Disruption of your natural circadian rhythms can cause health problems, so here are some tips for staying on scheduleBreakfast in the morning, work during the day, relaxation in the evening followed by bedtime. The waking hours have a certain rhythm, and the 24-hour cycle of the Earth’s rotation has resulted in a human sleeping pattern that largely takes place at night for about seven or eight hours of continuous shut-eye.Several studies have found that disturbing this ancient sleep-wake cycle can make people more prone to illnesses such as diabetes, obesity, gastrointestinal disorders and heart disease. Now, a study on nearly 300 pensioners at 24 GP practices in England has found that the best time to have a flu jab is probably in the morning, as this is the time when the immune systems of older people are better able to produce virus-fighting antibodies. Continue reading...

Do you struggle to remember details? And what does this mean for your psychological wellbeing?To find out, first read these descriptions: Dave earns £73,412 and is described by his colleagues as a nice guy who works hard and is a pleasure to be around. He often has lunch at the local café, where the staff say he is polite and pleasant. He always gives a generous tip.Frank earns £78,305 and is described as grumpy and rude. He skives as much as possible and is a pain to be around. He often has lunch at the local café, where the staff describe him as bad-mannered and unpleasant. He never gives a tip. Continue reading...

Women are being exploited by the idea that a cure for everything is on the horizonRecently, I had the opportunity to investigate the domestic habits and behaviours of a little understood human genus: Homo plutocratus. The super-rich, if you will. I spent time with them in their natural environment, observed them at close quarters and even managed to communicate with them in a form you might characterise as “light, social chit-chat”.And, as a result of these in-depth investigations, I am now able to reveal the results of my research: they are better looking than us. Continue reading...

It showed how to make communications faster and take up less space on a hard disk, making the internet possibleThis equation was published in the 1949 book The Mathematical Theory of Communication, co-written by Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver. An elegant way to work out how efficient a code could be, it turned "information" from a vague word related to how much someone knew about something into a precise mathematical unit that could be measured, manipulated and transmitted. It was the start of the science of "information theory", a set of ideas that has allowed us to build the internet, digital computers and telecommunications systems. When anyone talks about the information revolution of the last few decades, it is Shannon's idea of information that they are talking about.Claude Shannon was a mathematician and electronic engineer working at Bell Labs in the US in the middle of the 20th century. His workplace was the celebrated research and development arm of the Bell Telephone Company, the US's main provider of telephone services until the 1980s when it was broken up because of its monopolistic position. During the second world war, Shannon worked on codes and methods of sending messages efficiently and securely over long distances, ideas that became the seeds for his information theory. Continue reading...

Thirty years on from one of the worst radiation leaks in history, several countries have moved to phase out nuclear energy production altogether, and experts say another accident would kill the industryRelated: Chernobyl nuclear disaster 30th anniversary – in picturesThis week marks 30 years since an accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine led to a huge leak of radiation across eastern Europe. Continue reading...

Learning is all about motivation. When we really want to learn something, we generally succeed, even when the going gets toughImagine I gave you a book full of words, numbers and strange symbols – 150-odd pages of the stuff. Some of the things relate to each other in obvious ways, others not so much. Now suppose I’m going to test you: 50 questions about the contents of that book, how do you think you’d do?Well, if you can drive a car, chances are you’ve already done very well: those of you who passed the theory test recently will have got at least 43 out of 50 questions correct. That’s just one everyday example of the average person’s capacity to learn something that appears complex at first. Despite recently making the questions tougher, the DVLA still reports that the test has a pass rate above 50%. Continue reading...

LHC to be out of action for a week while connections to transformer are replaced following visit from hungry fouineThe world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator has been brought to its knees by a beech marten, a member of the weasel family, that chewed through wiring connected to a 66,000-volt transformer.The Large Hadron Collider on the outskirts of Geneva was designed to recreate in miniature fireballs similar to the conditions that prevailed at the birth of the universe, but operations of the machine, which occupies a 17-mile tunnel beneath Switzerland, have been placed on hold pending repairs to the unit. Continue reading...

