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1 week ago | 
theguardian.com | Ian Sample |Madeleine Finlay |Leah Green |Tony Onuchukwu |Ellie Bury
More of us are turning to products containing mushroom extracts, with the medicinal fungi market now worth billions of pounds. Promises of benefits to mental and physical health have seen its popularity spill over from wellness influencers to the shelves of Marks & Spencer – but is there any scientific evidence behind these claims?
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3 weeks ago | 
theguardian.com | Ian Sample |Tony Onuchukwu |Leah Green |Ilan Goodman
Vast areas of the ocean are getting darker, according to research based on satellite imaging. Marine ecosystems are governed by faint light changes – from mass nightly migrations to coral spawning cycles – so what happens when that light begins to fade? Ian Sample talks to Prof Tim Smyth from the Plymouth Marine Laboratory about why this darkening is happening and how life in the ‘photic zone’ – the sunlit upper layer that is home to 90% of marine organisms – could be profoundly affected
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3 weeks ago | 
theguardian.com | Helen Pidd |Moira Donegan |Ruth Abrahams |Alex Atack |Tony Onuchukwu |Elizabeth Cassin
Why is pro-natalism – the idea that society should focus on producing children – a growing movement in the US? The Guardian US columnist Moira Donegan tells Helen Pidd: “This is not something that average people in the US are crying out for. People are having the number of children that they desire and think that they can support, right?
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1 month ago | 
theguardian.com | Helen Pidd |Esther Addley |Alex Atack |Tony Onuchukwu |Homa Khaleeli |Elizabeth Cassin
“I felt very ready on the start line. I was like: ‘OK, this is it. This is what we’ve worked for.’”For the British Olympic athlete Lisa Dobriskey, reaching the women’s 1500m final at the London 2012 Games was a huge moment. She’d come fourth in Beijing four years earlier. This was her chance, in front of a home crowd. When the race began, Lisa remembers feeling alarmed at how slow it was because she knew at some point it was going to take off. And then it did.
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1 month ago | 
theguardian.com | Madeleine Finlay |Ian Sample |Tony Onuchukwu |Ellie Bury
Doctors in the US have become the first to treat a baby with a customised gene-editing therapy after diagnosing the child with a severe genetic disorder that kills about half of those affected in early infancy. Ian Sample explains to Madeleine Finlay how this new therapy works and how it paves the way for even more complex gene editing techniques.
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1 month ago | 
theguardian.com | Ian Sample |Damian Carrington |Tony Onuchukwu |Ellie Bury
Geoengineering, the controversial set of techniques that aim to deliberately alter the Earth’s climate system, may be inching a step closer to reality with the announcement that UK scientists will be conducting real-world experiments in the coming years. To understand what’s happening, Ian Sample is joined by the Guardian environment editor Damian Carrington. Damian explains what the experiments will entail and why scientists are so divided on whether pursuing this research is a good idea
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1 month ago | 
theguardian.com | Michael Safi |Hannah Ellis-Petersen |Hattie Moir |Tony Onuchukwu |Sami Kent
On Saturday, Pakistan and India agreed a fragile ceasefire. The announcement, reports the south Asia correspondent Hannah Ellis-Petersen, was made after days of escalation between the two neighbours: drone and missile attacks; cross-border skirmishes; and a world watching on, hoping that these two nuclear states would not go any further. Yet while the US-brokered peace may have reduced the tension, the long-running dispute over Kashmir remains unresolved.
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1 month ago | 
theguardian.com | Tony Onuchukwu |Ian Sample
Science correspondent Hannah Devlin joins Ian Sample to discuss three intriguing science stories from the week, from a global study that puts the UK third from bottom when it comes to flourishing, to a man who intentionally suffered more than 200 snake bites in the quest to find a universal antivenom and a breakthrough in the quest to understand the contents of the charred Herculaneum scrolls buried when Mount Vesuvius erupted
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1 month ago | 
theguardian.com | Ian Sample |Ashifa Kassam |Jillian Ambrose |Tom Glasser |Madeleine Finlay |Tony Onuchukwu | +1 more
Presented by Ian Sample with Ashifa Kassam and Jillian Ambrose, produced by Tom Glasser and Madeleine Finlay, sound design by Tony Onuchukwu, the executive producer was Ellie BuryThu 1 May 2025 00.00 EDTAuthorities are still trying to understand what triggered the massive power outage that left the majority of the Iberian Peninsula without electricity on Monday.
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2 months ago | 
theguardian.com | Madeleine Finlay |Ian Sample |Rachel Porter |Tony Onuchukwu |Ellie Bury
Madeleine Finlay and Ian Sample discuss three intriguing science stories from the week. From a hint at alien life on a distant planet, to a clue in the search for answers over why colon cancer rates are rising in the under 50’s, and news from a group of scientists who claim to have experienced a colour no one has ever seen before.
