Try our quiz and discover a surprising link between worldwide travel and your moralsMoral values are notoriously tricky to measure. But the findings of a 2016 study conducted at INSEAD Business School suggest a surprisingly simple way to do so. From the list below tick off all the countries you have visited:France, USA, Spain, Italy, China, UK, Russia, Mexico, Canada, Germany, Austria, Poland, Hungary, Greece, Morocco, South Africa, Tunisia, Algeria, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Uganda, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Iran, Jordan, Israel, Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Chile, Peru, Hong Kong, India, Thailand, South Korea, Japan, Indonesia, Turkey, Macau, Cyprus, Malaysia, Dominican Republic, Qatar, Oman, Bahrain, Senegal, Namibia, Australia. Continue reading...

SpaceX lands its first rocket since a previous attempt in September 2016 exploded before takeoff. The Falcon 9 rocket took approximately nine minutes to return to earth after launch, landing on a barge in the Pacific south of Vandenberg, California to the obvious delight of SpaceX employees Continue reading...

Many people are afraid of mice, but these ones really take the (cheese) biscuit: a study designed to examine the predatory instinct in mice successfully used optogenetics to switch their killer instincts off and on at will. In a slightly more romantic(? maybe not) vein, a male snow monkey was observed attempting to mate with female sika deer in Japan. This is only the second recorded example of sexual relations between two distantly related species, and could be down to “mate deprivation”, say researchers. In more heartwarming news, scientists have studied the impact of babytalk on dogs, concluding that that puppies respond well to it, but older dogs are unmoved. It might also shed light on the way humans communicate with actual babies. And if animals aren’t your thing, don’t despair: there’s some exciting knot news as well! Chemists have broken a world record, creating tightest knot ever made – a microscopic circular triple helix built from a strand of atoms, which could make a whole new world of materials possible. And if even that’s knot (aha!) enough to banish the January blues, perhaps the possibility of rare thundersnow might interest you. This video explains it all AND contains one of the most excitable reactions to weather I’ve ever witnessed. In more serious news, medical and legal specialists have warned that recent breakthroughs in fertility procedures could lead to “embryo farming” on a massive scale and drive parents to have only “ideal” future children – and that we must start to plan for the potential impact on society now. Continue reading...

Vaccines have been shown safe and effective. When he hints otherwise, the president-elect is gambling with young livesThis week, vaccine skeptic Robert F Kennedy Jr announced that he’d been nominated by President Elect Donald Trump to chair a commission on vaccine safety. A few hours later, the transition team issued a statement saying that that Trump was “exploring the possibility of forming a committee on autism”. Last summer, Trump met with Andrew Wakefield, who lost his medical license and was found to have produced fraudulent research linking vaccines to autism. Whether Trump is creating a commission on vaccine safety or autism, the message is clear. Trump is offering prominent support to the conspiracy theory that vaccines cause autism.The science on vaccines is very clear: they are safe and effective. Vaccines do not cause autism. It’s a waste of our tax dollars to rehash this issue yet again. Vaccines are one of the greatest triumphs of modern medicine. Let’s consider measles, just one of many vaccine-preventable diseases. Before 1963, when the measles vaccine became widely available, 3-4 million Americans got measles each year, of whom 48,000 were hospitalized, 4000 developed encephalitis resulting in long-term brain damage, and 4-500 died. The country’s population has almost doubled since that time. Continue reading...

Theories around the death of Grigori Rasputin still abound 100 years after the event. We examine the scientific credibility of some of the claimsThe end of December marked the 100th anniversary of the death of Rasputin, the “mad monk of Russia”, or “lover of the Russian queen” if you believe the Boney M song, though you probably shouldn’t. While the song is undoubtedly a floor-filler, unsurprisingly it is not exactly a reliable historical account of Rasputin’s life.Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin, a mystic and spiritual healer born in Pokrovskoe in Siberia, wielded huge influence over the Russian royal family, particularly Alexandra, the Tsarina, who looked to the spiritual healer to cure her haemophiliac son, Alexei. The life of Rasputin was certainly pretty strange but it is the stories surrounding his death that are the strangest of all. Continue reading...

