Just a few sessions of heavy drinking can damage someone's ability to pay attention, remember things and make good judgments, research shows.Binge drinkers are known to be at increased risk of accidents, violence and engaging in unprotected sex. But the study is the first to identify brain damage as a danger of consuming more alcohol than official safe limits.The research, to be published in the...

Letters: Your report of a survey of science teachers' attitudes towards creationism made certain assumptions which would not, I hope, be shared by most teachers of science

A common additive in processed foods could increase the risk of lung cancer by making the body's cells grow out of control, scientists warn today. Inorganic phosphate stimulated chemicals in the bodies of tested mice, causing lung tumours to form and grow, a study found. Researchers have called for the additive to be strictly regulated while further studies are carried out. The Food Standards...

The International Year of Astronomy opens with Venus as a striking evening star which moves from the S at nightfall to set in the WSW at about 20:15 on the 1st and more than one hour later by January's end. As Venus sinks, Orion and his sparkling retinue of winter constellations take over the SE sky.Brightening from mag -4.3 to -4.5 as it speeds through Aquarius into Pisces, Venus's track during...

You might imagine that where you stand on the nature-nurture debate is purely academic. You would be very wrong. Simply holding the belief that genes largely or wholly determine you or your children can be toxic. For instance, if you suffer a mental illness, believing it's down to genes means you are less likely to recover, probably because you feel there's nothing you can do about it. Likewise,...

Two units of alcohol a day increases the risk of bowel cancer by 18% and the risk of liver cancer by 20%

It must have been an appalling moment when a Viking realised he had paid two cows for a fake designer sword: a clash of blade on blade in battle would have led to his sword, still sharp enough to slice through bone, shattering like glass."You really didn't want to have that happen," said Dr Alan Williams, an archaeometallurgist and consultant to the Wallace Collection. He and Tony Fry, a senior...

Separating conjoined twins can be a complex and high-risk surgical procedure. For parents, separation can require harrowing ethical judgments - on rare occasions, for example, the procedure will mean sacrificing one twin's life to save another. Twins can be joined in a variety of ways and the specifics of each operation to separate them depend heavily upon which vital organs, if any, the twins...

Quantum physics is a bit of a black hole to me. You jump in and where do you get? Nowhere. But I am not alone. Not even the quantum physicists seem to get anywhere particular. Apparently they can't see what the quanta (discrete unit quantities of energy) are doing, because as soon as you look at them they stop doing what they normally do, and if you look at them while they're doing it, you can't...

Insurers delivered a victory for environmentalists and dealt a body blow to Turkey's economic regeneration plans yesterday by pulling the plug on a bitterly contested dam project that critics claimed would wreck habitats, displace people and drown ancient archaeological treasures.A consortium of German, Austrian and Swiss insurance firms ordered a halt to the £1.2bn Ilisu dam in Turkey's...

William Denison compared his family's hounding by extremists to 'Chinese water torture'

Profiles of five of the extremists behind the Huntingdon Life Sciences blackmail campaign

Despite yesterday's conviction of four animal rights activists, Huntingdon Life Sciences still takes extraordinary precautions to continue trading. The company was once listed openly on the London stock exchange, but this meant that for a small fee protesters could buy access to the company's shareholder register, allowing them to widen their campaign of intimidation to target investors. Soon...

Police believe Donna Molnar survived because snow quickly covered her body to form an insulating layer against the sub-zero temperatures of the Canadian winter. Crucially, her mouth and nose were left unobstructed, so she could still breathe.When the body starts to lose more heat than it can easily generate, it is forced to risk losing parts it can cope without. Older people reach this point more...

If proof were needed of the cold end to autumn, then Tim Sparks has evidence. He studies phenology, the timings of the seasons, and each year on the same dates in autumn he photographs the trees outside his offices at Monks Wood, Cambridgeshire. On 2 December this year the trees were bare of leaves - whereas on the same date in 2005 the leaves were still largely green.It just shows how the British...

A man who was left completely blind by a series of strokes has delighted scientists by negotiating a maze of obstacles without using his cane.The man, known only as TN, walked around chairs and boxes without knocking into them in an extraordinary demonstration of "blindsight", a strange ability some blind people have to detect objects they cannot see.Scans of the man's brain revealed that a...

Group orchestrated campaign involving hoax bombs, night visits and nuisance phone calls and letters

They are highly social, adhere to a rigid class system and are intensely house-proud. And now it emerges that bees resemble human beings in one more, previously overlooked, respect: they behave just like us under the influence of cocaine.Australian researchers found that bees which had been given a dose of cocaine threw themselves into unusually energetic dance routines, felt compelled to "talk"...