Category Archives: Science

A grey matter? Nature, nurture and the study of forming political leanings

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Researchers find minuscule difference in the amygdala – a region of the brain linked to threat perception

Where does our personal politics come from? Does it trace back to our childhood, the views that surround us, the circumstances we are raised in? Is it all about nurture – or does nature have a say through the subtle levers of DNA? And where, in all of this, is the brain?

Scientists have delved seriously into the roots of political belief for the past 50 years, prompted by the rise of sociobiology, the study of the biological basis of behaviour, and enabled by modern tools such as brain scanners and genome sequencers. The field is making headway, but teasing out the biology of behaviour is never straightforward.

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Dorset ‘Stonehenge’ discovered under Thomas Hardy’s home

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Enclosure older than Salisbury monument found under late novelist’s garden is given heritage protection

When the author Thomas Hardy was writing Tess of the D’Urbervilles in 1891, he chose to set the novel’s dramatic conclusion at Stonehenge, where Tess sleeps on one of the stones the night before she is arrested for murder.

What the author did not know, as he wrote in the study of his home, Max Gate in Dorchester, was that he was sitting right in the heart of a large henge-like enclosure that was even older than the famous monument on Salisbury Plain.

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Mental health overtakes cancer and obesity as Britons’ biggest health worry

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Ipsos survey asked people in 31 countries what they thought of their health and healthcare

Mental health has overtaken cancer and obesity as the health problem most Britons worry about, a global survey has revealed.

Experts said the shift in the public’s perception reflected the sharp rise in recent years in mental ill-health caused by the Covid pandemic, the cost of living crisis and male violence against women.

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September Supermoon: the best place and time to see tonight’s bigger and brighter full moon

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Find a viewing spot that is dark and looks towards the east, which is where the moon will rise. A flat location will give a ‘really cool’ perspective, experts say

If you look up into the sky on Wednesday night, you’ll likely notice the full moon gleaming bigger and brighter than usual.

You’ll be looking at the second supermoon of the year – the term for when the moon’s orbit is closest to Earth while it is full.

How to take a good photograph of the full moon on your phone or camera

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‘Entire ecosystem’ of fossils 8.7m years old found under Los Angeles high school

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Researchers find two sites with fossils including saber-toothed salmon and megalodon, the huge prehistoric shark

Marine fossils dating back to as early as 8.7m years ago have been uncovered beneath a south Los Angeles high school.

On Friday, the Los Angeles Times reported that researchers had discovered two sites on the campus of San Pedro high school under which fossils including those of a saber-toothed salmon and a megalodon, the gigantic prehistoric shark, were buried.

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Ig Nobel prize goes to team who found mammals can breathe through anuses

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Scientific research on pigeon missiles and dead trout also win at awards for amusing studies with serious implications

In a stark demonstration of how award-winning breakthroughs can come from the most unlikely directions, researchers have won an Ig Nobel prize for discovering that mammals can breathe through their anuses.

After a series of tests on mice, rats and pigs, Japanese scientists found the animals absorb oxygen delivered through the rectum, work that underpins a clinical trial to see whether the procedure can treat respiratory failure.

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Pathogenic microbes blown vast distances by winds, scientists discover

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Living microbes that cause disease in humans and host antibiotic-resistance genes carried 1,200 miles

Microbes that cause disease in humans can travel thousands of miles on high-level winds, scientists have revealed for the first time.

The winds studied carried a surprising diversity of bacteria and fungi, including known pathogens and, some with genes for resistance to multiple antibiotics. Some of the microbes were shown to be alive – in other words, they had survived the long journey and were able to replicate.

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Japanese eels can escape predators’ stomach through their gills, finds study

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Eels use tail-first technique to back up digestive tract of fish towards oesophagus before coming out of gills

It sounds like the plot of a horror movie – a predator swallows its prey only for the creature to burst out of its captor’s body. But it seems Japanese eels do just that.

Scientists in Japan have discovered that when swallowed by a dark sleeper fish, the eels can escape.

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Boeing’s Starliner lands on Earth – without its astronauts

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Nasa’s Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, who flew Starliner amid technical failures, will remain at ISS until February

Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft landed in a New Mexico desert late on Friday, months after its original departure date and without the two astronauts it carried when it launched in early June.

Starliner returned to Earth seemingly without a hitch, a Nasa live stream showed, nailing the critical final phase of its mission.

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DRC receives first donation of 100,000 mpox vaccines to contain outbreak

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Jab not yet approved for children, who make up most cases, while officials warn millions more doses will be required

The first donation of mpox vaccines arrived in Democratic Republic of the Congo on Thursday, but officials say millions more doses will be needed.

The announcement came amid warnings that the geographical spread of the virus, formerly known as monkeypox, was increasing, and swift action was needed across the continent to contain the outbreak.

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Romans’ siege wall in Masada may have been built in a fortnight, study finds

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New archaeological research adds to view that siege may have been quicker and more efficient than was thought

The Roman siege of Jewish rebels in Masada, one of the founding myths of modern Israel, may have been far quicker and more efficient and brutal than it has been traditionally represented as, according to new archaeological research.