Study of 10,000 reports into cannabis finds only enough evidence to support therapeutic use for chemotherapy patients, chronic pain and multiple sclerosisThere is not enough research to reach conclusive judgments on whether marijuana can effectively treat most of the symptoms and diseases it is advertised as helping, according to a wide-ranging US government study.The same is also true of many of the risks said to be associated with using cannabis, the study finds. Continue reading...

Launch will be the crucial test of whether engineers have understood the cause of the blast enough to correct itSpace insiders will be watching events in California carefully on Saturday. If all goes well, SpaceX will attempt its first launch since the explosion of 1 September 2016, which grounded its rocket fleet.The accident destroyed not only the Falcon 9 rocket but also its payload, the Amos 6 communications satellite. It inflicted considerable damage on one of Cape Canaveral’s launch pads too. Continue reading...

A microscopic circular triple helix built from a strand of atoms could make a whole new world of materials possibleIn a feat that breaks one of the most obscure world records in science, a team of chemists has created a microscopic circular triple helix, or put in more simple terms, the tightest knot ever made.Researchers in Manchester in the UK built the knot from a strand of atoms which curls around in a triple loop and crosses itself eight times. Made from 192 atoms linked in a chain, the knot is only two millionths of a millimetre wide – around 200,000 times thinner than a human hair.

My father, Kenneth Carpenter, who has died aged 93, was an eminent nutritional scientist.Born in London, Kenneth was the son of James, managing director of a chain of hardware shops, and Dorothy (nee George), a teacher. As a boy he horrified his parents by wasting his pocket money – as they saw it – on collecting antiques; he had a particular passion for English Delftware, of which he later presented some specimens to the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. Continue reading...

Technique called optogenetics used to pinpoint and take control of brain circuits involved in predatory behaviourIt has all the trappings of a classic horror plot: a group of normally timid individuals are transformed by scientists into instinctive killers, programmed to pursue and sink their jaws into almost anything that crosses their path.However, this hair-raising scenario was recently played out in a study of laboratory mice, designed to uncover the brain circuits behind the predatory instinct. Continue reading...

M Night Shyamalan’s new movie, Split, stars James McAvoy as a character with 23 different personalities. And, like most screen portrayals of the disorder, it is seen as dangerous and violent. But what’s the truth behind the stigma?Tom Hanks played six different characters in Cloud Atlas, Eddie Murphy played seven in The Nutty Professor and Alec Guinness notched up eight in Kind Hearts and Coronets. But James McAvoy sets a new benchmark with his new movie, Split. He plays Kevin, a man with at least 23 distinct personalities – not all of them nice. This presents extra challenges for the young women Kevin has abducted and locked in his basement. Every time he walks into the cell, they have to work out who they are dealing with. Is it “Dennis”, the frowny, buttoned-up neat-freak? Is it “Patricia”, the prim, English-accented governess? Could it be “Hedwig”, the nine-year-old Kanye West fan? We don’t get to see all of Kevin’s alter egos, but enough to get the picture and to make this lurid little horror stand out from the crowd.Split’s writer and director, M Night Shyamalan, professes to having had a lifelong fascination with dissociative identity disorder (DID), formerly known as split personality, or multiple personality disorder, and frequently mislabelled as schizophrenia (which is an entirely different condition). He is clearly not the only one. DID is relatively rare in real life, but we have all heard of it, and we all think we know what it entails because cinema and television seem to be obsessed with it. Continue reading...

Thundersnow is a rare weather phenomenon which looks set to make an appearance in the UK over the next couple of days. It occurs when the air closest to the ground is warm enough to rise and form a thunderstorm, but still cool enough that it’s able to freeze into snow. The results are brighter, but quieter, than we’ve come to expect from our usual doses of thunder and lightning Continue reading...

