Mathematician Paul Erdős (left) and actor Jeff Goldblum have an uncanny resemblance Public Domain; Matt Baron/BEI/Shutterstock I come to you with something a little different for my latest maths column – a plea to Hollywood to make a comedy biopic about one of the greatest mathematicians of all time, Paul Erdős. Why is Erdős (pronounced…
Cognitive training could arm the brain against the effects of dementia Gary Burchell/Getty Images Cognitive “speed training” can reduce the risk of a dementia diagnosis by 25 per cent – that’s according to results from the world’s first randomised controlled trial of any intervention against the condition. “There was a lot of scepticism about whether…
Few areas of healthcare have been the subject of more hype, and achieved less genuine good, than personalised medicine. Companies are eager to track your biomarkers or supply a personalised nutrition plan – all for a healthy fee, of course – but truly useful personalised medicine is still a long way off. The idea remains…
Artist’s reconstruction of a Palaeolithic woman making a digging stick from an alder tree trunk G. Prieto; K. Harvati The oldest known wooden tools have been found in an opencast mine in Greece. They are 430,000 years old and were made by an unidentified species of ancient human – perhaps the ancestors of Neanderthals. Prehistoric…
We can usually agree what objects look like, but why? Martin Bond / Alamy Our world seems to be fundamentally fuzzy at the quantum level, yet we do not experience it that way. Researchers have now developed a recipe for measuring how quickly the objective reality that we do experience emerges from this fuzziness, strengthening…
Christopher Michel/Contour RA by Getty Images Civilisations name their ages after materials. In school, we learn about the Stone Age, the Bronze Age – and we are currently in a silicon age characterised by computers and phones. What might define the next age? Omar Yaghi at the University of California, Berkeley, thinks a family of…
A site on Isbjørne Island where Palaeo-Inuit people erected a circular tent Matthew Walls, Mari Kleist, Pauline Knudsen Humans were voyaging to remote islands off the north-west coast of Greenland 4500 years ago. This required them to cross over 50 kilometres of open water – one of the longest sea journeys made by Indigenous peoples…
The brain responds after a heart attack Science Photo Library / Alamy Following a heart attack, the brain picks up and acts on signals that come directly from sensory neurons located in the heart. The discovery suggests there is a feedback loop, which involves the immune system as well as the brain, that has an…
Vaccine uptake is critical for public health Robin Utrecht/Shutterstock When I read the 1998 study falsely claiming there was a link between the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism, I was shocked. Shocked by how bad the paper was, shocked that it was published in a high-status journal and shocked that journalists reported…
Vast areas of the Amazon rainforest have been burned for cattle ranching MICHAEL DANTAS/AFP via Getty Images Deforestation has reduced rainfall over the Amazon, suggesting the rainforest could reach a catastrophic tipping point sooner than expected. Satellite observations and rain gauge measurements show that the amount of rain falling in the southern Amazon basin declined…
