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Pavel Durov, the Russian founder of chat app Telegram, claimed US intelligence agencies tried to persuade him and his company to build backdoors into the Telegram messaging platform. He claimed on Twitter on Wednesday that US agencies made two attempts to bribe his developers while they were on a one-week trip to the US last year. He also claimed that the FBI put pressure on him personally. "During our team's 1-week visit to the US last year we had two attempts to bribe our devs by US agencies + pressure on me from the FBI,"  Durov wrote on Twitter . "It would be naive to think you can run an independent/secure cryptoapp based in the US,"  he added in another tweet . Telegram is a messaging app that claims to have over 100 million active users. The company provides a secure space for people to talk in confidence through its "Secret Chats" feature that uses "end-to-end" encryption — an encryption method makes messages unreadable to a...

In Brief While studying the effects of space on a species of regenerating flatworm, scientists noticed that one of the subjects ended up growing two heads. Space travel is hypothesized to have facilitated this aberration. Space Hydra The International Space Station (ISS) is an invaluable tool that helps us understand how our Earth-based technologies and biology operates in space. It has been confirmed that space travel does indeed impact human biology, even down to the  genetic level . Even so, researchers looking into how a species of flatworms fare in space were not prepared for what they found. To the great shock of the team, one of the fifteen amputated planarian flatworms that spent five weeks aboard the ISS ended up growing back two heads once back on Earth. These findings have been published in the journal  Regeneration . Planarian flatworms have remarkable regeneration abilities. They are able to regenerate complex body systems even from a tiny pie...

Physical literacy is the mastering of fundamental movement skills and sport skills that allow a child to read their environment and make appropriate decisions, allowing them to move confidently and with control in a wide range of physical activity situations. Explaining the results of the research, Andy Daly-Smith, a senior lecturer in Physical Activity and Health at Leeds Beckett's Carnegie School of Sport, said: "As we move towards research informed practice, it is essential that objectives for PA in PE are appropriate. The uncompromising pursuit of these objectives by research and policy is concerning. It may cause teachers to focus on PA, at the expense of fostering an enjoyment of PA or developing physical literacy." Highlighting the differences between the objectives of the two countries, Matthew Hobbs, a PhD candidate at Leeds Beckett University and Lecturer in Physical Activity, Exercise and Health at Leeds Trinity University, said: "There were signific...

In Brief CEO Tim Cook revealed some details about Apple's secretive car project. More than an actual car, he emphasized the importance the autonomous system Apple is developing, which he considers "the mother of all AI projects." Apple just had its annual developer’s conference or WWDC on June 5, and as usual, CEO Tim Cook gave a keynote where he announced the tech giant’s latest improvements in its MacOS and iOS systems. But perhaps the greatest of these software developments wasn’t revealed on the WWDC stage. Instead, in an interview with Bloomberg Television, Cook discussed one of Apple’s most intriguing work — the so-called Project Titan, its secret car project. Well, it isn’t exactly going to be a car just yet — or maybe never?  What we do know  is that Apple is working on its own  autonomous driving software , which Cook revealed in the interview with Bloomberg.

Google wants you to find the best apps faster, so it's introduced a new section to the Play Store called  Android Excellence . The banner on the  Editor’s Choice page  will spotlight apps and games that “deliver incredible user experiences on Android, use many of our best practices, and have great design, technical performance, localization, and device optimization.” Last month, Google spotlighted the winners of its  second annual Google Play Awards . Several of the apps are, not surprisingly, represented on the Android Excellence page. Google says this list will be updated quarterly with hand-picked selections from its editorial team. Check out the first round of apps and games below: Android Excellence Apps AliExpress  by Alibaba Mobile B&H Photo Video  by B&H Photo Video Citymapper   by Citymapper Limited Drivvo  by Drivvo drupe  by drupe Evernote  by Evernote Corporation Hotel Tonight  by HotelTonigh...

Live Science  reports that a cache of 1,000-year-old drawn beads has been found at Igbo-Olokun, an archaeological site within the ancient Yoruba city of Ile-Ife, which is located in southwestern Nigeria. The Yoruba are known for the copper alloy and terracotta heads and figurines found at Ile-Ife. Some of the sculptures, which date to between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries A.D., were decorated with glass beads. Researchers had speculated that the beads had been imported from the Mediterranean or the Middle East, but Abidemi Babalola of Harvard University’s Hutchins Center for African & African American Research has found evidence of local glass production at Igbo-Olokun. The evidence includes glass waste; some 13,000 blue, green, red, yellow, and multicolored glass beads; hundreds of crucible fragments; and ceramic cylinders thought to have been used to handle crucible lids. Babalola and his team also unearthed pieces of clay covered with melted glass, suggesting that ...