Stephen Hawking to open Belief and Beyond Belief, a year-long festival of events and performances at London arts complexAn ambitious year-long programme of lectures, debates, music and performances examining the meaning of life and death will be launched at the Southbank Centre in London on Monday with a talk by the renowned physicist Stephen Hawking.The Belief and Beyond Belief festival is intended to explore what it means to be human in the 21st century with a wide range of participants from faith communities as well as those of no faith.

Recordings of New Zealand yellowhammer accents enable scientists to hear how their British relatives might have sounded 150 years agoA new study reveals that a type of native birdsong, now lost in Britain, can still be heard in New Zealand where the birds were introduced in the 19th century.By comparing recordings of yellowhammer accents in both countries scientists were able to hear how the birds’ song might have sounded in the UK 150 years ago. Continue reading...

People often maintain beliefs that can’t be explained away by ignorance. In the face of this, how do we effectively communicate science?Richard Feynman said that the easiest person to fool is yourself. Fooling yourself is a particular danger for the well-educated, who see themselves as smart; and who in all likelihood tend to hang around with like-minded people of similar background and experience. Because you’re smart, your ideas are necessarily good.The danger here is that a self-reinforcing herd mentality arises. Ideas become customs, and customs become Truth. Any deviation from the Truth is to be quashed, and outsiders are mocked and derided. Continue reading...

Technique could also lead parents to create ‘ideal’ future children only –possible impact on society must be planned for now, say specialistsA new lab procedure that could allow fertility clinics to make sperm and eggs from people’s skin may lead to “embryo farming” on a massive scale and drive parents to have only “ideal” future children, researchers warn.Legal and medical specialists in the US say that while the procedure – known as in vitro gametogenesis (IVG) – has only been demonstrated in mice so far, the field is progressing so fast that the dramatic impact it could have on society must be planned for now. Continue reading...

Carbon-rich peatlands could store three years’ worth of world’s total fossil fuel emissions, say scientistsScientists have discovered the world’s largest tropical peatland in the remote Congo swamps, estimated to store the equivalent of three year’s worth of the world’s total fossil fuel emissions.Researchers mapped the Cuvette Centrale peatlands in the central Congo basin and found they cover 145,500 sq km – an area larger than England. The swamps could lock in 30bn tonnes of carbon that was previously not known to exist, making the region one of the most carbon-rich ecosystems on Earth. Continue reading...

Based on simulations, dive including one-and-a-half somersaults and five twists is physically possible – researchers just need a diver to try itOlympic divers are judged on power, agility and the ability to crisply execute improbable combinations of somersaults and twists in the couple of seconds it takes to travel from the board to the pool below.Now, a pair of Australian mathematicians have devised a dive of unheard of complexity, which includes one-and-a-half somersaults and a record five twists. Continue reading...

Reluctance of healthcare providers such as NHS to pay for expensive drugs is behind lack of research, says Oxford professorNo new drugs for depression are likely in the next decade, even though those such as Prozac work for little more than half of those treated and there have been concerns over their side-effects, say scientists.Leading psychiatrists, some of whom have been involved in drug development, say criticism of the antidepressants of the Prozac class, called the SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors), is partly responsible for the pharmaceutical industry’s reluctance to invest in new drugs – even though demand is steadily rising. Continue reading...

Students in São Paulo are examining remains of man known for medical experiments on Jews at Auschwitz to uncover mysteries of his life on the runFor more than 30 years, the bones of Josef Mengele, the German doctor who conducted horrific experiments on thousands of Jews at Auschwitz, lay unclaimed inside a blue plastic bag in São Paulo’s Legal Medical Institute.Dr Daniel Romero Muñoz, who led the team that identified Mengele’s remains in 1985, saw an opportunity to put them to use. Several months ago, the head of the department of legal medicine at the University of São Paulo’s Medical School obtained permission to use them in his forensic medical courses. Today, his students are now learning their trade studying Mengele’s bones and connecting them to the life story of the man called the “angel of death”. Continue reading...

