Does skill have any influence on the outcome when playing Snakes and Ladders? Sipa US/Alamy Have you ever played snakes and ladders (also known as Chutes and Ladders)? Are you sure? This game has its origins in ancient Indian games in which players roll dice to progress across a board of squares, such as Pachisi….
There is a saying in the halls of British political power that scientific advisers should be “on tap, not on top”. This pithy aphorism, often attributed to Winston Churchill, highlights that, in a democracy, science should guide – not dictate – policy-makers’ decisions. Never was this truer than at the height of the covid-19 pandemic….
Ryoji Ikeda’s data-cosm [n°1] Alice Lubbock Thomas LewtonFeatures editor, London Since the mid-2000s, electronic musician and visual artist Ryoji Ikeda has transformed vast quantities of data into immersive installations that transport you inside invisible scientific realms. When visiting his new work data-cosm [n°1], which sets out to “chart the full spectrum of data on nature”,…
We may never know the universal wave function VICTOR de SCHWANBERG/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY/Getty Images From the vantage point of quantum physics, the universe may in some ways be fundamentally unknowable. In quantum physics, every object, such as an electron, is matched to a mathematical formula called the wave function. The wave function encodes all the…
Bacteria in stools could be an unexpected weapon in the fight against cancer LEWIS HOUGHTON/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY For people not responding to a type of cancer treatment, a faecal transplant from someone who had success with the drug could boost their odds. Altering the gut microbiome has knock-on effects on the immune system, which seemed…
Researchers tracked the body condition of polar bears in Svalbard Jon Aars, Norsk Polarinstitutt Polar bears have been getting fatter even as sea ice disappears in Norway’s Svalbard archipelago, the fastest-warming place on Earth – but scientists don’t expect the good times to last. The northern Barents Sea, which stretches between Svalbard and Russia’s Novaya…
Studying twins is key to understanding the heritability of lifespan Halfpoint/iStockphoto/Getty Images In wealthy, relatively safe countries, how long people live now probably depends just as much on the genetic variants they inherit from their parents as on their environment and lifestyles. That’s the implication of a study reanalysing data from research in twins in…
Spotting cancer tumours in mammograms seems to be easier with AI AMELIE-BENOIST/BSIP/Universal Images Group via Getty People who are screened for breast cancer by AI-supported radiologists are less likely to develop aggressive cancers before their next screening round than those who are screened by radiologists alone, raising hopes that AI-assisted screening could save lives. “This…
Elizabeth Hohmann with Dmitri, one of her prized stool donors Elizabeth Hohmann Faecal transplants are now commonly used to treat recurrent Clostridioides difficile infections, but finding people whose faeces are of sufficient quality to be used in these transplants is a major challenge. “It’s actually quite a frustrating activity because only about 1 per cent…
Tim Winton: “There may be places on our planet where the reality of our burning world can still be overlooked or evaded. Australia is not one of them.” Shutterstock / Vibe Images My grandparents were born at the end of the 19th century, in the era of the horse and cart. My mum and dad…
