As we enjoy spectacular images of Pluto today, spare a thought for the person who first saw it 75 years agoToday Pluto, looking magnificent, is all over our newspapers and social media. But the person who first saw Pluto only did so as a result of much tedious effort. I write “saw”, as it would be misleading to say that Clyde Tombaugh “discovered” Pluto in February 1930. Certainly, he cannot be credited as the sole discoverer, given the mathematical, organisational, technical and scientific work, not to mention money, of several others that should also be recognised. He was just one part of a programme set up by Percival Lowell in 1909 to search for Planet X, the existence of which was (wrongly) predicted by apparent eccentricities in the orbits of Neptune and Uranus.It is also not true to say that Tombaugh was the first to look directly at Pluto. Rather, he saw the chemical trace of its light on photographic plates taken several days before. Indeed, he may not even have been the first person whose eye cast over Pluto’s photograph, as Corey S. Powell’s article on the Lowell Observatory director, Vesto Slipher, suggests. However, he was the first to spot that something had moved across the small field of stars captured through the observatory’s 13-inch wide-field telescope between 23 and 29 January 1930. That something turned out to be Pluto. Continue reading...

Scientists at Nasa's New Horizons mission control centre celebrate the spacecraft's flyby of Pluto. The US probe shot past Pluto at more than 45,000 km/h (28,00mph) at 12.49pm UK time on a trajectory that brought the spacecraft within 12,500km of the body's surface. John Grunsfeld, Nasa's associate administrator for science, says studies of Pluto will help explain more about Earth's own origins and how our solar system was formed Continue reading...

New Horizons spacecraft captures sharp, close-up image as it approaches the dwarf planet on its flybyBy the standards of modern astronomical photography it might seem initially underwhelming – a grey-and-white sphere sitting amid the blackness – but make no mistake, this is a big moment for human scrutiny of the outer solar system.To mark the moment when America’s New Horizons probe made its closest approach to Pluto, passing within 7,700 miles (12,500km) of the last unexplored world in the solar system, Nasa released a picture of the dwarf planet from slightly further away. Continue reading...

Shoes, catheters, even pacemakers and dacryphilia: academics have made it their duty to study the ever-expanding catalogue of things that turn people onOn 28 October 2004 we humans took a giant step towards cataloguing all of our sexual fetishes. An Italian/Swedish research team, led by Claudia Scorolli at the University of Bologna, downloaded data from hundreds of online fetish discussion groups and spent the next three years analysing their haul. Then they published a study in the International Journal of Impotence Research: Relative Prevalence of Different Fetishes.Many fetishes concern body parts, the catalogue reveals. Feet and toes lead the list, followed in order of frequency by body fluids (blood, urine, etc), then body size (slim, stout, short, tall, whatever) and head hair. The least coveted bits by fetishists are nails, nose, ears, neck and, in last place, body odour. Continue reading...

If you can stand to have a little empathy for someone who seems unsympathetic, maybe his whole life is dedicated to feeling less empty insideLately, as I follow American politics, a question keeps nagging at me, resurfacing unbidden in idle moments over coffee, or while waiting on station platforms: what is Donald Trump thinking?To be clear, I don’t mean “what makes Trump think he can be president?”, since for all I know, he doesn’t really think this. And I don’t mean “what makes Trump think the right way to campaign for the presidency is to travel the country by private jet spewing racist bile about Mexicans every time he opens his mouth?” Clearly, Trump either believes that stuff or is cynical enough to pretend that he does. Continue reading...

Although long believed to be theoretically possible, new data from Cern has provided conclusive evidence for a new state of matterScientists at the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva have discovered a previously unseen class of particles that demonstrate there is a new state of matter.Researchers working on the collider’s LHCb detector spotted signals that are produced when five subatomic particles called quarks combine together to form pentaquarks.

With Nasa’s New Horizons spacecraft encountering Pluto on Tuesday, we’d like to see your photographs and artwork of the planets in our solar systemNasa’s Pluto probe is entering a crucial stage in its flyby phase, with its New Horizons spacecraft expecting to gather pictures and scientific data of the dwarf planet, 5 billion kilometres away, on Tuesday.Related: Pluto: Nasa's New Horizons probe shows dwarf planet bigger than expected Continue reading...

