A Nasa simulation shows how solar winds have over time stripped Mars of its atmosphere, which scientists say left the once warm and wet planet, cold and barren. The animation, released by Nasa on Thursday, is based on data obtained by the Maven spacecraft orbiting Mars Continue reading...

If passed, the off-patent drugs bill, which has its second reading in the Commons on 6 November, would allow doctors to prescribe existing drugs for new clinical uses, meaning that those which are no longer subject to marketing protection can be licensed by the MHRA (Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency). This could have a major impact on the future of medical research and treatments, namely breast cancer prevention. For instance, tamoxifen was historically used as a treatment, but ground-breaking clinical trials have shown that it can stop the disease occurring in the first place. We need the government to back this bill so doctors are legally allowed to prescribe tamoxifen – and numerous other drugs – in new ways. Off-patent drugs are sitting on shelves gathering dust because pharmaceutical companies have no incentive to endorse them. As a charity entirely dedicated to the prediction and prevention of breast cancer, this bill is of critical importance to us as it plays a crucial role in preventing the disease for future generations.

Prehistoric carnivores had 9.5in ‘sickle claw’, and quill knobs on lower arm bones are first documented evidence that a large raptor had feathersA dinosaur discovered in South Dakota had feathers on a raptor’s body, large claws and wings, according to a study published by the University of Kansas Paleontological Institute.

Nasa reveals that Mars has its own northern lights and loses atmosphere with surprising speed, which could explain how the planet became dry

To qualify for the rigorous, two-year selection process, aspiring space travelers must have a college degree in a Stem field, work experience and be in good health. Insider tip: it wouldn’t hurt to be a teacher or pick up scuba divingOn Wednesday, Nasa put out the call thousands have been waiting for. At the cusp of a new era in US manned-spaceflight, the agency has announced it is seeking applicants for the next class of astronauts.It’s an occupation plenty have dreamed about as kids, but what does it take to actually make it to the moon or the International Space Station? And how do you know you have the skills? Continue reading...

At the heart of our unique language ability lie other forms of cognition and cooperation, argue Paul Ibbotson and Michael TomaselloThe natural world is full of wondrous adaptations such as camouflage, migration and echolocation. In one sense, the quintessentially human ability to use language is no more remarkable than these other talents. However, unlike these other adaptations, language seems to have evolved just once, in one out of 8.7 million species on earth today. The hunt is on to explain the foundations of this ability and what makes us different from other animals. Continue reading...

The campaign trail is unfamiliar to most scientists – but sometimes it can’t be avoided. Stephen Curry reflects on Science is Vital’s most recent excursion.Campaigning is a strange game for scientists. To be politically effective, the message needs to be simple and repeated again and again. That’s what those of us involved in Science is Vital have been doing for the past couple of months.But this practice doesn’t sit well with our scientific training, which is all about delving into the details (right down to the atomic and molecular level in my case), and never saying anything without caveats, (except perhaps occasionally). Continue reading...

Guilt, shame, envy … now we know which emotions officially didn’t make the cut for the original crossover smash, it’s time to suggest a few for a second journey into Riley’s mindInside Out was an almost completely perfect film. Adolescents could relate to it. Adults could reminisce about it. Children who enjoy watching their parents burst into shuddering fits of tears for seemingly no reason also managed to get plenty out of it. This universal appeal was, in part, down to the well-balanced blend of emotions represented in the film.There was Joy, there was Sadness, there were Fear and Anger and Disgust. However, a featurette included on the Inside Out DVD reveals that 26 emotions were initially considered for the film. Greed was one that didn’t make the cut, as were Hope, Guilt, Shame, Pride, Envy, Gloom, Despair and Embarrassment. Schadenfreude was even in the running, before he was hilariously kicked to the kerb, the idiot. Continue reading...

Ambitious plans to settle the red planet may conflict with international law. Sara Bruhns and Jacob Haqq-Misra suggest an alternative approach.NASA has released a report containing detailed plans for a human mission to Mars. This has been a long-standing goal for NASA and their report outlines the challenges of Mars exploration in three stages. The first, ‘Earth Reliant’, stage focuses on research aboard the International Space Station. The ‘Proving Ground’ stage puts humans deeper into space for research, while remaining a few days from Earth. The ‘Earth Independent’ stage completes the plan by getting humans to the surface of Mars.NASA is not the only organization preparing to send humans to the red planet. SpaceX, Dennis Tito’s Inspiration Mars Foundation, and Mars One have all expressed an aim to visit and in some cases even colonize Mars. Continue reading...

Nasa releases close-up footage of the sun, taken by the Solar Dynamics observatory, which orbits the star and captures images across 10 wavelengths of invisible ultraviolet light. Each wavelength is assigned a colour to help scientists differentiate between them, resulting in beautiful footage which shows activity on the surface in spectacular detail Continue reading...

