on TripAdvisor as the worst they’ve ever visited, from which they’re still suffering post-traumatic stress. This is also why you shouldn’t use Google to diagnose that pain in your abdomen: some site will convince you it’s a fatal flesh-eating disease. Or perhaps, like me in recent weeks, you have found yourself loitering on parenting websites, trying to discover whether letting your baby cry himself to sleep would be unconscionably cruel and all but guarantee a disastrous adulthood.Except, once again, it’s not really a matter of “whether”. Now that the barrier to broadcasting your opinion is so low, you’re certain to find an apparently authoritative person expressing precisely that view, along with its opposite, and everything in between. (Incidentally, I think I’ve figured out the official standard for describing yourself as a “baby sleep expert” online: you need to be able to switch on a computer and start a blog.) Continue reading...

Collaboration with Europe is crucial to future breakthroughs, say cancer experts including Nobel prize winner Sir Paul Nurse

Climatologists say Labrador Sea could cool within a decade before end of this century, leading to unprecedented disruption, reports Climate News NetworkFor thousands of years, parts of northwest Europe have enjoyed a climate about 5C warmer than many other regions on the same latitude. But new scientific analysis suggests that that could change much sooner and much faster than thought possible.

Ok, so it may not be as catchy as Bowie’s musings on Mars, but it’s certainly as thrilling: with the discovery of seven Earth-sized planets orbiting nearby star Trappist-1, hopes have been raised that the hunt for alien life beyond the solar system could start within the next decade. That should give us time to sort out the bot-on-bot editing wars that have broken out on Wikipedia, and train bumblebees not merely to score goals for sugar, but to sort out the NHS as well or something. Let’s not look too far ahead though, as it turns out that most people would rather avoid knowing their future. On a more serious note, researchers have discovered that long-winded speech could be early sign of Alzheimer’s disease, and suggest that subtle changes in speech style occur years before more serious mental decline takes hold. Given that life expectancy is forecast to exceed 90 years in coming decades, early interventions for health conditions will be welcome, although one thing it seems you can do to protect your health is up your fruit and veg intake to 10 portions a day. Do crisps count? Continue reading...

Whether it’s through mentoring students as I do, or working in schools, we need active role models to encourage young black scientists to stay in educationMost black women were probably not aware that Katherine G Johnson, Mary Jackson and Dorothy Vaughan ever existed. I certainly wasn’t until earlier this year, when the founder of the Black British Academics network sent me a link to these amazing black women in science. Now that their story has been told in an Oscar-nominated film, could Hidden Figures encourage more black women to pursue a career in science?Related: Why Hidden Figures should win the best picture Oscar Continue reading...

It’s often been described as ‘elusive’ but a study from a team of US researchers suggests that a combination of genital stimulation, deep kissing and oral sex is the ‘golden trio’ for women when it comes to increasing their likelihood of reaching orgasm with a sexual partner Continue reading...

Exoplanets found orbiting Trappist-1 raise hope that the hunt for alien life beyond the solar system can start much sooner than previously thoughtA huddle of seven worlds, all close in size to Earth, and perhaps warm enough for water and the life it can sustain, has been spotted around a small, faint star in the constellation of Aquarius.Related: This discovery is a lottery win for astronomers looking for life beyond Earth Continue reading...