Science | The Guardian

The outspoken Canadian gynaecologist's compelling scientific study cuts through misinformation, myth and worse with clarity and wit in this study of the menstrual cycleThe doctor who taught me about human reproduction at medical school was in fact a veterinarian. More is known about a sheep's rhythms than a woman's, he said, setting the tone in our first tutorial, presumably because ewes drive a healthy profit. I was disappointed. I felt that menstruation and pregnancy shouldn't be narrated to us like they would be for any other animal. These aren't just biological events, but experiences coloured by memory and anticipation. What about days of frantic maxi pad changes in school cubicles that go unspoken between girls, some as young as eight, unpredictably timed yet reliably painful? Periods are a muddled burden: a monthly shame as well as a relief.If millennials have been undernourished with information about their bodies, then previous generations were almost starved of it. A flush of coverage has arisen out of this embarrassed silence, such as Emma Barnett's Period and BBC Radio 4's series 28ish Days Later. Dr Jen Gunter's Blood takes an unapologetically scientific approach to the menstrual cycle, written for anyone who wants to understand its often mystified ways and what medicine can do to help. Perhaps Gunter's resolve to reduce stigma around women's health was a reaction to her own upbringing in Canada, with a mother who thought tampons were evil". Now a gynaecologist in San Francisco with three decades of experience, Gunter became famous in 2018 for ridiculing the pseudoscientific offerings on Gwyneth Paltrow's wellness platform Goop, and has since continued her battle against disinformation with her Substack newsletter the Vajenda, alongside bestselling books The Vagina Bible and The Menopause Manifesto. Without fear, favour or sponsor, Gunter is a cheerleader for professional expertise, informed consent and reproductive justice. Continue reading...

The delay to Nasa's 10-year lunar programme gives us time to beef up the treaties governing the exploitation of extraterrestrial resourcesIt has been a grim time for lunar exploration. Scientists and space engineers had earmarked 2024 as the year that humanity would begin its return to the moon in earnest. An ambitious programme - largely funded through Nasa's $2.6bn commercial lunar payload services (CLPS) initiative - was drawn up. Its forerunner projects included the launch of the robot lander, Peregrine, last week - to be followed by a crewed mission, Artemis II, that would put four people into orbit round the moon in September. These missions would form the vanguard for a schedule of further projects, both robot and crewed, that would lead to the construction of a lunar colony some time in the next decade.These pioneering aspirations have not had an auspicious start, however. Shortly after its launch on Monday, mission controllers revealed that Peregrine - despite a flawless launch - had suffered a critical loss of propellant and wouldfail to make a landing on the moon. Then came the news that Nasa had decided to postpone its Artemis II mission for a year for safety reasons". Continue reading...

A new study unpicks the reasons men and women call time on a relationship and finds that micro-grievances really do matterThe desire to get married is a basic and primal instinct in women," observed the late, great Nora Ephron. It's followed by another basic and primal instinct: the desire to be single again." Relationship wisdom is full of such emphatic generalisations but, according to that eternally reliable media source a recent study", women do appear to fall in and out of love more extremely than men.A behavioural economist, Saurabh Bhargava of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, has published a new study in Psychological Science, the leading journal in the field, which has a number of striking findings. The first is that women reported having feelings of love almost twice as frequently as men. The second is that, over the course of a long relationship, women on average experience a much steeper decline in these feeling compared to their male partners. Continue reading...

New paper claims unless demand for resources is reduced, many other innovations are just a sticking plasterRecord heat, record emissions, record fossil fuel consumption. One month out from Cop28, the world is further than ever from reaching its collective climate goals. At the root of all these problems, according to recent research, is the human behavioural crisis", a term coined by an interdisciplinary team of scientists.We've socially engineered ourselves the way we geoengineered the planet," says Joseph Merz, lead author of a new paper which proposes that climate breakdown is a symptom of ecological overshoot, which in turn is caused by the deliberate exploitation of human behaviour. Continue reading...

Bone strength is set in childhood so better park access could prevent fractures in older people, study findsChildren with more green space near their homes have significantly stronger bones, a study has found, potentially leading to lifelong health benefits.Scientists found that the children living in places with 20-25% more natural areas had increased bone strength that was equivalent to half a year's natural growth. Continue reading...

As the Post Office scandal continues to unfold, Marina Hyde urges us to keep watching and stay angry (1m24s); what one man learned after 30 days of rejection therapy (9m40s); and double Oscar-winner Jodie Foster on beauty, bravery and raising feminist sons (26m49s) Continue reading...