Newly recognised species given the name ‘Skywalker hoolock gibbon’ by the team that proved it was distinct from other Chinese gibbonsScientists have discovered a new species of gibbon living in south-west China’s rainforests.Although scientists had been studying the primate for some time, new research has revealed it is in fact a different species. Continue reading...

Research in the Scottish Borders has produced some amazing finds - and suggests that our view of the fossil record needs a rethinkI held in my hands one of the first animals to drag itself out of the water and onto land. Christened “Tiny”, she (I like to think it was female, but we can’t actually tell) is entombed in a chunk of boring, black rock. I ran my hands over the surface, feeling the bumps betraying a stone pregnant with fossils. Yet, from the outside there’s no sign of the treasure within: no one has ever actually seen it.“We didn’t really know it was in the small piece of rock that we collected until it was CT scanned,” Dr Nick Fraser, Keeper of Natural Sciences at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh told me. “We were quite surprised to find Tiny hiding in the sediment - we still only know it from the 3D scan and the 3D print and so haven’t had the pleasure of seeing the actual fossil!” Continue reading...

Do all human languages share a universal grammar? And can science shed light on a schism that’s divided the world of linguistics for over half a century?Subscribe & Review on iTunes, Soundcloud, Audioboom, Mixcloud & AcastIn the 1960s, world-renowned MIT linguist Professor Noam Chomsky declared his theory of Universal Grammar (UG). Often defined as “a system of categories, mechanisms and constraints, shared by all human languages and considered to be innate”, Chomsky’s idea that children are somehow born with access to rules of language is, to this day, vehemently refuted. But what’s the evidence for and against UG? And what are some of the alternatives? Continue reading...

Baby-talk and pet-talk might have a common purpose in attempting to engage with a non-speaking listener, say researchersPuppies prick up their ears to human cooing but adult dogs are unmoved by it, according to a new study.Scientists have found that humans use a sing-song cadence, similar to that used towards babies, when talking to dogs – regardless of the age of the animal. But the tone only draws the attention of puppies: older dogs showed no preference over normal human speech. Continue reading...

Monkey’s unusual behaviour is only the second recorded observation of sexual interaction between distantly related wild animalsA male snow monkey has been observed attempting to have sex with female sika deer on Japan’s Yakushima Island, in an unusual example of interspecies mating behaviour.Related: Sandpipers go the extra 8,000 miles to have as much sex as possible Continue reading...

Is there any scientific backing for the model’s claim that her pink wall is calming and suppresses appetite?The least likely of this January’s diets came, obliquely, from Kendall Jenner’s official app and was a colour rather than a book. In a post titled “The story behind my pink wall!” she explained the thinking behind the pink living room wall of her expensive Los Angeles home: “Baker-Miller Pink is the only color [sic] scientifically proven to calm you AND suppress your appetite. I was like, “I NEED this color [sic] in my house!”. I then found someone to paint the room and now I’m loving it!”. Continue reading...

Scientists from the US Geological Survey (USGS) attached a camera to a female polar’s neck to study behaviour, hunting and feeding rates. The camera was intended to capture polar bears’ daily activities and help researchers better understand how they respond to declining levels in sea ice. The footage was uploaded to the USGS Facebook page on Monday but was filmed in April 2016

Dannii Minogue is brave to admit to using the beauty treatment at difficult times. Cosmetic procedures and the reasons we use them are still hard to talk aboutDannii Minogue has admitted to using Botox at difficult times in her life in a subconscious attempt to mask her feelings. Not only might she literally have been disabling her capacity to frown, she may also have been acting things out on her body in order to fend off her own emotions.Related: Is America developing a ‘crack-like addiction’ to Botox beauty? Continue reading...

Devil’s Dyke, West Sussex I carefully descend the muddy paths down to the bottom, where it is strangely quietThe small car parks and lay-bys are full, and cars are already beginning to line the sides of the road. The morning sunshine has drawn the crowds to this beauty spot on the top of the South Downs, with its panoramic views of Brighton and the Channel to the south, and the Sussex Weald to the north. A crow calls from the black skeleton of a tree, making itself heard above the noise of traffic and people.

