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by Robin McKie on (#VB8G)
The Lisa Pathfinder will test equipment for an orbiting observatory that will peer into the universe’s darkest cornersIt was perhaps the greatest scientific achievement of the 20th century. And next week space scientists will celebrate the 100th anniversary of the publication of Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity in fitting style – by launching a probe to help demonstrate the accuracy of the theory’s last unproven prediction: the existence of gravitational waves.At 4.15am on 2 December, the satellite, known as Lisa Pathfinder, is scheduled to be blasted into orbit from the European Space Agency’s centre in Kourou, French Guiana. It will carry equipment that will be tested as components for a future orbiting gravitational wave observatory. Continue reading...
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| Updated | 2026-06-29 01:01 |
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by Robin McKie on (#VB8J)
As satellites such as the European Space Agency’s Gaia provide astronomers with increasingly vast amounts of data, amateur observers, including schoolchildren, will help analyse the secrets of the starsWithin the Draco constellation, in the far northern sky, scientists have discovered a star, 700 light years from Earth, that has a distinctly unhealthy appetite. It is devouring its stellar companion. As the smaller of the two spins round the larger, the little cannibal is ripping streams of matter from its partner. Even odder, both stars have used up all their hydrogen fuel and now face a spectacular end to their existences – as fodder for supernovae explosions.For good measure, the two stars of Gaia14aae perfectly eclipse each other, as seen from Earth, a feature that could prove to be of key importance for astronomers. Eclipses allow scientists to calculate the masses of binary stars with unprecedented precision, and will give them a handle on understanding the behaviour of this extraordinary pair as they circle each other in their stellar dance of death.But what also excites scientists is the fact that it took groups of professional astronomers working with amateur colleagues to pinpoint this extraordinary object – and that teamwork could prove to be a powerful force in future. Indeed, many believe that amateurs, including children, working with professionals, could prove a highly effective combination. Continue reading...
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by Jim Powell on (#VA82)
The aftermath of the Paris attacks, Europe’s refugee crisis, a juvenile dinosaur under the hammer – the best photography in news, culture and sport from around the world this week Continue reading...
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by Graham Long on (#V9AV)
Fordingbridge, New Forest The giant funnel fungus is widespread but not common, and this find is worthy of note. It’s good to have friends who use their eyes“You’ve really got to see them,†he said excitedly as he came into the coffee morning. “They’re huge, bigger than dinner plates.†Veteran scouter Bill Edwards is in his mid-80s and walks everywhere. Over the year he uses many of the local footpaths and is a keen observer of the countryside. Last winter he spotted active honeycombs hanging from the branches of a bush alongside a stream. He noticed, too, a yellow brain fungus, growing on oak, whose lobes and folds were so expanded that from a distance it looked like a daffodil. This time he’d been using the path that links two parts of the town, along the line of the old railway with housing estates at each end. It runs along the perimeter of a school and it was there on the margins of the woodland that he’d seen them.Related: Country diary: Oxen Wood, Northamptonshire: A splash of real colour bursts out of an oak twig Continue reading...
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by Nicky Woolf in New York on (#V8M5)
SpaceX joins Boeing in planning first private manned launches to International Space Station, provisionally set to take place before the end of 2017Manned commercial space flight took a giant leap forward as Nasa signed its first mission orders with California-based private spaceflight company SpaceX to transport astronauts to the International Space Station.
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by Editorial on (#V87M)
The spread of intensive farming in the developing world means were are picking a fight with evolution. This is one we are bound to loseAntibiotic resistance may not seem as urgent as terrorism or the NHS funding shortfall. But it is actually a threat that could kill many more people and degrade the quality of civilised life much more. Chinese scientists have discovered a gene in bacteria that conveys resistance to colistin, a drug presently used in humans when other antibiotics won’t work but also used on a large scale in pig farms. It’s bad enough that such a gene has emerged – and will obviously be favoured by natural selection. What’s worse is that it’s found in a plasmid, a ring of DNA that can be passed directly between different strains of bacteria as well as being simply inherited. Just as we can catch infections from other people, the bacteria that cause them can now transmit to each other an immunity to our countermeasure.The new mutation is only found in one (large) class of dangerous bacteria and it only confers resistance to one particular antibiotic. But when that is the drug of last resort it’s frightening, and the overuse of antibiotics makes it almost certain that similar mutations will emerge, and spread, in other bacterial populations. The crisis is not just caused by human overprescription. The use of antibiotics in agriculture is a much greater scandal still. Animals are routinely dosed so that they can tolerate the overcrowding essential to factory farming. This is not only cruel but enormously shortsighted. The populations of food animals in south-east Asia provide a reservoir of infection for humans: we see this in the successive waves of flu that originate among the ducks and chickens there and then spread round the world. As more of the world eats more meat, farming will become more economically efficient, which is to say more cruel and more dependent on routine antibiotic dosage. This is a global problem and it will become a global health crisis, too. Continue reading...
