A surge of low-grade stars has thrown the celebrity world into a sub-prime crisis. Now where’s Mervyn King? Going by this weekend’s headlines, setting next year’s citizenship test should be a doddle.
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Celebrity world is in sub-prime crisis
The internet guru on the death of newspapers, why paywall will fail and how the internet has brought out our creativity – and generosity If you are reading this article on a printed copy of the Guardian, what you have in your hand will, just 15 years from now, look as arcane as a Western Union telegram does today. In less than 50 years, according to Clay Shirky , it won’t exist at all. The reason, he says, is very simple, and very obvious: if you are 25 or younger, you’re probably already reading this on your computer screen
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Clay Shirky: ‘Paywall will fail’
After the hacked emails scandal scientists became ‘more upfront, open and explicit about their uncertainties’ Science has been changed forever by the so-called “climategate” saga, leading researchers have said ahead of publication of an inquiry into the affair – and mostly it has been changed for the better. This Wednesday sees the publication of the Muir Russell report into the conduct of scientists from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) , whose emails caused a furore in November after they were hacked into and published online.
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Climate emails storm was turning point, say scientists
The gene mutation is much more common in Tibetans than Han Chinese and may represent the strongest instance of natural selection ever documented in a human population A gene that controls red blood cell production evolved quickly to enable Tibetans to tolerate high altitudes, a study suggests. The finding could lead researchers to new genes controlling oxygen metabolism in the body
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Mutation helps Tibetans in thin air
Breathing problems and failed resuscitation blamed for increased risk, with experts recommending two midwives for deliveries It doesn’t appeal to everybody, but for some women, having a good birth means delivering in the peace and familiarity of their own home, far from the white glare and hi-tech wizardry of the hospital.
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Home births ‘riskier for babies’
The neurodegenerative disease is said to affect seven people in 100,000, but experts believe the proportion is higher There are far more people with Huntington’s disease in the UK than has been assumed, but stigma and fear of insurance companies has kept them in the shadows, experts say today. Huntington’s disease is so genetically predictable that insurance companies make an exception to the general principle of not penalising people on the basis of their genetic make-up
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Huntington’s sufferers in the shadows
A fascinating new show examines the controversial question of fakery, forgeries and mistaken identities in art The National Gallery is about to open its worst exhibition ever. The pictures are deplorable: incompetent copies, botched restorations, outright fakes. The most painful thing for the gallery is that it bought most of them genuinely believing they were masterpieces
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Art fakes exposed at National Gallery
Attempts to portray the scientific community as fractured and in disagreement have prompted efforts to quantify the credibility of climate scientists, says Gavin Schmidt Leo Hickman: Why don’t we trust climate scientists? There is a lot of discussion this week about a new paper in PNAS ( Andregg et al, 2010 ) that tries to assess the credibility of scientists who have made public declarations about policy directions.
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What do climate scientists think?
John Sulston, who led the UK branch of the Human Genome Project, says patents on human genes would restrict access to treatments and inhibit research Human genetic information must be kept in the public domain to allow researchers to analyse it and to give members of the public fair access to medical treatments, the Nobel prizewinning scientist who led the British contribution to the Human Genome Project said today. Speaking at a briefing at the Science Museum in London to mark the 10th anniversary of the first draft of the human genome, biologist John Sulston said scientists and lawmakers must resist attempts by corporations and individuals to patent human genes. In the US, for example, it costs a woman between $3,000 and $4,000 to be tested for familial breast cancer because a corporation owns the patent for the two genes involved.
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Warning over genes patent attempt
How did cells taken from a poor black woman in 1951 come to unlock some of the biggest advances in science? Henrietta Lacks, a 31-year-old mother of five, died of cervical cancer on 4 October 1951; and while her disease was a tragedy for her family, for the world of medical research – and beyond that, every one of us on the planet – it was something of a miracle
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The mother of modern medicine