Metrics play a growing role in managing research. But to understand their limitations, we need to draw on the humanities.

A huge global commitment to reducing malaria has paid off and the goal of near zero deaths from the disease is realistic and affordable. What are we waiting for?A goal properly set is halfway reached. So said the late Zig Ziglar, who knew a thing or two about lessons for success. Yesterday, not only was a goal set – to bring malaria deaths to near zero in the next 15 years – but we have a definitive plan that maps out what it will take to get us there.Amid the negotiations taking place at the third international financing for development conference in Addis Ababa, an event – Malaria Financing for a New Era: an Exceptional Case for Investment – saw the presentation of two complementary and compelling plans, laying out technical guidance and charting the investment and collective actions needed to reach the 2030 malaria goals.

We all face so many big decisions in life, but maybe recent scientific research can help us make better choicesShould you get a cat, shun meat, live child-free and cancel your Facebook account; or get a dog, gorge yourself on steak, have a huge family – and post about it every day? We look at what new research tells us about the big choices in life Continue reading...

The 94-metre vessel, Investigator, is capable of spending 300 days a year at sea but will remain docked in Hobart for much of that time unless private funding sources can be foundAustralia’s new state-of-the-art marine research vessel is being wasted because it is only funded for half of the year, scientists claim, as the government looks to private sources of finance to get the ship to sea.The $120m vessel, Investigator, is a 94-metre research facility capable of carrying 40 scientists and support staff and spending 300 days a year at sea undertaking atmospheric, oceanographic, biological and geoscience work. Continue reading...

A group of endangered iguanas introduced to the Fijian island of Monuriki two months ago have been tracked down and appear to be healthyScientists have welcomed the first results of a captive breeding program aimed at saving a group of critically endangered Fijian crested iguanas, the first such attempt to reintroduce a species in that country.Some of the iguanas that were introduced to the Fijian island of Monuriki two months ago have been tracked down by scientists and appear to be healthy.

Finding by Queensland researchers is significant for humans, given about a quarter of food production depends on honey bee pollinationBees infected with a common gut parasite work less, die younger and carry much less pollen than healthy bees, Queensland researchers have found.The finding is significant for humans, given about a quarter of food production depends on honey bee pollination. Continue reading...

Jean Maria Arrigo was largely ignored and the subject of a smear campaign for sounding alarms about psychologists’ post-9/11 torture complicity but has emerged from the damning report as the story’s hero – and martyrJean Maria Arrigo’s inbox is filling up with apologies.For a decade, colleagues of the 71-year-old psychologist ignored, derided and in some cases attacked Arrigo for sounding alarms that the American Psychological Association was implicated in US torture. But now that a devastating report has exposed deep APA complicity with brutal CIA and US military interrogations – and a smear campaign against Arrigo herself – her colleagues are expressing contrition. Continue reading...

It would have been out of the question for a physician to participate in torture. For psychologists, this was a subject for debateIt should come as no surprise that the architects of the CIA’s enhanced torture program were psychologists and not psychiatrists. During my psychiatry residency in the federal prison system, there was one divide between doctors and prison guards that could not be crossed: I was exempt from firearms training. The psychologists in my cohort, however, were required to achieve proficiency on the shooting range like any other correctional officer.Prison psychologists do not walk around with guns during their normal routines. However, in a crisis situation such as a riot or an escape, they would be obligated to obtain a gun from storage and be prepared to use it. It’s entirely possible that a psychologist who had been listening to an inmate pouring out their heart out one day, could be in the position of having to open fire on that very same person the next. Continue reading...

Family of 23-year-old Katie Clack, who took her own life after struggling with the terrible effects of her incurable sleep disorder, vows to fight for justiceA 23-year-old nursery assistant who developed narcolepsy after receiving a swine flu vaccine took her own life last year, telling her family that living with the incurable sleep disorder had become unbearable.Katie Clack’s death raises fresh questions about the government’s long refusal to compensate about 80 people who developed narcolepsy as a rare side-effect of the vaccine, on the basis that the condition is not serious enough to merit payouts. Continue reading...

