Type of virus blamed for South American birth abnormalities found in Cape Verde, which has had three cases of microcephalyTests show an outbreak of Zika virus on the African island chain of Cape Verde is of the same strain as the one blamed for birth abnormalities in Brazil, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Friday.“The findings are of concern because it is further proof that the outbreak is spreading beyond South America and is on the doorstep of Africa,” said WHO’s Africa director, Matshidiso Moeti. Continue reading...

Smarter artificial intelligence is one of 21st century’s most dire threats, writes Yuval Noah Harari in follow-up to SapiensIt is hard to miss the warnings. In the race to make computers more intelligent than us, humanity will summon a demon, bring forth the end of days, and code itself into oblivion. Instead of silicon assistants we’ll build silicon assassins.The doomsday story of an evil AI has been told a thousand times. But our fate at the hand of clever cloggs robots may in fact be worse - to summon a class of eternally useless human beings. Continue reading...

The long-awaited O’Neill Review on Antibiotic Resistance paints a sobering, dystopian picture of our future. So what are we doing about it? Continue reading...

A new report shines a light on the links that BP has developed with leading cultural institutions. Does this limit their ability to speak out on climate change?“I’d prefer the wording not to focus on environmental damage” – those were the words used in an email by the company Shell, as it attempted to muscle in on the Science Museum’s curatorial decision making. In 2014, Shell had been a sponsor of the museum’s climate science exhibition but once that controversial email had been unearthed – as the result of a freedom of information request – there was no going back. The museum’s reputation was damaged and the end of Shell’s sponsorship became inevitable.Earlier this month, the campaign group, Art Not Oil, published a damning report into the “corrupting influence” of another fossil fuel giant – BP – on the museums and galleries it sponsors. Once again, it places the Science Museum in the spotlight. Continue reading...

UK legislation introduced today bans the tobacco industry from using branding on their cigarette packaging. But will it change the number of smokers?From today, brightly coloured branding will be stripped from tobacco packs when standardised (or ‘plain’) cigarette packaging legislation comes in to effect.Cigarette packs will now be a single colour - ‘Pantone 448 C opaque couché’ (according to market research the ‘world’s ugliest colour’), and the brand name will be written in a standard font, size and location. New health warnings covering 60% of the pack will also be introduced. All cigarette packs and tobacco pouches manufactured for sale in the UK from now on will have to comply with these regulations, and within a year there should be no branded packs on shelves at all. Ireland and France are also introducing this legislation today. Continue reading...

How does money change our thinking, feelings and behaviour? Claudia Hammond joins the podcast team to teach us how to take control of our cashMoney brings opportunities, but whether it brings happiness is another question. Claudia Hammond, author of Mind Over Money, joins Ian Sample in the studio to explore our psychological relationship to money.

The living quarters and stables of the emperor’s bodyguard will be incorporated into a station on the city’s new metro lineFrescoed barracks which once housed the cavalry of the Emperor Hadrian’s bodyguard have emerged into daylight after 19 centuries during excavations for a new underground train line in Rome.

Party says it will pay for policy by abolishing fossil-fuel subsidies which would raise $7bn a yearThe Greens have announced plans to increase research and innovation spending to 3% of GDP by 2025 and 4% by 2030.The party leader, Richard Di Natale, and the science and industry spokesman, Adam Bandt, are set to announce the policy on Friday in Melbourne. Continue reading...

Flying robots could be invaluable in emergencies, but there’s a hitch: flying takes a lot of energy. Robobee’s ability to perch could make a big differenceFlapping two tiny wings, the small, thin robot wobbles its way towards the underside of a leaf, bumps into the surface and latches on, perching motionless above the ground. Moments later, its wings begin to flap once more and it jiggles off on its way.The little flying machine, dubbed a “RoboBee”, has been designed to perch on a host of different surfaces, opening up new possibilities for the use of drones in providing a bird’s-eye view of the world, scientists say. Continue reading...

Project with chemicals company BASF will look at mulch, slug pellets and nematodes to find best method of fighting the pestsA study is being launched to discover the best way to tackle what many gardeners see as their ultimate foes – slugs and snails.The one-year research project will examine the use of mulch, slug pellets and nematodes, a form of biological control of slugs and snails. It is being conducted by the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) and the chemicals company BASF, the only UK producer of nematodes. Continue reading...