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by Tash Reith-Banks on (#V7ZF)
The second in our series on how STEM can help to relieve humanitarian crises focuses on James Roberts, inventor of the inflatable incubatorTuesday was World Prematurity Day. According to the World Health Organisation, more than a million babies a year die of complications arising from premature birth. The WHO also estimate that around 75% of those deaths are preventable with better access to simple forms of care.
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by Tom McCaskie on (#V7XN)
Anthropologist and sociologist whose books explored the role of belief in the lives of the Yoruba people of south-western NigeriaJohn Peel, who has died aged 73, was a leading figure in the British study of Africa whose particular area of expertise was the Yoruba people of south-western Nigeria. He pioneered the understanding that African societies and cultures were richly complex entities that might stand comparison with any others around the globe; his work helped to emancipate Africans from scholarly neglect, and the dismissive attitudes born of the slave trade, colonialism and racism.His work on the Yoruba portrayed a culture of immense sophistication in its beliefs, values, perceptions and organisation. John’s primary interest was in belief (he was himself a practising Anglican), and he demonstrated the ways in which Yoruba people adopted mission Christianity and then transformed it into something that addressed their own needs and aspirations. In so doing he showed an acute awareness of the continuities between the Yoruba past, present and possible future. Continue reading...
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by Jacob C Dunn on (#V7BC)
Sexual competition has made sperm the most diverse - and fascinating - cells in the animal kingdomThis piece was first published on The Conversation.Most people probably think of sperm as the microscopic tadpole-like things wriggling around in human semen. But there is an astonishing amount of diversity in the size, shape and number of sperm produced by male animals. In fact, despite performing the very same function in all animal species (fertilising eggs), sperm are the most diverse cells found among animals. Continue reading...
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by Rebecca Schiller on (#V716)
One in 200 pregnancies in the UK ends in stillbirth. The government is investing in machines, but what’s really needed is better quality care of pregnant mothersKate Nelson was pregnant with twins four years ago when she began to feel ill and couldn’t keep food or water down. At the hospital she saw yet another overstretched clinician who didn’t know her or her history. Kate knew something was wrong and told them so. But despite her complex multiple pregnancy, her concerns were dismissed. The system that all too often treats women like idiot visitors crashing around in their own bodies told her to go home, put her feet up and stop worrying.Her husband called me (her doula – someone who supports a woman during the birth process) later that day. I could barely make out his words as he told me that Kate was in a coma, their son Thomas had been stillborn and his brother Henry was being rushed to Great Ormond Street Hospital with life-threatening complications. He asked me which of them he should stay with. I didn’t know what to say. Continue reading...
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by Ian Sample on (#V5Z6)
John Conway sheds light on the true nature of numbers, the beauty lying within maths and why game-playing is so important to mathematical discoveryJohn Conway is Emeritus Professor of Mathematics at Princeton University.
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by Ellen Brait in New York on (#V50T)
Three experiments found that the birds can pick out diseased breast tissue with an accuracy rate of up to 99% and could help develop new imaging techniquesPigeons can distinguish between healthy and cancerous tissue in x-rays and microscope slides with an accuracy rate of up to 99%, according to a new study in Plos One.In a series of three experiments, led by Richard Levenson, professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at the University of California Davis Medical Center, it was found that pigeons have the capacity to learn how to identify whether an image shows healthy or cancerous breast tissue. The birds “share many visual system properties with humansâ€, according to the study.
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by Peter Bradshaw on (#V4ZM)
This charming documentary charts the progress of four retired astronomers as they talk about life, the universe and everything under the starsThere is enormous charm and food for thought in Alison Rose’s documentary about four retired, snowy-haired English astronomers and their road-trip reunion in the American south-west; they are recreating a journey they took together decades previously, as gung-ho twentysomething students at the California Institute of Technology.Donald Lynden-Bell, Roger Griffin, Neville “Nick†Woolf and Wallace Sargent are four eminently likable and distinguished academics who appear like gentleman explorers as they tackle a hike in the burning sun that might dismay people much younger. Their final goal is the remarkable Rainbow Bridge in Utah; on the way, they chat to each other and Rose about astronomy, the unimaginably vast reaches of the universe, about life on other planets and on our own. Oddly, the film reminded me of Patricio Guzmán’s Nostalgia for the Light (2010), about astronomers in 1970s Chile, who found in this discipline an escape from tyranny. Star Men isn’t political like this, but it finds an extraterrestrial strangeness or majesty in the American wilderness, just as Guzmán found it in Chile’s Atacama desert. Continue reading...