It’s technology’s biggest puzzle: although smartphones, laptops and even electric cars get lighter, cheaper and double in power every few years, they still die when you most need them. How close are we to perfecting a ‘super battery’ that charges at lightning speeds and lasts for days?My battery has died – anyone got a spare charger? It’s a cry with which most of us with a phone, laptop, or even an electric car, can sympathise. The mild but persistent irritation of a phone fading to black when you most need it. The never-ending pursuit of plug sockets. The sinking feeling when you realise you’ve picked the only train carriage with no power. The conflicting advice on how to prolong the life of your ever-sickening battery combined with the dark knowledge that it will die in a few years anyway. The nightly routine of charging your phone before bed.“The issue with existing batteries is that they suck,” Elon Musk, chief executive of Tesla, said in May at the launch of the Powerwall, a sleek new battery. It’s a mystery up there with dark matter and the question of why you still can’t buy a toaster that browns both sides of the bread equally: why do batteries suck? Continue reading...

Radical combination of antibodies and antibiotics could effectively clear up “superbug” infections and TB, as well as reducing harm to healthy microbesA precision drug therapy that wipes out bugs that hide in the body could help clear up persistent infections that do not respond to standard antibiotics.The treatment works by tagging antibiotics onto antibodies which home in on pathogens and deliver a lethal dose of drug directly to the heart of the infected tissues.

Space agency says astronauts will pave the way for putting humans on the surface of Mars, as it accepts applications for the first time since 2011A new class of astronauts is being sought by Nasa, now that a return to crewed missions from American soil is on the horizon.The US space agency said it would accept applications for its astronaut corps from 14 December to mid-February 2016 and announce the successful candidates in mid-2017.

Readers answer other readers’ questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific conceptsIf you’re dreaming that a fierce beast is chasing you, thus potentially triggering the fight or flight reaction, does your body produce adrenaline even if you’re asleep?Angela Brassley, Ilsington, Newton Abbot, Devon Continue reading...

Twitter recently introduced ‘hearts’ and ‘likes’ instead of stars and favourites. Is this seemingly-innocuous change part of an ongoing attempt to wipe out the more dedicated users?Enthusiastic Twitter users are currently reeling from a huge shift in the way the omnipresent social network functions. The owners and operators of Twitter have introduced a virtual-world altering shift, on a par with the collapse of the Roman Empire in ancient times, or the first demonstration of nuclear weapons in the 20 century. Understandably, people are shocked, outraged, exasperated, even scared in some cases.For those of you not on Twitter, what happened is this: until now, if you liked a tweet, you had the option of tagging it as a “favourite”, via a little yellow star icon underneath it. Now, this option is gone, taken from us without warning and cast into the endless void never to return, like George Osborne’s credibility. Instead of “favourites”, you now have to “like” a tweet, and instead of a yellow star, it’s a red heart. Obviously, this is an unspeakable outrage, with some proposing “extreme” measures to address it. Continue reading...

Progressives need to rediscover their Promethean ambitions and counter green ideologies that hold us back and won’t save the planetDespite the anti-capitalist rhetoric of green-left writers like Naomi Klein and Bill McKibben, and the anti-corporate street protests of environmental NGOs, could it be that their small-is-beautiful, degrowth, localist, organic, anti-GMO and anti-nuclear approach to solving climate change and biodiversity loss is in fact working in service of neoliberalism (while not even doing much to help the planet either)?Ever since The Population Bomb, the 1968 bestseller by serial-Chicken-Little and anti-natalist Paul Ehrlich, warning that four billion would die of starvation by the end of the 1980s, and the Club of Rome’s 1972 report Limits to Growth that predicted civilizational “overshoot and collapse” within decades, neo-Malthusians have been telling us we need to degrow the economy and retreat from a Western, consumerist, high-technology, unsustainable way of life, or else Hobbesian doom is all but a fortnight away. Continue reading...

Every day, millions of internet users ask Google some of life’s most difficult questions, big and small. Our writers answer some of the most common queries

More seaside cop shenanigans; a major survey of postwar British popular culture; Elvis Presley at 80. Plus, a physicist finally explains why the sky is blueThe spirited Brighton-based cop show continues, with cases including a client dying on a working girl, a couple of light-fingered farmhands, a distraction burglary – and a Ravey Davey drug-dealing throwback Continue reading...

