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8 articles from Guardian Unlimited Science

Boris Johnson had a lot to say about Partygate – but did any of it stack up?

Nowhere to hide for former PM as he was finally cross-examined on lockdown gatherings in No 10After 16 months, Boris Johnson was finally forensically cross-examined over Partygate – live on TV and for nearly four hours.Previous attempts to do so in brief media interviews or through questions posed in the Commons chamber allowed him to obfuscate or run down the clock. Continue...

One in five people in UK suffer from misophonia, researchers find

Disorder involves strong negative reaction to sounds such as chewing or snoringIf the sound of someone chewing gum or slurping their tea gets on your nerves, you are not alone. Researchers say almost one in five people in the UK has strong negative reactions to such noises.Misophonia is a disorder in which people feel strong emotional responses to certain sounds, feeling angry, distressed or even...

Beethoven’s bad liver may not have been solely down to alcohol, say experts

Cambridge study reveals the great composer experienced a hepatitis B infection and was at high risk for liver diseaseWhen an autopsy was carried out after Ludwig van Beethoven’s death in 1827, his liver was found to be “beset with nodules the size of a bean”. Now researchers say the cause may not have been alcohol consumption alone, with a genetic analysis revealing the great composer...

Australian military looks to build crucial space capabilities that will support Aukus nuclear subs

Defence department puts out call for satellites that can talk to each other and to the ground, are ‘scalable, rapidly deployable and reconstitutable’Follow our Australia news live blog for the latest updatesGet our morning and afternoon news emails, free app or daily news podcastDefence is looking for a mesh of military space satellites that can talk to each other as well as to the ground, and...

Novartis scraps cholesterol drug trial in blow to UK life sciences ambitions

Swiss firm’s withdrawal from Leqvio trial with NHS dents government plans to attract post-Brexit research and investment The Swiss pharmaceutical firm Novartis has ditched plans for a large clinical trial in the UK, in a further blow to the government’s efforts to make Britain an attractive place for research and investment after Brexit.The company decided to scrap the Orion-17 trial of its...

The Messi of maths: Argentinian Luis Caffarelli wins Abel prize

Caffarelli, 74, takes top trophy for work on partial differential equations, the first winner from South AmericaFirst football, and now maths. Three months after Lionel Messi triumphed at the World Cup, an Argentinian has won the top international trophy in mathematics.Luis Caffarelli, 74, has received the Abel prize, an award presented by the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, for his work...

Humans have reclaimed ‘land size of Luxembourg’ since 2000

Study shows more than 2,500 sq km added to coastlines, mostly port expansion in global southLand reclamation is nothing new, but during this century there has been a significant rise in the creation of artificial land by humans, with a recent study showing that developers have added more than 2,500 sq km – an area equivalent to the size of Luxembourg – to coastlines since 2000.Using satellite...

Sex on the beach: pressures of extreme polygamy may be driving southern elephant seals to early death

Study finds males, who can command a harem of up to 100 females, driven to gain weight as quickly as possible by foraging in areas full of predatorsExtreme polygamy may be driving male southern elephant seals to early deaths, new research suggests.A study of 14,000 southern elephant seals (Mirounga leonina) at Macquarie Island in the south-western Pacific, has found that while survival rates for...