Having run a marathon in space, what’s next for Tim Peake? A test drive on Mars (well, a Stevenage aircraft hangar decked out to resemble the red planet)The Airbus Stevenage Mars Yard is an impressive place, complete with sand, rocks, uneven surfaces and a mural representing the Martian horizon. The lights are low in the aircraft hanger, as if it is dusk on the Red Planet.Two robotic rovers sit silently in the artificial twilight. One of them, known as Bridget, is waiting for the test to begin. Continue reading...

A 600kg haul of ancient Roman coins were unearthed in the town of Tomares near Seville on Wednesday. Construction workers found the treasure while carrying out routine work on water pipes. Ana Navarro Ortega, head of the Andalucian Archeological Museum, says a discovery of this magnitude is incredible Continue reading...

After five years as a digital subscriber to the Guardian, the lure of the printed page is just too strongThe bad news is that newspapers are in decline. You only have to look around any commuter train carriage to clock the year on year drop in circulation. Practically the only papers you see now are the freebies – the Metro in the morning and, on the way home, the Evening Standard. Everyone else has their eyes fixed on a phone, tablet or laptop screen. A few are reading, but most are playing games or watching films or television programmes.Don’t get me wrong: I’m not here to rail against the new-fangled pursuits of a younger generation. The wealth of information, entertainment and connection that the digital world has brought to us, in its myriad colours and capabilities, is truly amazing. But I am troubled by the cost to news and newsprint. Even in digital forms that ought to be their salvation the papers struggle to compete for attention, displaced by more vibrant media. Continue reading...

Jahren, a geobiologist, lives on reheated fast food, encounters sexism and worries so much about funding it makes her ill. This is an inspiring behind-the-scenes look at scientific researchScience is about a passion for ideas and the people who pursue those passions. Hope Jahren captures both in her book, the engrossing story of her love of science and of the adventures she has while pursuing her hunches and hypotheses. In Jahren’s case, the passion is plants – and Lab Girl instils the reader with an appreciation for botany as well as for scientific discovery.Jahren is a geobiologist at the University of Hawaii, Mānoa, but she grew up in rural Minnesota, where the frigid temperatures outside were, she writes, mirrored by an emotional coldness inside: her family’s Scandinavian origins meant that discussions of feelings were out of bounds. But Jahren was busy playing under the lab bench belonging to her father, who taught physics and earth science at the local community college, and she fell in love with his profession. “The only thing I ever knew for certain was that someday I would have my own laboratory, because my father had one,” she writes. Continue reading...

Steve Jones on science at the time of the French revolution - and why scientists were among the first to be sent to the guillotineParis circa. 1789 saw the first lightning conductor, the first flight, the first estimate of the speed of light, and the invention of the tin can and the stethoscope. The metre replaced the yard and the theory of evolution came into being.

Reckitt Benckiser says it did not intentionally mislead about tablets targeting different types of pain

Construction workers working on water pipes in Seville stumble upon ‘unique’ collection of bronze coins said to be worth millions of eurosConstruction workers have found 600kg (1,300lb) of ancient Roman coins while carrying out routine work on water pipes in southern Spain, local officials have said“It is a unique collection and there are very few similar cases,” Ana Navarro, head of Seville’s archeology museum, which is looking after the find, told a news conference. Continue reading...

Such coral bleaching could be normal in 18 years, according to preliminary findings by leading climate and coral reef scientistsThe hot water temperature that drove the devastating bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef this year was made 175 times more likely by human-caused climate change, and could be normal in just 18 years, according to preliminary findings by leading climate and coral reef scientists.Related: Great Barrier Reef tourism operators refuse media and politicians access to bleached reefs Continue reading...

