Genes and the Bioimaginary, by Professor Deborah Lynn Steinberg, investigates whether the foundations of much genetic research are scientifically soundThe last few decades have seen what some describe as a “genetic revolution”. Advances in genetic science have seen genes become all-encompassing in political and scientific discussion.Do a quick survey of recent stories, for example, and you will find research that claims “intelligence, creativity and bipolar disorder may share underlying genetics” and a much-reported story that found that Holocaust survivors may have passed ontrauma to their children through their genes. Genetics has come to explain almost everything about our identities, whether it is our weight, our sexuality, or even if we are likely to become a criminal. Continue reading...

The Shoreham plane crash has prompted calls for a review of airshow safety. But everyday safety on Britain’s A roads is an issue receiving little attentionSince the Shoreham Airshow crash, which claimed at least eleven lives, many have called for a review of airshow safety. They question the level of risk in having vintage jets fly acrobatic manoeuvres, and many displays have now been grounded. By focusing on the aircraft though, these people have failed to recognize the most dangerous element in the crash: not the Hawker Hunter jet, but the road it crashed into.

Eighty-five-year-old twins from Brooklyn are setting off on what they say will be their final voyage. Their plan to die at sea has an undeniable romanceThe endlessness of the sea offers an eternal alternative. Perhaps if we just pushed off into it, we could escape death itself – as if its amniotic waters might be a return to a universal womb. After all, the sea is where we came from in the first place. There’s a definite romance to saying goodbye to the land, and setting sail for that last adventure.Van and Carl Vollmer, 85-year-old twins from Brooklyn, certainly think so. The brothers are about to embark on the handsome 158ft, three-masted barquentine, the Peacemaker, on a round-the-world voyage in search of remote islands and sunken galleons, from the Panama Canal to the Great Barrier Reef, the Philippines, and on to the Mediterranean. Continue reading...

Free online dictionary releases list of 1,000 latest words added to its database – with new entries also including Grexit, Brexit and beer o’clockBritons are offending commuters by manspreading, revelling in bants with their friends at beer o’clock, and being charged cakeage for bringing a birthday dessert into a restaurant, but it’s NBD.

The BBC’s recent announcement that its weather forecasts will no longer be provided by the Met Office has triggered widespread debate, but has this partnership always been solid, and are we right to fear the end of cooperation between these two cherished public services? Alexander Hall investigatesOn Sunday it was announced that after a 93-year relationship, the UK’s national weather service, the Met Office, would no longer be providing weather forecasts for the UK’s public service broadcaster, the BBC. The Met Office will no longer supply forecast data or weather presenters across all of the BBC’s platforms*, as Auntie Beeb looks to secure best value for money for license fee payers by tendering the contract to outside competition. Despite the seeming omnipresent nature of Met Office-presented weather on the BBC, the history of the special association between these two cherished British institutions suggests that there is nothing inevitable or straightforward about their relationship.On Monday, as people woke up to the news, the internet reacted with the usual cacophony of guffaws, outrage, “I told you so”s and conspiracy theories. Amongst the reasons put forward as to the real cause of the split the full spectrum of political agendas were evident, from blaming the EU for forcing the BBC to openly tender for the contract, to questions of the current government’s penchant for privatisation of public services, through to the usual Met Office bashing from climate change sceptics. Continue reading...

Scientists say warming waters and melting ice were to blame for levels rising faster than 50 years ago and ‘it’s very likely to get worse’Sea levels worldwide have risen an average of nearly eight centimetres (three inches) since 1992 because of warming waters and melting ice, a panel of Nasa scientists said on Wednesday.

Highly sensitive test can accurately predict relapses several months before new tumours show up on hospital scans

US study shows sharp drop in memory awareness about two years before the development of symptoms

Himalayan balsam is in bloom, its stunning helmet-shaped flowers giving off a heady fragrance unlike any other plant. It is also spectacular, standing up to over 10ft tall and growing in dense clusters. But this is a highly contentious plant that can spread rapidly and colonise damp ground, and with no natural enemies in the UK it has become a widespread weed.Himalayan balsam was brought here in 1839 from the western Himalayas and made a magnificent garden plant. But it didn’t take long before it escaped and began colonising the banks of waterways across the country. It grows at astonishing speed, up to 1.5 inches a day, and so tightly packed that it smothers most other plant life. And each plant produces up to 800 seeds that are flung into the air and can land up to 35ft away when the seedpods explode, helping spread the plants. Continue reading...

