Workplace privacy is more than if your boss digs into your genetic markersIf someone poops on the floor at work, can your boss test your DNA to see if you’re the culprit? That is what Federal District Judge Amy Totenberg was asked to decide in the case of the “devious defecator.”In 2012, the longhaul transportation and storage company Atlas Logistics discovered that someone had been defecating in its warehouse and suspected it was a disgruntled employee. The company wanted to analyze the “offending fecal matter” – and their employees’ DNA via cheek swabs – to identify the culprit. Two employees, Jack Lowe and Dennis Reynolds, sued. They claimed that Atlas violated the little-known Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (Gina) by taking their genetic information. (Neither Lowe nor Reynolds was a match. The true devious defecator remains at large.) Continue reading...

Welcome to Alex's second Monday puzzle. If you'd prefer to read the question, you can find it here. This week we're leaving Cheryl and Denise behind with two new types of brainteaser. To start with, can you spot the odd one out? Then see if you can answer a question set for Hong Kong six-year-olds. Can you solve it? Continue reading...

Structural biologists are revealing the astounding complexity of the molecular machinery of life. But why is it so hard to get any real sense of our molecular nature?I’d like to show you your inner molecule but, to be perfectly honest, I don’t think you’re interested. Which is rather frustrating for scientists like myself who have spent a career in structural biology working out what the molecules of human life look like. You know – proteins, nucleic acids, carbohydrates, lipids. The stuff we’re all made of.

A gripping study of the mental wounds inflicted by classic British institutionsI once knew an American psychoanalyst who worked in a Bangkok practice, specialising in expats. He’d first come to east Asia on contract for an international church whose missionaries kept getting into trouble. He never went home: there was more than enough work. “Specifically,” he said, “with people like you. Middle-aged, middle-class Brits who went to your crazy private schools may just about be the most damaged social sub-group I’ve ever come across.”It’s long been known that the practice of sending young children off into the care of strangers is not wholly safe. The ancient “public” schools worried the Victorians as much or more than did the workhouses: three parliamentary commissions sat in the 19th century to look at the financial frauds, riots and the astonishing numbers of deaths – from suicides, assaults by teachers and pupils, starvation, epidemics – in the schools of the rich. Tom Brown’s Schooldays only scraped the surface. Continue reading...

What do Sydney siege gunman Man Haron Monis, Germanwings pilot Andreas Lubitz, Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik, and Isis killers Jihadi John and Jihadi Jake have in common? Delusions of grandeur, a fear of failure and a need for admirationWhen Man Haron Monis, self-styled Islamic cleric, took 18 hostages in the Lindt cafe in Sydney, he declared himself to be a jihadist on behalf of Islamic State. Reports of the siege immediately went global. But, in fact, Monis had no connection to the group; he had brought the wrong flag to his own siege, and demanded that police bring him the right one in exchange for releasing hostages.In the inquest into the siege, which concluded last week, Monis was described as a “man spiralling downwards”. He had no job but many debts, had lost custody of his children and faced a lengthy jail term. Seeking “power and influence”, he had even briefly joined a biker gang, but was rejected as too “weird”. “His constant goal in life,” junior assisting counsel Sophie Callan summed up, “appears to have been achieving significance.” Continue reading...

Recovering patients continue to experience symptoms and side-effects, with Macmillan calling on government to fund long-term recovery packagesBritain’s health service is not prepared for the issues faced by the growing number of cancer survivors who live on after being diagnosed at a young age, a study published on Monday warns.Almost 80,000 people currently alive in the UK were diagnosed before the age of 45 with cancers traditionally associated with older age: breast, prostate, colorectal and lung cancers, new figures released by Macmillan Cancer Support and Public Health England reveal. Continue reading...

Scientist calls Persistence Cave ‘a warehouse of information’ and says he expects to find 100,000 animal bones over the summer as team excavates entranceThe National Park Service is beginning to excavate the mouth of an unexplored cave in the Black Hills of South Dakota, and researchers believe it could help broaden our understanding of how the region’s climate has changed over thousands of years.A park service worker found Persistence Cave in 2004 on the grounds of Wind Cave national park, in western South Dakota, but the agency kept it quiet, partly to prevent amateur spelunkers from trying to explore the well-preserved site. Continue reading...

