A new study shows that schools and many education programmes are failing to provide students with a basic understanding of evolution.

It is famously difficult to explain evolutionary principles without resorting to anthropomorphic or figurative language. Evolution ‘selects’ the fittest individuals; species ‘adapt’ to change. Both of these phrases are commonplace when explaining the very complex processes involved in evolution. However, this use of language implies that there is an agency o

Light bending reveals clumps of matter around early galaxy.

European astronomers have got their first glimpse of the soup of matter that surrounded a galaxy in the early Universe, just 3 billion years after the Big Bang. Their results provide clues as to how this matter got together, which is crucial to understanding why the Universe looks the way it does today 1 .

The 12-billion-year-old galaxy is called MS 1512-cB58. It is not the earliest galaxy known, but

Action to prevent non-insulin dependent diabetes and heart disease in South Asian people may need to begin during childhood, finds a study in this week’s BMJ.
Researchers in London identified 3,415 white and 227 South Asian children aged 8 to 11 years from primary schools in 10 British towns. Blood samples were taken from 1,287 white and 73 South Asian children.

An early stage in the development of diabetes and heart disease risk is insulin resistance, when insulin levels are increased.

Spot-welds stick sliding metals

Two smooth, cold, metal surfaces are like pieces of tacky Sellotape. They form tiny spot welds that have to be broken apart before they can slide over each other. This, claim two physicists in California 1 , is another reason why metals stick as they slip if they are pressed together and pushed.

Such microscopic causes of friction and wear are increasingly important as the scale of mechanical engineering shrinks to below what&#1

Weakened polio borrows genes to gain strength for outbreak

Genetic sleuthing has revealed how a dose of oral polio vaccine (OPV) can revert to the deadly poliovirus and cause an outbreak. The research highlights problems that global health organizations face completing their eradication of polio, and the urgency of that effort 1 .

“It reminds us that we need to be very careful in our development of a post-eradication policy,” says Bruce Aylward, leader of the

Pancreatic cancer is notoriously difficult to treat, largely because of the location of the pancreas close to major arteries and vital organs, and the effects of a poorly functioning pancreas on the rest of the body. It is one of the top 10 leading causes of death from cancer worldwide, and in the UK kills around 6500 people every year.

Doctors gave intravenous photosensitising agent (meso-tetrahydroxyphenyl chlorin) to 16 patients with inoperable pancreatic cancer. Three days later they ins