American and Russian astronauts use separate water filtration systems on ISS, as Nasa astronauts also collect Russian urine when available to increase supplyWhat’s the difference between American and Russian astronauts on the International Space Station? The Americans drink their urine, the Russians don’t.“It tastes like bottled water,” Layne Carter, water subsystem manager for the ISS at Nasa’s Marshall Space Flight Center told Bloomberg. “As long as you can psychologically get past the point that it’s recycled urine and condensate that comes out of the air.” Continue reading...

A fossilised dinosaur foot found by a student on a Welsh beach could be from the earliest known ancestor of Tyrannosaurus rex, experts sayA dinosaur foot found by chance on a Welsh beach could be from the earliest known ancestor of Tyrannosaurus rex.Palaeontology student Sam Davies made the discovery while searching for fossils on Lavernock Beach, near Penarth, South Wales. Continue reading...

Previously in the business of snapping supermodels, a chance meeting at a bus stop made this fashion photographer look again at young people affected visibly by genetic disease.See a gallery of Guidotti’s Positive Exposure pictures.I’m in a hotel in Seattle watching photographer Rick Guidotti at work. Amid high fives and shouts of “awesome” a group of young people are laughing and posing as he clicks away, capturing the wide smiles and infectious enthusiasm in the room. This is not an average photo shoot, however, and Rick is not your average photographer. Each of the young people has Costello Syndrome, a rare genetic syndrome, characterised by very distinct physical features, varying degrees of learning disability and an increased risk of cancer.A few years ago, Guidotti was a successful fashion photographer, flying between New York, Paris and Milan working on high-profile campaigns for YSL, Revlon, Elle, Vogue and Marie Claire, photographing some of the most beautiful women in the world.

Surprisingly enough complexity turns out to be complicated to handle - but here two physicists offer a set of principles for where to startJean Boulton is a onetime theoretical physicist turned consultant, and one of her passions is complexity and systems thinking, and their implications for how organisations, including development agencies, go about their work.She’s teamed up with fellow lapsed physicist Peter Allen, and Cliff Bowman (a “theorist and practitioner of strategy,” whatever that is) to write Embracing Complexity: Strategic Perspectives for an Age of Turbulence, a smart, 250-page introduction to complexity and its implications for action. Continue reading...

Despite our marquee not surviving the Welsh rain, science is a strong part of Green Man’s identity, and what makes it specialThis weekend I took part in one of the more unusual science-communication events I’ve ever done. I, along with other researchers in my lab group, risked both sunburn and trench foot to bring a science stall to Green Man.Despite being predominantly a music festival, Green Man takes its science seriously. There is a whole area called Einstein’s Garden, with science stalls run by academics, and a programmed stage and tent operating throughout the whole festival. Science-themed activities include singing, stand up comedy, plays, interactive shows for kids, demos, skeletons, even 4-hour taxidermy workshops! Continue reading...

Scientists say there is a formula for winning the stick-throwing bridge game made famous by Winnie the Pooh and friendsPoohsticks, the timeless game made famous by Winnie the Pooh, Piglet and Christopher Robin, is not a game of chance, according to scientists – and there’s even a formula to win.The game, in which competitors drop sticks into a river upstream off a bridge and see which comes out downstream first, is first mentioned in the book The House At Pooh Corner by AA Milne published in 1928. Continue reading...

Physicist says information sucked into a black hole may emerge in another universeAll is not lost if you fall into a black hole – you could simply pop up in another universe, according to Stephen Hawking.

Every day, millions of internet users ask Google life’s most difficult questions, big and small. Our writers answer some of the commonest queriesThe answer to this question may surprise you. Your life will begin when two important changes take place. Fortunately, these changes are totally within your control. They are attitudes, not circumstances, and both have been chosen by you rather than imposed upon you, although you may not be aware of having made those choices.The first impediment to living fully right now is the belief that you need to consider all possible options before you commit to anything. We believe in choice – when asked, most people will tell you that it’s better to have lots of choices. That way, most people will say, you’ll make a better decision, and feel happier and more satisfied as a result. Continue reading...

Sarcoptic mange can leave southern hairy-nosed and bare-nosed wombats blind and deaf before eventually killing themTwo of Australia’s three native wombat species are under threat from a disease which can leave the animal blind and deaf, and eventually kill them.