Our friend and colleague Jaap Lucassen, who has died aged 84, was a Dutch scientist working mainly in the UK, who made a distinguished contribution to physical chemistry.The great Anglo-Dutch food and soap company Unilever provided the platform for Jaap’s scientific career. Unilever Research spawned in the early 1960s two small basic science groups, at Vlaardingen (Rotterdam) and Port Sunlight (Merseyside), each scrutinising fundamental properties of soap-related materials (surfactants). These groups rapidly gained international respect. Jaap and his wife, Emmie Reynders, joined Vlaardingen in 1961. Continue reading...

The selflessness of those who have donated their corpses for students to learn from will be honoured at Southwark cathedral this FridayThe dissecting room at Guy’s hospital in London is located at the top of the building so people can’t peer in through the windows. Quite rightly, the hospital preserves the dignity of those who have given their bodies to be dissected. But it’s common enough for people to want to rubberneck, maybe for some ghoulish thrill, maybe out of deep existential curiosity.Personally, I have spent enough time around dead bodies to have got past all of that. And by the time I get up all those stairs I’m puffing away like a 20-a-day asthmatic and already sufficiently in touch with my mortality. Continue reading...

German pharmaceuticals giant approaches world’s biggest seed firm over ‘negotiated acquisition’ set to be worth at least $40bnThe German drugs and chemicals group Bayer has pounced on Monsanto, the world’s biggest seed company, with an unsolicited takeover offer likely to be worth more than $40bn (£27bn).Bayer, which invented aspirin in the 19th century, said executives from both companies had met to “privately discuss a negotiated acquisition of Monsanto Company” to create a “leading integrated agriculture business”. Continue reading...

Giant waves, possibly triggered by two meteorite impacts, may have shaped Mars’s coastline and could hint at whether the red planet was once habitableMega-tsunamis in an ancient ocean on Mars may have shaped the landscape and left deposits that hint at whether the planet was once habitable, researchers say.The giant waves, thought to have reached up to 120 metres in height as they raced over the land, could have been triggered by two large meteorites slamming into the surface. Continue reading...

Fortnightly for the next two months, I’ll be investigating different drugs, busting some myths and explaining potential harms and benefits. This week: cannabisCannabis is the most widely used illicit drug in the UK. It’s the resin of a plant, and is consumed by smoking (sometimes with, sometimes without tobacco), eating, and more recently, vaping. Despite some suggestion that cannabis might be linked to poor mental health and educational outcomes, it is popular because it’s seen as less harmful than some other illicit drugs, and not necessarily that different to smoking cigarettes. But does the evidence back this belief up? Continue reading...

Study uncovers genes which help control the shape of our noses, a finding researchers believe will offer insights into our evolutionary pastA collection of genes that underpin the shape of the human nose have been discovered in a study into our facial features.Scientists scanned the genomes of around 6,000 individuals to unpick why some people have narrow, pointy noses, while others have broad bridges or wide nostrils. The upshot was the discovery of four genes which are involved in controlling the shape of our nasal apparatus, with another gene found to affect how much the chin juts out. Continue reading...

Urgent treatment with blood-thinning drug greatly reduces risk of subsequent fatal or disabling stroke, research findsDeath and disability can be averted by quickly taking aspirin after a minor stroke, a study has found.The blood-thinning drug is already given to people who have suffered a transient ischaemic attack (TIA), or “mini-stroke”, after they have been assessed in hospital. Continue reading...

By understanding how healthy people steer around their environment, scientists hopes to pin down how spatial navigation goes wrong in Alzheimer’s diseaseIf there’s one thing that I’ve learned in the few short years that I’ve been a fully-fledged scientist, it’s that time is one of the most valuable commodities that you can give a researcher. In all its myriad forms, time is invaluable to the scientific process – time to develop ideas, time to write grants. The time that you need to run an experiment. Critically, the time that participants are willing to give you in the pursuit of knowledge. It’s a precious thing, for everyone involved.Like with many things we take for granted, it’s easy to forget the importance of time until it’s gone. This is a point that becomes acutely salient in the case of Alzheimer’s disease. Once a definitive diagnosis has been made, the average life expectancy for patients with the disease is around six years. It robs people of their future, but more than that, Alzheimer’s disease robs them of their past – short term memory loss is a common indicator, and as the disease progresses, it can eat into memories from earlier in life. Continue reading...