Women looking forward to conceive should take extra care of their oral hygiene, as not doing so would result in a delay in conceiving. This study has been carried out by researchers from University of Helsinki in Finland. The researchers found that -- Porphyromonas gingivalis -- a bacterium present in the mouth, is linked with a gum disease that results in delays conceiving in women. "Our results encourage young women of fertile age to take care of their oral health and attend periodontal evaluations regularly," said one of the researchers, Susanna Paju. Periodontal or gum disease refers to an inflammatory reaction to a bacterial infection below the gum line. The research was carried out on 256 healthy women, who were not pregnant and belonged to the mean age 29.2 years, ranging between 19 and 42 years. These women had stopped consuming contraceptives to become pregnant. These women were followed-up to find out if they conceived or not during the observation period of 1...

Everyone has those lazy Sunday afternoons where you wake up, stay in your jammies all day and watch Netflix until it’s bedtime. While it’s a way to have alone time and relax after a long week, what would happen if you did that all the time; if you stayed holed up in your tiny apartment and your skin never saw the light of day? Life Noggin answers that question in its newest video. And no, you won’t die, but that doesn’t mean it’s OK to stay inside forever. Even if it isn’t life threatening, getting out into the fresh air and daylight is important for your health. For starters, going outside gives you a good dose of vitamin D. Many vitamins are obtained through food, but vitamin D is absorbed in your skin by what’s known as a photosynthetic reaction from sun exposure. If you’re never, ever out in the sun, then you’ll definitely be lacking this important nutrient unless you add supplements to your diet. It’s pretty much impossible to get the quantities of vitamin D necessary jus...

Neuroscience isn't on many elementary school lesson plans. But this spring, a second grade class at Fairmont Neighborhood School in the South Bronx is plunging in. Sarah Wechsler, an instructional coach with wide eyes and a marathoner's energy, asks the students to think about the development and progress that they've made already in their lives. "You probably don't remember, but there was a time when you didn't know how to speak and you were just like 'Wah wah wah blah blah blah, mama, mama!' " she tells the kids. "Our brain grows and changes when you try hard things, when you learn new things." The children offer their own ideas. "Brains are pink!" "Your brain can get smarter. For example if you need help with your work, your brain is there in your head for you ."  After watching a video with a cartoon brain, and doing an exercise where yarn stands in for connections between neurons, they seem to have a...

Archeologists have just discovered a nearly complete bird, encased in fossilized tree sap, that has remained intact for almost 100 million years. The bird, which was just a few days old at the time of its death, is one of the most stunningly preserved examples of pre-history avian life ever recovered -- but this is no ordinary bird. The dream of resurrecting dinosaurs from their ancient remains, like in  Jurassic Park , might be  nothing more than science fiction , but one aspect of the pseudoscience depicted in the film franchise is actually quite true: archaeologists regularly find prehistoric bugs and other small creatures perfectly preserved in amber. This newly-discovered fossil, which was located in Burma, includes half of the bird's entire body, including a wing, claws, and head. Unlike modern birds, this newborn hatchling is from a now-extinct branch of the family tree called Enantiornithines. Researchers say they would have looked a lot like modern-day avians,...

This programme centres on numerous couples and dyads living with schizophrenia from various backgrounds and ethnicities, each discussing several clichés, such as a person with schizophrenia must be dangerous, weed-smoking and a ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ character. From the outset, encountering experiences from people from numerous backgrounds seemed to highlight diversity, depth and complexities across mental health experiences. The exclusive focus on views from people living with schizophrenia perhaps mirrored NHS and social reforms of prioritising service user involvement; illuminated person centred care; offered unique opportunities to overtly challenge stereotypes; and revealed several voices of seldom heard groups within a reputable televised BBC outlet. Throughout the programme, I wondered whether the bright yellow backdrop with modern  jazz  music played throughout portrayed the vibrancy of life, altered attention spans and promoted the therapeutic value of colour and mus...

This year the focus is on building communities which support carers in looking after their loved ones well, while recognising that they are individuals with needs of their own. In these communities, carers feel recognised and valued. Nicola Gale, President of the British Psychological Society, says: "Carers Week reminds us each year of the importance of carers and highlights the challenges they face and the contribution they make to families and communities throughout the UK. "Though many find caring gives a sense of satisfaction and teaches them new skills, without the right support people can struggle. Evidence shows that caring can cause physical and mental ill health, poverty and social isolation. "Carers can struggle to hold down a job, get a good night's sleep, stay healthy and maintain relationships with friends and family. "In all these areas psychology can and should offer help."