Dust from 1100 homes was surveyed to learn more about microbes that might exacerbate breathing problems and allergies ... or even have health benefitsIf the steady build-up of grime, stains and crumbs on the floor is not enough to spur you to a home cleaning spree, then research on the bugs that lurk in house dust might just do the job.

Free-living songbirds show increased stress hormone levels when nesting under white street lights. But different light spectra may have different physiological effects as this study finds, suggesting that using street lights with specific colour spectra may mitigate effects of light pollution on wildlifeA study published today in the journal Biology Letters reports that free-living urban songbirds have increased levels of the stress hormone, corticosterone, in their bloodstream when they nest under street lights. Higher corticosterone concentrations raises the likelihood that birds will prematurely abandon their nests, eggs and chicks. The study, which also investigated the effects of other colours of artificial lighting on wild birds, found that corticosterone levels decrease as nest distance increases from a lamppost with red lighting. This research suggests it may be possible to reduce the disturbing effects of night lighting on wildlife by using street lights with specific colour spectra. Continue reading...

For too long, scientists focused on what we can see. Now they are at last starting to decode life’s softwareThis summer marked the centenary of one of Britain’s most famous and controversial scientists – the astronomer Fred Hoyle. Hoyle’s championing of steady-state cosmology was daring enough, and turned out to be ultimately misguided, but his foray into the origin and nature of life in the 1970s prompted fierce criticism. He argued that the odds of life spontaneously springing from a non-living mix of chemicals were comparable to that of a whirlwind sweeping through a junkyard and assembling a Boeing 707.Creationists often seize on Hoyle’s analogy to argue that life must have had a divine origin, which is curious because in 1970 the Nobel prizewinner Jacques Monod reasoned the exact opposite, citing the extreme improbability of life as an argument for atheism. He thought that if the laws of nature were somehow rigged in favour of life, it would look like design. Francis Crick, another committed atheist, also commented that life’s origin seemed “almost a miracle”. Continue reading...

Yet another article about people having difficulties in the workplace (G2, 25 August) without a single mention of the words “trade unions”. Can I just clarify that you do realise we exist outside of the confines of rail strikes and the Labour leadership election?

Researchers say findings may have important public health implications as vitamin supplements are relatively safe and cost-effectiveLack of vitamin D may be a direct cause of multiple sclerosis (MS), a study has found. The discovery may have important public health implications since so many people have insufficient levels of the essential vitamin, researchers say.The findings may help explain why rates of MS, a potentially disabling auto-immune disease that damages nerve fibres, are higher in high-latitude regions such as northern Europe, which have fewer sunny days. Sunshine triggering a chemical reaction in the skin is the primary source of vitamin D. Continue reading...

A robotic arm and a bionic penis both made headlines this week. Here are eight other prosthetic innovations that could revolutionise surgery

My mother, RaeJeanne Kier, who has died aged 82, was an early feminist, one of the first subscribers to Ms magazine and a member of the US National Organization of Women. She proudly pioneered the new feminist role model for her daughters and her peers – that of the married, educated female professional. She had a busy private practice as a child and clinical psychologist in Connecticut for more than 30 years, and later joined the staff of the Bridgeport Child Development Center as a clinical psychologist, from which she retired after many years.She was a dedicated advocate for children and supported various community and international organisations, notably Unicef. Her interest in world affairs and global climate change was fuelled by reading Guardian Weekly. She also wrote countless letters to her representatives in the US Congress expressing her views. Continue reading...

Swedish woman who lost her uterus to cancer received her mother’s womb in pioneering transplant and got pregnant via IVFA pioneering procedure has led to a baby being born from the same womb that nurtured his mother.The Swedish mother, who lost her uterus to cancer in her 20s, said it was “unimaginable” that she now had her own child thanks to her mother’s donated womb. Continue reading...

A new exhibition opens this week at the Tate Britain where visitors can use their senses to experience art in a different way. Tom Purset of Flying Object, who are behind the Tate Sensorium exhibition, says the change to the traditional atmosphere of art galleries has made people think differently about the pieces of art. Visitors to the gallery are provided with a wristband that records their biometrical data as they react to the exhibition, which will be analysed by the University of Sussex Continue reading...

There’s been a lot of news about joke thieves recently, but it’s a practice that’s been around for years. Why does it happen, and how do people get away with it so often? As someone who recently experienced it first-hand, here are some possible explanations.Last year, my friend asked to use the one working USB port on my ageing (since replaced) computer to recharge his e-cigarette. However, I was currently using it to charge my Kindle. I then realised what a ridiculous scenario this would have been as little as 5 years ago, so I tweeted about it.Last night my mate asked to use a USB port to charge his cigarette, but I was using it to charge my book. The future is stupid. Continue reading...