A new satellite will explore how the weather “down here” in the troposphere affects the weather “up there” in the ionosphere, from 30 miles above ground to 600 miles. Everything above 100 miles is classed as space, so this includes most of the ionosphere.The Ionospheric Connection Explorer or Icon is being built by UC Berkeley for Nasa to investigate the upward coupling effect, the mysterious way that storm systems affect conditions at much higher altitudes. Continue reading...

El Niño driving current spike in warm weather and May almost certain to be warmer than average from 1961 to 1990Unseasonably warm weather across Australia, which is set to continue through the coming month, might be putting a spring in people’s step but is a clear sign of dangerous climate change, according climate scientists and meteorologists.Australia and the rest of the world have been reeling from a string of temperature records being smashed. February caused alarm when it was the most unusually warm month on record by a huge margin. But that record was broken immediately by March.

Oxford University researchers hope study will pave way for single-treatment cure for many types of inherited blindnessGroundbreaking gene therapy has restored some vision to patients who were going blind.University of Oxford researchers hope the findings of the small study will lead to potential cures for common causes of vision loss, including genetic-related macular degeneration, which affects thousands of people in the UK. Continue reading...

If verified, finding could help understand how people’s faces change with time, and may ultimately lead to ways of slowing the most visible effects of ageingThose in search of the fountain of youth should not hang up their boots, but in a laboratory in the Netherlands lies what may be the answer to a more realistic mystery: why some people look younger than others of the same age.

Launch of Soyuz 2.1a marks milestone for Russia’s beleaguered space industry after series of embarrassmentsRussia has launched the first rocket from its new Vostochny cosmodrome, with President Vladimir Putin praising the event after dressing down officials over a delay caused by a technical glitch.The launch marks a milestone for Russia’s beleaguered space sector, with the new spaceport in the far east of the country touted to signal a rebirth of an industry plagued by a string of embarrassments in recent years. Continue reading...

New research has found that young women with eating disorders are more likely to go to schools with more girls, and with more highly educated parents. Research author Helen Bould explores why this might beDiagnosed eating disorders are more common in some schools than others: schools with greater proportions of female students, and schools with higher numbers of children with university-educated parents. These were the headline results of our study, published last week in the International Journal of Epidemiology (open access).Eating disorders are serious illnesses (someone with bulimia nervosa is around twice as likely to die young as someone without it; someone with anorexia nervosa about six times more likely), so this might make us worry about the effect of all-girls private or selective state schools on the mental health of young women – but should it? Continue reading...

28 August 1923: Ayrton, celebrated in a Google doodle, was the first woman to receive the Hughes Medal from the Royal Society and an active suffragetteWe regret to announce that Mrs. Hertha Ayrton, widow of Professor W. E. Ayrton, and herself a scientist of great distinction, died at North Lancing, Sussex, on Sunday last.Mrs. Ayrton’s name is bound up in the public mind chiefly with her researches in connection with the electric arc. Her great powers of observation and remarkable inventive faculty were turned in this direction in 1893. Her husband, Professor Ayrton, had been approached by the Board of Trade on behalf of the Admiralty with a request that he should investigate the question of “roaring” searchlights, which was being examined concurrently by the Admiralty’s own experts. Continue reading...

Russian president Vladimir Putin watches the first rocket launch from the new Vostochny cosmodrome in the country’s far east on Thursday. The unmanned Soyuz spacecraft was launched a day after a technical glitch thwarted a much-publicised event in a sign of continued crisis in the nation’s space industry Continue reading...

Some of the most common exotic plants in Britain have evolved rapidly to better suit the environment – whether that means becoming larger or smaller

Scientists an increase in levels of serum phosphate in the body caused by red meat consumption increases your ‘miles on the clock’, or biological ageEating too much red meat and not enough fruit and vegetables could increase the body’s “biological age” and contribute to health problems, according to researchers.Scientists found that a moderate increase in levels of serum phosphate in the body caused by red meat consumption, combined with a poor overall diet, increases your biological age – your “miles on the clock” – in contrast to your chronological or actual age. Continue reading...

