Elon Musk says the likelihood that we are not actually all living in a simulated world is ‘one in billions’. In this episode of Chips with Everything, philosopher and cognitive scientist Dr David Chalmers weighs in to explore those oddsWhat if our ability to develop technology becomes – or, in theory, already became – so advanced that we are living in a computer simulation that more technologically-capable humans have constructed for us? For tech mogul Elon Musk and a flurry of high-profile scientists and philosophers, that theory is very much plausible. Continue reading...

My friend and colleague Jon McQuilken was a geochemist and highly accomplished petroleum systems geoscientist with British Gas and then BG Group, an exploration organisation that was once part of the public utility. He presented at many international conferences, published widely on the petroleum systems of North Africa, and became a chartered geologist in 2014. He had retired from BG Group only four days before his sudden death, from a heart attack, aged 59.Born at RAF Halton, Aylesbury, son of Norma (nee Hargreaves) and Thomas McQuilken, Jon had a varied and interesting life as a youngster as the family followed his father’s RAF assignments as a warrant officer. This included postings in locations ranging from Uxbridge, west London, to Changi, Singapore, before they finally settled in Beverley, east Yorkshire, where Jon completed his schooling at Longcroft comprehensive. Continue reading...

Actor whose career took second place to her vocation to help disturbed childrenThe actor Coral Atkins, who has died aged 80, found fame on television in the 1970s in A Family at War, which ran for 52 episodes and attracted audiences of more than 20 million. Her character, Sheila Ashton, was the downtrodden and neglected wife of a womanising RAF sergeant, David (played by Colin Campbell), and a heroine of the semi-autobiographical series created by John Finch.The ITV drama (1970-72) followed a lower-middle-class Liverpool family from 1938 to 1945, their emotional conflicts running parallel to the greater events taking place across Europe and then the world. Atkins found herself showered with flowers, receiving stacks of fan mail and forever being stopped in the streets by people shouting out to “our Sheila”. Continue reading...

Larger bubbles, about 3.4mm across, enhance the release of aerosols into the air above the glass, say expertsBigger bubbles could make your champagne taste better this Christmas, research has found.It was long thought that a steady stream of tiny bubbles in a glass of champagne was a sign of quality. But researchers in France’s Champagne-Ardenne region have found that larger bubbles may actually improve the way a sparkling wine tastes. Continue reading...

Before you settle down to festive fun and family fights, let’s get the last of this year’s science in your eyes! First up is a rather intriguing discovery that pregnancy appears to trigger long-term changes in brain structure. Scientists suggest that the transformations in the volume of grey matter in certain regions could boost a mother’s ability to care for her newborn baby. Researchers have also identified three genes which could explain why some people are obese and healthy while others develop diabetes and heart disease as a result of their weight. It’s not a reason to overdo the mince pies, but it opens up the possibility of personalised BMIs and targeted treatments in the future. And if all that just sounds too batty well, a group of scientists from Tel Aviv University have gone a bit further into that territory. Their recent study used machine learning algorithms to decode the squeaks that bats make. The scientists found that they could work out who was arguing with whom, what the squabble was about and could even predict the outcome of a disagreement – all from the bats’ calls. And finally, some rather heartwarming news. After scouring the genomes of 27 patients with debilitating movement disorders which had left doctors baffled, doctors have discovered a new genetic disorder. Treatment is now possible for these children - and some have now improved so much they can walk again unaided. Continue reading...

Do you ever get the feeling you and your relatives are actors trapped in the same old parts? Don’t worry – there are ways to break out of your rolesWhen your family get together at Christmas, do you find yourself feeling as though you are re-experiencing childhood dramas? Do you feel you’re taking on a role, reverting to Christmas past? You may even feel as though you are reading from an invisible script and repeating interactions with family members that leave you feeling frustrated and angry.We may consider ourselves to be autonomous adults who have carved out our own independent lives. But when the holidays loom, many find themselves dreading predictably damaging and repetitious scenarios with family. These unnerving interactions often include put-downs, competitiveness, control freakery and passive aggression. Continue reading...

New research shows that the rhythm of breathing directly impacts neural activity in a network of brain areas involved in smell, memory and emotionsThe rhythm of breathing co-ordinates electrical activity across a network of brain regions associated with smell, memory, and emotions, and can enhance their functioning, according to a new study by researchers at Northwestern University. The findings, published in the Journal of Neuroscience, suggest that breathing does not merely supply oxygen to the brain and body, but may also organise the activity of populations of cells within multiple brain regions to help orchestrate complex behaviours.Related: Your nose knows death is imminent | Mo Costandi Continue reading...