It’s a common belief that funny men have more luck with the opposite sex. So does a GSOH really make you more attractive, or does it still come down to looks?In a recent guest post, Girl On The Net looked at the assumption that women “love a bad boy”, the cliché that women are attracted to more rebellious, undisciplined, aloof characters who play by their own rules like “treat them mean, keep them keen” etc.But never mind the bad guy, what about the funny guy? It’s an equally common cliché that women are often charmed by a guy who can make them laugh. It certainly pops up in the media often enough. How many sitcoms have you seen where the at-best-average-looking bloke ends up with a woman who’s clearly “out of his league”, purely because he’s wacky, or witty, or cuttingly sarcastic? Continue reading...

For each mission, medics, psychologists and engineers all work behind the scenes to send astronauts safely into orbit and bring them homeAstronauts are the pop stars of science and technology. From a launch site in icy Kazakhstan, they are hurtled into space inside tiny Soyuz capsule, aimed at the remote moving target that is the International Space Station (ISS). There, they will undertake scientific research and become guinea pigs for medical experiments. So it’s no surprise that their exciting jobs hog the media spotlight.But behind every astronaut is a team of dedicated professionals making sure everything runs smoothly. From workers training the astronaut before a mission, to those monitoring their medical health – there are hundreds of professionals involved in getting one person safely into (and back from) space. Continue reading...

Efficiency of antibiotics falling as deaths in EU and US hit around 50,000 annually from infections drugs can no longer treatThe “antibiotic apocalypse” may already be upon us. According to Dame Sally Davies, chief medical officer for England, 50,000 people are dying every year in Europe and the US from infections that antibiotics have lost the power to treat.Davies has been at the forefront of the UK’s efforts against antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and taken on a global leadership role. She has described the threatened loss of antibiotics to the world as on a par with terrorism and climate change. Continue reading...

Report by economist Jim O’Neill says global cost of problem could be loss of 10 million lives a year by 2050 and $100tn a yearA blueprint to end the scourge of antimicrobial resistance proposes that drug companies should foot the bill for the development of new antibiotics and that patients should not be able to get them without a test to ensure they are needed.Economist Jim O’Neill, charged two years ago by David Cameron with finding answers to one of the most pressing problems in the world today, says the global financial cost of no action would be the loss of 10 million lives a year by 2050 and £69tn ($100tn) a year. Continue reading...

A novice fossil collector’s decade-old find has been announced as a new kind of spectacularly horned dinosaur related to the Triceratops

Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult and Aberdeen University are working on lab-grown treatment that could help hundreds of thousands of peopleInsulin shots could become a thing of the past for type 1 diabetes patients thanks to a technology being developed by Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult, a London-based not-for-profit organisation, and Aberdeen University.The pre-clinical results have encouraged CGT and Aberdeen University to create a spin-out company, called Islexa. It will manufacture lab-grown islets, the organoids responsible for insulin production, by reprogramming donated pancreatic tissue. Continue reading...

Grizzly bears in Alaska and Canada are moving north as their environment warms, bringing them into contact with polar bears located on the coastlineClimate change is known for swelling the oceans and fueling extreme weather, but it may be also causing the curious emergence of a new type of bear in the Arctic.