Small birds were observed travelling to as many as 24 different breeding sites in Alaska within six weeks, further than flying from Paris to MoscowA bird smaller than a city pigeon has been recorded flying 13,000km (8,000 miles) in just one month to have sex with as many females as possible

New computer simulations counter widely-held belief that moon was formed from a single massive collisionThe moon may have formed after an ancient rocky bombardment that pummelled the Earth and sent trillions of tonnes of debris into orbit, scientists say.Computer simulations show that a flurry of impacts over 100m years could have kicked up enough material to form orbiting moonlets, which gradually merged to make the moon.

Risk of early death is as low for those who meet recommended activity targets in one or two sessions a week as it is for daily exercisers, study showsPeople who cram all their exercise into one or two sessions at the weekend benefit nearly as much as those who work out more frequently, researchers say.

Celebrity items tend to be relatively common artefacts yet attract phenomenal sums of money. Why?In November last year, the dress that Marilyn Monroe wore to sing Happy Birthday to President John F Kennedy sold for $4.81 million. In 2004, several pieces of Britney Spears’ used chewing gum sold for up to £100 a piece. There is even a market for the belongings of despised individuals: A bracelet Charles Manson made in prison is currently selling for $4,500.Some of these, like Marilyn Monroe’s dress, reflect a moment in history. But the attraction of others, such as Britney Spears’ chewing gum, are harder to explain. Celebrity items tend to be relatively common artefacts such as clothing or furniture. Their previous ownership rarely adds any functional value and they are often indistinguishable from other, seemingly identical items in the marketplace. Continue reading...

A new study suggests that liberals have the same confirmation biases as right-wing people. That’s why we all need to do a better job at listening to othersIt’s been a year of polarizing decisions. The US election, Brexit: a world of binary choices where everyone who disagrees is a hater, a loser, a deplorable, a fascist or a deplorable loser fascist hater. Worldwide, people – whether that’s “coastal metropolitan elite citizens” or “honest hardworking rural folk” – have retreated into their bubble, an echo chamber where they are only confronted with news which conforms with their existing worldview.The internet, initially envisioned as a wonderful tool which would bring us all closer together, has unfortunately been instrumental in this. From Senator Daniel Moynihan saying everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts, we’ve come to a world where wildly divergent facts are available, as succinctly shown by the Wall Street Journal’s “Blue Feed, Red Feed,” graphic.

Need for fillings could be reduced in future as study reveals natural ability of teeth to repair themselves can be enhanced using Alzheimer’s drugDentists have devised a treatment to regenerate rotten teeth that could substantially reduce the need for fillings in the future.The therapy works by enhancing the natural ability of teeth to repair themselves through the activation of stem cells in the soft pulp at the centre. Continue reading...

Miracles may not exist, but this year could see some key scientific breakthroughs. From dementia and zika to pain relief and customised drugs, here’s a look at what we may hear about this yearIn 2017, we can study the unimaginably small and share unimaginably vast amounts of data. But, as a GP involved in the day-to-day delivery of primary health care, I often wonder why, if so much is known, we can do so little? Why is there such a lag between the headline scientific discoveries and what a local GP can offer? Bridging that gap as speedily and effectively as possible is the aim of an emerging field of biomedical science called translational medicine. Scientists, healthcare professionals, pharma and funders are collaborating to translate science into solutions, or “bench to bedside”. The mantra for governments and agencies that fund health services across the world is “value-based care” – basically, payment by results. To be fair, it’s not all about cutting costs: the idea is to stop funding poor-value healthcare, and move towards an era of “precision medicine” in which your genomics, epigenomics (chemicals that tell the genome what to do), environmental exposure (eg pollution) and other factors guide the care you are offered. Continue reading...