In launch event on Friday, agency shared plans to test over US cities to see if it's quiet enough by engaging the people below'Nasa has unveiled a one-of-a-kind quiet supersonic aircraft as part of the US space agency's mission to make commercial supersonic flight possible.In a joint ceremony with Lockheed Martin Skunk Works in Palmdale, California, on Friday, Nasa revealed the X-59, an experimental aircraft that is expected to fly at 1.4 times the speed of sound - or 925mph (1,488 km/h). Continue reading...

Study calculated that there was an 11% increase in mortality associated with cases involving the use of hydroxychloroquinePeople who took an anti-malaria treatment that Donald Trump touted as a cure for Covid-19 in the early days of the pandemic and waning days of his presidency were 11% more likely to die from the virus, according to a new scientific study.The study's authors - who published their findings in the peer-reviewed Biomedicine & Pharmacotherapy journal - also estimated that nearly 17,000 people in six different countries, including the US, died after contracting Covid-19 and taking the antimalarial hydroxychloroquine. Continue reading...

Research with paired voles found surges in pleasure hormone dopamine subsided after period of separationBreaking up is hard to do, but it seems the brain may have a mechanism to help get over an ex.Researchers studying prairie voles say the rodents, which form monogamous relationships, experience a burst of the pleasure hormone dopamine in their brain when seeking and reuniting with their partner. However, after being separated for a lengthy period, they no longer experience such a surge. Continue reading...

Moon mission records provide a clue as to why getting to the lunar surface remains far from straightforwardIt was a flawless launch. In the early hours of Monday morning, the Vulcan Centaur rocket rattled into the darkness over Cape Canaveral, shed its solid rocket boosters and released the Peregrine spacecraft on the perfect trajectory for its landmark mission to the moon.The success prompted a Yee-haw!" from Tory Bruno, the chief executive of United Launch Alliance, which built the rocket: this was the Vulcan's maiden flight, after all. But it wasn't long before the mood shifted. Astrobotic, the company behind Peregrine, found the spacecraft was leaking propellant. And without sufficient fuel, the chances of landing softly on the moon rapidly fell to zero. Continue reading...

Researchers able to model movements of greater horseshoe bats in Devon to help conserve foraging groundsBats fly back to their roosts after a night of hunting in a leapfrogging" pattern that allows them to maximise their time out and stay safe from predators, researchers have found.A team from Cardiff University and the University of Sussex developed a mathematical model using trajectory data" that tracked the flight of greater horseshoe bats in Devon to pinpoint how the creatures engage with the nocturnal environment. Continue reading...

Bearing witness to the climate crisis can feel surreal. These strategies can help manage the feeling of despairIt sucks... and it's only going to get worse," my client says, disbelief colouring their facial expression.I'm inclined to agree, it does suck. Continue reading...

Laser-sensor technology reveals network of earthen mounds and buried roads in rainforest area of EcuadorArchaeologists have uncovered a cluster of lost cities in the Amazon rainforest that was home to at least 10,000 farmers about 2,000 years ago.A series of earthen mounds and buried roads in Ecuador was first noticed more than two decades ago by archaeologist Stephen Rostain. But at the time, I wasn't sure how it all fit together," said Rostain, one of the researchers who reported on the finding in the journal Science on Thursday. Continue reading...

A 1.3bn light year-sized ring discovered by PhD student in Lancashire appears to defy the cosmological principle assumptionAstronomers have discovered a ring-shaped cosmic megastructure, the proportions of which challenge existing theories of the universe.The so-called Big Ring has a diameter of about 1.3bn light years, making it among the largest structures ever observed. At more than 9bn light years from Earth, it is too faint to see directly, but its diameter on the night sky would be equivalent to 15 full moons. Continue reading...

Kate Moss at 50 | Vinted's impact on charity shops | IPP sentences | Pant-throwing prowessI am surprised to see that the feature described on your print front page as Kate Moss at 50" (She keeps us enthralled, like Bowie did': the magic of Kate Moss, by her photographers, 11 January) appears to be illustrated by an image of Kate Moss at approximately 20. Are there no mature" images available? It seems that time and again we are shown that beauty is predominately in the young, and it's a pity that the Guardian could not show us a beautifulolderwoman.

