Science

The Big Question: What do Britain's 'X Files' tell us, and why have they been released now?

Inside Science

The truth really is out there as Britain's 'X-files' released

Wednesday, 14 May 2008

Her Majesty's Government may have concluded in 1979 that "it has never been approached by people from outer space" but the current Pope is entertaining the idea of aliens.

Glaxo 'downplayed' warning on heart-attack risk from Aids drug

Monday, 12 May 2008

The multinational drugs company GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) downplayed an early warning about the rising number of people who have suffered heart attacks after using one of its drugs, abacavir. An anti-Aids medication, abacavir is taken by tens of thousands of people worldwide.

Susan Greenfield: The girl with all the brains

Sunday, 11 May 2008

What sort of a teenager cuts open a rabbit's head for fun? The Susan Greenfield sort. Clever, solitary and bored, she once bought a dead animal from the butcher and carried it home, for an operation on the kitchen table. "I wanted to see the brain," she says. "I'd never seen one before." I imagine the scene in the bleached-out colours of a horror film. A girl. A knife. An open skull. A little boy mouthing something strange: "Alpha. Beta. Gamma. Delta ..."

Circumcision 'is the best weapon in fight against Aids'

Friday, 9 May 2008

The billions of dollars spent on Aids prevention programmes based on HIV vaccines, wide-scale testing and the promotion of condoms or sexual abstinence have turned out to be less effective than a simple surgical operation to remove the foreskin.

After 200-year quest, scientists finally unravel the bizarre origins of the duck-billed platypus

Thursday, 8 May 2008

When the first skin of a duck-billed platypus arrived in England in 1799, the keeper of natural history at the British Museum thought it must be an elaborate hoax; how else to explain an animal with the fur of a mammal and the beak of a bird?

Tomorrow's sports stars: Is talent all in the genes?

Wednesday, 7 May 2008

Some people are born to play football. So says David Beckham's official website. After attending the Bobby Charlton Soccer School at 11, Beckham was selected to be a trainee for Manchester United at just 16 years old. The rest, as we know, is history, tattoos and Gillette razor blades. But what if footballers really are born and not made? A test to determine whether a child will turn into an élite soccer player is the stuff of football managers' dreams.

Insects 'will be climate change's first victims'

Tuesday, 6 May 2008

Tropical insects rather than polar bears could be among the first species to become extinct as a result of global warming, a study has found.

Revealed: secret of how birds navigate during migration

Thursday, 1 May 2008

The mystery of how migratory birds exploit the Earth's magnetic field using an internal compass may have been solved by scientists who have discovered how molecules in the eye can be orientated by weak magnetic lines.

Women's voices sound less Mariella and more Marilyn during ovulation

Thursday, 1 May 2008

A woman's voice becomes more attractive to both men and women at the point in her monthly cycle when she is at her most fertile, according to a study of vocal changes during ovulation.

Weather modification: The rain makers

Wednesday, 30 April 2008

Whether it is the Chinese firing weapons into the sky to make it rain, or the Thai government setting up a "royal rainmaking project", the science of weather modification has always had a touch of the sci-fi about it. So it is perhaps little surprise that the effectiveness of such an eccentric area of research has always been a little foggy. Indeed, no matter how hard you try – say, through launching silver-iodide particles into clouds to make them rain – it's hard to tell how influential you're actually being as it might have happened anyway.

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