Our intrepid reporter Girl On The Net brings you this and other intriuging news from the International Congress on Love and Sex with RobotsAfter spending a fascinating two days at the International Congress on Love and Sex with Robots, where academics discussed everything from robot design to the ethics of programming lovers, I was surprised to learn from Gizmodo that “sex robots may literally f**k us to death.”How, I wondered, could these otherwise thoughtful researchers allow humanity to walk into such a dystopian nightmare?

Limusaurus fossils found in China suggest they started life eating insects before turning to plantsA small dinosaur that scampered across north-western China 160m years ago boasted a trait not seen in any other dinosaur or other prehistoric creature: it was born with teeth but became toothless by adulthood.Scientists said fossils of 19 individuals of a dinosaur called Limusaurus, ranging in age from under a year to 10 years, showed that juveniles had small, sharp teeth but adults developed a toothless beak. Continue reading...

Japanese investment in OneWeb offers hope of global internet equalityA US bid to use more than 600 satellites to provide cheap internet access across the world looks set to move forward thanks to a massive cash injection.Japanese telecommunications giant SoftBank has announced that it is putting up a $1bn stake in OneWeb, an American company that includes Richard Branson on its board of directors. OneWeb’s plan is to launch a massive constellation of simple satellites to encircle the world and provide access to the internet from anywhere in a cost effective way. Continue reading...

My husband, John Stewart, who has died aged 73 from cancer, was reader emeritus in gravitational physics at Cambridge University, and a fellow of King’s College for more than 40 years.John was born and brought up in Pinner, at that time in Middlesex. His father, James Stewart, was a Glaswegian who had been apprenticed at John Brown’s shipyard but left Scotland in the 1930s and thereafter worked mainly for United Dairies as an engineer. His mother, Hilda (nee Hale), was a London-trained nurse from Merthyr Vale in south Wales. John was the eldest of their three sons. Continue reading...

A global summit on biodiversity has sparked debate over whether advances in the life sciences are encouraging biopiracyOutside the conference hall of the Moon Palace, a luxury Cancun resort, warm waves lapped white sands, bathed in a pink Mexican sunset. Inside, close to two hundred delegates to the United Nations’ 2016 biodiversity conference huddled around a doorway, desperate to get into a windowless room for the final evening’s negotiating session. In the end, most of the crowd made it into room, to witness twenty or so country delegates hammer out compromise text late into the night. This wasn’t what they had expected from a UN summit. But the issue under discussion – synthetic biology – is an unusual topic.Synthetic biology is often described as the application of engineering principles to biology. Some see it a fundamentally new approach to biology; others as the next stage of biotechnology; and others as simply an exercise in rebranding. As social scientists researching this field, we’ve seen the confusion of synthetic biologists as to why a treaty about biodiversity is attempting to govern their research. Continue reading...

Dating when our ancestors split from Neanderthals and other relatives has long been a puzzle, but DNA advances are making our evolutionary journey clearerAnthropologists and geneticists had a problem. And the farther back in time they looked, the bigger the problem became.For the past several years, there have been two main genetic methods to date evolutionary divergences - when our ancestors split from Neanderthals, chimpanzees, and other relatives. The problem was, the results of these methods differed by nearly two-fold. Continue reading...

Poison isn’t confined to Agatha Christie TV specials: many Christmas favourites harbour deadly secretsParacelsus, a sixteenth century German Swiss philosopher who brought a new approach to medical and toxicological theory famously wrote, “The dose makes the poison”; in essence, too much is too much. This may seem like stating the obvious, but it’s one of those things that needed saying to make people think about it properly. Just how much of something is too much? And, in the season of overindulgence, is there anything we should be concerned about?Obviously, overeating isn’t healthy in the first place, but who can resist that extra mince pie or the last roast potato? As the pile of empty sweet wrappers grew beside me, and the doors on my chocolate advent calendar told me I had apparently achieved time travel and I was living at least two weeks in the future, I started to worry. So, I sat down to have a think about Paracelsus and some of the more toxic treats available to us at Christmas. Continue reading...

Life-changing technology could become commonplace as first 10 people receive Argus II retina implant to restore sightThe NHS is to pay for 10 people to be implanted with a “bionic eye”, a pioneering technology that can restore some sight to those who have been blind for years.Only a handful of people have undergone surgery in trials so far to equip them to use Argus II, which employs a camera mounted in a pair of glasses and a tiny computer to relay signals directly to the nerves controlling sight. The decision to fund the first 10 NHS patients to be given the bionic eye could pave the way for the life-changing technology to enter the mainstream. Continue reading...

