A small, icy moon of Saturn called Enceladus is one of the prime targets in the search for life elsewhere in the solar system. A new study strengthens the case for Enceladus being a habitable world.

The data for those new research findings comes from the Cassini spacecraft, which orbited Saturn from 2004-2017. In 2005, Cassini discovered geyser-like plumes of water vapor and ice grains erupting continuously out of cracks in Enceladus’ icy shell.

Ιf you asked a multilingual friend which language they find more emotional, the answer would usually be their mother tongue – the one they used while growing up and probably still use at home. This does not mean they are incapable of expressing emotion in another language, but there is a clear link between first languages and stronger emotional expression.

This has a lot to do with where and how we learn a language. Our first language, which linguists call L1, is usually acquired in the emotionally charged settings of childhood and family. Second languages, known as L2, are often learned in more neutral contexts, such as schools and institutions, making them less emotionally intense.

Why did people think cannibalism was good for their health? The answer offers a glimpse into the zaniest crannies of European history, at a time when Europeans were obsessed with Egyptian mummies.

Driven first by the belief that ground-up and tinctured human remains could cure anything from bubonic plague to a headache, and then by the macabre ideas Victorian people had about after-dinner entertainment, the bandaged corpses of ancient Egyptians were the subject of fascination from the Middle Ages to the 19th century.

Mummy mania

Faith that mummies could cure illness drove people for centuries to ingest something that tasted awful.

You have probably heard the phrase “follow your gut” – often used to mean trusting your instinct and intuition. But in the context of the gut-brain axis, the phrase takes on a more literal meaning. Scientific research increasingly shows that the brain and gut are in constant, two-way communication. Once overlooked, this connection is now at the forefront of growing interest in neuroscience, nutrition and mental health.

US health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr has announced he is cancelling US$500 million (£374 million) of research into mRNA vaccines, citing unproven concerns about their safety and long-term effects.

Kennedy has claimed that mRNA vaccines “encourage new mutations and can actually prolong pandemics” – a misleading statement that contradicts the scientific consensus on viral evolution and effects of vaccination.

But scientific research shows that mRNA vaccines have saved millions of lives.

Tumors can destroy the blood vessels of muscles even when the muscles are nowhere close to the tumor. That is the key finding of a new study that my colleagues and I recently published in the journal Nature Cancer.

Muscle loss in cancer patients is a major health problem, but the exact causes of how precisely tumors affect muscles remain an active area of research.