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...

Access to fertility treatment encourages more education and career planning, says a study looking at Israel, where IVF has been free to all citizens since 1994Women who live in countries where IVF is widely available are more likely to delay the key events in their personal lives so that they can focus on building their careers.New research suggests that women with ready access to IVF are more likely to marry, to complete their university education and to pursue postgraduate qualifications later on in their lives. Continue reading...

Eminent journals and peer-reviewed academic papers are supposed to convince us of scientific truth. Here’s why we should all be wary…Science is emphatically not a belief system. It doesn’t require faith, and it works: civilisation is built on science working. But it’s a full-time job to keep on top of one subject, and impossible to stay up to date across a range of fields. We have to trust that the system works. But does it?This is the process: scientists do the research – primarily paid for by you – which gets written up and peer-reviewed before publication as a paper in a journal. Getting published in a journal is not a mark of truth but that your research is credible enough to warrant entering the literature for ongoing scrutiny. Published papers are the benchmark of academic success, and the media’s main focus. Continue reading...

Mind control still sounds like the stuff of sci-fi movies. But it’s coming closer, with implants that can help people with paralysis and, further off, devices to send thoughts between humansAhundred electrodes are pressed tightly against my scalp and a mixture of salt water and baby shampoo is dripping down my back. The goings-on in my slightly agitated brain are represented by a baffling array of graphs on a screen in front of me. When I close my eyes and relax, the messy spikes and troughs become neat little waves.Next, scientists here at Newcastle University’s Institute of Neuroscience induce small electric currents in different parts of my head, using a technique called transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). If they fire the device a few millimetres to the left of my brain’s motor cortex, I feel nothing. Hit my “sweet spot”, however, and my arm moves of its own accord. Continue reading...

Admired for his work in documenting and promoting Syria’s cultural heritage, Asaad was regarded as a national treasure by regime loyalists and opponentsIslamic State’s execution of Khaled al-Asaad, the keeper of Palmyra’s extraordinary cultural artefacts, has inspired a rare consensus among Syria’s other political factions.The archaeologist and historian reportedly opposed the 2011 uprising against the country’s president, Bashar al-Assad, but his murder has provoked grief and condemnation from regime loyalists and opposition activists. Continue reading...

New research suggests that body posture during sleep may affect the efficiency of the brain’s self-cleaning processThe human brain can be compared to something like a big, bustling city. It has workers, the neurons and glial cells which co-operate with each other to process information; it has offices, the clusters of cells that work together to achieve specific tasks; it has highways, the fibre bundles that transfer information across long distances; and it has centralised hubs, the densely interconnected nodes that integrate information from its distributed networks.Like any big city, the brain also produces large amounts of waste products, which have to be cleared away so that they do not clog up its delicate moving parts. Until very recently, though, we knew very little about how this happens. The brain’s waste disposal system has now been identified. We now know that it operates while we sleep at night, just like the waste collectors in most big cities, and the latest research suggests that certain sleeping positions might make it more efficient. Continue reading...

DNA sequencing could be the key to quickly and cheaply identifying pathogen strains, as well as tracking routes of transmission and monitoring mutationsThis piece was first published on The ConversationIt is now 12 years since the first set of genetic instructions in a human was sequenced. Many of our hopes for using knowledge about the human genome to better fight the likes of heart disease and cancer still lie years and decades in the future, but DNA sequencing in healthcare is not all about tomorrow. It is already revolutionising clinical microbiology. Most exciting of all, it is giving us an important tool in our battle with drug-resistant strains of bacteria. These strains are one of the major growing threats to human health, and have just prompted new guidelines in the UK on how GPs should prescribe antibiotics. Continue reading...

Scientific researcher whose work made possible many new cancer treatmentsChris Marshall, a pioneering cancer researcher, who has died aged 66 from the disease he spent his life studying, made important discoveries which shaped our understanding of how cancers arise and which have helped in the development of advanced therapies to treat them.Among his most significant achievements was the identification of a human oncogene – a normal gene present in each cell that mutates and triggers cancer. This work began in 1980, when Chris established his own research team at the Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) in London. At that time the ICR had a distinguished record in understanding carcinogens and developing chemotherapeutic drugs, but lacked research into the rapidly developing areas of cell and molecular biology. Chris, with a colleague, Alan Hall, filled this gap. He was building on an astonishing discovery, made a few years earlier by scientists in the US, that the DNA taken out of a human cancer cell could be transferred to a mouse cell and that the mouse cell could then be turned into a cancer cell. Continue reading...