The end of the AD72-73 Jewish Revolt is conventionally depicted as a heroic last stand against the might of Rome by a handful of rebels who eventually killed themselves rather than be overwhelmed by the emperor Vespasian’s forces.

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By a nose: Australian science prize goes to team who use odours to distract predators from endangered species

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Researchers discover how to use ‘olfactory misinformation’ to protect native animals and farmers’ crops

Peter Banks’ remarkable road to a prestigious Eureka prize began nearly two decades ago as he watched rodents escape predators and wondered: why were the mice peeing everywhere?

“They were just putting their smell everywhere,” the ecologist said. “And I went, ‘how about if we use that principle of the smell of prey being everywhere to stop predators from finding their food?’”

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How a little-known 17th-century female scientist changed our understanding of insects

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Maria Sibylla Merian’s beautiful and disturbing illustrations, which shaped how we look at the natural world, will be on show at Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum

More than three centuries after she made a perilous transatlantic voyage to study butterflies, a rare copy of the hand-coloured masterwork by the great naturalist and artist Maria Sibylla Merian is returning to Amsterdam.

The Rijksmuseum, which holds more than half-a-million books on art and history, last week announced it had acquired a rare first-edition copy of Metamorphosis of the Insects of Suriname (Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium), described as a high point of 18th-century book production when the Dutch Republic was “the bookshop of the world”.

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African nations hit by mpox still waiting for vaccines – despite promises by the west

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Last week’s planned rollout of doses faces further delays as campaigners complain of greed and inequality

None of the African countries affected by the outbreak of a new variant of mpox have received any of the promised vaccine, pushing back a rollout that had been planned for last week.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has been at the centre of an outbreak of the new clade 1b variant, with 18,000 suspected cases and 629 deaths this year, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

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‘Amazing’ Viking-age treasure travelled half the world to Scotland, analysis finds

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Lidded vessel is star object in rich Galloway Hoard and came from silver mine in what is now Iran

It is a star object of the Galloway Hoard, the richest collection of Viking-age objects ever found in Britain or Ireland, buried in AD900 and unearthed in a field in Scotland. Now a lidded silver vessel has been identified as being of west Asian origin, transported halfway around the world more than 1,000 years ago.

When it emerged from the ground a decade ago, the vessel was still wrapped in its ancient textiles, whose survival is extremely rare. Its surface could be seen only through X-ray scans. Since then, the textiles have been partially removed and preserved and the vessel has had laser cleaning to remove green corrosion over much of its silver surface. It has also undergone scientific analysis.

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US repeating Covid mistakes with bird flu as spread raises alarm, experts say

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Public health experts warn ‘overinflated view of abilities’ and restrictive laws could make next outbreak more lethal

The US is making the same mistakes with the H5N1 bird flu virus as with Covid, even as the highly pathogenic avian influenza continues spreading on American farms and raising alarms that it could mutate to become a pandemic, public health experts argue in the New England Journal of Medicine.

“We’re closing our eyes to both the Covid pandemic and to a potential nascent bird flu [pandemic] on the horizon,” said Gregg Gonsalves, associate professor of epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health and co-author of the article. “Our ability to react swiftly and decisively is the big problem.”

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Africa to finally receive first batch of vaccines for deadly mpox virus

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The continent will belatedly get 10,000 shots amid criticism of delays to the process caused by WHO red tape

Africa’s first batch of mpox vaccines will this week finally reach the continent, weeks after they have been made available in other parts of the world.

The 10,000 shots, donated by the US, will be used to tackle a dangerous new variant of the virus, formerly known as monkeypox, after a 2022 outbreak triggered global alarm.

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‘Real hope’ for cystic fibrosis patients as NHS rolls out life-changing drug

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Campaigners hail decision to give thousands of sufferers access to new set of drugs known as ‘modulators’

Alix Oxlade was 30 weeks into her pregnancy when scans showed fluid building up in the stomach and bowels of her unborn son, Rufus. The cause was unclear, though there was an early suspect: cystic fibrosis.

One of the most common inherited illnesses in the west, cystic fibrosis is caused by a defective protein that allows mucus to build up in the lungs, bowels and other organs and can lead to chronic infections that worsen through life. Tests subsequently showed Alix and her partner, Ben, who live in East Yorkshire, were both carriers of the disease.

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Scientists enable hydrogel to play and improve at Pong video game

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Researchers say their creation has memory, which it can use to perform better by gaining experience

Researchers have found a soft and squidgy water-rich gel is not only able to play the video game Pong, but gets better at it over time.

The findings come almost two years after brain cells in a dish were taught how to play the 1970s classic, a result the researchers involved said showed “something that resembles intelligence”.

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Prehistoric humans may have stuck pikes in ground to kill mammoths, say experts

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People of ancient Clovis culture could have impaled huge animals on pikes rather than throwing spears, finds study

When it came to taking down giant animals, prehistoric hunters would quite literally have faced a mammoth task. Now researchers have shed fresh light on how they might have done it.

Experts studying sharp stone points made by the Clovis people, who lived in the Americas from about 13,000 years ago, say that rather than hurling spears at enormous animals such as giant bison, mammoths or ground sloths, the tribes could have planted their weapons point-up in the ground to impale charging creatures.

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