Neurologist Suzanne O’Sullivan’s excellent book reveals that medicine remains as much an art as a scienceSuzanne O’Sullivan qualified as a doctor in 1991. She is now a consultant at the National Hospital of Neurology and Neurosurgery in London. This, her first book, is an account of her experience over 20 years of the many conditions that exist in that much disputed no man’s land between psychological and physical illness. The patients she examines in these pages often have dramatic symptoms – blindness, paralysis, seizures, intense pain and chronic fatigue – but they are symptoms related to no identified disease or physical cause. By the time these patients come to O’Sullivan they have generally exhausted every scan and endoscopy the NHS can provide, as well as the patience of doctors and specialists in different fields. She is often there to tell them the last words that they generally want to hear: that the very real agony that they may feel in head or gut or back or limb is all in their mind.To O’Sullivan that is never a trivial diagnosis, no matter how it sounds. Psychosomatic illness, the experience of physical symptoms brought about by emotional states, is not a new phenomenon, though arguably it has reached pandemic proportions with the self-diagnostic possibilities offered by the internet. O’Sullivan traces it at least as far back as Hippocrates in 400BC, who noted, for example, that emotion alone could trigger sweating and cause the heart to beat double time. As a result of such observations Hippocrates believed that a physician must treat disturbances in the mind as well as the body. Two millennia before Freud he was analysing the dreams of his patients for signs of mental distress that might be causing physical illness. Continue reading...

Many children hear voices or have visions. Usually there is no cause for concern...Childhood has long been championed as a time for make-believe, but recent research has found that another form of unreality – hallucinations – is more common in children than we previously imagined. For years, kids’ accounts of seeing, hearing and experiencing things that weren’t really there were considered to be part of the same invented world – an “overactive imagination”; a “fantasy world”. The Alice in Wonderland approach, perhaps. But as it was recognised that hallucinations can be reliably identified in children, science has begun to look at why these illusory experiences are many times more common during our early years.Hallucinations often reflect a bizarre, blurry version of our realities and because play is an everyday reality for children, the content can seem similar. Both can contain quirky characters, strange scenarios and inspire curious behaviour. One child described how he saw a wolf in the house, another that he had “Yahoos” living inside him that ate all his medicine. On the surface, these could just as easily be a child’s whimsy, but genuine hallucinations have a very different flavour. “In play and make-believe, children are imagining,” says Elena Garralda, a professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at Imperial College London. “They do not have the actual perceptual experience of seeing and hearing.” Another key difference, notes Garralda, is that “hallucinations feel imposed and children cannot exercise a direct control over them”. Continue reading...

Cancer, dementia, heart disease and new – or new strains of – infectious diseases are what modern westerners are dying of nowWhere are we

British archaeology team uncovers stunning Aksumite and Roman artefactsSpectacular 2,000-year-old treasures from the Roman empire and the Aksumite kingdom, which ruled parts of north-east Africa for several centuries before 940AD, have been discovered by British archaeologists in northern Ethiopia.Louise Schofield, a former British Museum curator, headed a major six-week excavation of the ancient city of Aksum where her team of 11 uncovered graves with “extraordinary” artefacts dating from the first and second centuries. They offer evidence that the Romans were trading there hundreds of years earlier than previously thought. Continue reading...

Plankton are the tiny enablers of life on Earth, but their fragile ecosystems are under attack from climate change. A three-year study is helping marine experts understand them for the first time

There have been many tedious discussions about the value of philosophy for modern science. I find it much more interesting to ask if and in what way modern science can advance philosophyThe Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the European Organization for Nuclear Research CERN in Geneva is the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator and possibly the most complex scientific instrument ever built. The LHC has just begun its second three-year run, at the record-breaking collision energy of 13 TeV. About 10,000 scientists from 60 countries will search for new phenomena beyond the Standard Model of particle physics, in pursuit of a simple, beautiful and all-encompassing theory of nature.Related: Live webcast of the 13 TeV restart of the CERN Large Hadron Collider Continue reading...

Sense About Science talks about ‘perceived food allergies’. But I’m not just another muesli-belt middle-class neurotic who doesn’t understand scienceOn the bus the other day I watched a mother hand her toddler a packet of salt and vinegar crisps. The little girl obviously liked them, doubtless relishing their salty-sweet crunch, but suddenly her face reddened, her eyes watered and she began coughing and spluttering, an episode that must have lasted a good two minutes. The volatile pungency of the crisps was getting up my nose a couple of seats away, so was it any wonder that a child’s immature lungs reacted like that?Related: Why does the media have a blindspot on food science? | Robin Bisson Continue reading...

Scientists from Kew and Western Australia stumbled upon the as yet unnamed flower during a three week expedition to collect waterlily specimensA perilous expedition in northwestern Australia that had researchers wading through lakes, ponds and creeks stalked by meat-eating crocodiles has ended with the discovery of a stunning new species of waterlily.

The scale of the continent’s energy deficit often fuels a sense of fatalism and paralysis. Yet on the flipside of this crisis are enormous opportunities“We shall make electric light so cheap that only the wealthy can afford to burn candles,” said Thomas Edison, inventor of the modern lightbulb. That was almost a century and a half ago.

