The team look at what makes some people brilliant public speakers, and others lost for words Continue reading...

From the eyeball to the umbilical cord, from a messy corpse to the value of ECT – doctor Gavin Francis recounts his adventures in medicine and explores the wonders of the human formBefore starting my GP clinic yesterday I glanced through the list of patients I’d see that day. Most of the names I knew relatively well: their appointments would be follow-ups on diabetes, mental health problems, heart disease, or any number of the myriad difficulties many of us struggle along with. Other names I knew less well: one turned out just to need her contraceptive pill, another had broken his wrist, yet another felt overwhelmed by a paralysing sense of despair. One of the rewards of this often difficult but fulfilling work is that when my patients take their seat in the consulting room, I never know what they are going to say. I have between 10 and 12 minutes allocated per patient, but, as for most GPs, this is never enough.The first patient was a new name new to me. With a click of the computer his records popped up on screen, and I noticed his date of birth was last week. He was just a few days old; our consultation together would become the first entry into notes that, all being well, will follow him for the next eight or nine decades. The emptiness of the screen seemed to shimmer with all the possibilities that still lie ahead of him. Continue reading...

Reverting to a child-like state to escape the complexities of being an adult can be appealing, which may explain the New Zealand prime minister’s behaviour Continue reading...

The Hubble space telescope was launched into space aboard the shuttle Discovery on the 24th of April 1990. Its 25 year mission has seen dramatic highs and lows, during which it has captured some of the most iconic images of space ever taken

Seismic tomography provides scientists with a much bigger picture of the volcanic ‘plumbing system’ under Yellowstone national parkDeep beneath Yellowstone national park, one of the world’s most dynamic volcanic systems, lies an enormous, previously unknown reservoir of hot, partly molten rock big enough to fill up the Grand Canyon 11 times, scientists say.

Scientists at University College London suggest comedians are better at focusing intensely on tasks and drawing on memories when constructing speech

Though imperfect, vaccine ‘protected older children for four years against uncomplicated and severe malaria by a third’, says expert involved in project Continue reading...

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A Russian man with a rare muscle disease says he wants to become the world's first head transplant patient. Valery Spiridonov, who lives near Moscow, says his muscles are rapidly deteriorating and, at 30, he doesn't have many years left. The £10 million pound operation would transplant his head onto that of a donor using spinal cord fusion Continue reading...

Using virtual reality, neuroscientists simulated the effects of invisibility in subjects and found it gave them confidence in front of a crowdThe possibilities open to a person rendered invisible have been well explored in the worlds of science fiction and philosophy, not to mention the minds of adolescents.

Scientists able to ‘re-write’ errors in mitochondrial DNA in mice, increasing the possibility of a similar treatment to prevent disease in humansResearchers in the US have raised hopes for a simple genetic therapy that could prevent devastating diseases being passed on from mothers to their children.A team at the Salk Institute in California demonstrated in mice that a single injection into embryos could rewrite faults in the DNA of mitochondria, the biological batteries that are needed to keep tissues healthy.

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Scientists circumnavigating the globe on a spartan racing catamaran will spend the coming year deploying drones to collect better data on plastic pollution

The Lyrid meteor shower happens every April, and on average 10 to 20 shooting stars can be seen an hour. Clear skies over the UK made this year’s display particularly spectacular

The anger surrounding the appointment of ‘Skeptical Environmentalist’ Bjorn Lomborg to a university post in Australia gives us a great opportunity to discuss academic intolerance

It’s 25 years since a shuttle first put the giant space telescope into orbit, but the project initially seemed doomed to fail. How did Nasa’s team turn things around, going on to capture over a million stunning images of deep space?

The snake’s head fritillary can be seen in breathtaking abundance at Iffley Meadows, Oxford Continue reading...

The Hubble space telescope, which has captured images of stars coalescing out of glowing clouds of dust, peered back more than 10bn years to study the early universe, pinpointed the remnants of supernovae explosions and helped physicists uncover some of the cosmos's deepest secrets, turns 25. Happy birthday Hubble Continue reading...

