Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano has produced a rare ‘firehose’ of lava which is flowing into the Pacific Ocean. Footage captured by the US Geological Survey on 28 January shows a steady stream of molten lava creating littoral explosions as it impacts the cold sea water Continue reading...

Our nuclear energy, safety and research must not be subjugated to already chaotic Brexit negotiations – the government must put the national interest firstLast week we learned just how hard and how ill-conceived Brexit looks like being. The two line parliamentary bill published by the government last Thursday contained no detail, no plan, and no check or balance on the prime minister’s possible negotiation as it progresses.One thing that was included, albeit buried in the explanation notes, is a brief reference to also ending Britain’s membership of Euratom – an entirely separate treaty. The implications of this will be deep and far-reaching for the future of UK’s energy supply, science, industry and workers. There is no political or legal mandate for the UK to leave Euratom, in fact it was barely even a footnote in the referendum campaign, and yet we are heading for a nuclear Brexit. Continue reading...

British Heart Foundation says most people affected have not been diagnosed, and true number could be higherMore than 620,000 people in the UK have a faulty gene that puts them at risk of heart disease and sudden death from heart attacks or cardiac arrests, and most of them are unaware of the risk, a charity has warned.The British Heart Foundation (BHF), which released the figure, said it was 100,000 more than previous estimates. But the true figure could be even higher because of under-diagnosis and the presence of other, as yet unknown, faulty genes, it said. Continue reading...

The long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific conceptsDreaming that one can levitate or even fly seem to be near universal. Can anyone throw light on why something that presumably cannot have any basis in our evolutionary past should be so common to our unconscious selves? For me at least, when I have such dreams they always seem completely real (though my dreaming self is always suprised at discovering the ability).Francis Blake, London N17 Continue reading...

You’d think scientists could answer simple questions like ‘when did the dinosaurs live?’. But the truth about science is bad news for those seeking certaintyWith controversy about science communication, facts and alternative facts hitting the headlines recently, I’ve been having a number of conversations with colleagues from all over the world about why science seems to be losing in the current war on reason.This isn’t in the usual fringe battle fronts like creationism or flat-Earthers. It’s on topics deep behind our lines, in areas like whether climate change exists or not, how many people were present at a given time at a given place and whether one man with a questionable grasp on reality should be the only source people get their news from. Continue reading...

Nicola Davis sits down with Professor Uta Frith to talk autism, passion, rebellion and the role of women in scienceSubscribe & Review on iTunes, Soundcloud, Audioboom, Mixcloud & AcastIn a career that spans almost five decades, Uta Frith, now an emeritus professor of cognitive development at University College London, and chair of the Diversity Committee at the Royal Society, is a name synonymous with the leaps and bounds seen in recent research into autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders. But what has kept her passionate throughout her long career? What is she most excited about when it comes to the future of autism research? And how important are mentors like Uta within the field of science? 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 perpetratorsOne morning last summer, a German psychologist named Mathias Kauff woke up to find that he had been reprimanded by a robot. In an email, a computer program named Statcheck informed him that a 2013 paper he had published on multiculturalism and prejudice appeared to contain a number of incorrect calculations – which the program had catalogued and then posted on the internet for anyone to see. The problems turned out to be minor – just a few rounding errors – but the experience left Kauff feeling rattled. “At first I was a bit frightened,” he said. “I felt a bit exposed.”Kauff wasn’t alone. Statcheck had read some 50,000 published psychology papers and checked the maths behind every statistical result it encountered. In the space of 24 hours, virtually every academic active in the field in the past two decades had received an email from the program, informing them that their work had been reviewed. Nothing like this had ever been seen before: a massive, open, retroactive evaluation of scientific literature, conducted entirely by computer. Continue reading...

