I weighed myself every hour for the entire bank holiday weekend. Here’s what I found out.For a long time now I’ve been weighing myself daily, but I realised early on that the numbers you see when you step on the scales are almost always nonsense. Weight measurements are like opinion polls – individual results don’t tell you anything because there’s just too much random noise, error and variation. It’s only when you have a few dozen that you can start to reliably pick out a trend.But that noise made me curious. It’s easy to chalk up weight gains and losses to hidden forces or semi-scientific concepts like ‘starvation mode’, but when you do that you lose a sense of control. Understanding is power, and I wanted to understand what my body did over the course of a single day that caused my weight to vary so much from one morning to the next.

One in 50 of us are victims, left feeling like robots – and yet even doctors have to Google it. Now one sufferer is intent on helping millions out of their torment

Gathering for a summit on green chemicals, industry leaders and academics discussed how to solve the problems that threaten to stall 20 years of good intentionsChemistry is having “an innovation crisis”, according to John Warner, co-author of the 12 Principles of Green Chemistry. “We need to ask if the way we’re training future scientists is fitting the need of society.”The push for green chemistry began over two decades ago, and Warner has been part of the movement the whole time. On Wednesday, he presented one of two keynote speeches at a Guardian conference on green chemistry. Continue reading...

Portraits of some tropical bird species in Colombia’s Chocó-Andes region that will be agriculture’s winners and losers when their cloudforest neighbourhood is converted into cattle pastureRead more here. Continue reading...

Conversion of tropical forests to farms is a big driver of wildlife extinctions. But a new study shows that some farming practices have the potential to simultaneously protect natural habitats and boost farm yieldsOne of the main drivers of extinction is habitat loss that arises when tropical rainforests are converted to farms -- a trend that is escalating at a dramatic rate. But are some farming practices less harmful to local birds and other wild animals? This was the question asked in a study published today in the journal Current Biology. In this study, the authors recorded the overall diversity of bird species living on land-sharing cattle farms -- these appear to be wildlife-friendly because they include isolated trees and forest patches -- and compared it to land-sparing cattle farms that lack trees and forest patches and to neighbouring contiguous forest. The researchers found that land-sharing cattle farms retain less total bird biodiversity than do more intensive land-sparing cattle farms -- but only if the neighbouring contiguous forest is protected from human exploitation. Additionally, they found that overall avian biodiversity drops off faster for land-sharing cattle farms that are located farther away from contiguous forest. Continue reading...

Faced with learning anatomy for his medical degree at Glasgow University, Mike McCormick turned to the corner shop for help ... and Candy Anatomy was born Continue reading...

Replacing faulty coding in DNA offers giddying potential to banish diseases. But editing embryos is fraught with perils that must be considered with great careMore than 10,000 diseases result from mutations in one or other of the 20,000 genes in the human genome. The disorders are rare. But across the world they affect millions of people. They are responsible for a heavy loss of life. Scientists have worked for decades to perfect gene therapies that might treat some of these conditions. The latest weapon in their armoury is a technique called Crispr-Cas9, a form of genome editing. It works like the find and replace function on a word processor. Instead of correcting clumsy typos, it cuts out faulty DNA and replaces it with the right genetic lettering.Researchers are using Crispr-Cas9 to learn how genes control development, and how they affect health and disease. Radical therapies are on the cards. Scientists hope to draw immune cells from cancer patients, and rewrite their genomes, so that when the cells are put back they destroy the patients’ tumours. Separately, trials are under way to make people resistant to HIV by writing natural immunity into the DNA of their blood cells. It is early days, but the medical potential is breathtaking. Continue reading...

Most accurate count to date is over seven times higher than last estimate – but almost half have been cut down since the start of civilisation, say scientistsScientists have already calculated how many fish there are in the sea (230,000 species), and how many species there are on the planet overall (8.7m). Now they have had a crack at counting all of the world’s trees.Using a combination of satellite and ground measurements, researchers estimated that there are just over 3tn trees on the planet, over seven times as many as the current, non peer-reviewed reckoning that relied on satellite images alone.

Wenlock Edge, Shropshire The thrush’s gaze was defiant, proud – but I wondered if I read into it what I wanted to seeThe thrush held its prize in its beak, a worm plucked from the hedge, like a dog with a stick in its mouth. To me its gaze was defiant, ferocious and proud, but then I wondered if I was just reading into it what I wanted to see.I had spent the day talking to writers wandering in Rectory Wood, in Church Stretton. The wood contains remnants of plantings influenced by Capability Brown, and relics of grottos and vistas of the Picturesque garden movement. Continue reading...

Unexpectedly large numbers of people with learning disabilities treated with drugs normally reserved for those with severe mental illiness, study findsUnexpectedly large numbers of people with learning disabilities are being prescribed strong psychiatric drugs, possibly as a “chemical cosh” to quieten those with challenging behaviour, according to new research.A study published online by The British Medical Journal found that the number of people registered with GP practices with an intellectual or learning disability, who are being treated with psychotropic drugs far exceeds those with mental illness. Continue reading...

The NHS can’t afford to protect everyone from this rare but often fatal bug: babies over six months miss out. Here’s what you need to know if your child is not eligible for the vaccineBacterial meningitis is the worst nightmare of every parent roused by a screaming child at three in the morning. And with good reason: although relatively rare, affecting about 3,200 people in the UK each year, it kills one in ten of those infected. Although it can kill at any age, babies are the most common victim.So it’s great news that the NHS will start offering a vaccine against meningitis B this month to all babies in England, Scotland and Wales born after June 2015 (Northern Ireland may soon follow suit). And there will be a one-off catch-up for any baby born after March 2015 who will have missed the first jab in the series. Particularly vulnerable people, such as the immunocompromised, can already get the jab on the NHS. Continue reading...

The original Cavendish Laboratory – the crucible of modern science – is under threat. Boris Jardine explains why it’s important and why it should be saved.Amidst a chaotic jumble of museums, offices and laboratories in the centre of Cambridge there is one building that can legitimately claim to have changed the world: the Cavendish Laboratory, designed by the great Scottish scientist James Clerk Maxwell, where atoms were split, sub-atomic particles discovered and DNA unravelled.But the Cavendish may not survive in its current form for long. The ‘New Museums Site’ in which it lies is about to undergo a dramatic renovation: the scientific departments – in search of space and up-to-date facilities – have largely moved out of the city, and so the university wants to ‘create a window into the site’s history’. A noble aim, especially when the history of the place is so rich. But, bizarrely, the Cavendish Laboratory is slated for partial demolition. In the name of commemorating past achievement, we are about to lose some of the country’s most important scientific architecture. Continue reading...

US drug maker says disclosure of all historical trial data offers little value to patients, but critics say lack of information paints distorted picture of safetyPfizer, one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical groups, has said it will resist demands from investors and transparency campaigners that it disclose results from all historical drug trials.A powerful group of 85 investors, representing more than £2.5tn of assets, recently joined forces with medical research campaigners to press for greater transparency from the 25 largest pharmaceuticals groups in the world. Continue reading...

A new book aims to illustrate all the eccentricities of international onomatopoeia“I want Meryl Streep crying in five different accents.”