Iain Banks's death from cancer makes his final novel all the more poignantThe Quarry is a novel about disease, about "fucking cancer", as it's repeatedly described. It's a novel held up against the dying of the light, a fierce howl into the void that, in the image of the titular quarry, threatens to engulf the…
For every 'designer drug' the authorities ban, clandestine labs are churning out a new version. No wonder the law can't keep up…The term "designer drug" became popular with the acid house and ecstasy boom in the 1990s, but it was never really accurate. The main ingredient in ecstasy pills – MDMA – was first synthesised…
Science's hunt for a unifying account of how the world works requires us to entertain everything from hidden dimensions to multiple universes. But are these ideas based on fact or fiction? Jim Baggott and Mike Duff debate the limits of physics Jim Baggott, author of Farewell to Reality: How Fairytale Physics Betrays the Search for…
Bertolt Meyer's amazing bionic hand controlled by an iPhone app is a glimpse of the advances being made in prosthetics. But in years to come, will everyone want one?Bertolt Meyer is used to being viewed as not fully human. Born with a stump where his left hand should have been, he spent his childhood wearing…
From robot ethics to genetics and the impact of ageing, there are plenty of subjects that affect all our futuresBRIDGET McKENZIE Culture consultantThere will be far fewer safe and fertile places, and these will be besieged by refugees. The global population will have collapsed drastically. The equatorial regions will be too hot to grow food,…
Acerbic art critic Brian Sewell has denounced most factual TV as disgracefully dumbed-down – particularly on the BBC. Television writer Michael Hogan begs to differMichael Hogan: Brian, your speech at the recent Sandford St Martin Trust awards for religious broadcasting said TV was blighted by "ever-increasing vulgarity and ever-lower intellectual levels". Strong words. Did you…
As the global population rises and food prices do too, many scientists are looking for alternatives to traditional foodstuffsEating insectsTwo billion people around the world, primarily in south-east Asia and Africa, eat insects – locusts, grasshoppers, spiders, wasps, ants – on a regular basis. Now, with food scarcity a growing threat, efforts are being made…
How self-healing concrete and 3D printing will transform buildings and many other sectors besidesBuildings will be very different because currently they are not very hi-tech. They are still made from concrete, steel and glass. The wiring and plumbing of a building will soon start to become integrated and grown like our bodies' nervous and digestive…
A new species of butterwort – carniverous plants first described in the 15th century – is one of only three to be found in TurkeyButterworts first show up in a herbal in the 15th century. The genus name Pinguicula is derived from the Latin word pinguis, meaning fat or oily, an adjective first applied to…
Ethics: the questions posed by our bionic bodies | Observer editorial
Science is sending us towards a posthuman future. We need to decide if that's where we should be goingIn the cult 1970s television show, The Six Million Dollar Man, astronaut Steve Austin (Lee Majors) is shown crash-landing on Earth, then being whisked into an operating theatre. "Gentleman, we have the capability to make the world's…
Read more »