Powerful people believe it’s fine for them to break rules others should follow. The psychologist whose work informed the movie Inside Out discovers how to get to the topIt is far safer to be feared than loved,” wrote Niccolò Machiavelli in The Prince, the founding text of the philosophy of realpolitik. These days, anyone wishing to establish their credentials as a hard-headed commentator on global affairs need only echo that bleak assessment: sure, it’s all very well for do-gooders to preach love and charity – but force, or the threat of it, is the only language everyone always understands. The American psychologist Dacher Keltner begs to differ. When you closely observe chimpanzees – or other primates, such as kindergartners or university students – you’ll find it is not the bullies and manipulators who gain power, he writes. Rather, it is those who demonstrate empathy and enthusiasm, solve others’ problems and otherwise further the greater good. Were that the end of the story, the world would be ruled exclusively by kindly philanthropists. Readers may have noticed that this is not the case.This is the “paradox” of Keltner’s title: it is true that being nice is the best path to power, but achieving power reliably turns people nasty. “The seductions of power,” as he puts it, “induce us to lose the very skills that enabled us to gain power in the first place.” Research demonstrates that people who feel powerful are more likely to act impulsively: to have affairs; to drive inconsiderately; to lie; to argue that it is justifiable for them to break rules others should follow; and, in one entertaining study by Keltner and his colleagues, to steal sweets from children. Rich people even shoplift more than the poor. All in all, accumulating power seems to trigger a tendency to self-absorption: in experiments, when people are asked to draw the letter E on their own foreheads so that others can read it, powerful people are more likely to draw it the right way round to themselves, and backwards to onlookers. In a literal sense, they no longer see the world from other people’s perspective. Continue reading...

Before this year’s drought, farmers’ yields were tripling in some regions. With the right investment, Ethiopia can get back on track for middle-income statusA year ago, Ethiopia was on the verge of achieving something remarkable. Having been the second poorest country in the world as recently as 2000, Ethiopia was on track to becoming middle-income by 2025. The 1980s image of a country ravaged by famine, poverty and conflict was fading.A large part of Ethiopia’s phenomenal growth was thanks to more than a decade of investment, with a particular focus on transforming agriculture. This sector employs more than 80% of the population of 91 million people (pdf), and accounts for more than 60% of exports. Agricultural yields were tripling in some regions, with the farmers I visited proud to be harvesting more, earning more, and sending their children to school and university. Continue reading...

From adjusting your body language, to dressing in a way that makes you feel good, here’s our guide to projecting the best version of yourself

Fossil oil shales open a window into the early diversity of mammals and the radiation of birds with spectacular fossils

Has teaching has been the poor cousin of research for too long? asks Jenny RohnThere’s an old adage: ‘those who can’t do, teach’.But this doesn’t really apply to taught science subjects at the university level, at least in my experience over a few decades in university settings around the world. If anything, it’s the opposite: stressed-out scientists, who do very well by the all-powerful yardstick of research excellence, have to be dragged from their labs to the podium to transmit their wisdom to the younger generation. As you might expect from a random sample of the population, the majority of whom have no actual pedagogical training, some are better at this task than others. Continue reading...

A meeting on synthesising the human genome, convened behind closed doors at Harvard, has caused a stir. Should we worry about scientific secrecy?Secrecy has long been a part of scientific and innovation practices. For instance, research on nuclear, biological or chemical weapons is often conducted in secret. In his excellent book on Secrecy and Science, Brian Balmer describes how the Manhattan Project epitomised the way in which scientific secrecy operates, explaining how specific sites were kept secret, but also how projects were compartmentalised, so that knowledge was exchanged only on a ‘need-to-know’ basis, meaning that only a very few people had any real understanding of the programme as a whole. In other words, attempts to maintain secrecy often go hand-in-hand with imperatives of efficiency, security, bureaucracy and control.Discussions to synthesize, for the first time, a human genome should not occur in closed rooms Continue reading...

Fossils from China are said to prove that multi-cellular organisms evolved as early as 1.5bn years ago – but some experts dismiss findingsA claim by researchers that complex life on Earth may have evolved a billion years earlier than previously thought has immediately divided scientists in the field, with some hailing the evidence as rock-solid and others unconvinced.The researchers, writing in the journal Nature Communications, said they had uncovered fossils showing that complex life on Earth began more than 1.5bn years ago. Continue reading...

Regulators should focus on end product of food, rather than crops that went into it, says US studyGenetically manipulated food remains generally safe for humans and the environment, a high-powered science advisory board declared in a report on Tuesday. The National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine concluded that changing the genetics of what we eat does not produce the “Frankenfood” monster some opponents claim – but is not feeding the world with substantially increased yields, as proponents promised.With the line between engineered and natural foods blurring because of newer techniques such as gene editing, the 408-page report said, regulators need to make their safety focus more on the end product of the food that is made rather than the nuts and bolts of its making. Continue reading...

