Category Archives: Science

Mount Vesuvius eruption ‘turned victim’s brain to glass’

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Scientists discover vitrified remains caused by immense 520C heat of disaster in AD79

When Mount Vesuvius erupted in AD79, the damage wreaked in nearby towns was catastrophic. Now it appears the heat was so immense it turned one victim’s brain to glass – thought to be the first time this has been seen.

Experts say they have discovered that splatters of a shiny, solid black material found inside the skull of a victim at Herculaneum appear to be the remains of human brain tissue transformed by heat.

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Coronavirus: China bars 11m residents from leaving city at centre of outbreak

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Government unveils new countermeasures as country prepares for lunar new year and death toll doubles to 17

Chinese authorities have suspended all outbound transport from Wuhan, the city at the centre of an outbreak of the mysterious Sars-like coronavirus, which has so far killed 17 people.

Bus, subway, ferry and long-distance passenger transportation networks from the city were suspended from 10am local time on Thursday, state media reported. The city’s airport and train stations were also closed to outgoing passengers.

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Polygraph’s revival may be about truth rather than lies

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The science is shaky on lie detecting but there is evidence polygraphs have another use

Telling lies is stressful. That’s the basic logic of a polygraph test: that the stress of deceiving others will manifest itself through fleeting physical responses that may be imperceptible to another person but can be measured by a machine. Typically, a polygraph records blood pressure, galvanic skin response (a proxy for sweat), breathing and pulse rate.

There is a fairly standard protocol for the lie detector examination. The examiner will mix specific questions relevant to a case – “Did you commit a robbery on 29 March?” – with a series of control questions. Crucially, the control questions are also designed to be anxiety-inducing – for instance: “Have you ever stolen from a friend?” Along the way, the subject will be reminded that the machine can distinguish truth from lies and that they must respond truthfully.

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Coronavirus: China reports 17 new cases of Sars-like mystery virus

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Three of the new cases are severe, with experts worried about the disease’s spread ahead of lunar new year

China reported 17 new cases of the mysterious Sars-like virus on Sunday, including three in a severe condition, heightening fears ahead of China’s lunar new year holiday, when hundreds of millions of people move around the country.

The new coronavirus strain has caused alarm because of its connection to severe acute respiratory syndrome, which killed nearly 650 people across mainland China and Hong Kong in 2002-03.

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Climate emergency: 2019 was second hottest year on record

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Last decade was also hottest yet in 150 years of measurements, say scientists

The year 2019 was the second hottest on record for the planet’s surface, according to latest research. The analyses reveal the scale of the climate crisis: both the past five years and the past decade are the hottest in 150 years.

The succession of records being broken year after year is “the drumbeat of the Anthropocene”, said one scientist, and is bringing increasingly severe storms, floods, droughts and wildfires.

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Having more sex makes early menopause less likely, research finds

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Study of nearly 3,000 women suggests body may ‘choose’ not to invest in ovulation

Women who have sex more often are less likely to have an early menopause, according to research that raises the intriguing possibility that lifestyle factors could play a more significant role than previously thought in determining when the menopause occurs.

The study, based on data collected from nearly 3,000 women who were followed for 10 years, found that those who reported engaging in sexual activity weekly were 28% less likely to have experienced menopause at any given age than women who engaged in sexual activity less than monthly.

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Massive and malodorous – world’s biggest flower found

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A 111cm-wide Rafflesia was recently discovered but these giants are in danger

The largest single flower ever recorded was found recently in Sumatra, Indonesia, measuring a reported 111cm (3.64ft) across. This was a specimen of Rafflesia tuan-mudae and beat the previous largest flower record of 107cm for Rafflesia arnoldii, also in Sumatra.

Rafflesia is not only a giant flower, but it has no leaves, stems or proper roots. It cannot photosynthesise and instead sucks the food and water out of a particular vine using long thin filaments that look like fungal cells. It gorges itself on the vine for a few years before bursting out into a flower bud, swells for several months before blooming into a flower that looks like a bright red bucket with big thick lobes. It gives off a whiff of rotting meat that, together with its gigantic size, helps attract pollinating flies. Rafflesia also steals some of the DNA from the vine it lives on, using it for its own genetic code for reasons that are not clear.

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Australia bushfires are harbinger of planet’s future, say scientists

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Apocalyptic scenes give glimpse of what would be normal conditions in 3C world

The bushfires ravaging Australia are a clear sign of what is to come around the world if temperatures are allowed to rise to dangerous levels, according to scientists.

“This is what you can expect to happen … at an average of 3C [above pre-industrial levels],” said Richard Betts, professor of geography at Exeter University. “We are seeing a sign of what would be normal conditions in a 3C world. It tells us what the future world might look like. This really brings home what climate change means.”