A moral philosopher examines the cycles of suffering that perpetuate violenceJonathan Glover's new book, on the seemingly intractable nature of the Israel-Palestine conflict, quotes George Orwell on the Spanish civil war: Everybody believes in the atrocities of the enemy and disbelieves in those of his own side without ever examining the evidence."This could have been written today, amid bipolar thinking and pressure to take sides, where people's identification with the facts can reflect their political predilections. Glover wrote the bulk of his study before the recent horrors, though it is published with a foreword addressing them. Not surprisingly, it is still deeply relevant. We have seen these tragic cycles of violence again and again in the past; they continue on an even more horrific scale today. Glover is a philosopher and author of Humanity: a Moral History of the Twentieth Century, which took him 10 years to write and involved careful scrutiny of acts of human barbarism and the ethical questions surrounding them. Continue reading...

Facilities could also slash transmission of diseases and cut pressure on ambulance callouts and hospitals, study saysThousands of lives could be saved if safe rooms were set up in UK cities where people could be supervised while they get high, the world's largest review of the effectiveness of drug-consumption rooms and overdose-prevention centres (OPCs) has found.The part-government-funded study published on Thursday also found the facilities could slash the transmission of fatal diseases, as well as reduce drug litter, the pressure on ambulance callouts and the burden on hospitals. Continue reading...

Last year was a bumper year for science news, with the rise of weight-loss drugs such as Wegovy, record-high global temperatures, not to mention an attempted orca uprising.So what will this year bring? Ian Sample and science correspondent Hannah Devlin discuss the big stories likely to hit the headlines and share their predictions for 2024. And environment reporter Patrick Greenfield reveals his top climate stories for 2024Archive: BBC, ABC News Continue reading...

Study of ancient DNA shows bronze age Yamnaya people spread gene variants that carry increased risk of multiple sclerosisAncient DNA helps explain why northern Europeans have a higher risk of multiple sclerosis than other ancestries: the disease is a genetic legacy of horseback-riding cattle herders who swept into the region about 5,000 years ago.The findings come from a huge project to compare modern DNA with that culled from ancient humans' teeth and bones - allowing scientists to trace prehistoric migration and disease-linked genes that tagged along. Continue reading...

Giant primate ate bark and twigs after climate change turned sub-tropical environment into savannahIt was the largest primate ever to have roamed the Earth, but just why - and when - our distant cousin giganto" ended up extinct has been something of a mystery.Now researchers say the enormous ape was victim of an unfortunate choice of food when its preferred snacks became scarce. Continue reading...

Artemis III mission to land four astronauts near lunar south pole will be delayed until 2026Nasa has postponed its plans to send humans to the moon after delays hit its hugely ambitious Artemis programme, which aims to get spaceboots bouncing again on the lunar surface for the first time in half a century.The US space agency has announced the Artemis III mission to land four astronauts near the lunar south pole will be delayed a year until September 2026. Artemis II, a 10-day expedition to send a crew around the moon and back to test life support systems, will also be pushed back to September 2025. Continue reading...

Nasa's Canberra Deep Space complex is part of a global network communicating with the Peregrine 1, which has no chance of landing on the moonThousands of kilometres from the Earth, the doomed Peregrine mission to the moon is speaking its last words back home - and it may be an Australian deep space outpost that records its final message.On Tuesday Astrobotic, the US company behind the mission, revealed there was no chance" that Peregrine 1 would fulfil its aim to be the first commercial space probe to make a soft landing on the moon. A critical fuel leak after Monday's liftoff meant the probe would run out of propellant long before its planned 23 February touchdown in the Bay of Stickiness. Continue reading...

Study of sounds and feeding habits shows animals organise into female-based groups of up to 20,000Sperm whales live in clans with distinctive cultures, much like those of humans, a study has found.Using underwater microphones and drone surveys, Hal Whitehead, a sperm whale scientist at Dalhousie University, in Halifax, Canada, examined the sounds the animals made and their feeding habits and found they organised themselves into groups of up to around 20,000. Continue reading...

US biotech firm designs cheaper, less invasive multi-cancer screening test it says could be gamechanger'Scientists have developed a simple test that can identify 18 early-stage cancers that experts say could represent a medical gamechanger".Cancer accounts for one in every six deaths worldwide, but early detection can significantly improve outcomes. Existing screening tests have drawbacks, including invasiveness, cost and low levels of accuracy for early stage disease. Continue reading...

Astrobotic company says goal is now to get US spacecraft as far as possible before it loses power

The spacecraft, a collaboration between Nasa and Astrobotic, is unlikely to reach the lunar surfaceThe Peregrine lunar lander is a robotic spacecraft designed by the US-based lunar logistics company, Astrobotic. Loaded on to a rocket, and blasted into space, it is designed to deliver payloads to the surface of the moon, or the moon's orbit. Continue reading...