What would we do without Gwynnie? Not only has she taught the world to cook an egg but she has now explained how to yawn properlyFrom suncream to bed-making, the internet is full of advice on mundane endeavours which you have apparently been “doing wrong” your whole life.And you’ve been doing yawning wrong too, according to Gwyneth Paltrow. Continue reading...

The CSIRO’s deep space communication complex will be the first place on Earth to receive images as the New Horizons probe makes its closest encounter with the dwarf planetAustralian scientists are gearing up for a historic moment in space exploration as a tracking station in Canberra becomes responsible for receiving the world’s first close-up images of Pluto on Tuesday evening.Nine and a half years after it left Earth and having clocked up 5bn kilometres of space travel, Nasa’s New Horizons spacecraft will make its closest encounter with Pluto at exactly 9:49.57pm AEST (12.49.57pm BST or 7:49.57am EST) on Tuesday. Continue reading...

Fictional scientist Jeremy Bumble dreams of the day when mankind can break the shackles of the ageing process so that he can once againe feel the silky-smooth skin of his younger self. But could it ever happen? He explains why a special jellyfish called 'turritopsis dohrnii', coupled with process called 'transdifferentiation', shows that immortality is possible - sort of. Go science!

A recent study shows that medications used to treat depression and Parkinson’s disease can alter moral decision-making in healthy people. Lead author Molly Crockett discusses what we can and cannot conclude from these findings.Can drugs change our morals? My colleagues and I recently addressed this question in a study carried out at University College London. We gave healthy people the opportunity to earn money by delivering painful electric shocks to either themselves or others, and investigated how common medications influence these moral decisions.One group of volunteers received either the serotonin-enhancing antidepressant drug citalopram or placebo. Enhancing serotonin made participants more reluctant to harm, regardless of whether this benefited themselves or another person. The volunteers who received citalopram were willing to pay nearly twice as much money as those who received placebo to prevent both themselves and other people from receiving pain. Continue reading...

Scientists searching for lobster larvae on Investigator research vessel instead find cluster of four volcanoes thought to be about 50m years oldFour enormous underwater volcanoes, thought to be about 50m years old, have been discovered off the coast of Sydney by a team of scientists who were looking for lobster larvae.

Astronomers of all stripes are poised for a face-to-face meeting with Pluto – a mere point of light in a large telescope, but a familiar mark on our star charts for 85 years. It’s like meeting a lifelong pen-pal for the first time. A concoction of nerves, expectations and raw excitement has swept the community, unable to resist the allure of the unknown. Yet Pluto is only the first step into a new frontier of exploration beyond Neptune. Continue reading...

Louis Freeh calls report that preceded Stephen Behnke’s ousting from the American Psychological Association leadership a ‘gross mischaracterization’A prominent psychologist ousted from the leadership of the the US’s largest professional psychological association for his alleged role in enabling and covering up torture has enlisted a former FBI director to fight back.Related: US torture doctors could face charges after report alleges post-9/11 'collusion' Continue reading...

Nasa's New Horizons spacecraft has begun beaming back photographs of the surface of Pluto as it approaches. The probe was less than 2.5m km from the 2,300km-wide dwarf planet on Saturday and by Tuesday, it will be taking pictures from an altitude of just 12,500km. The newly published image shows the planet's hemisphere that will soon rotate out of view Continue reading...

From are silent farts more deadly to could a zombie apocalypse actually happen? The creators of the AsapSCIENCE YouTube channel share their favourite science questions (and answer them!)As the creators of AsapSCIENCE, a YouTube channel where we answer some of the world’s weirdest questions using science, we get asked lots of fun, fascinating, and sometimes bizzare questions. We’ve investigated whether video games can make you smarter (good news for XBox fans), how much sleep you actually need, and whether social media is changing your brain. We even solved #TheDress.

Educational neuroscience burst onto the scene with the hope of explaining how we learn. But the jury is still out on whether it’s useful for classroom practiceNo one knows how much knowledge students take home with them after a day at school. Tests, homework and inspections give a snapshot of learning but ultimately it’s something that you cannot see; it’s invisible and personal.The educational researcher Graham Nuthall spent 40 years trying to understand how we learn. He wired classrooms in New Zealand for sound, installed video cameras, sat in on lessons and interviewed hundreds of students. But despite crunching mountains of data, he was not able to draw any conclusions. Continue reading...