Inspired by Cecil the lion, activists have begun an uphill struggle to convince Unesco to do for wildlife what it already does for places – and create World Heritage Species

Tesla boss’s SpaceX plans to send an unmanned spaceship, the boldest goal yet in a private space travel industry that counts Jeff Bezos and Richard BransonThere are moonshots, and then there are moonshots.Elon Musk’s rocket company, SpaceX, announced Wednesday morning it planned to send one of its spaceships to Mars by 2018, the most ambitious goal set to date by the burgeoning private space travel industry funded by billionaires instead of governments. Continue reading...

Using brain imaging, scientists have built a map displaying how words and their meanings are represented across different regions of the brainScientists have created an “atlas of the brain” that reveals how the meanings of words are arranged across different regions of the organ.Like a colourful quilt laid over the cortex, the atlas displays in rainbow hues how individual words and the concepts they convey can be grouped together in clumps of white matter. Continue reading...

Carmen Moreno collected vital evidence left behind by officers after woman was found dead in Spanish parkA park keeper and big fan of the CSI series of forensic criminal investigation TV dramas helped solve a murder in southern Spain when she bagged up vital evidence overlooked by police.Carmen Moreno, who has been sweeping leaves and collecting rubbish in the María Luisa park in Seville for 28 years, went to clean up the mess the police left behind after a woman’s body was found in the park. Continue reading...

Creationists fail to appreciate the history of science as well as science itself

Conservationists pin hopes of the species’ survival on breeding the Caribbean island’s last known male and female in the wildIn what could be a fairytale ending, conservationists are hoping to reunite the last two remaining wild mountain chicken frogs living on Montserrat and help their species breed on the Caribbean island for the first time since 2009.A project led by the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust will next month take the last remaining female and “translocate” her into the territory of the last remaining male as part of a 20-year recovery plan for the species, one of the world’s largest and rarest frogs that exists on just two Caribbean islands, Montserrat and Dominica. Continue reading...

The best charity adverts use words that stick in the mind. How can charities harness the psychology of words to improve their fundraising ads?Contrary to what you may feel about everyday communication, there is science and psychology behind every word we use: our speech is not random at all.Elizabeth Stokoe, a British scientist and professor of Social Interaction at Loughborough University where she studies conversation analysis, explains: “Talk falls into systematic patterns in ways that are surprising and not intuitive, for example, people on a first date ask questions about each other’s relationship histories in almost identical ways”. Continue reading...

The chief of Australia’s peak science organisation confirms about 75 oceans and atmosphere researchers will lose their jobs in a smaller restructureThe CSIRO chief executive has admitted recent cuts to the organisation’s climate research have been handled badly, conceding he wasn’t very good at communications or politics.In another gruelling Senate committee hearing on Wednesday, Dr Larry Marshall confirmed about 75 researchers in the oceans and atmosphere business unit would lose their jobs in a revamped, smaller restructure – down from about 110 announced to widespread derision in February.

Turning scientific evidence into policy exposes a gulf between how scientists think and how policymakers work. Here’s what scientists need to knowLast week, a major new report on The Science of Using Science: Researching the Use of Research Evidence in Decision-Making suggested that there is very limited evidence of “what works” to turn scientific evidence into policy. There are many publications out there on how to influence policy, but few are proven to work.This is because scientists think about how to produce the best possible evidence rather than how policymakers use evidence in complex policymaking systems. (The report describes how policymakers’ “capability, motivation, and opportunity” to use evidence varies). Scientists identify a cultural gap between them and policymakers, suggesting that we need to overcome differences in the languages used to communicate findings, the timescales to produce recommendations, and the incentives to engage. Continue reading...

Archaeologists uncover extraordinary remains of mother looking down at infant in her armsArchaeologists in Taiwan have found a 4,800-year-old human fossil of a mother holding an infant child in her arms.The 48 sets of remains unearthed in graves in the Taichung area are the earliest trace of human activity found in central Taiwan. Continue reading...

