"If you resort to mentioning Hitler, some say, you have lost the argument. If you resort to sequencing Hitler’s DNA to try to get more eyeballs for your TV channel, I would say you have just plain lost it" 🧪 My view of the TV documentary on Hitler's DNA: www.newscientist.com/article/2504...

Also on this episode of the podcast, @mjflepage.bsky.social and I talk about our worries around genetic determinism open.spotify.com/episode/16HS...

I interviewed geneticist Turi King and historian of Nazi Germany Alex Kay about the documentary, "Hitler's DNA: Blueprint of a Dictator" and I started by saying we don't call DNA a blueprint... www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XXB...

To understand Adolf Hitler, we need to look at his personal life and the wider societal and historical context - analysing his DNA for a TV gimmick tells us nothing, says Michael Le Page

Instead of watching the documentary, read this by @mjflepage.bsky.social on Hitler's DNA www.newscientist.com/article/2504...

“There is no need to look to genes to explain why many individuals try to become dictators – the far more pressing question is why we let them.” The argument against sequencing Hitler’s DNA for a TV documentary. @mjflepage.bsky.social www.newscientist.com/article/2504...

"If you resort to mentioning Hitler, some say, you have lost the argument. If you resort to sequencing Hitler’s DNA to try to get more eyeballs for your TV channel, I would say you have just plain lost it" 🧪 My view of the TV documentary on Hitler's DNA: www.newscientist.com/article/2504...

Thing about Iceland’s forests is that they were & are a bit different to those elsewhere. The joke goes, what do you do if lost in an Icelandic forest? Stand up!

Have you ever used one of those calculators that tell you how much CO2 🔥 you'll generate flying 🛩️ somewhere? 🧪 Well, the bad news is that existing flight calculators wildly underestimate the true impact, according to a team at @uniofsurrey.bsky.social www.newscientist.com/article/2502...

New Scientist is looking for a new features editor, ideally with a specialism in evolution, ecology, human sciences and biology - if there's you, take a look! www.dmgmedia.co.uk/careers/jobs...

Where are we on climate action? The bottom black line is countries that submitted new commitments (on time), the dotted line is global emissions. Blue shading are the commitments. That is the progress 10 years after Paris... unfccc.int/process-and-...

It's horrifying to see #Melissa intensifying right up to landfall - I dread to think what will happen in Jamaica, with up to a metre of rain forecast 🧪 But it's clear why Melissa is so powerful - it was fuelled by waters made abnormally warm by global heating: www.newscientist.com/article/2501...

4 days of seismic records from a seismic station in Jamaica shows Hurricane Melissa roaring towards the island. Hurricanes increase the amplitude of ocean waves which beat on the coast and sea floor. These produce Rayleigh waves that can be seen as increasingly thick “wiggles” in seismic records 🧪

“We’ve missed 1.5”: In the podcast this week we discuss the facts that (a) Paris saved us from the worst of global heating and (b) that it’s been clear for a long time that we’d miss 1.5 degrees. 📺🎧: podfollow.com/the-world-th...

New podcast: 💉mRNA vaccines help your body fight cancer 🤬State of Climate Action report sounds red alert 🦜New explanation for the dawn chorus open.spotify.com/episode/4ODd... with @pennysarchet.bsky.social and @mjflepage.bsky.social plus Clea Schumer and Sophie Boehm of @worldresources.bsky.social

Immune cells engineered 🧬 to target cancerous cells, called CAR T cells, work really well against blood cancers like leukaemia, but they don't do much against solid tumours, that is, for most cancers 🧪 Now promising animal results suggest this could soon change www.newscientist.com/article/2501...

This year the US approved CRISPR 🧬 pigs resistant to a disease called PRRS Now a team at @roslininstitute.bsky.social has gene-edited pigs 🐖 to make them resistant to classical swine fever 🧪 The benefits should include lower greenhouse emissions and prices 🥓 www.newscientist.com/article/2500...

Biting midges arrived in Iceland a decade ago. They're pretty nasty, too

mRNA 🧬 vaccines - but not other kinds - trigger an innate response that can allow the immune system to 'see' and attack tumours, animal studies suggest 🧪 If true, the covid vaccines should do this - and now we have the first evidence this is so www.newscientist.com/article/2500...

Yes the CO2 rise 2023-2024 was faster than we predicted at Mauna Loa and was a record rise there - now the WMO confirm the global mean rise was also a record Also the rate of CO2 rise is now above the IPCC scenarios that limit global warming to 1.5C www.carbonbrief.org/met-office-a...

Is it bad that a plan to tackle CO2 emissions from international shipping has been delayed a year? Well, that depends on the details. If the plan ends up being 'let's use food-based biofuels instead of fossil fuels', frankly the planet is a lot better off with no plan

The US decision to cut funding for mRNA vaccine development was dumb, and it's looking dumber by the day as more evidence of their benefits and potential piles up. There's another big study coming Sunday - watch this space

From an alien-looking flat-faced longhorn beetle to an abandoned baby rhino, images at London’s Natural History Museum show what we stand to lose from the decimation of global biodiversity

Glad I got my jab Monday

According to a recent report, the use of biofuels ⛽ worldwide has increased CO2 emissions by 16% 🧪 Increased, instead of decreased! Plus biofuels are driving up food prices 💶 and helping to destroy biodiversity. This is utter madness www.newscientist.com/article/2499...

mRNA vaccines 🧬 are already great but they can be made even more effective by making them code for virus-like nanoparticles 🦠 rather than just single proteins 🧪 This means a lower dose is required, which should reduce side effects www.newscientist.com/article/2500...