Independent review examines American Psychological Association guidelines and doctors’ involvement in national security

Jurassic World has rekindled our passion for the prehistoric, so this summer head to the beach in search of ammonites, belemnites – and maybe a sauropod or twoWhat is it about dinosaurs? They never really go out of fashion, but with Jurassic World stomping across multiplex screens for the past few weeks and scientists at National Geographic staging a televised “T rex autopsy” (fake, obviously), there’s no escaping them this summer. Maybe now’s the time to discover your inner palaeontologist and try fossil hunting. There are plenty of sites across the UK from beaches to quarry beds where you can give it a go, but some more popular spots are prone to falling rocks and are dangerous at high tide, so a little bit of research is a good idea. Go to ukfossils.co.uk for advice on the safest sites to visit.Charmouth on Dorset’s Jurassic Coast is ideal for first-timers, says palaeontologist Simon Penn, as it’s quite safe and set up for holidaymakers who want to amble along and do the odd bit of fossil spotting. “At that end of the coast, you’re likely to find ammonites and belemnites that are around 190 million years old,” he says. (If you’re heading to Camp Bestival at end of July, keep an eye out for Jurassic CSI, which Penn helped to set up – mocked-up crime scenes where the culprit is one of six possible dino-villains.) Continue reading...

The American Psychological Association report highlights how it allowed torture clinicians to operate in our ranks. But the impact goes far beyond the groupRelated: US torture doctors could face charges after report alleges post-9/11 'collusion'The report documenting the role of the American Psychological Association (APA) as an embedded accomplice to torture during the War on Terror is important for its detail, but not for its novelty. The essence of this story has been known for eight years despite APA denials, euphemisms, double-talk and whitewashing; the report simply underscores the truth of what many of us have been saying all along. Continue reading...

Leading group of psychologists faces a reckoning following repeated denials that its members were complicit in Bush administration-era tortureThe largest association of psychologists in the United States is on the brink of a crisis, the Guardian has learned, after an independent review revealed that medical professionals lied and covered up their extensive involvement in post-9/11 torture. The revelation, puncturing years of denials, has already led to at least one leadership firing and creates the potential for loss of licenses and even prosecutions.For more than a decade, the American Psychological Association (APA) has maintained that a strict code of ethics prohibits its more than 130,000 members to aid in the torture of detainees while simultaneously permitting involvement in military and intelligence interrogations. The group has rejected media reporting on psychologists’ complicity in torture; suppressed internal dissent from anti-torture doctors; cleared members of wrongdoing; and portrayed itself as a consistent ally against abuse.

This month’s data set graphic by Pete Guest looks at the sun, how strong it is, and the effect it can have on your skin Continue reading...

Are our sexual desires derived from our genes? Or can we make active choices about who we are sexually attracted to?Over the past decade the idea that we are “born this way” — or that our sexuality is genetic — has become increasingly important. The mantra has become a political strategy, in particular for gay and lesbian communities, who see it as a way to protect themselves from discrimination. The movement has spawned blogs where people show pictures of their childhood to highlight the innate nature of their sexuality, and attacks on those who have questioned the theory.But do the politics match the science? Continue reading...

It is done to reinforce the inadequate sex binary and even to police non-heterosexual, queer attractions or acts“Designer babies” seems like a concept from a dystopian future, but they’re here now: would-be parents who utilize in-vitro fertilization to conceive often also have the option of genetically testing embryos and then picking which one to implant.Scientists can test for hundreds of things, from fatal genetic traits like Tay-Sachs and Huntington disease to non-fatal but culturally devalued embodiments like Down syndrome, deafness, blindness and intersex conditions. Continue reading...

‘I wanted to say something similar to Neil [Armstrong] when he landed on the moon, so I said, “It may have been a small step for Neil, but it’s a heck of a big leap for me.” That loosened the tension a bit’The main aim of our nine-day mission on Challenger was the release and deployment of two communications satellites; the walk would follow that. It was a long time in the making: decades earlier, I helped develop the jet-propelled backpack I’m wearing, an MMU, or Manned Manoeuvring Unit. We were still testing and tweaking it six weeks before we went up. I was delighted to have been picked for the mission: it was a murky selection process, lots of back and forth between mission command and management.The day before my walk, we reduced the pressure and increased the oxygen in the shuttle to get the nitrogen out of my bloodstream, otherwise I’d get the bends. Where I live now, outside Denver at an altitude of 8,300ft, has lower oxygen levels than the cabin did that day. Continue reading...

