Category: Health

TSViPhoto/Shutterstock Scientists have crossed an important line in biological engineering. In a recent study, researchers used artificial intelligence to design complete sets of genetic instructions for bacteriophages, viruses that infect bacteria. Some of those computer-generated designs produced working viruses when they were built and tested in the laboratory. These viruses were designed to infect bacteria […]

Orlowski Designs LLC/Shutterstock Most people underestimate how much light a pair of sunglasses blocks out. A typical dark pair removes around 80 to 90% of the visible light reaching the eye. Safely looking directly at the Sun requires reducing the light reaching the eye by a factor of around 100,000, meaning roughly 99.999% must be […]

Pen_ash/Unsplash A fall from an electric scooter (e-scooter) can look deceptively minor. The rider is standing only a short distance above the road and, unlike a motorcycle, most e-scooters are limited to relatively modest speeds. Yet trauma surgeons are seeing injuries that tell a different story. E-scooter crashes can cause serious head injuries, damage to […]

E coli has a new enemy – designed by AI. Saiful52/Shutterstock.com Tiny viruses that infect bacteria could one day help us tackle infections that antibiotics can no longer treat. But first, scientists need to understand how these viruses work, and artificial intelligence could provide them with a powerful way to do that. Known as bacteriophages, […]

ART-ur/Shutterstock.com Artificial intelligence has designed viruses that can infect bacteria and reproduce – a first that shows AI is beginning to do more than analyse the genetic code of living things. It can write new versions of it, too. The viruses in question are bacteriophages, or phages – viruses that infect bacteria rather than people, […]

New Africa/Shutterstock.com With temperatures forecast to climb to 36°C in parts of the UK, heat health alerts are once again in place – and for many people it will mean more than an uncomfortable few days. The human body normally keeps its core temperature at around 37°C, and when the air around us heats up, […]

New Africa/Shutterstock A teenager joins an online video chat. Within seconds, artificial intelligence analyses their face and gives them a score out of ten for “attractiveness”. They are compared in real time with another user who scores higher and is declared the winner. The game is live-streamed, and the audience ridicule the loser in the […]

KL-Pharma/Shutterstock.com Almost 305,000 doses of the morning-after pill were provided free of charge in England’s high street pharmacies in the first five months of the new contraception service, according to new NHS data (October 2025 to March 2026). This figure marks one of the biggest changes in access to emergency contraception in decades, putting a […]

Pheelings media/Shutterstock Europe is in the grip of yet another deadly heatwave. Over 10,000 excess deaths were recorded during late-June 2026 alone – and the toll keeps climbing. With the acceleration of the climate crisis, heatstroke is predicted to become more prevalent. Understanding why it is so often fatal is now an urgent question. Heatstroke […]

The greatest jump in ADHD diagnoses was seen in children. Studio Romantic/ Shutterstock Diagnoses for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have increased in many countries across all age groups, our latest review has found. We have also shown that prescriptions for ADHD treatments have seen similar increases across all age groups. Our latest review, published […]