Josh Cathcart can now eat with cutlery and pull up his trousers for the first time thanks to i-limb quantum, a special child-sized handA nine-year-old boy, born with his right arm missing from the elbow, can build Lego, eat with a knife and fork and pull up his trousers for the first time thanks to a new bionic hand.Josh Cathcart, who was bullied because of his disability, declared his new limb “awesome” and could not wait to show it to his school friends, after becoming the first child in the UK to be fitted with the i-limb quantum, a special child-sized hand.

Like a karmic device come to punish our planetary transgressions, jellyfish thrive on the environmental chaos humans create. Is the age of the jellyfish upon us?Another British summer, another set of fear-mongering headlines about swarms of “deadly” jellyfish set to ruin your holiday. But news that jellyfish numbers may be rising carries implications far beyond the interrupted pastimes of the sunburnt masses.Like a karmic device come to punish our planetary transgressions, jellyfish thrive on the chaos humans create. Overfishing wipes out their competitors and predators; warmer water from climate change encourages the spread of some jellies; pollution from fertilisers causes the ocean to lose its oxygen, a deprivation to which jellyfish are uniquely tolerant; coastal developments provide convenient, safe habitat for their polyps to hide. In addition, the great mixing of species transported across the world in the ballasts of ships opens up new, vulnerable ecosystems to these super-adaptors. Continue reading...

With deaths from antibiotic resistance far outstripping even those of epidemics such as Ebola, scientists are desperate to discover new classes of antibioticsOff the coast of California, nearly 20,000 feet below the surface of the Pacific Ocean, scientists from the San Diego Institute of Oceaneography are collecting samples of marine life from the ocean floor. At first glance, these small clumps of sediment may appear nothing special, but the micro-organisms which lie within may one day provide an answer to one of the most urgent issues in modern healthcare: the global antibiotic resistance pandemic.To put the scale of the problem in perspective: the Ebola epidemic in West Africa captured the headlines in 2014, and in total the virus accounted for just over 11,000 fatalities, making it as the most devastating outbreak of the virus in history. Current estimates place the annual number of deaths from antibiotic resistant bacteria at around 700,000 worldwide. Unless things change this figure is predicted to rise to 10 million by 2050, with growing numbers of bacteria already fully resistant to every clinical antibiotic available. Continue reading...

The idea that genius and madness are intertwined is an ancient one. But in truth, in this desperately underfunded field, we don’t even have objective tools to diagnose disorders of the mind, let alone back up claims such as thisThe idea that highly creative or intelligent individuals are especially vulnerable to mental ill health has been around for a long time. “No great genius has ever existed without some touch of madness” is attributed to Aristotle in 350BC, and more recent examples of creative types describing their afflictions with great clarity are not hard to find.Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar and David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest are both achingly vivid portrayals of mental ill health; and both make uncomfortable reading in light of their author’s untimely deaths. Continue reading...

Space agency kills off internet rumour by confirming an asteroid strike will not wipe out humanity in the next few weeks, or years, or decadesGood news for those with plans for October and beyond: the Earth will still be in existence.Nasa has confirmed – after rumours swept the internet about an imminent asteroid strike expected between 15 and 28 September – that the two-week period in question will be entirely free of Earth-destroying space attacks. Continue reading...

A European Arianespace rocket was successfully launched from a South American spaceport on Thursday on a mission to deliver two new communications satellites into orbit. The unmanned Ariane 5 rocket left Guiana space center with a payload that includes the Eutelsat 8 West B satellite and the Intelsat 34 satellite Continue reading...

Nasa sheds new light on Saturn moon Dione, with pictures taken by the Cassini spacecraft on its latest close approach on Monday. Nasa says the grey, black and white images show Dione’s icy terrain in ‘the best resolution ever’ and are the result of shadows cast in sunlight reflecting off Saturn Continue reading...

Such racks, or tzompantli, were used to display severed heads of sacrifice victims on wooden poles, and this one is made partly of skulls mortared togetherArchaeologists say they have have found the main trophy rack of sacrificed human skulls at Mexico City’s Templo Mayor Aztec ruin site.

‘We’re not suggesting a do-nothing, wait-and-see approach,’ says lead researcher in study of more than 100,000 women with breast cancer of the milk ductWomen who are treated for what has come to be considered a non-invasive breast cancer of the milk duct could need less treatment – not more – a new study of more than 100,000 women indicates.The study, which appears in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Oncology this week, found that women treated for ductal carcinoma in situ, a group of abnormal cells found in the milk duct, were not significantly less likely to die of breast cancer than women on average. Some patients who received radiation therapy actually fared worse, especially if the treatment was on the left side. Continue reading...