Report reveals how critical areas of research, and particular regions of the country, would fare should EU funding dry upGreat swaths of research under way in universities and businesses across the UK will come under threat should Britain leave the EU, according to a major report into the nation’s finances.Crucial work on cancer, computer systems, nanotechnology and engineering - areas where Britain claims world-class expertise - has become heavily reliant on EU grants, making the research highly vulnerable to the slump in support that Brexit could provoke.

A fiery meteor streaked across the sky early on Tuesday morning and was captured by a police dashboard camera. The Portland, Maine, police department released video of the fireball, which was seen in much of New England, as far south as New Jersey, and as far north as parts of Canada Continue reading...

Chairman of UN’s joint meeting on pesticide residues co-runs scientific institute which received donation from Monsanto, which uses glyphosateA UN panel that on Tuesday ruled that glyphosate was probably not carcinogenic to humans has now become embroiled in a bitter row about potential conflicts of interests. It has emerged that an institute co-run by the chairman of the UN’s joint meeting on pesticide residues (JMPR) received a six-figure donation from Monsanto, which uses the substance as a core ingredient in its bestselling Roundup weedkiller.

A new study shows that people with more money tend to be less lonely. We shouldn’t be surprised – the link between happiness and wealth is clearMoney can’t buy happiness: it’s a rarely questioned truism. It also tends to be most enthusiastically embraced by those who have never gone without it. “I’ve tried hard to care about money,” Chelsea Clinton once humble-bragged, “but I couldn’t.” No matter how attached we are to the idea that money can’t buy happiness, though, the research shows almost the complete opposite.After community and social relationships, the association between income and wellbeing is one of the most robust in the happiness literature. And a new study demonstrates just how deep-seated that psychological link is, how intricately our financial circumstances weave their way into our psyches. Continue reading...

Certain psychedelics, including psilocybin, may be useful for treating depression. Could they be a game-changing breakthrough for psychiatry?Clinical depression causes misery for hundreds of millions of people worldwide. Around one in five patients fail to respond to any treatment and even among those who do recover, relapse rates are high and get progressively worse with each successive episode.The most widely used class of antidepressants, the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), can lift some people out of severe depression and help them stay well, but they don’t work for everyone, and among the many side-effects are anxiety, weight gain and sexual dysfunction. Since the SSRIs became available in the 1980s no new class of drugs has emerged, so the news that there may already be a more effective type of antidepressant in existence that is safe and well tolerated is tantalising. The catch is that to possess or supply these chemicals runs the risk of an unlimited fine or prison sentence. Continue reading...

Research into the giraffe genome has uncovered genetic variations that could be behind unusual adaptations to neck length and cardiovascular systemIt sounds like a tale by Rudyard Kipling, but researchers delving into giraffe genetics say they have discovered new insights into how the creature got its long neck and gangly frame.The world’s tallest land animal, the giraffe boasts some curious characteristics. Its neck contains seven vertebrae, the same number as humans, but each is elongated. For blood to reach the brain, the heart must pump it to a height of two metres - a feat made possible by an unusual heart structure, blood pressure more than twice that of humans and thick-walled blood vessels. Continue reading...

After 50 years in the wilderness, psychedelic drugs such as psilocybin, found in mushrooms, deserve to be examined for their potential in treating illness such as depressionThose of us who have never felt depression will certainly know people who have, and will have shared with them that impatient hope that with time, exercise, a new season, a new prescription, a new counsellor, the cloud might lift. Thankfully it usually does; it can never feel soon enough.Related: Magic mushrooms lift severe depression in clinical trial Continue reading...

Transplant medicine has overcome problems of infection, rejection and surgical complexity. Now we just need more people to become donorsThe first penile transplant in the US was performed on cancer survivor Thomas Manning at Harvard’s Massachusetts General Hospital last week. This paves the way for the treatment of other cancer patients, wounded veterans, burn victims and all those who’ve suffered genital trauma or needed radical surgery to save their lives. Transplanting a penis is technically much simpler than transplanting a lung or liver, so why did it take this long?Transplant medicine is much older than many realize. Over 3,000 years ago, the ancient Indian physician Sushruta used skin transplants – more commonly today called grafts – to reconstruct noses amputated as punishment for crimes. As early as the 1600s, patients were treated with animal blood infusions or bone transplants. But early transplant medicine was thwarted by infections and the immune system. Our skin is one of our most basic defenses – acting like the high walls and moat of a medieval city – guarding us against invasion by all sorts of microbes in the environment. An appreciation of the germ theory and the need for antisepsis – at first with carbolic acid, a corrosive chemical that burns, bleaches and numbs the skin and is poisonous to the lungs if inhaled – helped bring down surgical death rates dramatically. Anesthesia made it possible to undertake long complicated surgeries without unnecessarily torturing patients. But it wasn’t until antibiotics came into widespread use during the second world war that modern surgery as we know it today became possible. Continue reading...

