“‘Part of our biological toolkit’: Newborn babies can anticipate rhythm in music.”
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Russ Roberts (https://hawaiisciencejournal.com).
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Brain activity suggests newborns can detect and predict patterns relating to rhythm, study says Newborn babies can anticipate rhythm in pieces of music, researchers have discovered, offering insights into a fundamental human trait. Babies in the womb begin to respond to music by about eight or nine months, as shown by changes in their heart rate and body movements, said Dr Roberta Bianco, the fir
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An ape was able to identify the location of imaginary objects in pretend scenarios, researchers find Whether it’s playing at being doctors or hosting a toy’s tea party, children are adept at engaging in make-believe – now researchers say bonobos can do it too. While there have been anecdotal reports of apes using imaginary objects, including apparently dragging pretend blocks across the floor, ex
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‘Giveaway’ competitions on WhatsApp and Telegram for retatrutide and other drugs described as ‘extremely dangerous’ Hidden-market promoters of weight-loss drugs are running social media “giveaway” competitions that offer powerful, unlicensed medicines as prizes. The Guardian has been monitoring WhatsApp and Telegram groups promoting substances such as retatrutide – a medicine unlicensed in the UK
Today
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As fewer people choose to pair up, let alone marry, it could be that our species’ mating patterns are moving closer to the natural order Monogamy, you may have heard, is in crisis. Fewer people are in relationships , let alone opting to be in one ’til death . And even those who have already exchanged vows seem to be increasingly looking for wiggle room. “Quiet divorce” – mentally checking out of
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On a recent trip to Lake Geneva in Switzerland, biodiversity reporter Phoebe Weston witnessed the impact of one of the planet’s most potent invasive species, the quagga mussel. In just a decade the mollusc, originally from the Ponto-Caspian region of the Black Sea, has caused irreversible change beneath the surface of the picturesque lake. While ecologists believe invasive species play a major ro
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My wife, Lelia Duley, who has died aged 67, was an obstetric epidemiologist who studied health outcomes related to pregnancy, childbirth and its aftermath. Working alongside frontline clinicians, she designed large-scale trials to test commonly used, but under-evaluated, treatments for pregnant women. Continue reading…
Yesterday
By age 20 diagnosis rates for men and women almost equal, research finds, challenging assumptions of gender discrepancy Females may be just as likely to be autistic as males but boys are up to four times more likely to be diagnosed in childhood, according to a large-scale study . Research led by the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden scrutinised the diagnosis rates of autism for people born in Swede
Two-decade study indicates a diet rich in foods such as olive oil, nuts and vegetables can cut risk of every type of stroke A Mediterranean diet can reduce the risk of every type of stroke, in some cases by as much as 25%, a large study conducted over two decades suggests. A diet rich in olive oil, nuts, seafood, whole grains and vegetables has previously been linked to a number of health benefit
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We don’t have a single verb to express smelling something nice. Welsh and Croatian, by contrast, are never caught short when something fragrant gets right up your nose I remember the first time I remembered a smell. This was remembering to the extent that it stopped me in my tracks, taking me back to a specific moment, a specific place and a specific feeling. The smell was that of a bike shop. Ma
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While some benefits such as stress relief are backed by solid evidence, they can be achieved without expensive hyped-up courses Read more in the Antiviral series Get our breaking news email , free app or daily news podcast In the 2012 film adaptation of the Dr Seuss book The Lorax, a fable about capitalist greed, air is a commodity. The mayor of Thneedville deprives the city’s residents of trees
Novo Nordisk share price plunges after blaming lower US drug prices, patent protection issues and rising competition The maker of Wegovy and Ozempic, Novo Nordisk, has predicted a sharp drop in revenues this year owing to what its boss described as a “painful” push by Donald Trump to lower US weight-loss drug prices, rising competition, and the loss of important patent protections. Denmark’s Novo
Feb 3, 2026
On the Future of Species by Adrian Woolfson review – are we on the verge of creating synthetic life?