Crop-breeding innovations are merely a short-term solution for falling yields. Only agricultural diversity can ensure food security and resilienceAs a new year dawns, it is hard not to be dazzled by the current pace of technological change in food and agriculture. Only last month, news emerged of a crop spray with the potential to increase the starch content in wheat grains, allowing for yield gains of up to 20%. This development comes hot on the heels of major breakthroughs in gene-editing technologies – using a powerful tool known as Crispr – over the course of 2016.

The AWAKE experiment at CERN made a breakthrough at the end of last year. A long-term technology-development project, its aim is to drag electrons through a plasma, behind a beam of protons, and provide a route to higher energies than the Large Hadron ColliderHigh-energy particle beams have multiple uses. In general, a controlled beam of high-energy particles can be used to smash things up – for example tumours or protons – or study them at high resolution, revealing the structure of molecules and materials, or indeed new fundamental physics such as the Higgs boson.The challenges involved in producing a useful beam are various, and depend on the type of particle and what you want to use the beam for. One common limitation is the size and cost of the machine, and another is the steepness of the accelerating voltage gradient. Continue reading...

From film to philosophy, from music to history and economics, masters of their crafts pick the five books they could not live withoutAuthor Alain de Botton is known for applying philosophical concepts to everyday life; his books include How Proust Can Change Your Life (1997), Status Anxiety (2004) and The Architecture of Happiness (2006). In 2008 he co-founded The School of Life, an innovative school with a focus on emotional intelligence. Continue reading...

Nearly 40 years since the first ‘test-tube baby’, how close are we to editing out all of our genetic imperfections – and should we even try to do so?Comfortably seated in the fertility clinic with Vivaldi playing softly in the background, you and your partner are brought coffee and a folder. Inside the folder is an embryo menu. Each embryo has a description, something like this:Embryo 78 – male

Nasa research shows that ice-free summers are now imminent, posing a peril to us allSomething is happening to the floating sea ice of the Arctic, other than the well-documented retreat in its surface coverage each summer. Scientists are finding that Arctic sea ice is getting younger and thinner, which is set to continue in March, when US research reveals the winter maximum, and September, when it reveals the summer minimum, making it more vulnerable to a catastrophic and unprecedented break-up.Nasa researchers have found that the thicker multi-year ice, which has survived several summer melt seasons, is being rapidly replaced by thinner, more ephemeral one-year ice formed over a single winter. This change makes the polar region increasingly vulnerable to storms that could smash their way through the final remnants of thinner, one-year sea ice, making a completely ice-free summer in the Arctic increasingly likely. Continue reading...

The origin of the universe, the distribution of galaxies, and the nature of black holes – it’s all in a day’s work for one of the most prominent scientists of all timeSubscribe & Review on iTunes, Soundcloud, Audioboom, Mixcloud & AcastOn 8 January 1942, Frank and Isobel Hawking celebrated the birth of their son, Stephen. 75 years later and Professor Stephen Hawking is one of the most prominent scientists of all time. In a career spanning half a century, the cosmologist has notched up more than 150 scientific papers, a dozen or so books, and a string of TV and film appearances. It’s an achievement made all the more remarkable given his diagnosis with motor neurone disease at the age of 21 . Continue reading...

Asking someone what they are reading is like saying, ‘Who are you and who are you becoming?’I believe that everything you need to know you can find in a book. People have always received life-guiding wisdom from certain types of non-fiction, often from “self-help” books. But I have found that all sorts of books can carry this kind of wisdom. A random sentence in a thriller will give me unexpected insight. If I hadn’t read Killing Floor, the masterful 1997 novel that introduced the world to Jack Reacher, a former military cop turned vagrant, I never would have learned this valuable piece of wisdom: “Waiting is a skill like anything else.”I also believe that there is no book so bad that you can’t find something of interest in it. That, actually, is a paraphrase from the Roman lawyer Pliny the Younger, a sentiment later adopted by Miguel de Cervantes in Don Quixote. Admittedly, neither Pliny nor Cervantes were subject to some of the weakest “sex and shopping” books from the 1980s, but I still think it mostly holds true. You can learn something from the very worst books – even if it is just how crass and base, or boring and petty, or cruel and intolerant the human race can be. Continue reading...