Frog saliva switches between being thin and watery as the whip-like tongue hits its target, to thick and sticky as the insect is reeled in, research showsScientists have discovered what makes the frog’s tongue uniquely sticky, allowing the amphibian to snag passing flies while squatting motionless by the water’s edge.Frog saliva, the study revealed, has a bizarre property of being able to switch between thin and watery as the whip-like tongue hits its target, to thick and sticky as the insect is reeled in, creating an almost inescapable trap. Continue reading...

Using a device which detects patterns in brain activity, patients paralysed by ALS can answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’ – and tell doctors they are ‘happy’ with lifeDoctors have used a brain-reading device to hold simple conversations with “locked-in” patients in work that promises to transform the lives of people who are too disabled to communicate.

Justice minister hails ‘momentous day’ as so-called Turing’s law receives royal assent, but critics say move does not go far enoughThousands of men convicted of offences that once criminalised homosexuality but are no longer on the statute book have been posthumously pardoned under a new law.A clause in the policing and crime bill, which received royal assent on Tuesday, extends to those who are dead the existing process of purging past criminal records. Continue reading...

Scientists believe a mathematical model could explain the origins of the cosmos. Here’s what you need to know …

Forget practising for hours on end or cramming the night before an exam. Here are some pointers to help you get top resultsThe old saying, “If at first you don’t succeed: try, try again”, might need rewriting. Because, according to new research, even if you do succeed, you should still try, try again. “Overlearning”, scientists say, could be the key to remembering what you have learned.In a study of 183 volunteers, participants were asked to spot the orientation of a pattern in an image. It is a task that took eight 20-minute rounds of training to master. Some volunteers, however, were asked to carry on for a further 16 20-minute blocks to “overlearn” before being moved on to another task. When tested the next day, they had retained the ability better than those who had mastered it and then stopped learning. Continue reading...

An assault on “alt-right” figure Richard Spencer sparked the ‘punch a Nazi’ meme. Violence is bad, but so is racism – so where do we stand ethically?When a KKK-endorsed alleged sexual assaulter can be elected to the White House, many are rightfully fearful. People of colour are increasingly worried about the normalisation of racism. Many once thought racism would get no further than the lips of a racist relative or a poorly-worded Facebook post. Now these views are entering the Oval Office and federal buildings, given weight by chants and placards and verified Twitter accounts.On 20 January, Richard Spencer, a prominent figure in the “alt-right” movement, was punched in the face while giving an interview in Washington. The punch spawned a number of “punch a Nazi” memes. It could be said that seeing a prominent representative of racist views being punched brings catharsis in a world that appears to be slouching toward Nazism. Continue reading...

Orangutan Samboja will be shown males on a touchscreen in experiment aimed at learning more about mating choicesA Dutch zoo hopes to increase the breeding chances of a female orangutan by seeing if she will choose a preferred mate on a touchscreen before they are introduced.In a four-year experiment it has called “Tinder for orangutans”, the Apenheul primate park in Apeldoorn will show Samboja, an 11-year-old female, pictures of possible partners from an international great ape breeding programme. Continue reading...

Automated fact-checking is hard enough, but Trump’s ‘chaos by design’ threatens to render it obsolete. Can Artificial Intelligence keep our grip on reality?Imagine you’re the head of machine learning at a big social media company, and you’ve been asked to design a system that can detect “fake news”. Succeed and you’ll be in line for a fat bonus. Screw up and you could put democracy itself at risk. Where do you start?

A set of photographic prints from Nasa’s archives – selected by Barbara Hitchcock and Peter Riva and approved by several of the astronauts – that include the first moon landing, are up for auction in New York. Originally part of a 1985 Smithsonian Institution exhibition, Sightseeing: A Space Panorama, many of the photos had never before been published by the space agency, and are the only known Cibachrome prints made from original Nasa positives Continue reading...

Images from the Cassini spacecraft are most detailed ever taken, and include previously unseen features within the ringsNasa has released spectacular images of Saturn’s rings, revealing that the rings may be home to millions of orbiting “moonlets”.The images from the Cassini spacecraft resolve details on a scale of 550 metres – around the size of the tallest buildings on Earth. They include previously unseen features within the rings, including giant double-armed “propeller” structures that suggest a constellation of miniature moons are hidden within the planetary rings. Continue reading...