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by Reuters on (#V4MV)
New data adds to signs that a weather pattern known for causing extreme droughts, storms and floods could become one of the strongest ever in 2015A key indicator for the strength of El Niño has reached a record high, the US weather agency said, adding to signs that a weather pattern known for causing extreme droughts, storms and floods could become one of the strongest ever.El Niño, the “little boyâ€, is driven by warm surface water in the eastern Pacific Ocean and its strength is measured by how much higher temperatures are over three-month averages. Continue reading...
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by Sarah Boseley Health editor on (#V4FW)
Under NHS England proposals, patients will be given drugs normally too expensive for the NHS while data is collected to establish their valueNew cancer drugs that show promise but are too expensive for the NHS could be made available to patients for two years to collect data on their value, NHS England has proposed.The plans, which now go out to consultation, are an attempt to solve a thorny ethical and political issue that has provoked damaging headlines for governments for many years. Continue reading...
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by Ian Sample Science editor on (#V4CH)
Lucara mining firm attracts many inquiries to buy 1,111-carat gem but says stone not yet valued as it’s too big for onsite equipment and must be flown to AntwerpThe Canadian mining company which this week unearthed the world’s largest diamond in more than a century says it cannot put a value on the 222g (7.8oz) stone.The 1,111-carat gem was hauled from an open pit mine in central Botswana, by the Lucara Diamond Corporation, a Vancouver based firm. Continue reading...
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by Guardian Staff on (#V3KW)
High-speed footage of two blue-capped cordon bleu birds tapping their feet on a branch whilst singing in order to attract the attention of the opposite sex. Scientists at Japan’s Hokkaido University found that both males and females used the technique to seduce their targets. The steps have not been seen before because they are too fast for the naked eye to spot Continue reading...
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by Ian Sample Science editor on (#V3CN)
To woo potential mates, the blue-capped cordon bleu performs a high-speed tap dance too fast for the human eye to see, new research has foundHumans buy flowers. Capuchins throw stones. Giant tortoises bellow. But the blue-capped cordon bleu, a small finch found in Africa, really knows how to win over a mate.
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by Oliver Milman in New York on (#V35M)
NIH sees ‘no further justification for invasive biomedical research’ and will transfer remaining 50 chimps to an ape sanctuaryThe US National Institutes of Health will wind up its programme of medical research upon chimpanzees, announcing that 50 of its remaining great apes will be sent to sanctuaries.
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by Michael Halpern on (#V2DQ)
Lamar Smith has targeted government climate change researchers with a subpoena that demands all their notes and correspondence relating to a recent study
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by Associated Press in Washington on (#V1PQ)
FDA approval for new version of product, based on the drug naloxone, which Irish maker says is cheaper and easier to use than injectionsThe US Food and Drug Administration has approved an easy-to-use version of the lifesaving drug that reverses heroin and prescription painkiller overdoses.The reformulated drug, sold as Narcan, comes as a nasal spray and should help first responders, police and others deliver the antidote in emergency situations. Known generically as naloxone, it reverses the effects of opioids — drugs that include legal painkillers such as oxycodone and illegal narcotics such as heroin. Continue reading...
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by Sarah Boseley Health editor on (#V1G5)
There are more than 1,000 stillbirths each year and out of a sample of 85, researchers found failures in the pregnancy care of half of themThe lives of hundreds of unborn babies could be saved if their mothers were given better care in pregnancy, according to a major report.More than 1,000 babies without any congenital abnormality die at or near term, before labour begins, in the UK every year. A team of experts reviewed in detail a representative sample of 85 of these stillbirths and found there were failures in the care of half of them. Continue reading...
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by Sarah Boseley on (#V1D1)
Scientists in China discover a gene that enables resistance to move between bacteria – which is likely to spread worldwide, they warnThe last line of antibiotic defence against some serious infections is under threat, say experts who have identified a gene that enables resistance to spread between bacteria in China.The gene, called mcr-1, allows a range of common bacteria, including E coli, to become resistant to the last fully functional class of antibiotics, the polymyxins. This gene, they say, is widespread in bugs called Enterobacteriaceae carried by both pigs and people in south China and is likely to spread worldwide. Continue reading...