A small number of farmers, shocked by the devastating effects of modern weedkillers and fertilisers, are turning their farms into havens for wild flowers – and for the birds who depend on the flowersModern farming has been devastating for most wild plants, from herbicides, fertilisers, drainage, and much more – but it doesn’t have to be that way. Mike and Nick Kettlewell farm some 400 acres in the Oxfordshire Cotswolds and have left wildflower margins beside fields and planted small copses.They have converted arable land to grassland to encourage wild flowers to return, such as bee orchids and cowslips. Hedges are cut every three years and grow tall, rich in flowers and fruit, and new hedges planted with traditional species such as wild pear and crab apple. Continue reading...

Penelope Stanford does her female ancestors a disservice in claiming that australopithecine “females [had] little agency in the selection of mates” (Polygynous apes may explain men of today, Letters, 20 December). A species in which female choice did not underpin mate selection, as it does in practically all animal species, would deteriorate rapidly under the enfeebling influence of mediocre male genes. She is right that polygynous species mean many males with no partners – our own genetic record shows far fewer fathers than mothers in any individual’s ancestry – and that males will fight each other for reproductive privileges.But any Palaeolithic proto-human female would never want her own offspring to end her genetic line – and feeble sons have little chance of gaining reproductive privileges against tougher males. Her solution is to choose males who prove themselves capable of dominating other males, so that her sons will do the same in the next generation. Polygamy is an excellent solution for females to the perennial problem of too few high-quality males. It may not be a nice ancestry, I agree, but would she say this explains a lot about the behaviour of some females nowadays? I would be surprised.

Being overweight is a risk factor for diabetes and other diseases; genes could explain why 15-20% of obese people seem to suffer no health consequencesScientists have offered a genetic explanation for why some people are obese and healthy while others develop diabetes and heart disease as a result of their weight.The study identified three genes, which appear to influence whether fat is compartmentalised and stored around the outside of the body or whether it spills into the circulatory system. Higher levels of fat in the blood supply increase the risk of type 2 diabetes and can lead to fatty deposits around the heart and liver. Continue reading...

Temperatures in parts of the Arctic are expected to rise above 0C for the second winter in a rowScientists are forecasting ice-melting temperatures in the middle of winter for some parts of the Arctic for the second year in a row. And analysis shows such recent record temperatures there would have been virtually impossible without human greenhouse emissions. Continue reading...

Far from being stuck in a stuffy past, the unifying message of modern archaeology is vital for steering us towards a positive futureIt’s nearly end-of-year “listicle” season, and 2016 has offered plenty of fascinating archaeological discoveries - my favourite is the Neanderthal-made stalagmite construction, which truly deserves the epithet “mysterious”. But let’s look beyond the past 12 months for a tale of hope amidst fear: the most important human origins discovery of the past three decades, and why it matters now more than ever.Test-tubes, not trowels, have provided the greatest advances in prehistoric research in the past 30 years. The “Oldest X”, or “Earliest Y” isn’t our most important discovery, instead it’s the profound connectedness of humanity we’ve discovered through genetics. Everyone alive today is deeply and closely related: we are more similar to each other than two groups of chimpanzees separated only by a river. Even more important, most of our differences in genetic terms are found within populations, not between them. Continue reading...

Rodrigues fruit bats and Amur tigers are among the species supported by WCS, which operates five wildlife parks in New York City and works to save wildlife and wild places in nearly 60 countries and all the world’s oceans Continue reading...

Christmas is full of festive fun for palaeontologists. After all, the Christmas tree in your living room would be at home with the dinosaursPalaeontologists have a slightly different take on the world, even at Christmas: Christmas dinner is the ceremonial dissection of an avian dinosaur, and there’s no finer joke than a half a billion year old arthropod named after Santa Claus. And so it is with Christmas trees: most people see them as the slightly pagan focal point of their festive decorations. I see this as the one time of year when people actually pay any attention to these mighty survivors from Mesozoic times.In the UK, the Norway Spruce Picea abies is the traditional species to be festooned with decorations of questionable taste. It exhibits all of the qualities associated with most modern conifers: it is an evergreen woody tree, bearing seeds in cones. It shows monopodial growth (it has one trunk), and strong apical dominance (it grows up more strongly than its branches grow out). It also produces resin, which protects the tree from fungal attack and from pests. It is long-lived (a group of clones in Sweden was carbon-dated at 9550 years old) and is relatively slow-growing: this year’s Trafalgar Square Christmas tree is 27 metres tall and was 95 years old when it was felled. Continue reading...