Cardiff will be the first UK city to introduce a surcharge for oversized SUVs and trucks, "while very large vehicles – those over 3,500kg – will be excluded from residential permits entirely."

I wrote recently about a motion to effectively ban the use of genetic technologies in conservation that was going to be voted on at the IUCN meeting now underway Well, the vote just happened - and it was close! Motion 133 rejected by just one vote!

Aargh! Needless to say, a record rise in CO2 is really bad. By @tinymaddie.bsky.social 🧪 I think this means the CO2 rise was even higher than forecast by the Met Office, but that's based on a different measure so I'll need @richardabetts.bsky.social to confirm www.newscientist.com/article/2500...

In response, I'm seeing complaints about solar on farmland from the likes of @cprecountryside.bsky.social Butt 2% of UK farmland is used to grow biofuels, which is wildly inefficient and way more damaging than solar If you're not campaigning against biofuels, do shut up about solar on farmland

NEW: There’s a disaster unfolding in Alaska right now. And no major network is covering it. The remnants of Typhoon Halong battered western Alaska overnight. Homes, with people in them, have literally been swept into the Bering Strait. At least 20 are missing. No comment from any federal agency.

3/3) And @mjflepage.bsky.social tells me and @pennysarchet.bsky.social about SELFISH SPERM in older men.

Must-catch show this week: 🧵 1/3) Primatologist Alejandra Pascual-Garrido, who works on tool use in chimps in Gombe, tells us what it was like working with Jane Goodall. 🎧: open.spotify.com/episode/2QZk...

And here's a short video explainer on the chemistry Nobel: www.youtube.com/shorts/C6p36...

The most important piece of information you need to know about Celebrity Traitors is that Nick Mohammed was doing a PhD at the University of Cambridge on "The Effects of Glacier-Induced Isostatic Readjustment on Current Climate Change Models" before he abandoned it to switch to a career in comedy

If you saw preprint, biggest two updates are: Much improved discussion + variant calls now accessible If you'd like an accessible summary check out this great article from @mjflepage.bsky.social in New Scientist: For science thread read on! [2/n] institutions.newscientist.com/article/2499...

The risk of older fathers fathers passing on disease-causing mutations 🧬 to their children is higher than we thought 🧪 The reason - mutant sperm stem cells that turn selfish and divide faster than normal 1/ www.newscientist.com/article/2499...

They are "almost like Hermione’s handbag in Harry Potter” 🧙‍♀️ Heiner Linke of the Nobel committee for chemistry describes the designer materials known as metal-organic frameworks that won the Nobel for Richard Robson, Susumu Kitagawa and Omar Yaghi 🧪 www.newscientist.com/article/2499...

Regulatory cells in our blood play a key role in preventing our immune systems attacking us - and the discovery of these cells by Mary Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell and Shimon Sakaguchi was today rewarded with a Nobel prize 🧪 www.newscientist.com/article/2498...

There should be no genetic engineering of wildlife, says a motion to be voted on at an IUCN meeting this month 🧪 But many scientists think synthetic biology is crucial to saving biodiversity - for instance, to make corals 🪸 heat tolerant #wildlifeconservation www.newscientist.com/article/2498...

A study suggests AI could help evade controls on synthesising bioweapons. Here's why this is like doing a fancy Mission Impossible-style bank raid when the vault door has been left open, the alarm is off and the guards are asleep 🧪 www.newscientist.com/article/2498...

I want to tell you a story, and it begins with this VERY WEIRD animal: Meet Thetys vagina... [a thread 🧵] 📸 m_patton bit.ly/2Mgw8Sf 🌿🧪🦑🐙🌊

My piece on the exceptional legacy of Jane Goodall www.newscientist.com/article/2498...

This is worth a read 🧪

I do think this human egg story is being massively overhyped. To be clear, no eggs have been "generated", "created" or "made" from human skin cells - rather, existing human eggs have been given the DNA from skin cells using a kind of cloning 1/

We've found a master regulator that controls the level of DNA repair 🧬 and thus how fast we accumulate mutations 🧪 The team that discovered it thinks this also determines the rate of ageing 👵, but they haven't quite proved it yet www.newscientist.com/article/2497...

If you or your child have mild asthma 🫁 and are still using a salbutamol/albuterol (blue) reliever inhaler, you should talk to your GP/doctor about switching to the combination inhaler 🧪 www.newscientist.com/article/2497...

As Reform's Nathan Gill admits taking bribes from Russian 'secret service pawn' Oleg Voloshyn, here’s a nice photo of Nigel Farage with Voloshyn’s wife.

The emperor has no clothes

I love this