We all know that too much time with tech is bad for the mind, but even resisting temptation is taking its toll on us, argues Tom Chatfield. Those phantom messages, where you imagine your phone vibrating – that’s your body trying to tell you something. Over half of us now suffer from nomophobia – anxiety of being out of phone contact – and our willpower and attention are suffering as a result

Physicists have spent decades trying to reconcile two very different theories. But is a winner about to emerge – and transform our understanding of everything from time to gravity?It is the biggest of problems, it is the smallest of problems. At present physicists have two separate rulebooks explaining how nature works. There is general relativity, which beautifully accounts for gravity and all of the things it dominates: orbiting planets, colliding galaxies, the dynamics of the expanding universe as a whole. That’s big. Then there is quantum mechanics, which handles the other three forces – electromagnetism and the two nuclear forces. Quantum theory is extremely adept at describing what happens when a uranium atom decays, or when individual particles of light hit a solar cell. That’s small.Related: Sign up to the long read email Continue reading...

Discovery by Stanford University researchers could challenge assumption that ability to ‘push’ water is a widely desired evolutionary traitFor the longest time, science has assumed that in order to run, swim, or fly, animals and humans must exert pressure on the ground, water or air around them to project themselves forward.

Asian emerald ash borer, given the maximum risk rating to the tree species, is ‘moving uncontrolled’ through Russia having established itself in US and CanadaA tiny beetle could wipe out Britain’s ash trees much faster than the established ash dieback disease which is expected to eventually kill millions of the trees, according to the government’s leading authority on pests and pathogens threatening UK forests.“The emerald ash borer is moving uncontrolled through Russia. It flies long distances, moves quickly and can reproduce in the UK,” said Nicola Spence, chief plant health scientist. The beetle has not has yet arrived in the UK, but she warned: “There is a high risk of it being introduced and establishing itself.” Continue reading...

Scientists claimed that Dutch chimpanzees who joined a group in Scotland modified their calls for food in line with the locals – but not everyone agreesDo Edinburgh chimps hoot with an accent? And could Dutch newcomers pick up their Scottish lilt?These are the questions dividing primate researchers, some of whom have disputed a high-profile study that asserted a troop of chimps changed their calls to match the locals, and that the findings shed light on the evolution of language. Continue reading...

His first book was about the Grateful Dead. His second, about autism, has just taken the Samuel Johnson prize. Meet neuro-warrior Steve Silberman, friend of Allen Ginsberg and ‘gay coach’ to Oliver SacksSteve Silberman hasn’t slept: a combination of jetlag, excitement and genuine surprise at winning the Samuel Johnson prize for non-fiction. These morning-after interviews with happy, sleepy authors can be rather ritualised, but Silberman is a delight: a bulky (think John Goodman) American whose black braces just about keep his baggy trousers up, and who talks non-stop about his book – a history of changing perceptions of autism over the past 80 years – and the curious art-meets-science life that produced it.Neurotribes is the first popular science book to win the prize – an important breakthrough, he says, not least because “science is under attack in America, particularly from Republican party presidential candidates. Ben Carson, who is himself a doctor, touts his disbelief in evolution.” Silberman reckons the book won because it combines “history, science and real-time interactions with people”, and that the judges responded to its optimistic conclusion that people with autism, marginalised for so long despite having much to offer, were being embraced at last.

In a recent poll, two-thirds of Americans say they accept climate change, and the vast majority say human activities cause it – but they aren’t very worriedMost Americans know the climate is changing, but they say they are just not that worried about it, according to a new poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. And that is keeping the American public from demanding and getting the changes that are necessary to prevent global warming from reaching a crisis, according to climate and social scientists.As top-level international negotiations to try to limit greenhouse gas emissions start later this month in Paris, the AP-NORC poll taken in mid-October shows about two out of three Americans accept global warming and the vast majority of those say human activities are at least part of the cause. Continue reading...

Scientists are struggling to explain the mass die-off of at least 150,000 endangered saiga antelopes in Kazakhstan earlier this yearMore than half of the world’s population of an endangered antelope died within two weeks earlier this year, in a phenomenon that scientists are unable to explain.Related: Kazakhstan's mass antelope deaths mystify conservationists Continue reading...

Southwark Playhouse, London

Silicon Valley Robotics boss says robots can spare people from having to interact human-to-human

The accepted wisdom is that the young are more radical than the old. But is this true, and if it is, why should our politics change with the years?Any man who is under 30, and is not a liberal, has no heart; and any man who is over 30, and is not a conservative, has no brains.This maxim – variously attributed to Winston Churchill, Benjamin Disraeli and Victor Hugo, among others – neatly captures the common notion that to be on the left of the political spectrum is to be young and idealistic, while to be on the right is to be older and more pragmatic. But is there any evidence for this? Continue reading...

The city’s toxic air has been linked to allergies, respiratory conditions, birth malformations and increasing incidence of cancers. But as a recent car-free experiment showed, action to cut pollution can be effectiveFor a few hours one morning two weeks ago, private cars were banned from driving into the heart of old Delhi. It was hard to tell at the messy road junction in front of the historic Red Fort and the shopping street of Chandni Chowk, though, which was still crammed with auto-rickshaws and buses barrelling along the roads with seemingly little regard for any traffic rules.