Dr David Goodall will not have to work from home after Edith Cowan University backs downA 102-year-old Perth man who is also Australia’s oldest scientist will get to keep an office on campus after Edith Cowan University reversed a decision that would have forced him to work from home.Dr David Goodall was told in August that he had been deemed a health risk due to him taking about 90 minutes and four to five public transport changes to travel to the university’s northern suburban Joondalup campus. Continue reading...

Harrowbarrow, Tamar Valley Beehives are overlooked by the outline of the arsenic flue chimney, now a harmless relicMahonia flowers, fir and variegated holly garland the entrance to All Saints church – this year’s venue for Calstock parish’s Christmas tree festival. Inside the Victorian building with its tiled floor and vaulted ceiling, trees have been decorated by local schools, voluntary and community groups.Built during the mining boom the church was also used as a school on weekdays, with a roll of 164 pupils in 1876. In 1879 a new school, one that would appeal to the Nonconformists too, was built by Mr Hunn of Metherell for £904 on half an acre of land, bought by the Education Board for £40 from the lord of the manor (Mr Williams of Caerhayes Castle). Continue reading...

Grapes can completely plug a child’s airway, with research suggesting they are third most common cause of death in food-related incidentsGrapes are the third most common cause of death among children who die in food-related choking incidents, and doctors say a lack of awareness among parents, carers and health professionals could be leaving young children at risk.

Thoracic surgeon whose Heimlich manoeuvre has saved tens of thousands of people from choking to deathIn May 2016, the thoracic surgeon Henry Heimlich, who has died aged 96, attracted international attention when he saved the life of a woman sitting next to him at dinner in his retirement home. Patty Ris was choking on a piece of hamburger lodged in her windpipe; using a bear hug to apply abdominal thrusts, in what is known as the Heimlich manoeuvre, he dislodged the obstruction. “God put me in the seat next to him,” the 87-year-old Ris said and headlines claimed it was the first time the retired surgeon had actually used the procedure he invented in 1974. Although it emerged that Heimlich had previously used his technique successfully in 2003, the story remained a reminder of the many lives that were owed to his creativity.In 1972 Heimlich was struck by an article about America’s epidemic of death by choking. It was often called “beefsteak disease”, since among adults it usually involved swallowing large bites of meat that had not been thoroughly chewed, but the risk to children ingesting foreign objects was just as severe. Heimlich recognised that the standard technique of pounding the back often served to shift the object more firmly down the windpipe. Continue reading...

As attention turns to viruses including Zika and Ebola, the World Health Organisation warns diseases like diabetes will pose a bigger threat by 2030More people in Africa will die from diseases such as cancer, heart problems or diabetes than infectious diseases by 2030, according to the World Health Organisation, which found the continent recorded the highest prevalence rates of high blood pressure in the world.In a report published on Tuesday, the WHO warns that the number of deaths globally from non-communicable diseases (NCDs) is set to increase by at least 15% from the organisation’s 2010 estimates, and that 44 million people will die of NCDs over the decade up to 2020, 4 million of those in the African region. Continue reading...

A drug that can kill cancerous cells without the side-effects of radical surgery is causing massive excitement for good reasonProstate has long been the Cinderella of cancers, lagging behind others – in particular breast cancer – when it comes to diagnosis, treatment and the funding that goes into research.

Anthropologist fascinated by shamanism, myths and religious rites who strove to protect indigenous peoplesIn the early 1950s the anthropologist Francis Huxley, who has died aged 93, undertook pioneering fieldwork among the Urubu people of the Amazon basin. The resulting book, Affable Savages (1956), adopted a new, “reflexive” approach to the study of culture in which the author’s encounters with the “other” are reflected as much in personal reactions as in objective descriptions.Francis was a pioneer of this form of anthropological writing – a style that much suited his lifelong interest in shamanism and the altered states of consciousness often experienced by religious healers. While this novelesque way of writing was largely shunned by his contemporaries, eventually it became commonplace. Continue reading...