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by Ian Sample Science editor on (#V0V3)
Astronomers have observed for first time a planet taking shape out of microscopic dust particles 450 light years from EarthThe primordial process that turns enormous clouds of cosmic dust into newborn planets over millions of years has been observed directly for the first time.
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by Reuters on (#V0Q9)
Thirty Meter Telescope project temporarily blocked amid protests by Native Hawaiians and environmentalists who say it would damage sacred landsThe Hawaii supreme court has temporarily blocked construction of one of the world’s largest telescopes on a dormant volcano, following a challenge by Native Hawaiians and environmentalists who say the project would damage sacred lands.The state high court handed down the order late on Tuesday, suspending until 2 December the permit for the project near the summit of the Mauna Kea volcano on Hawaii’s Big Island, court papers said. Continue reading...
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by Ian Sample Science editor on (#V0NZ)
Lab-grown tissue which produces realistic sounds marks a step forward for patients suffering from diseases or injuries which damage the voiceVocal cords that produce realistic sounds have been grown in the lab from human cells.
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by Tamsin Edwards on (#V0E4)
The results of our study might be surprising to some. But although it rules out very high rises, climate sceptics certainly shouldn’t be dancing in the aislesThe past, present and long term future of the Antarctic ice sheet and its surrounding ice shelves have been news over the past few months. I’m part of a team with a new study published in Nature predicting its future. You might think: what’s new?
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by Damian Carrington on (#V0E6)
New findings on neonicotinoids have important implications as many food crops and wildflowers rely on bee pollination to reproduceThe world’s most widely used insecticides harm the ability of bumblebees to pollinate apple trees, scientists have discovered. The finding has important implications for agriculture and the natural world, say the researchers, as many food crops and wildflowers rely on bee pollination to reproduce.There is good evidence that neonicotinoids harm bees but the new research, published in the journal Nature, is the first to show a negative impact on the vital pollination services bees provide. Continue reading...
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by Kim Wall on (#V0A5)
For the next generation of hackers, micro organisms have become the new hardware and DNA strands the new softwareThe petri dish spells it out in faint, dark letters: “Ceci n’est pas un E coli.†The play on the classic painting has a twist, though: while Magritte insisted his caption was accurate since it wasn’t a pipe but an image of one, here, the canvas really is Escherichia coli. Or at least it was, before it was genetically modified for capabilities far beyond its own.Since E coli’s natural habitat – the darkness of the human intestine – doesn’t warrant light sensitivity, a sensor is added. Another upgrade instructs the bacteria to excrete an enzyme to stain the dish’s agar solution black when hit by light. The image itself is captured through a negative putting only the lit-up bacteria to work – the brighter the light, the darker the spot – and voilà : about a day later, a bacterial photograph. Continue reading...
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by Suzi Gage on (#V03J)
Misinformation about the junior doctor contract is rife. It’s time to look at the facts and listen to why the doctors affected feel a strike is inevitableIt’s hard to miss the junior doctor contract crisis that’s going on in the NHS. The British Medical Association (BMA) has balloted its members, and if they vote to go on strike there will be three days of action at the beginning of December. But why are the junior doctors of our NHS considering striking?I spoke to a number of them while researching this article, and all were really upset that it has come to this. The frustration is evident in their voices and their words. Continue reading...
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by Alan Yuhas on (#TZDJ)
According to new research, happiness peaks when couples have sex once a week but does not increase with greater frequency – and quality mattersSex matters to couples until it doesn’t, according to new research that finds happiness peaks when couples have sex once a week but does not increase with greater frequency.“Although more frequent sex is associated with greater happiness, this link was no longer significant at a frequency of more than once a week,†said lead researcher Amy Muise. Continue reading...
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by Stephen Curry on (#TZ8J)
Russian and American adventures in space are revealed in vivid detail in the spectacular Cosmonauts exhibition at London’s Science Museum, and in a massive new collection of photographs from Nasa’s moon missionsLondon’s Science Museum has boldly gone where no science museum has gone before. In Cosmonauts: Birth of the Space Age it has created a dazzling, unprecedented exhibition devoted to the Russian space program. To do so, the museum has borrowed a cornucopia of treasures from no fewer than 18 different institutions. Many of the objects on show have never been seen outside Russia. Some even had to be declassified to be to be brought to London. Science museum director Ian Blatchford has described it as “unique and unrepeatableâ€. He is not exaggerating.The exhibition explores uncharted territory, as fascinating and unfamiliar as any alien world. On show are not just the outlandish technologies that the Russians flung into orbit – and to the moon, and to the planets – but also the vision and the political ambition that fuelled their national space adventure. Continue reading...