MindEar delivers CBT through chatbot along with sound therapy allowing brain to learn to tune out conditionWhether it is a ringing sound or perpetual buzzing, tinnitus is a common and often debilitating condition. Now researchers say they have designed an app that can reduce its impact.Tinnitus is the perception of sounds that are not the result of an external source, and is thought to affect 7.6 million people in the UK, although fewer have severe tinnitus. Continue reading...

As parks and gyms fill with people hoping to make 2024 their year of fitness, Ian Sample speaks to Martin Gibala, professor of kinesiology at McMaster University in Canada, about how much exercise we should be doing, the benefits of interval training, and how to make a new regime stick Continue reading...

The rodent was filmed repeatedly gathering objects and placing them in a tray in a shed in Builth WellsMice like to keep themselves clean, but does this diligence extend to their homes? Video footage of a mouse gathering up objects in a shed and placing them neatly inside a box, night after night, has been interpreted as evidence for mousekeeping". But there could be other explanations for this curious behaviour, experts say.The Builth Wells rodent, nicknamed Welsh Tidy Mouse" by the shed's owner, Rodney Holbrook, was recorded gathering clothes pegs, corks, nuts and bolts and placing them in a tray on Holbrook's workbench - a behaviour that has been going on for months. It follows a similar incident in Bristol in 2019, when a mouse was videoed stockpiling" screws, piece of chain and other metal items inside a box of birdfeed. Continue reading...

US firm Astrobotic says it is assessing alternative mission profiles' after finding failure in propulsion systemA private moon mission that blasted into space on Monday appeared to be in jeopardy after suffering a critical loss of propellant" and operators said they are considering alternatives for the mission.After lift-off on Monday, the Peregrine Mission One (PM1) - which carries a piece of technology developed by UK scientists - experienced an anomaly" that would have prevented the lander from achieving a stable position pointing towards the sun, according to Astrobotic, the US firm behind the project. Continue reading...

The answer to today's tantalising tech teaserEarlier today I set you the following puzzle, a classic interview question for software engineers. It seems really to have caught your imaginations: so far the original article has had almost 500 below-the-line comments. Many are lateral takes on the problem, often humorous. Many are meditations on the ambiguities involved when phrasing a technical question about data structures in a fantasy setting. Some are furious posts about what makes a spoiler, and some are celebrations of your favourite software engineers.Enough already, here is the puzzle again, together with the solution. Continue reading...

Pressure grows on artificial intelligence firms over the content used to train their productsThe developer OpenAI has said it would be impossible to create tools like its groundbreaking chatbot ChatGPT without access to copyrighted material, as pressure grows on artificial intelligence firms over the content used to train their products.Chatbots such as ChatGPT and image generators like Stable Diffusion are trained" on a vast trove of data taken from the internet, with much of it covered by copyright - a legal protection against someone's work being used without permission. Continue reading...

Pioneering British surgeon who carried out the world's first liver, heart and lung transplantIn the 1960s Roy Calne, professor of surgery at Cambridge University, was gripped by the emerging new science of transplantation to help those with kidney and liver failure.Calne, who has died aged 93, became Britain's premier transplant surgeon and researcher, achieving a number of firsts, including the first liver transplant in Europe in 1968, the world's first liver, heart and lung transplant in 1986 (with John Wallwork) and the world's first successful organ cluster" transplant (stomach, intestine, pancreas, liver and kidney) in 1994. Continue reading...

The Peregrine 1 lander carrying Nasa scientific equipment is on its way to the moon after a successful launch of the Vulcan Centaur rocket at Cape Canaveral. Within minutes of separation from the rocket, Astrobotic mission control received a signal from the lander, which will go into a highly elliptical orbit to put it on course to its destination. Peregrine is set to land on 23 February and will seek to gather data about the lunar surface ahead of planned future human missions

Latest news: lunar lander expected to reach the moon by end of February, the first US lander there for 50 yearsHere are some pictures of the rocket at Kennedy Space Center on Merritt Island, Florida from the last couple of days. The 62m tall (202 ft) Vulcan Centaur rocket was rolled out to the launchpad on 5 January ahead of today's planned launch, which is currently on track for about half-an-hour's time.United Launch Alliance spokesperson Amanda Sterling has said everything is on track for launch at this stage.We are currently holding at T-minus seven minutes as part of our planed 60 minute hold, and the team is not working any issues at this time.The Vulcan booster is fuelled to flight level with super-chilled liquid oxygen and liquid methane ... and the ULA team is on track for an on-time lift off at 2.18am Eastern (7.18am GMT). Continue reading...