Second world war ships, most of which are war graves, are vanishing from the Java Sea, yet the Indonesian government says nothing can be done. It is true?Two weeks ago, a Dutch expedition preparing a 75th anniversary commemoration of the Battle of the Java Sea found only holes on the seafloor where the ships used to be. The Dutch ships HMNLS De Ruyter and HMNLS Java are “completely missing” and a large section of HMNLS Kortenaer has been stripped away. The same has been confirmed for HMS Exeter and HMS Encounter, as well as sections missing from HMS Electra. The US submarine Perch is also completely gone. While the Perch sank without its crew on board, the other vessels are war graves.Related: Mystery as wrecks of three Dutch WWII ships vanish from Java seabed Continue reading...

It’s easy for UK researchers to focus on the downsides of leaving the EU. A House of Lords report today calls for a more positive approach

The puzzler tests general knowledge, logic and lateral thinking – and a subscription to Significance magazine awaits the winnerRiddle me this: do you have what it takes to complete the Royal Statistical Society’s Christmas quiz?It may not require specialist mathematical knowledge but the questions are a devilish test of general knowledge, lateral thinking and logic. Continue reading...

Stem cell infusions could treat babies affected with rare bone conditions, as well as older people – and even astronauts who lose bone mass in orbitPeople with fragile bones could have their skeletons beefed up with infusions of stem cells harvested from pregnant women, researchers say.Scientists proposed the unusual therapy after studies showed that the treatment led to 78% fewer fractures in animals that were bred to have a brittle bone disorder.

What has Juno revealed since it dropped into Jupiter’s orbit earlier this year? And how is the probe holding up against the solar system’s largest gas giant?Subscribe & Review on iTunes, Soundcloud, Audioboom, Mixcloud & AcastOn Tuesday 5 July 2016, Nasa’s Juno probe dropped into Jupiter’s orbit after a five-year, 1.4 billion-mile journey. Five months on, we ask what fresh insights we’ve gained into Jupiter’s structure, its history, and its extraordinary weather systems. And with engine problems, radiation belts to dodge, and the solar system’s largest gas giant to navigate, how has the probe held up? Continue reading...

Canada’s Hudson Bay is as ice-free in November as on a summer’s day and polar bears could be extinct here by mid-century. If the bears are in trouble, so are weChurchill, on the banks of the Hudson Bay in Canada, is known as the polar bear capital of the world. Hundreds of bears gather there each year before the sea freezes over in October and November so they can hunt seals again from the ice for the first time since the summer.I first went there 12 years ago at this time of year. The place was white, the temperature was -20C, and the bears were out feeding. Continue reading...

New therapy does not cause side-effects such as impotence and urinary incontinence, researchers sayA drug activated by laser light successfully destroys early prostate cancer while avoiding side-effects that commonly occur with surgery, trial results have shown.

You report (Stepping back 3.6m years: footprints yield new clues to humans’ earliest ancestors, 14 December) that Marco Cherin supposes from features of his find that other males in the species concerned, like gorillas, had multiple female partners. It is not the main conclusion that can be drawn from this, though it is usual for males to assume that they, in the past, would have been the one with several wives. The existence of family groups with one dominant male and several wives means that there would be many more males with no partners, circling aggressively round the family groups, attempting to displace the fathers, possibly, like lions, eliminating the offspring of a displaced male. It is not a nice ancestry. It is one in which females have little agency in the selection of mates. If this is, sadly, a strand in human development, it explains a lot about the behaviour of some males nowadays.

The answer to today’s puzzle, in which it is confirmed that Guardian readers are less clever than German 13-year-oldsEarlier today I set you the following puzzle, from a Christmas quiz set by the German Mathematical Society. About 80 per cent of German 12 to 14-year-olds gave the correct answer.Below are the first four prototypes of a machine designed by elves designed to sort presents by weight. Each machine sorts four presents at a time. The four presents are placed in the top, and then fall through the slides. Where two presents meet at a crossing, the lighter present goes to the left, and the heavier one goes to the right. This is repeated until all four presents are at the bottom. Continue reading...

Decrease in volume of grey matter in certain areas of the brain could help boost a mother’s ability to care for her child, research suggestsPregnancy appears to trigger long-term changes in brain structure, researchers have revealed, suggesting that the transformations could boost a mother’s ability to care for her newborn baby.The study, based on brains scans, found that the volume of grey matter in certain regions of the brain decreased in women who had been pregnant – a shift that was found to last for at least two years. Continue reading...

A debilitating condition which robs children of the ability to control their limbs has now been identified, making treatment possible for the first timeDoctors have discovered a new genetic disorder that robs children of the ability to walk normally and makes it hard for them to control their other limbs.While the condition has never been defined before, researchers found that patients with the faulty DNA can benefit enormously from a medical treatment that uses electrical pulses to stimulate the brain.