Finding is most convincing evidence so far that male and female dinosaurs looked different and may have had mating selection rituals comparable to birdsThe male Stegosaurus had billboard-like back plates that it used to attract potential mates, while females had prickly spikes that kept predators at bay, scientists have discovered. Continue reading...

Bees have a preference for sugar solutions laced with the pesticides, scientists say, as a separate landmark field trial show neonicotinoids harm bee populationBees may become addicted to nicotine-like pesticides in the same way humans get hooked on cigarettes, according to a new study, which was released as a landmark field trial provided further evidence that such neonicotinoids harm bee populations.

Even more powerful than science’s capacity to explain is the human longing for mystery. So if Nessie is denied us, we’ll simply look elsewhere for fabled beasts Continue reading...

Readers answer other readers’ questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific conceptsGalaxies rotate. Do all spiral galaxies rotate in the same direction?A Grieve, West Parley, Dorset Continue reading...

Why sex? Why then only two sexes? Why do we age and die? It’s the energy, stupid! This thinking is as important as the Copernican revolutionThe “Origin of Life” is a conundrum that could once be safely consigned to wistful armchair musing – we’ll never know so don’t take it too seriously. You will probably imagine that it’s still safe to leave the subject in this speculative limbo, without very much in the way of evidence.You’d be very wrong, because in the last 20 years, and especially the last decade, a powerful new body of evidence has emerged from genomics, geology, biochemistry and molecular biology. Here is the book that presents all this hard evidence and tightly interlocking theory to a wider audience. Continue reading...

Items from the history of space and aviation went under the hammer at Bonhams, New York – including the first robotic probe to land on the moon Continue reading...

A ‘dirty bomb’ of pseudo-science wrapped up nearly 268 cases – perhaps hundreds more. Now begins the ‘herculean effort to right the wrongs’George Perrot has spent almost 30 years in prison thanks to a single hair. It was discovered by an FBI agent on the bedsheet of a 78-year-old woman who had been raped by a burglar in her home in Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1985.Perrot, then 17, was put on trial, despite the absence of physical evidence tying him to the crime scene. There was no semen. There was no blood. And so there was no way to conduct a conclusive DNA test. Continue reading...

Successful trial could pave the way for similar techniques to be used for conditions such as sickle cell disease and thalassaemiaChildren with a devastating immune condition appear to have been cured, after becoming the first to be given a new form of gene therapy.Without the treatment, the patients who suffer from a rare condition called Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome, faced short life expectancies and prolonged periods in hospital.Related: HIV gene therapy using GM cells hailed a success after trial Continue reading...

Reptiles were previously considered unable to play, but a Russian space experiment has overturned that view thanks to a loosely fastened collarThey can walk on walls with ease and shed their tails when they find themselves in a tight spot, but the one thing geckos were thought to lack was a capacity for playfulness. Now, a space experiment has overturned the view that geckos are entirely serious creatures, showing that they are open to a spot of fun after all.When given the opportunity, the Russian experiment found, geckos are happy to spend time batting an object around a tank at zero gravity. Continue reading...

Research involving cohort of 95,000 children is latest research to contradict findings of discredited gastroenterologist Andrew Wakefield Continue reading...

Google is not the first to take cameras into Loch Ness in search of the fabled monster. In 1972, the Loch Ness Investigation Bureau captured two frames that appeared to suggest the presence of two large, unidentified animals Continue reading...

Vespa velutina, which preys on honey bees, is already spreading rapidly across mainland Europe and could pose a serious risk to the UK’s apicultureBeekeepers have been told to be alert for invading hornets that have killed six people in France and could pose to serious risk to Britain’s honey bees.The Asian hornet, which preys on honey bees, is spreading rapidly across France and other parts of mainland Europe, and there are fears its arrival in Britain is only a matter of time – particularly in light of the unusually warm spring weather. Continue reading...