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Organ donation: new technique can preserve human livers for a week

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Week-long storage boosts time organs are usable and distances over which they can be moved

Human livers from organ donors can now be preserved for a week, researchers have revealed, a dramatic improvement on previous techniques, which could only keep the organs usable for a matter of hours.

The technology could boost the number of livers available for transplantation and offer new approaches to treating diseases such as liver cancer.

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Grass growing around Mount Everest as global heating intensifies

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Impact of increase in shrubs and grasses not yet known but scientists say it could increase flooding in the region

Shrubs and grasses are springing up around Mount Everest and across the Himalayas, one of the most rapidly heating regions of the planet.

Related: 1.9 billion people at risk from mountain water shortages, study shows

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China’s Sars-like illness worries health experts

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China’s viral pneumonia outbreak may have jumped species barrier, raising fears of pandemic

The finding that the outbreak of viral pneumonia in China that has struck 59 people may be caused by a coronavirus, the family of viruses behind Sars, which spread to 37 countries in 2003, causing global panic and killing more than 750 people, means that health authorities will be watching closely.

China says the illness is not Sars (severe acute respiratory syndrome), nor Mers (Middle East respiratory syndrome), both of which are caused by coronaviruses, and so far it appears milder than both. Unlike Sars, it does not appear to spread easily between humans and unlike Mers, which has a mortality rate of about 35%, nobody has died.

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Viking runestone may allude to extreme winter, study says

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Ninth-century Rök stone may deal with fear of cold climate crisis in Scandinavia

One of the world’s most famous runestones is now believed to have been erected by Vikings fearing a repeat of a previous cold climate crisis in Scandinavia, a study has concluded.

The Rök stone, raised in the ninth century near Lake Vättern in south central Sweden, bears the longest runic inscription in the world, with more than 700 runes covering its five sides.

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Scientists give cuttlefish 3D glasses and shrimp films for vision study

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Researchers use 3D glasses, films and food to test whether cuttlefish use stereopsis to find prey

There are some questions in science that can only be answered by strapping a pair of 3D glasses to an unsuspecting cuttlefish and setting it loose in an underwater movie theatre.

That, at least, was the thinking of a team of researchers who set themselves the task of working out how the marine molluscs know how far away prey is before launching their explosive, tentacled attacks.

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Astronomers discover huge gaseous wave holding Milky Way’s newest stars

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‘It’s right up in our face’ – close proximity of stellar nursery to our solar system stuns scientists

Astronomers have discovered a gigantic, undulating wave of dust and gas where newborn stars are forged over a 50 million billion mile stretch of the Milky Way.

The gaseous structure, which holds more mass than 3m suns, runs directly behind our solar system as viewed from the heart of the galaxy, but has eluded observation until now.

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Severe childhood deprivation reduces brain size, study finds

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Brain scans of Romanian orphans adopted in UK show early neglect left its mark

Children who experience severe deprivation early in life have smaller brains in adulthood, researchers have found.

The findings are based on scans of young adults who were adopted as children into UK families from Romania’s orphanages that rose under the regime of the dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu.

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Mystery illness in Chinese city not Sars, say authorities

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Fears of new epidemic after people taken to hospital in Wuhan with viral pneumonia

A mysterious respiratory illness that has infected dozens of people in a central Chinese city is not Sars, local authorities have said.

The 2002-03 epidemic of severe acute respiratory syndrome started in southern China and killed more than 700 people. Fears of a recurrence arose this month after a number of people were taken to hospital with unexplained viral pneumonia in Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province.

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Chandrayaan-3: India unveils fresh $35m attempt to put a rover on the moon

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Space programme seeks to bounce back after 2019 project ended with a crash landing on the lunar surface

India plans to make a fresh attempt at an unmanned mission on the moon this year, the head of the country’s space programme has said, after a 2019 bid ended in a crash landing.

Work was going “smoothly” on the Chandrayaan-3 mission to put a rover probe on the moon’s surface, Indian Space Research Organisation chairman K Sivan said. “We are targeting the launch for this year but it may spillover to next year,” Sivan said. Indian sources said authorities had set November as a provisional target for launch.

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AI system outperforms experts in spotting breast cancer

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Program developed by Google Health tested on mammograms of UK and US women

An artificial intelligence program has been developed that is better at spotting breast cancer in mammograms than expert radiologists.

The AI outperformed the specialists by detecting cancers that the radiologists missed in the images, while ignoring features they falsely flagged as possible tumours.

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International Space Station astronauts play with fire for research

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Tests to study behaviour of flames in zero gravity suggest fires could be more dangerous on moon than Earth

Playing with fire can be dangerous and never more so than when confined in a space capsule floating 250 miles above the Earth. But in the past week astronauts onboard the International Space Station have intentionally lit a series of blazes in research designed to study the behaviour of flames in zero gravity.

The scientists behind the experiment, called Confined Combustion, say it will help improve fire safety on the ISS and on future lunar missions by helping predict how a blaze might progress in low gravity conditions.

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