Giant panda had been expected to give birth last week, but experts now suspect she absorbed the foetus into the wombEdinburgh zoo has said that its giant panda Tian Tian has again lost a cub during pregnancy, despite growing optimism in recent weeks that the zoo’s midwifery would finally pay off.Staff at the zoo had been convinced that Tian Tian’s prospects were greater than ever this year after her hormone readings and behaviour showed her pregnancy was going to plan, following her artificial insemination with semen from her mate, Yang Guang, in March.

After years of disappointment, staff at Edinburgh zoo hoped that this month would bring the birth of a baby panda. But is captive breeding really the way to save the species?At about 5pm on 25 March, a cold, wet Wednesday earlier this year, Tian Tian, the female giant panda at Edinburgh zoo, stirred from the wooden platform in her outdoor enclosure and began to bleat. Tian Tian, who was born in Beijing zoo in 2003, has proved a terrific hit with visitors since she arrived in Britain with the zoo’s male panda, Yang Guang, in December 2011. Yang Guang, whose name means “Sunshine”, might be a larger and, to all appearances, more affable creature, but Tian Tian (“Sweetie”) is a panda with more edge, more wit and more dash.These are unusual qualities. Pandas are vegetarian bears with slow metabolisms. They subsist almost entirely on bamboo, which they digest poorly. They do everything they can to avoid unnecessary exertion. If you give Yang Guang a ball, he will most likely see if he can eat it, then let it go. Tian Tian, on the other hand, has been known to skip after balls and do forward rolls. Sometimes she hangs from the bars on the top of her indoor den – a pose that her handlers call “ninja panda” – just for the hell of it. She is not all nice. Tian Tian has bullied keepers off the job, and sometimes takes sly swipes with her enormous claws at passing vets. “She has got her own mind, most definitely,” said Alison Maclean, the chief panda keeper at Edinburgh zoo, who seems to love her deeply for precisely this reason. “You have to be very, very careful around her.” Continue reading...

Remember winter, when everything was cold and grey? Right now, when all around is lush and green, the contrast couldn’t be greater. But is everything really as it seems? New research shows that we see things differently in winter compared with summer.Our eyes perceive four pure, unmixed colours – blue, green, red and yellow. People often find it hard to agree exactly what shade pure blue, green and red are, but curiously we tend to see pure yellow the same way, despite having different eyes. Lauren Welbourne, a psychologist at the University of York, wondered if that was because yellow is influenced more by the world around us than the biology of our eyes. Continue reading...

Tropical species with smaller geographical ranges are more likely to die out in a warming climate than those that can adapt by ‘invading’ new regionsSpecies native to the Great Barrier Reef are more likely to face extinction through climate change than marine life elsewhere that can adapt by “invading” new regions, according to new research.

Gladstone collars, Anthony Eden hats, Wilson’s raincoats – now it’s Jeremy Corbyn vests. Why are male politicians judged by their clothing rather than their policies and principles?

Websites try to suggest everything from your next best friend to your next best shirt. But are these recommendations a help or a hindrance? Four writers look at how algorithms shape their online lives

Talking to Daniel Bye about his Fringe First-winning performance lecture throws up some interesting ideas about the interaction between science and society“I’d say it’s quite funny for about the first 5 mins then rapidly downhill “, says Daniel Bye of his Fringe First-winning Edinburgh show, Going Viral. “There are more laughs in it later on, but it is quite a bleak view of the world, or rather, a view which is bleak. Well. That’s really going to make people want to see it.”It might sound less attractive than a hazmat suit, but if you’re at all interested in science and ideas you should catch it.

Annual vaccinations could be a thing of the past as scientists have successfully tested vaccines on animals infected with different strains of influenzaA universal flu vaccine that protects against multiple strains of the virus is a step closer after scientists created experimental jabs that work in animals.

Gaze adoringly at your loved one, and they will soon look deformed, monstrous or like your mother, according to a study. One writer puts it to the testThe first two minutes are the trickiest. My partner, C, and I are seated opposite one another in our bedroom, staring into each other’s eyes. As she does every single morning after finishing her breakfast, our dog saunters in and burps resonantly, as close to our faces as she can aim. We burst into laughter but do not break eye contact. Only another eight minutes to go …We’re doing something we’ve never done in our 11 years together: looking into each other’s eyes without pausing, smiling or talking for 10 minutes. No, this is not some Relate-endorsed attempt to save our relationship, though I wouldn’t put it past C, who has just qualified as a Gestalt therapist and does this sort of thing for larks, to suggest it. “Ten minutes?” she splutters when I instruct her to come home immediately and look into my eyes. “Last time I did it, it was only four and I was in love with the man by the end!” Continue reading...