The answer to today’s puzzleEarlier today I set you the following puzzle: On the assumption that the following ten statements are true, what can you conclude?The only people in the cereal cafe are from Stoke.Every person would make a great Uber driver, if he or she is not allergic to gluten. Continue reading...

It is known that our galaxy is being pulled through space, but cosmologists suspected it was being pushed as well – and new research might confirm itThe Milky Way is being “pushed” through space by a cosmic dead zone that lurks half a billion light years from Earth, researchers claim.Located on the far side of the constellation of Lacerta, the Lizard, the vast patch of nothingness appears to have a striking dearth of galaxies compared to the rest of its cosmic neighbourhood.

Thought to have lived 540 million years ago, the discovery of Saccorhytus coronarious fossils sheds light on the early stages of evolutionYou won’t find it in your family album, but a tiny prehistoric creature with a bag-like body, a huge mouth and no anus has become the best candidate yet for our earliest known ancestor.

US congressmen are proposing a bill to restrict President Trump’s access to nuclear weapons. As ‘chaotic’ as he may be, is this fair or rational?As humans, we all make irrational decisions throughout the course of our lives, which have the potential for long-term consequences. We might drink too much or smoke. Perhaps, if we are millennials, we go for brunch instead of saving for a house. However, most of us do not have adequate power for the consequences of our irrationality to have wide-reaching impacts. Perhaps one of the hardest choices that the leader of a nuclear state can make is that of starting a nuclear war.Donald Trump wrote in his book The Art of the Deal that “a little hyperbole never hurt”, a mantra he has employed adeptly throughout his short and explosive political career. From suggesting that Obama and Hillary founded Isis, to insisting that he has big hands, Trump repeatedly makes irrational and unsubstantiated statements on his mission to Make America Great Again. However, few would accuse him of irrationality when he admitted last week that receiving the nuclear codes was “very, very, very scary”. Few might disagree. With his access to the nuclear button and the US arsenal of 975 nuclear warheads, small hands could one day cause big problems. Continue reading...

Carroll is best known as the author of Alice in Wonderland, but his mathematical work, Symbolic Logic, is the inspiration for today’s puzzleUPDATE: The solution is now up hereHello guzzlers.Lewis Carroll - whose birthday was on Friday - was a keen deviser of mathematical puzzles, such as this one: Continue reading...

What to look out for in the coming month, including a brilliant view of Venus and a penumbral lunar eclipseFebruary brings our best evening sky of 2017. Not only is Orion still resplendent but Venus blazes at its brightest and highest as an evening star. Continue reading...

How do brains and computers differ when it comes to memory storage? And what clues can we get from the ageing brain?Subscribe & Review on iTunes, Soundcloud, Audioboom, Mixcloud & AcastThis week, Observer Magazine columnist and neuroscientist Dr Daniel Glaser delves into the complex world of episodic memory. With King’s College London neuropsychologist Dr Charlotte Russell as his guide, Daniel explores how and where memories are stored, how reliable these memories are and whether computers – like our brains – show ‘graceful degradation’ of memory. Continue reading...

The Nobel winner says keeping telomeres – the ends of our chromosomes – in prime condition can stave off diseases associated with ageingYou won your Nobel prize for medicine for your discoveries concerning telomeres, found at the ends of chromosomes. What are telomeres and what happens to them as we age?

Lack of faith is no impediment to a decent death – or to helping another through theirs, says Johannes KlabbersIn the secular age you don’t need special authorisation to console a dying person. Just learning what it means to be there for someone is enough.“Death literacy” is officially a thing. People go to death cafés; books about death are in demand… and around 55 million people worldwide do it every year. But how do you actually do dying well? And who can the dying turn to for support? Continue reading...