Study suggests that men’s voices evolved through male competition not female mating choices, and might show our ancestors were not made for monogamyBenedict Cumberbatch’s deep and booming voice might have made him a hit among women, but a low pitch is more likely to have evolved to intimidate other men, new research suggests.When both heterosexual men and women were played recordings of male voices, the deeper tones were hailed by men as sounding more dominant. While the deeper voices were judged to be more attractive by female listeners, the effect was weaker, the researchers report. Continue reading...

TTIP democracy | Nicky Morgan ‘finishing this job’ | Theresa May and the ECHR | Bridge ignored | Falcon 9 rocket name | Keith Flett’s productivityRobin Gill (Letters, 25 April) queries my comments about EU decision-making in relation to TTIP – the trade negotiations between the EU and the US. However, the European commission can only negotiate on the basis of the public mandate it has received from EU governments. TTIP can only enter into force if EU governments and the European parliament agree. Furthermore, the commission has given much evidence on its negotiations, including to the House of Lords – evidence that is publicly available. It cannot impose an agreement or bypass elected governments.

A clinical psychologist reflects on the combination of cultural factors at play in this disturbing trend

Forestry commission elevates oriental chestnut gall wasp to high-priority tree pest after 2015 outbreaksAn Asian wasp that threatens the UK’s sweet chestnuts has been designated a high-priority tree pest for the first time.The oriental chestnut gall wasp (Dryocosmus kuriphilus) was first found in the UK last year, in Farningham woods near Sevenoaks in Kent, and a street in St Albans in Hertfordshire.

The economic models that are used to inform climate policy currently contain an unhealthy dose of wishful thinking. Technologies that remove carbon dioxide from the air are assumed in the models that avoid dangerous climate change – but such technologies do not yet exist and it is unclear whether they could be deployed at a meaningful scale.The scenarios modelled for the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report assume the large-scale deployment of technologies that achieve negative emissions that draw down carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and permanently store it. But whether such proposed methods could be deployed at a material scale is unproven. It would be more prudent to exclude these techniques from mitigation scenarios used by the IPCC, unless and until we have sufficient evidence of their availability and viability to support their inclusion.Most of the modelled emissions pathways limiting warming to 2 °C (and all the ones that restrict the rise to 1.5 °C) require massive deployment of Biomass Energy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS). This involves growing biomass which is used to generate power and geologically sequestering the carbon dioxide produced. While the constituent steps of this process have been demonstrated, there are but a few, small, examples of the combined process. To rely on this technique to deliver us from climate change is to demonstrate a degree of faith that is out of keeping with scientific rigour. Continue reading...

Crowdsourcing research by ‘non-specialists’ could help historians investigate big-data archives, and in the process make everyone an expertCitizen science is a digital method, which has been applied to a range of big-data scientific problems. The Zooniverse is a key player in this; having first sought the help of the crowd in classifying galaxies almost a decade ago, it now boasts 47 different projects with well over a million users. The projects hosted on their site have been bringing to the forefront concerns over who exactly is allowed to participate in science.Even though the hierarchical structure of professional science still remains within most citizen science platforms (with the exception of the extreme citizen science movement), they have had the result of giving everyone access to the raw data of research, and an opportunity to demonstrate and develop expertise. Continue reading...

New pictures are most detailed images of Mars ever achieved from an orbiting spacecraft and seem to add weight to theory on Beagle 2’s final resting placeAstronomers have revealed the most detailed images yet of what is thought to be the landing site of the ill-fated Mars lander, Beagle 2, offering further evidence that the British spacecraft failed to phone-home because of problems following touchdown.Showing a bright blip in dusty terrain, the new picture is four times the resolution of previous images. The image adds weight to the theory that the diminutive spacecraft - just under a metre in diameter - landed as planned on Mars in 2003, but failed to fully unfurl its solar panels. “Given the size of Beagle 2, even with super-resolution images you are not likely to see more than a series of blobs because it is so small,” said Mark Sims, of the University of Leicester and former mission manager for Beagle 2. “What it does show is that it is on the surface and it is at least partially deployed.”