Hearings to conclude on Tuesday into whether reported concerns including loss of sense of smell are cause for greater regulation of booming industrySceptics consider homeopathy a joke, a bogus science that belongs in a punchline, not a pharmacy – but US government regulators are suddenly taking it seriously.The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is holding public hearings this week to explore whether it should toughen oversight of what has become a controversial, billion-dollar branch of the healthcare industry. Continue reading...

In these fascinating videos, we see how one man’s quest to merge two passions -- bird watching and beatbox music – has created an experimental new form of music Continue reading...

Researchers reviewing trials involving thousands of patients say taking extra vitamins and minerals does more harm than goodDietary supplements, such as over-the-counter multivitamins, do “more harm than good” and can increase the risk of developing cancer and heart disease, according to research in the US.The study by the University of Colorado, which reviewed several trials involving thousands of patients over a decade, showed that those who took extra vitamins and minerals were more likely to have health problems. Continue reading...

British chess master Nigel Short recently caused controversy by saying women’s brains aren’t ‘hard wired’ for chess. He also pointed out women have greater ‘emotional intelligence’. But this supposed praise reveals a great deal of cultural preconceptions and gender stereotyping, which suggests it’s not actually a compliment at all. Continue reading...

Scientists at Oxford University say a world-first form of research shows infants may be far more sensitive to pain than adultsThe brains of babies “light up” in a similar way to adults when exposed to the same painful stimulus, suggesting they feel pain much like adults do, researchers said on Tuesday.

Infected patients have higher levels of certain chemicals in their breath, undetectable to the human nose Continue reading...

A new study examines the use of mindfulness-based cognitive therapy in the treatment of recurrent clinical depressionSomehow, somewhere, across those six weeks, something happened inside me – in my head? my body? my soul? – and I began to understand. Sitting still became a boon and a comfort, even a luxury, rather than a threat or an irritation. And the present moment, right here, right now, began to seem a very comfortable (and comforting) place to be, bereft of dread and full of the possibility of peace and calm.Julie Myerson, ‘How mindfulness based cognitive therapy changed my life’ Continue reading...

The director of a new documentary on the Hubble space telescope reflects on the craftsmanship behind the planet’s most celebrated science instrumentIn a darkened room at Nasa’s Goddard Space Centre in Maryland, I found a focused team of men and women, engrossed in their daily task of taking the pulse of the planet’s most celebrated science instrument: the Hubble space telescope. On the wall in front of them a live 3D rendering of Hubble is projected onto the wall – its orientation and position in orbit 550 kilometers above the Earth presented in real time for everyone in the room to see.Today Hubble was being harnessed to hunt for distant icy dwarf planets, which Nasa’s New Horizons mission might be able to aim for later this year, after its historic flyby of Pluto. Such objects, found in the remote Kuiper Belt, over 4 billion miles from Earth, are typically only half as big as Long Island, NY, and so dark in colour that only Hubble’s exquisite mirror has a chance of detecting them. Continue reading...

Millions of women will each use more than 16,800 tampons over the course of their lives. We have no data to tell us if that’s unequivocally safe Continue reading...

Everyone is currently urging people not to miss the voter registration deadline which is today. But why so much enthusiasm at the last minute when it’s always been as important? Deadlines, as much as we hate them, often prove to be very motivating, for various psychological reasons. Continue reading...

Today’s “Museum Monday” video is a short time-lapse that celebrates the glory of springtime at London’s Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew Continue reading...

$4m for Bjørn Lomborg to lead the way on climate change? Not a problem for the Tony government, or for Australia’s ‘scientists’ Continue reading...

The pendulum clock of Longitude hero John Harrison is tested and declared a masterpieceOne of Guinness World Records’ more unusual awards was presented at the National Maritime Museum yesterday. After a 100-day trial, the timepiece known as Clock B – which had been sealed in a clear plastic box to prevent tampering – was officially declared, by Guinness, to be the world’s “most accurate mechanical clock with a pendulum swinging in free air”.It was an intriguing enough award. But what is really astonishing is that the clock was designed more than 250 years ago by a man who was derided at the time for “an incoherence and absurdity that was little short of the symptoms of insanity”, and whose plans for the clock lay ignored for two centuries. Continue reading...