An appreciation of ‘sick jokes’ equates with high IQ and low aggressionWho needs Mensa? If you want to find out if someone has a high IQ, just tell them a string of sick jokes and then gauge their reaction.A new study in the journal Cognitive Processing has found that intelligence plays a key role in the appreciation of black humour – as well as several other factors, notably a person’s aggression levels. Continue reading...

Research shows price of 14 treatments that should cost pennies has risen by up to 1,000%Drug companies have been accused of profiteering by raising the prices of out-of-patent cancer medicines that cost just pence to make, inflating the bills of the cash-strapped NHS by hundreds of millions of pounds.Academics say the prices of 14 cancer drugs have increased by between 100% and nearly 1,000% over the past five years in the UK. These are all generic drugs where the patent has expired, which means they can be made for little more than the cost of the raw ingredients. Continue reading...

Drug firms say leaving EMA could mean Britons having to wait a year longer than EU citizens for newly-developed medicinesMinisters are coming under growing pressure to scrap plans to quit Europe’s medicines regulator as part of Brexit, with drug firms saying doing so could force Britons to wait a year longer than patients in the EU to access new drugs.Labour and leaders of the UK’s pharmaceutical industry fear that patients and the NHS will lose out if Britain gives up its membership of the European Medicines Agency (EMA). The health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, told MPs last week that he did not expect the UK to continue as a member once it left the EU. Continue reading...

Starving rodents in north-eastern France are suffering from vitamin deficiencies that prompt them to eat their own youngA diet of corn is turning wild hamsters in north-eastern France into deranged cannibals that devour their offspring, researchers have reported.

Advice that overcooked starchy foods can contain acrylamide, a chemical liked to cancer, has caused a furore this week. Is it just another health scare?In October 1997, something troubling was happened around the HallandsaÌŠs ridge in southwestern Sweden. Farmers had found cows paralysed or dead in their fields, lifeless fish were spotted floating in a local river and workers at a construction site began suffering from nausea and prickling sensations in their fingers.Suspicion fell on a major construction project to drill a railway tunnel through the ridge. The project had been plagued by leaks and the construction company had resorted to injecting 1,400 tons of a sealant called Rhoca-Gil into tunnel walls. Tests confirmed that the sealant had leaked high levels of a toxic chemical into surrounding ground and surface water. The chemical was acrylamide. Continue reading...

Amid growing concerns over the anti-science stance of the Trump administration, I spoke to US scientists planning to join the March for ScienceScientists in the United States are mobilising to organise a March for Science. What originated online as a discussion about how to push back against the anti-science stance of Donald Trump’s administration rapidly gathered support from concerned scientists and non-scientists alike. A march on Washington similar to the Women’s March was proposed, and within 24 hours the group’s Twitter account had gained an additional 124,000 followers. Over half a million people have also joined a new Facebook page, which has become a hive of comments, suggestions and coordination. An event in the US capital is planned for March, with activities occurring in other countries.Related: EPA staff experiencing stress and fears Trump will suppress climate science Continue reading...

After exhaustive studies, an international team of scientists has worked out why tomatoes don’t taste like they used toAn international team of scientists claims finally to have cracked one of the most common consumer conundrums: why don’t tomatoes taste like they used to?

Harryplax severus takes name from secretive Hogwarts teacher Severus SnapeA species of crab that managed to elude capture for 20 years after it was first identified from remains has become the latest real-life creature to be named after a Harry Potter character. Harryplax severus takes its name from Harry’s notorious teacher Severus Snape, who managed to keep the secret that he was a double agent working for Hogwarts headmaster Professor Dumbledore until he died.Discovered 20 years ago in Guam by collector Harry Conley, who was digging in rubble fields at low tide, biologists have only now identified it as a new species. It was Conley’s first name, rather than the beloved boy wizard’s, that provided the genus name – in honour of his prolific rummaging for crustaceans, deep in the Micronesian island’s mud. Continue reading...