Next Tuesday, more than nine years after leaving Earth, Nasa’s probe will make history as the first spacecraft ever to reach the distant dwarf planetNine years after it left Earth, Nasa’s New Horizons spacecraft will on Tuesday become the first probe to reach Pluto, the mysterious icy world at the edge of the solar system, snapping photographs as it hurtles by at 30,000 miles an hour.The journey has taken sufficiently long that in the intervening years the status of the celestial body has been downgraded by astronomers from planet to the less impressive-sounding dwarf planet. Continue reading...

Rare example of an Enigma machine, used by Nazi Germany to send coded messages during second world war, expected to fetch £70,000A rare surviving example of an Enigma machine, used by the German military to send coded messages during the second world war, is expected to fetch £70,000 at auction next week.Related: Why didn’t we build our own Enigma machine? Continue reading...

Samuel Jaffe and his digital camera have entered an insect world where things are not what they first appear

We should welcome recent commitments by the business sector, but they now need to be converted into tangible progressThe success of the Paris climate talks, COP 21, this December will not be measured by whether or not countries can all agree on a new global deal. It will rest on deals made outside the negotiation halls and beyond the traditional scope of international climate talks.The New York climate change summit last September offers one bellwether for tracking this change, where 481 private companies and investors joined national, city and regional governments, and nearly 400 civil society groups to craft and sign 29 different pledges for climate action. These commitments take on targets that range from reducing deforestation to mitigating aviation sector emissions.

The most detailed pictures captured of the satellite have been beamed back to earth by the New Horizon spacecraftNasa has released the most detailed picture yet taken of dwarf planet Pluto, captured by the New Horizons spacecraft.Taken from a distance of 8m kilometres, the relative close-up of the icy world on the fringes of the solar system was sent back to earth on 8 July. Continue reading...

Nasa's New Horizons spacecraft has sent back detailed images of Pluto and its moon Charon, leaving scientists 'drooling'. The pictures have been captured from a mere 8m kilometres, giving the closest-ever pictures of the dwarf planet. New Horizons is due to fly past Pluto on 14 July after taking nine years to reach it Continue reading...

Primary school pupils across England take part in trial as part of ‘philosophy for children’ study, with pupil-led discussions on topics such as fairness and bullyingPhilosophical discussions about truth, fairness or kindness appear to give a small but significant boost to the maths and literacy progress of primary school pupils, although experts remain puzzled as to why.More than 3,000 pupils in 48 state primary schools across England took part in a year-long trial as part of a study named “philosophy for children”, and found that their maths and reading levels benefited by the equivalent of two months’ worth of teaching. Continue reading...

Scientists have regained contact with the probe before its encounter with the dwarf planet, after a nine-year journey from EarthNasa is all set for next week’s historic Pluto fly-by having reactivated the New Horizons spacecraft following a malfunction last weekend.The 14 July fly-by will take place on the 50th anniversary of Mariner 4’s visit to Mars, which was America’s first successful planetary fly-by. Continue reading...

In two separate experiments, scientists have formed a network from the brains of monkeys and rats, allowing them to co-operate and learn as a “superbrain”Scientists have linked together the brains of three monkeys, allowing the animals to join forces and control an avatar arm, in research that raises the prospect of direct brain-to-brain interfaces in humans.In a second experiment, the brains of four rats were wired together in a “brain net”, enabling the rodents to synchronise their neuronal activity and collaboratively solve a simple weather forecasting problem that individual rats struggled to complete. Continue reading...

IBM processors built at 7nm will be four times more powerful with up to 20bn transistors squeezed onto a single chipFears that Moore’s law – which dictates the exponential growth of processing power – would falter this year have been allayed after IBM revealed processors with circuits just 7nm wide.Moore’s law states that every 18 to 24 months processing power will double and it has been steadily observed to be true since 1965, enabling the rapid technological progress over the last four decades. Continue reading...