Criticism over branding of philanthropist as a ‘foreign agent’ as scientists say cuts and mismanagement are threatening the field. RFE/RL reportsOne of Russia’s largest scientific benefactors has cancelled millions of dollars in funding after the government branded his foundation a “foreign agent”, a label used to target organisations seen as hostile to the state.The move to alienate 82-year-old Dmitry Zimin has stirred Russia’s scientific community, which has watched with despair as mismanagement, dwindling budgets and a “brain drain” have eroded their capabilities. Continue reading...

What do pencillin, polythene and Mexican yam have in common?This article was first published on The Conversation.Did you know that the discovery of a way to make ammonia was the single most important reason for the world’s population explosion from 1.6 billion in 1900 to 7 billion today? Or that polythene, the world’s most common plastic, was accidentally invented twice? Continue reading...

Mathematician Jordan Ellenberg argues that maths can help all of us become sharper thinkersJordan Ellenberg is aprofessor of mathematics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.His new book, How Not To Be Wrong, is an attempt to reconnect us with how maths can improve and inform our lives, deploying simple insights to get us thinking about real-life issues differently. Continue reading...

Reassessment of historical data and methodology by US research body debunks ‘hiatus’ hypothesis used by sceptics to undermine climate science Continue reading...

Nicknamed Hellboy, the dinosaur had short horns over the eyes and a long nose horn, the opposite of the features sported by its close relative triceratopsWhen fossil experts first clapped eyes on the skull, it was clearly from a strange, horned dinosaur. When they noticed how stunted the bony horns were, its nickname, Hellboy, was assured.

Misdiagnoses leading to unnecessary treatments and poor diets, sometimes causing malnutrition, says Sense About Science

We recently brought you our 10 best unsung female scientists. Here, we present your thoughts on the academics who should have made the listAstrophysicist (1943-) Continue reading...

Dwayne Johnson’s disaster drama might have other films quaking in their boots at the box office, but there are seismic cracks in its geological accuracy, writes a professor of earthquake engineeringFirst of all, San Andreas is a fun film. It’s interesting. But it has a bit of a fatalistic scenario of destruction – one we hope will never actually happen – and the film makes several scientific errors.Related: The word from Hollywood: sensible is the new sexy | Catherine Shoard Continue reading...

More electricity from renewables, fewer gasoline-powered vehicles and lower power consumption by buildings mandated under ‘50-50-50’ agenda Continue reading...

The new online test of life expectancy gives an encouraging answer – but why are only men asked about how many cars? Continue reading...

Scientists use questions on smoking, how briskly you walk and how many cars you own to find your risk of death Continue reading...

17th century widow Louise de Quengo, wearing her shoes and cap, was found along with heart of her husband in lead coffinFrench archaeologists have uncovered the well-preserved body of a noblewoman who died 350 years ago – along with the clothes in which she was buried, including her cap and shoes, still intact.The corpse of Louise de Quengo, a widow from an aristocratic family from Brittany, was discovered in an hermetically sealed lead coffin placed in a stone tomb at a convent chapel in the western city of Rennes.

However, critics suggest panel may be over-stating effectiveness of screening as debate over exact value of mammograms continuesWomen who undergo breast cancer screening cut their risk of dying from the disease by 40%, according to a global panel of experts attempting to end a long-running controversy about mammograms.IARC, the International Agency for Cancer Research, an arm of the World Health Organisation, has weighed in with strong support for mammography screening, which has divided scientific opinion in recent years. Some scientists argue that few lives are saved and that screening does harm by identifying some small slow-growing cancers which are then treated with surgery, radiotherapy and drugs, but which would never have disturbed the woman in her lifetime. Continue reading...

Nasa marked an historic milestone on Wednesday: 50 years since astronaut Edward Higgins White became the first American to step into space. That first spacewalk for the US happened on June 3, 1965, during the second manned spaceflight in Nasa's Project Gemini. Watch footage of White's historic venture and hear from those who followed Continue reading...

Harriet Minter writes (2 June, theguardian.com), of my campaign to see fertility issues added to the secondary school curriculum, that “the last thing we need is more scaremongering”. I am delighted that my call for fertility education has provoked such a widespread response. But this storm of opinion must not cloud focus on the underlying facts, and we need to correct some misconceptions and inaccuracies in media reporting.Harriet writes: “If you’re someone who is relatively fertile, your chances of having a baby in your 30s, or even your 40s, are not significantly lower than they would have been when you were younger.” This is inaccurate and references an article by Twenge in The Atlantic that itself misinterprets two important scientific papers. The first by Dunson and colleagues demonstrates significant reductions in a woman’s fertility with age. A second study by Rothman and colleagues shows that a couple’s fertility peaks around 30 years and at age 40 declines by approximately half with most of this decline attributable to the female partner. Both these complex academic studies clearly confirm the decline in fertility in women (and to a lesser extent men) over the age of 35. Continue reading...