Thirty-five jobs saved and half of remaining 75 to 80 climate scientists to go to new centre in HobartAbout 35 climate science jobs at the CSIRO have been saved from initial cuts of 110, as part of a restructure that includes the establishment of a new climate science centre in Hobart.Of the organisation’s remaining 75 to 80 climate scientists, half will go to the Tasmanian centre. Continue reading...

Older patients given flu vaccinations in the morning rather than the afternoon produced more antibodies to fight seasonal virus strains, say researchersGPs could save the lives of thousands of people and prevent many more from being hospitalised by administering flu jabs in the morning rather than the afternoon, research suggests.A trial of nearly 300 pensioners seen at 24 GP practices in the West Midlands found that flu vaccinations were more effective when given at morning surgeries, with people producing higher levels of antibodies to fight off seasonal strains of the virus.

Study of nine-month-old children showed regular musically-based play sessions improved their ability to process speech sounds and rhythmsTaking babies along to musical play sessions may boost their cognitive skills and have a long-lasting impact on their learning, researchers say.A study of nine-month-old infants found that regular play sessions arranged around musical activities improved the children’s ability to process speech sounds as well as musical rhythms. Continue reading...

Disappearing pitmatic | Appearing in the Guardian | King Canute v tide | Horse/car priority on roads | Wakes weeks and potato pies | Spelling test cancellationI only speak to animals while out walking (Notebook, 19 April) if there are no people within earshot. However, I have found that the salutations between people in County Durham have changed over the past 30 years. No more pitmatic “What fettle?” or “What cheer?” and an increase in the prosaic “Alreet?”, which is used as both greeting and response. With the pits long gone and pitmen as rare as nightingales, so their language disappears too.

Answers to today’s spot the difference puzzlesI’ve been posting fortnightly puzzles in the Guardian for almost a year now, and one of the trickiest things to judge is level of difficulty.I try only to set puzzles that are understandable to everyone, and that at least a significant minority will be able to solve. Continue reading...

Malaria death rates have fallen 60% since 2000, but with some mosquitoes developing resistance to treated bednets, is it time to change strategy?The underlying fact seems incontrovertible: mosquito resistance to the insecticides used to treat bednets is growing. The question is what can be done to combat this resistance and ringfence the dramatic drop in global malaria deaths over the past 15 years?Since 2000, the numbers of people dying of malaria have dropped by 60% and cases of the disease have fallen by 37%, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO). Continue reading...

Salt lakes, dust rivers and ice shelves were among the images captured by European Space Agency and Nasa satellites last monthThousands of saline lakes span the south-western part of Western Australia, at the headwaters of the Frankland river, north of Stirling Range national park.Millions of years ago, declines in rainfall caused river flows to ebb and river valleys to fill in with sediment. Wind then sculpted the loose sediment to form the lake basins that remain today. Some of the lakes now fill with runoff directly from the Stirling Range; others are controlled primarily by groundwater. Continue reading...

Archaeology is hard work. You need patience to cope with red tape, dedication to painstakingly record finds at digs – and a touch of eccentricity always helpsI ended up in archaeology as a result of a long-held romantic notion of making great discoveries and solving mysteries. As a kid I always had my head buried in books, lost in the realms of the great ancient civilisations of the world. I never had fantastical expectations of archaeology, though. I didn’t think that I would travel the world and be a globe-trotting treasure hunter. And you certainly don’t get to travel in archaeology unless you are somehow affluent, have magical powers to secure funding, or know the right people in all the right places.None of the above apply to me, so I have been confined to archaeology in England and Northern Ireland. Don’t get me wrong, archaeology here is infinitely fascinating but let’s be honest, it’s not as grand and visually awe-inspiring as, say, the pyramids or Pompeii. Over here, at its most stellar, it can be just two different coloured soils side by side, but to the trained eye that tells us a great deal about what was going on thousands of years ago. Continue reading...