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by Andrew Simms on (#TYY8)
In the last month, experts have questioned the accuracy of current targets for both emissions reductions and the resources needed for climate action. So what does this mean for the planet?Measurement can be simply a matter of getting things to fit– or a matter of life and death. By confusing different scales and units, a friend once nearly ordered a Venetian blind that would have been three metres wide and only three inches deep. Continue reading...
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by Ara Darzi on (#TYPJ)
One carefully worded text message encouraging people to donate organs added an extra 100,000 donors to the list, all thanks to behavioural insights
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by Guardian Staff on (#TYDY)
18 November 1961: Test firing of Minuteman missile, which can be launched remotely without preliminary fuelling, is a major step in America’s defence programmeCape Canaveral, November 17
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by Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore on (#TYD7)
The French biologist turned choreographer on media fascination with his story and his new six-hour public ‘exhibition’ in Sydney, performed in the nudeNaked bodies are heaped in a mound. Faces pushed up against groins, legs indiscriminately stacked over breasts and buttocks. Everyone is as still as stone. Then, slowly, they begin to unfurl. Feet flex, limbs tentatively stretch out, backs ripple.Related: Skinny-dipping in the void: the day I toured James Turrell's art show naked Continue reading...
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by Ian Sample Science editor on (#TXT8)
Kepler 438b, hailed as most habitable planet beyond our solar system, is regularly blasted with enough radiation to strip away its atmosphereIt was hailed as the most habitable planet ever found beyond the solar system. But now the distant world of Kepler 438b has started to look decidedly less inviting.Astronomers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics unveiled the small, rocky world circling the star Kepler 438 in January this year. A touch larger than Earth, in an orbit that keeps it warm enough for liquid water, but not too warm, the planet looked ripe for life.
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by Melissa Davey on (#TXMP)
In the race to build the first functional quantum computer, Australian researchers at the University of NSW find coding possible in siliconAustralian researchers have demonstrated that a quantum version of computer code can be written on a silicon microchip with the highest level of accuracy ever recorded.A quantum computer uses atoms rather than transistors as its processing unit, allowing it to conduct multiple complex calculations at once and at high speed. In the race to build the first functional quantum computer scientists around the world have been trying to write quantum code in a range of materials such as caesium, aluminium, niobium titanium nitride and diamond. Continue reading...
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by Hannah Jane Parkinson on (#TWBP)
The OUP is trying to be innovative by selecting the crying-face emoji for its coveted top spot, but it’s one of the least emotive – and not even a wordI have no words to describe it. Oxford Dictionaries, as owned by the Oxford University Press (OUP), has announced its “word†of the year is … not a word. It’s an emoji.To be precise, it’s the “tears of joy†emoji. Which makes me very “crying face emojiâ€, because the tears of joy emoji certainly doesn’t deserve to be emoji – sorry, word – of the year. Continue reading...
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by Ian Sample Science editor on (#TW9Q)
Disruption to gene HTR2B could affect decision-making and self-control and may explain why some people are more prone to impulsive behaviourA genetic mutation that makes people more impulsive when they consume alcohol may explain why some are more prone to drink driving, impulsive sex and random acts of violence.The mutation disrupts a gene called HTR2B which the body uses to make serotonin receptors in parts of the brain that have a governing role in decision making and self-control.
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by Sarah Boseley Health editor on (#TW6C)
Charlie Sheen is one of 35 million people living with the virus and treatments mean he is likely to be able to keep illness at bayIn 1985, when a shocked world learned that the actor Rock Hudson had Aids, and six years later, when Queen’s lead singer, Freddie Mercury, died the day after he had made his diagnosis public, HIV was a death sentence and carried a massive stigma.Related: Charlie Sheen reveals he is HIV positive: 'It's a hard three letters to absorb' Continue reading...
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by David Cox on (#TVSY)
Laughter has many functions, and whilst language is a key part of human humour, psychologists think certain animals show signs of being in on the jokeThere’s a video on YouTube (above) with over three and half million views, in which a girl appears to make a dolphin giggle by doing repeated cartwheels and handstands in front of its tank at a sea world centre.We still understand relatively little about the extent to which emotions are present in animals, but could it be that the dolphin in this clip is experiencing one of the most distinctly human forms of expression – humour? Continue reading...