Foundations of the Curtain, where Romeo and Juliet and Henry V were possibly first staged, uncovered in ShoreditchThe foundations and shoulder-high walls of the Curtain theatre, where Shakespeare performed as an actor and may have staged the first performances of Romeo and Juliet and Henry V, have been uncovered in a development site in Shoreditch.To the consternation of archaeologist Julian Bowsher, an internationally acknowledged expert on Shakespeare’s theatres, the excavation of the foundations and a long stretch of the back wall of the stage prove that the theatre was rectangular, not the “wooden O” of the famous prologue to Henry V. Continue reading...

Newly released onboard footage shows a Russian rocket blasting off from a new space port, as it carries three satellites into orbit. The rocket, a Soyuz-2.1, is the first to launch from Russia’s new space port, the Vostochny cosmodrome

Over many years the EU has built international collaborative structures that robustly serve public health. Brexit would certainly mean losing the European Medicines Agency to another EU country, but what would be the wider impacts for the UK pharmaceuticals industry and patient safety?From agreements of cross-border care to health research collaboration, public health protections and shared institutions; there is much at stake in this referendum debate. One key pillar of health is pharmaceuticals, where the London-based European Medicines Agency (EMA) has a central role in supporting medical innovation and ensuring patient protection. A Brexit would certainly mean losing the EMA to another EU country, but what would be the wider impacts for the UK pharmaceuticals industry and patient safety?Over a billion prescriptions are dispensed and a further £2.5billion of pharmaceuticals bought over the counter in UK pharmacies annually – products of global trade. EU law currently assures their quality, safety and effectiveness. That legal framework covers clinical trials, market authorisation of new medicines, manufacture and distribution and the continuous benefit-risk review of medicines on the market. The European Medicines Agency (EMA), a decentralised body of the EU, coordinates the work from its headquarters in Canary Wharf, London. The working language is English; the UK’s national authority, the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), plays an influential role but every aspect of the system depends on effective collaboration between regulators and experts of all 28 Member States. Continue reading...

Results raise hopes that active substance in class 1 drug could be used to treat mental health conditions in future

Thousands of Roman coins and several bronze statues are among artifacts discovered by two divers off the coast of Israel. The objects came from a merchant ship that sank near the port of Caesarea 1,600 years ago during the late Roman period. Underwater footage shows divers digging out clumps of coins buried in the sand. ‘All the cargo was completely under the sand. That’s why it’s preserved so well,’ said Jacob Sharvi from the Israel Antiquities Authority Continue reading...

Surgeons attach dead donor’s penis to 64-year-old who had his penis amputated to prevent a cancerous tumour from spreading

Tropical regions likely to suffer biggest increase in hot days and extreme weather because of climate change, say scientistsNew evidence that poorer countries will suffer the worst effects of climate change has shown that the number of hot days in tropical developing countries is likely to increase markedly as global warming takes hold.It has long been expected that poor people would bear the brunt of climate change, largely because so many more of the world’s poorest live in tropical latitudes whereas, wealthier people tend to live in more temperate regions. Continue reading...

Stanford study shows how details gleaned from telephone ‘metadata’ by National Security Agency pose a threat to privacy of ordinary citizensThe mass collection of telephone records by government surveillance programs poses a clear threat to the personal privacy of ordinary citizens, according to US researchers who used basic phone logs to identify people and uncover confidential information about their lives.Armed with anonymous “metadata” on people’s calls and texts, but not the contents of the communications, two scientists at Stanford University worked out individuals’ names, where they lived and the names of their partners. But that was not all.