From the microscopic to the macroscopic, this is an original and gripping look at the universe and our place in itThose who remember Douglas Adams’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy will recall the Total Perspective Vortex, a device that shows the entire universe (cleverly extrapolated from a piece of fairy cake) to anyone placed inside it. The resulting feeling of complete insignificance is enough to shatter the victim’s mind permanently.I am pleased to report that this book, which aims to show us our place in the grand scheme of things, will not make you lose your marbles. However it may, to use the parlance of a bygone era, blow your mind a bit. In one four-page period, my marginal notes went from “!” to “!!” to “!!!” Continue reading...

A bright green fireball, thought to be a meteorite, falls across the sky above Bangkok on Monday. Footage recorded by a dashcam shows the light, which was spotted all across the region in Thailand, light up the darkness with the Thia Astronomical Society stating that the phenomenon could be identified as a “fireball” due to its level of brightness. A similar event was also recorded in Poland on Saturday Continue reading...

The manned satellite has been inhabited by 220 people from 17 countries, with the first Briton due in DecemberThe International Space Station – the manned satellite that constantly circles the Earth in low orbit – clocked up 15 years of continuous occupation on Monday.Since the first permanent crew moved in on 2 November 2000, 220 people representing 17 countries have come and gone. Most of those visitors have been American – a result of all the space shuttle flights that were needed to deliver station pieces. Continue reading...

Nasa research finds ice in the region has gone into ‘irreversible retreat’ and claims effect is ‘unstoppable’A key area of ice in west Antarctica may already be unstable enough to cause global sea levels to rise by three metres of ocean rise, scientists said on Monday.The study follows research published last year, led by Nasa glaciologist Eric Rignot, warning that ice in the Antarctic had gone into a state of irreversible retreat, that the melting was considered “unstoppable” and could raise sea level by 1.2 metres. Continue reading...

The health minister, Sussan Ley, says 17 over-the-counter medicines will be taken off Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme from 1 JanuaryThe Turnbull government has confirmed it will press ahead with removing common medicines such as paracetamol and aspirin from the list of subsidised drugs.Related: Painkillers and antacids may be removed from subsidised medicines list Continue reading...

Alarming trend among less-educated 45- to 54-year-olds largely thought to be a result of more suicides and the misuse of drugs and alcoholA sharp rise in death rates among white middle-aged Americans has claimed nearly as many lives in the past 15 years as the spread of Aids in the US, researchers have said.The alarming trend, overlooked until now, has hit less-educated 45- to 54-year-olds the hardest, with no other groups in the US as affected and no similar declines seen in other rich countries.

Dashcam captures a bright fireball, believed to be a meteor burning in the sky, above Poland on Saturday. A huge green light is seen shooting across the sky over Nowy Dwór Mazowiecki in eastern Poland, burning bright and then disappearing out of sight Continue reading...

Fourteen healthy children have been fathered by previously infertile men in Japanese trial using round spermatid injectionFourteen babies have been born following the injection of very immature sperm cells into eggs – a technique that could help infertile men to become fathers, scientists say.The 14 children were born to 12 men and their partners in Japan after round spermatid injection (Rosi), which has been banned in the UK since the 1990s due to concerns for the health of any children it might create. Continue reading...

The International Space Station celebrates its 15th anniversary of human occupation on Monday. Since the first permanent crew moved in on 2 November 2000, 220 people have come and gone, representing 17 countries. More than 26,500 meals have been dished up and the complex has grown from three to 13 rooms Continue reading...

The Fortingall yew in Perthshire has started to produce red berries, suggesting a change of sex in one of its branches. It’s an unusual – but not unprecedented – switchAfter possibly 5,000 years alive, doing anything other than dying would be a surprise. But Britain’s oldest tree is very much alive – and has amazed observers by apparently changing sex.Fortingall yew in Perthshire is justly famous as one of the oldest living things in Europe, although no one knows its true age because its most ancient parts have decayed and disappeared. Continue reading...

Imlygic programs viruses to attack only cancer cells and gives patients more humane options – potentially ‘a complete change in the game’ in treatmentA new cancer treatment strategy is on the horizon that experts say could be a game-changer and spare patients the extreme side effects of existing options such as chemotherapy.Chemotherapy and other current cancer treatments are brutal, scorched-earth affairs that work because cancer cells are slightly – but not much – more susceptible to the havoc they wreak than the rest of the body. Their side effects are legion, and in many cases horrifying – from hair loss and internal bleeding to chronic nausea and even death. Continue reading...

Nasa marks 15 years of humans living on board the International Space Station (ISS) on Monday. Members of the ISS Expedition 45 spoke from on board the ISS to mark the milestone occasion. ISS commander Scott Kelly says the space station serves as the most important experiment they conduct as a moving vehicle keeping humans alive for long periods of time Continue reading...