Soaring Arctic temperatures ‘strongly linked’ to recent extreme weather events, say scientists at cutting edge of climate change researchThe dramatic melting of Arctic ice is already driving extreme weather that affects hundreds of millions of people across North America, Europe and Asia, leading climate scientists have told the Guardian.

Geneticists are exploring how disease introduced by European colonists shaped the evolution of indigenous peoples of the AmericasPrehistoric America was not a disease-free utopia. Tuberculosis, treponemal disease, Chagas disease, and many other pathogens were endemic to populations in different regions of the continent. But the “Columbian Exchange” beginning in 1492 introduced new pathogens to American populations, including smallpox, measles, influenza, and yellow fever. This introduction had devastating consequences for tribes. In some places, death from infectious disease resulted in the depopulation of entire regions, leading to the collapse of social, economic, and political institutions, and the loss of many traditional cultural practices and ways of life.Understanding the dynamics of these pandemics is critically important in order to learn how they may have shaped the genetic diversity of contemporary Native American communities, potentially giving insights into the genetic underpinnings of diseases present in a higher frequency in some populations than elsewhere. More broadly, documenting the historical effects of the introduction of novel pathogens can give insights into the evolution of host-pathogen relationships. These insights are potentially useful for responding to future outbreaks of emerging infectious diseases. Continue reading...

Other finds in the biodiverse greater Mekong region include a rare banana species from Thailand and a tiny frog from Cambodia and Vietnam Continue reading...

Researchers devise test to determine whether machine learning algorithms are introducing gender or racial biases into decision-makingThere was the voice recognition software that struggled to understand women, the crime prediction algorithm that targeted black neighbourhoods and the online ad platform which was more likely to show men highly paid executive jobs.Concerns have been growing about AI’s so-called “white guy problem” and now scientists have devised a way to test whether an algorithm is introducing gender or racial biases into decision-making. Continue reading...

A seasonal conundrum about excellence in German manufacturingUPDATE: Solution and explanation now posted here.Merry Chrimbo guzzlers.For my last Monday puzzle of the year I’ve chosen a treat from the the German Mathematical Society’s online puzzle advent calendar. Continue reading...

Also known as chimaeras, the creatures have tooth plates instead of teeth and a retractable penis on their headsAmerican scientists surveying the depths of the ocean off the coast of California and Hawaii have unwittingly filmed the mysterious ghost shark for the first time.The team from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Center had sent a remote operated vehicle down to depths of 2,000 metres (6,700ft) when the creature appeared on their screens. Continue reading...

My father, Jim Low, who has died aged 88, was a rocket scientist. Not that he ever used the term himself. In his passport, he described himself always as a mathematician/physicist. But, as one of the early members of the European Launcher Development Organisation (Eldo) – the predecessor of the European Space Agency – that was indeed what he was, at least for much of his career.It was a career path that was all the more surprising, given his relatively humble origins in Cupar, Fife, as the son of James, a postman (who had fought in both the Boer and first world wars), and Mary (nee Collins). After attending Bell Baxter high school in the town, Jim, the youngest of four children, was the first in his family to go to university, thanks to a grant that was available after doing his national service – and, of course, to his intelligence and hard work. Continue reading...

Our panel of leading scientists pick the most significant discoveries and developments of the year – from the Zika virus to the planet Proxima B – and a surprising secret of marriage1 February Continue reading...

Do you love Christmas? Or find it a real ordeal? The answers to this quiz could surprise youFrom your taste in decorations to how happy you are with your presents, psychologists have studied every aspect of the festive season. So what does your attitude to Christmas say about you?1. Do you deck the halls? Are you a minimalist or a maximalist when it comes to decorations? How far do you go when it comes to decorating the outside of your house, and what does your taste say about your personality? Continue reading...

Scarlet dresses are outselling black ones but studies have cast doubt on the colour’s effect on sexual attractionTheresa May knows it. Jane Russell and Marilyn Monroe exploited it to stunning effect. Even singer Chris De Burgh was aware of the transformative powers of the colour red.This is not just the judgment of the stylist who helped the prime minister choose her Amanda Wakeley number for a charity bash last week, or Howard Hawks, who dressed Monroe and Russell in glitzy red robes in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Countless psychological experiments have confirmed that wearing red clothing increases attractiveness and sex appeal. Continue reading...