Things took a turn for the mythological this week with the creation of a human-pig hybrid, or chimera. It marks the first time that embryos combining two large, distantly-related species have been produced and is a big step towards being able to generate human hearts, livers and kidneys for transplant. And as if pig-humans (or human-pigs, or ... whatever) weren’t enough, researchers have modified E coli microbes to carry an expanded genetic code. Apparently this will ultimately allow them to be programmed, but also paves the way for the creation and exploitation of entirely new life forms. Given that human interactions with other species tend to go the way of the Cern weasel, this might not be great for whatever emerges, but still. Yay science. Definitely good news for everyone is the possibility that a radical therapy involving the tranquiliser ketamine could treat alcohol addiction by “erasing” drink-related memories. It’s extremely exciting that we’re starting to unpick how drugs interact with the brain. Another study this week, into LSD, has revealed why acid trips last so long – adding to our understanding of the brain’s serotonin receptors. Perhaps the only piece of science news this week that didn’t add to our understanding was the furore over the “dangers” of roast potatoes and burnt toast. Time to read some actual facts about acrylamide and ponder our own reactions to “scientific” pronouncements. Continue reading...

Stone marten, which met its fate at the Large Hadron Collider, to become part of Rotterdam museum’s exhibition on ill-fated human-animal interactionsThe singed fur and charred feet are testament to the weasel’s last stand: an encounter with the world’s most powerful machine that was never going to end well.Now an exhibit at the Rotterdam Natural History Museum, the stone marten met its fate when it hopped over a substation fence at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) near Geneva and was instantly electrocuted by an 18,000 volt transformer.

In December we challenged you to solve the annual statistical brainteasers. Now it’s time to find out how you didIf you lost sleep over the festive season due to the famously fiendish Royal Statistical Society Christmas quiz then good news: today we publish the results of the annual brain twister.

It’s vital to improve public trust in science and expertise. But science is increasingly complex, and getting harder to explain. Things need to changeSelf-scrutiny is hard, but a crisis is looming and we scientists need to get out the mirror. A casual observer, viewing the landscape of science, sees a place of lofty achievement: soaring towers built on our understanding of genetics, the effortless sophistication of modern electronics, and astonishing fountains of knowledge on every topic imaginable. But all this rests on the foundations that connect science to society, and this is where the problem lurks.On the surface, science is more democratic than ever – a rapidly increasing proportion of all scientific papers are freely available online, university websites overflow with information about current research, and scientists are increasingly visible to the rest of society. But modern science is full of convoluted complexities, because the world is complicated. And so explaining our science is getting harder. Continue reading...

Science had been doing it tough for years but this was different. It knew it had to get out if it was going to survive

Study highlights how children as young as six can be influenced by stereotypes such as the idea that brilliance or giftedness is more common in menGirls as young as six years old believe that brilliance is a male trait, according research into gender stereotypes.The US-based study also found that, unlike boys, girls do not believe that achieving good grades in school is related to innate abilities. Continue reading...

China’s most ambitious moonshot to date will use one of the most powerful launchers in the worldChina will launch its next lunar mission in November this year. Chang’e-5 will attempt to retrieve samples of moon rock and return them to Earth. If the mission succeeds it will be the first lunar sample return since the Soviet Union’s Luna-24 in 1976.The mission will be China’s most ambitious moonshot to date. Weighing in at 8.2 tonnes, the spacecraft will be launched by China’s Long March 5 rocket. This heavy-lift vehicle is one of the most powerful launchers in the world. Its maiden flight took place on 3 November 2016. Continue reading...