This puzzle will spin you in circlesUPDATE: The solution can be read hereToday's puzzle is a classic interview question for jobs in programming. I hope it flicks your switches.The loopy labyrinth Continue reading...

Look for the distant giant shortly after the sun sets and light starts to drain from the skyWhat a difference a week makes to the moon. Last week it was a waning crescent in the morning sky. This week it returns to the evening twilight as a waxing crescent.The illuminated percentage of the visible surface remains almost the same at 14%, compared with last week's 12.7%, but this time it is the moon's eastern hemisphere that is illuminated instead of the west. Last week, the moon's planetary companions were Mercury and Venus, this week it is the turn of Saturn. Continue reading...

A cold Roman soldier is promised new socks, while his commander's wife invites her peers to party: mundane texts offer priceless historical insightsFor the average museum-goer the romance of archaeology is inextricably bound to extravagant displays of power and riches: Egyptian pharoahs in their gilded sarcophaguses, China's extraordinary Terracotta Warriors, the gold and jewellery of ancientRome. Inthe field, it is the remnants of mighty fortifications and sumptuous palaces, the imprint of catastrophic events, that people cross continents to visit.Few of the thousands who traipse along Hadrian'sWall to the Roman fort of Vindolanda each year would go out of their way to see two of thetreasures discovered there, both now at the BritishMuseum. One is a birthday invitation from the wife of the fort commander to a friend, including greetings from her husband and my little son". The other is a letter to a soldier promising socks, sandals and underpants to protect him from the Northumberland cold. Yet these messages offer sharpand human insight into colonial life in a remoteoutpost of empire nearly 2,000years ago. Moretablets are still being unearthedby archaeologists racing against the effectsof climate change. Continue reading...

Charismatic founder of Kids Company who stepped down after the charity's collapse in 2015For two decades Camila Batmanghelidjh, who has died after a long illness aged 61, was one of the most passionate and readily recognisable figures on the UK charity circuit.Kids Company, the charity she founded in 1996 to help distressed, abused and abandoned children and teenagers in south London, undoubtedly helped several thousand young people. Batmanghelidjh and her assistants surrounded them with unquestioning love, meals, support, advice, therapy and even clothes and pocket money, and the charity eventually spawned other outposts in Bristol and Liverpool. Continue reading...

Fixating on results can make us miserable, as some of the top sports stars have discovered. It's the intrinsic joy of what we do that brings the best rewardsWhy do we like sport? There are millions of people around the world who feel happiest when they are engaged in pursuits that - on the face of it - are pointless. And yet sport is serious business. Jamie Carragher and Declan Rice are two English footballers who have said their sport is all about winning". Is that really true? I was a sports presenter for BBC Radio 1 for eight years, encompassing the 2012 London Olympics, Andy Murray's historic Wimbledon win and a World Cup in Brazil. It was frequently thrilling, yet over time when I went on air to report on the action, I had a nagging sense that something was missing. The fixation on results didn't convey sport's deep beauty and its many life lessons. Sport is often described as a metaphor for life and so I set out to explore exactly that - and found many important insights about where happiness and fulfilment are to be found. Here's what I discovered. Continue reading...

Of course there is a link between mind and body: mental health is inextricably linked with physical wellbeingYour article shows the way that depression will be treated worldwide in future (A weight off our minds: how therapy got physical to beef up mental health", News). Exercise as a treatment for depression has five massive advantages: it is free; it can be used in combination with other treatments; the benefits last; it confers other health benefits; and it empowers the individual to take positive action in fighting off depression.The underlying science has little to do with release of endorphins: exercise has been proved to work more permanently by stimulating neuroplasticity (ie new circuits) in key parts of the brain that subserve mood, emotion and executive functioning. It works in the same way as all other treatments for depression, from placebo to talking therapy to medication to ECT, and is synergistic when combined with any of these. Those with seasonal affective disorder should start an exercise programme when the clocks go back. Exercise really is the new antidepressant.

After four-month journey, Aditya-L1 will measure and observe sun's outermost layersIndia's solar observation mission has entered the sun's orbit after a four-month journey, the latest success for the space exploration ambitions of the world's most populous country.The Aditya-L1 mission was launched in September and is carrying an array of instruments to measure and observe the sun's outermost layers. Continue reading...