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A genomic entrepreneur’s guide to the coming revolution in biology raises troubling questions about ethics and safety The prophet Ezekiel once claimed to have seen four beasts emerge from a burning cloud, “sparkling like the colour of burnished brass”. Each had wings and four faces: that of a man, a lion, an ox and an eagle. Similarly, a creature called Buraq, something between a mule and a donke
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Researchers say waste dumping and climate breakdown have contributed to rise in brick, concrete and glass on beaches As much as half of some British beaches’ coarse sediments may consist of human-made materials such as brick, concrete, glass and industrial waste, a study has suggested. Climate breakdown, which has caused more frequent and destructive coastal storms, has led to an increase in thes
Artemis II mission was due to begin as early as next week and astronauts have spent almost two weeks in quarantine Nasa has postponed its historic mission to send astronauts around the moon and back again, after issues arose during a critical test of its most powerful rocket yet. The US space agency had planned to launch the Artemis II mission from Kennedy Space Center in Florida as early as next
Feb 2, 2026
Aerospace business and artificial intelligence firm to unite for IPO as world’s most valuable private company Musk is taking SpaceX’s minority shareholders for a ride | Nils Pratley Elon Musk’s aerospace company SpaceX has acquired his artificial intelligence business xAI, in a $1.25tn (£910bn) merger that consolidates part of Musk’s empire as SpaceX prepares to go public later this year. The two
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Just like men, women are increasingly being told by online influencers that the classic symptoms of middle age could be down to low testosterone. In the second part of this miniseries exploring the hormone, Madeleine Finlay finds out what testosterone supplementation is doing for women. She hears from science journalist Linda Geddes, who is taking testosterone for low libido, and from prof Susan
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UPFs are made to encourage addiction and consumption and should be regulated like tobacco, say researchers Ultra-processed foods (UPFs) have more in common with cigarettes than with fruit or vegetables, and require far tighter regulation, according to a new report. UPFs and cigarettes are engineered to encourage addiction and consumption, researchers from three US universities said, pointing to t
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The answers to today’s problems Earlier today I set you these three problems about the number 11. Here they are again with solutions. 1. Funny formation odd positions: 9,7,5,3,1 sum to 25; even positions: 8,6,4,2,0 sum to 20. Continue reading…
Feb 1, 2026
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Every second, 11m bits of information enter our brains, which then efficiently prioritise them. We need to learn to work with the process, rather than against it It’s believed that we have about 50,000 thoughts a day: big, small, urgent, banal – “Did I leave the oven on?”. And those are just the ones that register. Subconsciously, we’re constantly sifting through a barrage of stimuli: background
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Puzzles one louder than ten UPDATE: Solutions can be read here It’s two decimal digits long, it’s prime, it’s a palindrome and it’s the number of players in a football team. Let’s hear it for “legs” eleven! Continue reading…
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Straddling the celestial equator, the constellation is visible in both hemispheres Orion, the hunter, one of the most recognisable constellations in the night sky, is well placed for observation from the northern hemisphere during February. Straddling the celestial equator – the projection of Earth’s equator on to the night sky – the constellation is also visible from the southern hemisphere. Fro
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We are living longer and longer, but many of us are unprepared for the challenges age brings, says the novelist and psychotherapist Frank Tallis We have never lived so long, so well, nor had more available advice on how to do so: don’t smoke, don’t drink, don’t eat ultraprocessed foods; lift weights, get outside, learn a language. Cosmetics – or surgery – have never been so available, so advanced
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Recreating cosmic dust may help answer questions about how meteorites hitting Earth came to contain organic matter Get our breaking news email , free app or daily news podcast How does one acquire star dust? One option, as the Perry Como song suggests, is to catch a falling star and put it in your pocket, so to speak. Thousands of tonnes of cosmic dust bombard the Earth each year, mostly vaporisi
Jan 31, 2026
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Nick Carter says easing controls on MDMA will allow drug to be used as alternative treatment for those with PTSD A former head of the British military is calling for the government to ease restrictions on the party drug MDMA so that it can be tested more cheaply as a treatment for veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Sir Nick Carter, who was chief of the defence staff until 2021,
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Researchers tell ‘human story’ about crisis during plague of Justinian, which killed millions in Byzantine empire A US-led research team has verified the first Mediterranean mass grave of the world’s earliest recorded pandemic, providing stark new details about the plague of Justinian that killed millions of people in the Byzantine empire between the sixth and eighth centuries. The findings, publ
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Champion of respiratory medicine who was passionate about building bridges between academics and clinicians Mike Morgan, who has died aged 75, was a leading figure in respiratory services in Leicester for more than 30 years. He also championed respiratory medicine at the highest level. It had long been a poor relation compared to other areas of medicine but, as the national clinical director for
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