President Trump’s election win alongside wider geopolitical turbulence causes the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists to move the Doomsday Clock 30 seconds closer to midnight. Rachel Bronson, from the organisation, cited Trump’s rejection of climate change science and his ‘reckless’ language around nuclear weapons as factors in the decision

Forensic scientist who shattered glass ceilings to become the last controller of the service in England and WalesMargaret Pereira, who has died aged 88, was a distinguished forensic scientist with an international reputation. Early in her career, she developed a highly sensitive method of investigating minute bloodstains to determine the ABO blood type of an individual. It was adopted worldwide as the Nicholls and Pereira (or N&P) method, Lewis Nicholls being her laboratory director.The Metropolitan Police Forensic Science Laboratory, which Margaret joined in 1947, would become an important centre for research into the rapidly expanding sciences devoted to the investigation of crime. Offences against the person involve biologists in the study of all body fluids – saliva and semen as well as blood. In order to pursue these studies, scientists at the laboratory, in common with researchers everywhere, routinely used themselves as guinea pigs, and Margaret was heard to remark that “in this job you don’t have an orifice to call your own”. Continue reading...

Research is first to demonstrate precisely how the compound lysergic acid diethylamide attaches to serotonin receptors in the brain“You can hear the Universal Symphony with God singing solo and Holy Ghost on drums,” was how Hunter S. Thompson described the experience, while the Beatles famously sang about “tangerine trees and marmalade skies”.Related: LSD's impact on the brain revealed in groundbreaking images Continue reading...

Prospect of growing human organs for transplantation raised by creation of first ever embryos combining two large, distantly related speciesScientists have created a human-pig hybrid in a milestone study that raises the prospect of being able to grow human organs inside animals for use in transplants.It marks the first time that embryos combining two large, distantly-related species have been produced. The creation of this so-called chimera – named after the cross-species beast of Greek mythology – has been hailed as a significant first step towards generating human hearts, livers and kidneys from scratch. Continue reading...

British astronaut Tim Peake announces his plan to return to the International Space Station with the European Space Agency. Speaking at the Science Museum in London on Thursday, Peake says it is ‘only natural’ to want to return for a second time with his classmates from 2009 for a second mission

The universe is expanding faster than we thought, causing problems for cosmologists. It could even mean Einstein’s theory of relativity needs revisingIts like a game of cat and mouse. Every time astronomers think they are getting close to understanding the universe, mother nature throws them another curveball to contend with.Today’s googly comes from the H0LiCOW collaboration and takes the form of a faster than expected expansion rate for the universe. Based on new observations taken with the Hubble Space Telescope, it confirms that a serious discrepancy lies at the heart of our astronomical understanding. Continue reading...

Neuroscientist who provided fresh insights into our development as individualsWhat is the origin of the unique and complex behaviours that our species are capable of? Is it nature or nurture? How is human cognition – our memory, language, numerical abilities – organised? How do developmental disorders occur? These age-old questions have puzzled – and deeply divided – scientists for hundreds of years. Over the course of more than four decades, research by the developmental neuroscientist Annette Karmiloff-Smith, who has died aged 78, provided key insights that challenged the traditional answers, and led to a new understanding of how genetic and environmental factors interact to give rise to different outcomes in individuals.She argued that developmental disorders should not be understood as “normal minus something broken”, but as developmental trajectories that take very different paths from the typical. When one sees what appears to be the same behaviour in both typical and atypical populations, that behaviour may actually be supported by processes that are quite different in each population. Annette’s work in this area involved individuals with Down’s syndrome, Fragile X syndrome and Williams syndrome, among others. Continue reading...

In the wake of Donald Trump’s claim that torture ‘absolutely’ works, comedian Lee Hurst has tweeted a terrorism scenario. Here’s why it’s wrong“Your baby is tied to a timebomb,” suggests comedian Lee Hurst. “You have the terrorist. He tells you you have one hour. Do you torture him to find your baby or let it die?”My answer, along with I suspect most of the Anglo-American intelligence community, would be ‘no’. What Hurst describes is a classic reiteration of the age-old ‘ticking bomb’ scenario, and it’s superficially appealing until you start to dig into the assumptions lurking behind it. Continue reading...

Doctors saved a Canadian woman’s life by removing her lungs for six days while she waited for a double lung transplant. In what is believed to be the first procedure of its kind in the world, Melissa Benoit arrived at Toronto hospital with just hours to live when staff and her family decided to take the unprecedented procedure