It’s becoming increasingly difficult to keep track of online reading material. That’s why physical print-outs sometimes trump a digital copies

A recent article stated that (male) victims of the Ashley Madison hack deserve their fate. Real life, however, is far from being so clear cut.I’ve heard a lot of gloating in the light of the Ashley Madison hack - most of it along the lines that the cheaters on the site deserved to be outed because cheating on your partner is an awful thing to do. It was only today that I saw the first solid ground laid for the “well they shouldn’t have been so stupid” argument.Yesterday, Barbara Ellen explained that she isn’t sorry for any of the men who were exposed in the Ashley Madison hack because they were just plain stupid: Continue reading...

A series of experiments has produced incredible results by giving young blood to old mice. Now the findings are being tested on humans. Ian Sample meets the scientists whose research could transform our lives

Did German physicists have a plan in the 1930s? And if so, was their physics any help?Last week, on the plane back from Chicago, I finished Philip Ball’s book about physics in Germany in the nineteen-thirties and -forties. I’m still thinking about it, and I’m trying to work out why it has left such a strong impression. I think it is because the compromises, recriminations and judgements formed have echoes, weak but clear, in so many other arguments going on today.It is difficult to be nuanced about Nazis. There are obvious reasons for this, but it is nevertheless sometimes important to try. That genocidal ideology came from somewhere, and looking back on the period through a lens which colours everyone as hero or monster is not necessarily helpful for gaining understanding, and therefore not necessarily a good approach to the prevention of such abominations in future. Continue reading...

Despite a freedom of information request, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills refuses to share details of the funding review it has commissioned from the consultancy McKinsey.Openness and transparency can save money, strengthen people’s trust in government and encourage greater public participation in decision-making. Or so says the gov.uk website. But that doesn’t seem to be the modus operandi in Sajid Javid’s Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS).Over the summer, rumours have been swirling (first published by the Guardian’s Political Science blog) that the consultants McKinsey & Company have been called in by BIS to advise where cuts could be made to the department’s budget, which includes £4.7 billion of annual investment in science, research and innovation. This is an internal review, and hasn’t been officially announced, but we understand it is due to report in early September, in time to inform spending review negotiations. Continue reading...

In this era of hi-tech surgery and medical innovation, dentistry can feel a little left behind. But is this fair, or just an image problem?Who among us hasn’t had this thought, as a dentist industriously and cheerfully chisels and scrapes and drills away at your teeth: surely there is a better way?When anthropologists last month discovered evidence of dental handiwork in a 14,000-year-old tooth, the surprising thing about it wasn’t the fact that people in the stone age had cavities and tried to do something about them. It was the fact that the procedure seemed so … familiar. Continue reading...

A webcam captures Mei Xiang, female giant panda, giving birth at the Smithsonian National Zoo in Washington. The 17-year-old panda gave birth to two cubs on Saturday, having been artificially inseminated with sperm from two male pandas.The Smithsonian is one of four zoos in the US to have pandas, which are on loan from China Continue reading...

The psychologist and popular science author on data graphics, spectacular planet photography and the ambitious comedy of Amy SchumerSteven Pinker is a Canadian experimental psychologist renowned for his work in the fields of cognitive science and linguistics. He is a professor at Harvard and a prolific author, with bestsellers on how the mind works (the title of one of his two Pulitzer-nominated books) and the science of language. In his controversial 2011 work, The Better Angels of Our Nature, he argues that violence in human societies is on the wane. Pinker regularly crops up on lists of top global thinkers. His most recent book is The Sense of Style, in which he offers guidelines for achieving clarity in non-fiction writing. Killian Fox Continue reading...

Previously unpublished correspondence shows how wartime codebreaker longed for permanent relationshipMore than 60 years after codebreaker Alan Turing’s death in an apparent suicide, his battle with his sexuality and longing for a permanent relationship have emerged in three previously unpublished letters.The correspondence dates from the 1950s when, after being found guilty of gross indecency with a 19-year-old man, he had been sentenced to chemical castration. Continue reading...