How did a small Nordic country dominate the Games? By making sport fun and not something for kids to suffer Norway’s Olympians stormed the mountains of Milano Cortina and left the rest of the world wondering how a nation of 5.6 million people regularly tops the Winter Olympics medal table,...
The rise of rejection sensitive dysphoria: ‘My chest feels like it’s collapsing’
It makes rejection, teasing or criticism feel unbearable, often prompting a strong physical reaction. Sufferers describe life with a condition that is only just starting to be understood Jenna Turnbull’s chest is tightening. The 36-year-old civil servant, who lives in Cardiff, can picture herself as she speaks: an 11-year-old in...
Toxic waste from screens ends up in endangered dolphins, study finds
Gene-altering chemicals found in humpback dolphins and finless porpoises, raising alarm they may end up in human food chain Toxic e-waste chemicals from television, computer and smartphone screens have been found in the brains and bodies of endangered dolphins and porpoises in the South China Sea. Research published in Environmental...
How ancient Scottish rocks throw ‘snowball Earth’ theory up in the air
Researchers discover rare periods of a few thousands years when climate unexpectedly awoke from slumber During the ”snowball Earth” period about 700m years ago, Earth’s climate shut down. The planet was encased in ice and insulated from seasonal variations: spring, summer, autumn and winter all stopped. Or at least that...
Ayahuasca psychedelic DMT shows promise as depression therapy
Study finds participants saw reduction in depressive symptoms as researchers welcome ‘promising’ results A phase II clinical trial has found dimethyltryptamine (DMT), one of the psychoactive components traditionally used in the Amazonian psychedelic ritual ayahuasca, might be a promising therapy for depression. The psychedelic pharmaceutical company Small Pharma (now Cybin...
Tropical plants flowering months earlier or later because of climate crisis – study
Changes threaten ecosystems as flowering falls out of sync with fruit-eating, seed-dispersing animals and pollinators Tropical flowers are blooming months earlier or later than they used to because of climate breakdown, with potentially “cascading impacts across ecosystems”, according to a study of 8,000 plants dating back 200 years. Researchers looked...
US grid battery storage hits record, even as clean energy incentives are rolled back
The US added 57 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of battery storage capacity to its electric grid last year – enough to supply the annual electricity needs of roughly five million homes. The SEIA report projects an additional 21 percent increase by the end of 2026, representing about 70 GWh of new capacity...