Astronomers say launch of dozens of lunar probes could jeopardise research and valuable resources such as sea ice in cratersScience and business are heading for an astronomical clash - over the future exploration of the moon and the exploitation of its resources. The celestial skirmish threatens to break out over companies' plans to launch dozens of probes to survey the lunar landscape over the next few years. An early pioneer - Peregrine mission one - is set for launch this week.The aim of this extraterrestrial armada - largely funded through Nasa's $2.6bn Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative - is to survey the moon so that minerals, water and other resources can be extracted to build permanent, habitable bases there. These would later provide a springboard for manned missions to Mars. Continue reading...

In the former president's eyes, he has wronged no one - he thinks he is the victim of injustice, not the perpetrator, writes Phil LeaskIn trying to understand Donald Trump in his review of David Keen's book Shame (27 December), Charlie English does not distinguish between shame - our feeling of having done something wrong - and shaming, a demonstrative and abusive act of power that seeks to humiliate someone. Trump feels no shame because he does not accept or share the values of those who are critical of him; in his eyes he has wronged no one. At the same time, he cannot be shamed because he has constructed a defensive shield around himself that ensures every criticism bounces off. He seeks, instead, to humiliate anyone who opposes him or represents a different way of being in the world.Of course, if we look deep into Trump's past we could find that he was a victim of humiliation, which would partly explain but in no way justify his rage, vitriol and abuse, his sense that he is currently a victim of injustice, and his desire for revenge. All of these are consistent consequences of humiliation. Seeing his own actions as entirely just, he has no need - in his eyes - to feel shame. He cannot be defeated by accusations of shamelessness or attempts to humiliate him, but only by political action and being held legally responsible for his actions.

Assuming we are all doing the best we can might free us up to feel gentler, kinder and more compassionate to ourselves - and othersRadical acceptance of ourselves opens the door to knowing and accepting that we are imperfect. This is vital because we spend so much of our lives trying to find some version of perfection. Interestingly, as soon as we build a strong enough practice of accepting ourselves, we usually become more accepting towards other people. This can't work in reverse - if we try to accept other people while still holding a seething bedrock of anger and hate at ourselves, we will project that anger on to other people.I rarely speak in absolutes, but I will say it is impossible to feel for someone else what we cannot feel for ourselves. Self-acceptance must accompany any other acceptance. Continue reading...

Commercial Peregrine mission aims to deliver Nasa scientific equipment to moon along with mementos and ashes of Star Trek creatorFinal preparations are under way at Cape Canaveral in Florida for a milestone mission to put a US lander on the moon, an achievement not seen in more than 50 years since the end of the Apollo project.Last-minute glitches aside, Peregrine mission one, named after the fastest animal on Earth, will roar into the sky at 7.18am UK time Monday. After looping around the planet, it will head to the moon and slip into lunar orbit before an attempted landing soon after local sunrise on 23 February. Continue reading...

Mycologists Alan Rockefeller and Mandie Quark are on a mission to meticulously document species in Ecuador's jungle - before they vanishWords and photographs by Rachel Bujalski

Barnard Castle, Teesdale: In the winter woodland you can find more activity than you might think, including the most numerous animals on EarthTwo o'clock on a cold December afternoon, and the sun is already sinking towards the western horizon, sending long shadows through Flatts Wood. Ahead, a blackbird lands beside the footpath and begins flinging aside dead leaves, with the irascible air of a gardener discovering fly-tipped rubbish on their lawn. During shortwinter days these birds expend a lot of energy excavating layers of decaying autumn leaves, in search of buried food. Head cocked to one side, he seems to be listening, perhaps sensing something hiddenhere, and ignores us until we are a few paces away.When he flies, we take a closer look: what lives under last summer's discarded foliage? Beneath loose, wind-dried leaf litter lies several years of accumulated dead foliage; a leafy lasagne welded together by fine fungal threads advancing from a spreading delta of pure white mycelium, creeping out from under a fallen branch. For every toadstool that appears above the surface, there will be miles of these fine hyphae, digesting their way through dead plants, until they can store enough energy to organisethemselves into another fungal fruiting body. Continue reading...

Both ice giants are similar pale blue, new research finds, correcting earlier beliefs about the planets' relative huesIt's a colour beloved by interior designers, but it seems duck-egg blue is also splashed across our solar system, with research suggesting it is the true colour of both Uranus and Neptune.The new work puts paid to the popular belief that Neptune has a deep blue hue, suggesting instead both planets are a similar colour - with Neptune only slightly more blue than Uranus. Continue reading...