Astronomers find evidence of black holes concealed behind clouds of gas and dust in two of Earth’s galactic neighboursMonster black holes may be lurking behind smokescreens in our cosmic backyard, say scientists. But they are still millions of light years away and much too distant to pose any threat to Earth.Astronomers have discovered evidence of supermassive black holes at the centre of two of our galactic neighbours. One, the galaxy NGC 1448, is “just” 38m light years from our own body of stars, the Milky Way. The other, IC 3639, is 170m light years away. Both are classified as “active” galaxies that emit intense levels of radiation. Continue reading...

A resilience research centre is investigating why some people recover from adversity, while others crumbleStanding in a cold cell in a former East German secret police prison, Gilbert Furian explains how he approached his imprisonment here in 1985. “I tried to numb myself,” he says. “ thought that if I reacted the way my heart wanted to, I would go crazy. So I put myself in a kind of standby mode.”Furian was working for a company that produced heating facilities when he was arrested at the age of 40. He recalls the fear he felt as four Stasi agents dressed in plain clothing turned up at his office and took him away. Though they didn’t specify the charge at the time, Furian knew it must be about the interviews he had conducted with punks in East Berlin a few months earlier. Continue reading...

Open letter: There is an important debate to be had about screen time, but we need quality research and evidence to support itMoral panic about the impact of new technologies on our behaviour and development is not new. Socrates railed against the dangers of writing for fear that it would nurture “forgetfulness in the learners’ souls, because they will not use their memories.” One source of contemporary anxiety is “screen time”. Recently, a letter signed by a group of writers, psychologists and charity heads raised concerns that childhood health and wellbeing in the UK is declining, in part due to “increasingly screen-based lifestyles.” The signatories argued that the policy response to these concerns, first raised over a decade ago, has been half-hearted and ineffective.As a group of scientists from different countries and academic fields with research expertise and experience in screen time, child development and evidence-based policy, we are deeply concerned by the underlying message of this letter. In our opinion, we need quality research and evidence to support these claims and inform any policy discussion. While we agree that the wellbeing of children is a crucial issue and that the impact of screen-based lifestyles demands serious investigation, the message that many parents will hear is that screens are inherently harmful. This is simply not supported by solid research and evidence. Furthermore, the concept of “screen time” itself is simplistic and arguably meaningless, and the focus on the amount of screen use is unhelpful. There is little evidence looking at the impact of the context of screen use, and the content that children encounter when using digital technologies – factors that may have a much greater impact than sheer quantity alone. Continue reading...

A nice kick-off to the New Year as a mysterious type of radio wave from deep space has been traced to a precise source for the first time. So-called fast radio bursts picked up in 2016 by a telescope in New Mexico likely emanated from a dwarf galaxy some 3bn light years from Earth. The new discovery will not settle the issue of exactly what’s causing the pulses, but it definitively eliminates several theories. Oh the excitement – it’s like Contact, but real! Space excitements aside, concerns are growing about the impact of air pollution on health. A study in the Lancet this week, which tracked 6.6 million people, estimates one in 10 cases of Alzheimer’s among those living by busy roads could be linked to air and noise pollution. It’s by no means conclusive, but does link to other work on the impact of pollution on the brain and its processes. Don’t despair though, there’s some happier brain news with the surprise discovery that the tissues responsible for facial recognition keep growing into adulthood - unlike other areas which are fully formed in early life. It’s hoped that the finding will help scientists understand some aspects of the ageing process, but also what happens in disorders that make it hard for people to spot familiar faces.

Predicted to be one of the largest break-offs ever recorded, separation of iceberg could trigger breakup of most northern major ice shelf, Larsen CA giant iceberg, with an area equivalent to Trinidad and Tobago, is poised to break off from the Antarctic shelf.Related: British Antarctic research station to be moved due to deep crack in the ice Continue reading...