Hormonal birth control is effective in preventing pregnancy, but there may be some neurological trade-offs that we are only just learning about Oral contraceptives have been effectively preventing pregnancy for more than 65 years, but it has only been in the past 10 that scientists – many of them women – have started to seriously…
The Book Club gives their verdict on Larry Niven’s Ringworld Eugene Powers/Alamy It was quite an experience, moving from the technicolour magical realism of Michel Nieva’s wild dystopia, Dengue Boy, to Larry Niven’s slice of classic science fiction, Ringworld, first published in 1970 and very much redolent of the sci-fi writing of that era. Not…
Kaliane Bradley’s protagonist is given some unexpected news in The Ministry of Time andrey_l/Shutterstock The interviewer said my name, which made my thoughts clip. I don’t say my name, not even in my head. She’d said it correctly, which people generally don’t. “I’m Adela,” she said. She had an eye-patch and blonde hair the same…
“I would have to establish some rules for how time travel worked” … Kaliane Bradley DreamcatcherDiana/Shutterstock The embarrassing truth about the use of time travel in my novel, The Ministry of Time, is that initially it was just a tool to get a Victorian naval officer into the 21st century so that I could torment…
Illustration of ancient birds nesting above the Arctic circle Gabriel Ugueto Newly discovered bone fragments from Alaska suggest birds have been breeding and nesting in the Arctic for at least 73 million years. “Which is kind of crazy, because it’s not easy to live in the Arctic and have newborn babies up there,” says study…
Leprosy can be caused by two species of bacteria, Mycobacterium leprae or Mycobacterium lepromatosis nobeastsofierce Science/Alamy A form of leprosy affected people in the Americas long before the arrival of Europeans, contrary to popular belief. “The narrative around leprosy has been always been that it’s this awful disease that Europeans brought to America,” says Nicolàs…
Dark chocolate is high in antioxidant compounds Gabi Musat/500px/Getty Images When in the depths of a YouTube rabbit hole, I find myself watching celebrity food diaries. After a day of avocadoes and green juices, the end-of-day treat is often a few squares of dark chocolate, and social media is awash with claims that the stuff…
A statue of the saint in Cucullo, Italy, is draped with harmless local snakes Piero Castellano Every year on 1 May, San Domenico di Sora gets some spectacularly bizarre accessories. During a religious procession in the Italian village of Cocullo, a statue of the saint is adorned with harmless snakes (above). The origins of this…
Sunset over the ruins of Wheal Coates in Cornwall, once among the UK’s most important tin mines David Chapman/Alamy Under a Metal SkyPhilip Marsden (Granta (UK, on sale) Counterpoint (US, 4 November)) Travel writer Philip Marsden lives on the river Fal in Cornwall, UK. About 3500 years ago, after a little tin was added to…
“People just moan about the weather forecast and how bad it is…” Erik AJV/Alamy “It’s an absolutely unbelievable scientific achievement,” says Andrew Charlton-Perez, talking to me by video from his office at the University of Reading, UK. His colleague, Simon Driscoll at the University of Cambridge, nods enthusiastically. “There are so many different applications and…