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by Jane Stuart Smith for the Conversation on (#TV5R)
Predictions that this Scottish dialect would be homogenised by TV and population movement have been confounded by University of Glasgow researchThe city of Glasgow has a very distinctive dialect and accent. Its famous incomprehensibility has even been demonstrated in a lab experiment, and is seemingly consistent over time. The glottal stop, where “t†sounds get dropped, was common currency well before the 20th century, as can be seen from these observations by a visitor to the city written in 1892:Strangers hurl at us a sort of shibboleth such sentences as “pass the wa’er bo’le, Mr Pa’erson†Continue reading...
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by Sally Adams on (#TTSK)
Stories that suggest alcohol can make you a better lover are very popular, but what’s the evidence behind them?Alcohol “…provokes the desire, but it takes away the performance†said Shakespeare, but was he right? It is common belief that alcohol helps us lose our inhibitions and can also act as an aphrodisiac (sometimes!). But it’s not often thought of as a performance enhancer in the bedroom. I refer you to “brewers droopâ€, the age-old nickname for temporary erectile dysfunction induced by alcohol.The notion of too much alcohol as a passion killer is backed up by anecdotal and scientific evidence, but this doesn’t seem to dampen the media fascination with it as a libido enhancer. Is there any truth behind the notion that a couple of pints can really make you a better lover or is this just another “sexy†science story? Continue reading...
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by Reuters in London on (#TT96)
Generic medication disulfiram is found to wake the virus that causes Aids from dormancy – a step towards killing it, say researchers in US and AustraliaScientists seeking a cure for HIV/Aids have said a drug designed to combat alcoholism might be able to draw out the dormant virus from hiding in the body and allow it to be killed.
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by Tamara Dean on (#TT6J)
Researchers at the University of New South Wales agreed to be photographed working on the ground and in the field (not to mention the water, caves and bush). Photographer Tamara Dean was on a mission to ‘represent the ways these people related to landscapes’ and to show them as heroes. Read on to find out more about their work in ecology, oceanography and climate science
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by Associated Press in Cape Canaveral on (#TT4T)
Electricity rerouted after short circuit but spare parts will not arrive in next shipment following delays to supply missions caused by failed launchesThe International Space Station has had a power cut and spacewalking repairs may be needed once a replacement part can be delivered by rocket.Nasa said on Monday that the six astronauts were left with one less power channel on Friday. A short circuit in equipment on the station’s framework was to blame. The short apparently tripped a current-switching device, resulting in the loss of one of eight channels used to power the orbiting lab. The affected systems were switched to alternate lines. Continue reading...
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by Alan Yuhas and Martin Pengelly in New York on (#TS79)
Ninety-three days after transplant, surgeons say Patrick Hardison, a retired fireman injured when a burning roof collapsed on him, is making a full recoverySurgeons in New York have declared the most extensive face transplant ever a success, saying the procedure to give a firefighter the face of a brain-dead man stands as a “historic†achievement.In August surgeons at New York University’s Langone Medical Center performed the transplant for 41-year-old Patrick Hardison, a retired fireman from Mississippi who suffered disfiguring injuries when a burning roof collapsed on him, melting his mask, in 2001.
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by Ian Sample Science editor on (#TRTW)
Clumps of protein which align with Earth’s geomagnetic field lines may feed information to the nervous system, creating the ability to navigateTiny biological compasses made from clumps of protein may help scores of animals, and potentially even humans, to find their way around, researchers say.Scientists discovered the minuscule magnetic field sensors in fruit flies, but found that the same protein structures appeared in retinal cells in pigeons’ eyes. They can also form in butterfly, rat, whale and human cells. Continue reading...
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by Mo Costandi on (#TR85)
In a big step towards the development of prosthetic limbs that feel real, two research groups have developed artificial skin containing touch and heat sensorsProsthetic limbs have come a long way in the past 25 years. People who lose an arm or a leg can now be fitted with sophisticated prostheses that interface with the nervous system directly, which read the brain signals related to planning movements and translate them into commands for the device, enabling the user to control their replacement appendage by merely thinking about it.Neurally-controlled prosthetic devices can vastly improve quality of life for amputees and paralysed patients, by helping them to move and regain at least some of their independence. Ultimately, though, researchers hope to develop devices that provide sensory feedback to the user – this would not only allow for more accurate control of the prosthesis, but would also enable the user’s brain to incorporate the artificial limb into its model of the body and take full ownership of it, so that actually feels more like a part of the body than a cumbersome add-on. Continue reading...
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