Alcohol consumption, even in moderation, is linked to a greater risk of adverse brain outcomes and a more severe decline in cognition,  While heavy drinking is known to correlate with poor brain health, few studies have looked at the impact of moderate drinking on the brain; and for those that have, the results are inconsistent. So a research team from the University of Oxford and University College London set out to investigate whether moderate alcohol consumption has a beneficial or harmful association — or no association at all — with brain structure and function. They analyzed data from the Whitehall II study which measured the weekly alcohol intake of 550 healthy men and women (average age 43) over a 30 year period (1985-2015). None of the participants were alcohol-dependent. Brain function tests were carried out at regular intervals and at the end of the study (2012-15), participants underwent an MRI brain scan.. After adjusting for factors such as ...

You’ve probably heard that two-thirds of American adults are overweight and one-third obese. But what’s at the root of these numbers? The most popular marker for obesity, body-mass index (BMI), has always been a poor means for judging body composition. Yet it is used by default by most fitness professionals and doctors. Our cultural obsession with statistics is not necessarily helpful either. In fact, if you plug BMI into Google a handy calculator pops up. Type in your weight and height and you  receive a number in under a second. The measure is simple: your mass divided by the square of your height. Under 18.5 percent and you’re underweight; from there to 25 and you’re normal; next step is to 30, overweight; three degrees of obesity follow the 30 percent marker. 

 It’s an  interior shot  of one of the buildings on Facebook’s campus in California. It looks as big as an aircraft hangar, except that it has steel pillars at regular intervals. The pillars are labelled to enable people to find their desks. It’s all open-plan: nobody in this building – not even the founder of the company, Mark Zuckerberg – has a private office. And as far as the eye can see are desks with large-screen iMacs and Aeron desk chairs. The people working at these desks are the folks who write, curate, design and maintain the algorithms that determine what appears in your  Facebook newsfeed. I’ve been looking at the picture until my eyes begin to pixelate. What I’ve been trying to determine is how many women there are. I can see only three. So I ask a colleague who has better eyesight. She finds another two. And that’s it: as far as the eye can see, there are only five women in this picture. Welcome to Silicon Valley, where most of the digital...

There will be a test, so I hope you are paying attention. When a person starts to blink more rapidly, it suggests their mind is wandering, research finds. Blinking sets up a tiny barrier against the outside world, allowing the brain to focus on something different. The researchers were inspired by neuroscientific findings that parts of the brain are less active when the mind wanders.

L ife can be overwhelming. We want to do as much as we can, see the world, learn new things – and it can all get a bit too much. I reached a point when I felt that I could no longer be interested in everything. I had to shut some of life out, and I didn’t like that. I was living under the assumption – the false assumption, as it turned out – that to know anything worthwhile took years of study, so I might as well forget it. But something inside me rebelled. I still wanted to learn new things and make new things. They didn’t have to be big things – I was happy to leave that until later. Start small, start humble. Start with an egg. So I was thinking about how long it would take to learn how to cook really well. I recalled a chef telling me that the real test is doing something simple – like making a perfect omelette. Everything you know about cooking comes out in this simple dish. So I decided to switch the order around. Instead of spending hours learning the basics of ...

F our years ago, completely spent, blood transfused into me in a frantic effort to allow me to walk, I lay on a hospital bed having given birth the day before. To the joy of my family, I had brought them a son. Blue balloons foretold a man in the making. Not just the apple of my eye, but the one who would one day open jam jars for me. The hero who would do the DIY and put out the rubbish. He who was born to be strong because he is male. But then, physical strength can be defined in different ways. What I was yet to learn was that, beneath our skin, women bubble with a source of power that even science has yet to fully understand. We are better survivors than men. What’s more, we are born this way. “Pretty much at every age, women seem to survive better than men,” says  Steven Austad , an international expert on ageing, and chair of the biology department at the University of Alabama. For almost two decades, he has been studying one of the best-known yet under-researched fac...

In 1950, a learned lunchtime conversation set the stage for decades of astronomical exploration. Physicist Enrico Fermi submitted to his colleagues around the table a couple contentions, summarized as 1) The galaxy is very old and very large, with hundreds of billions of stars and likely even more habitable planets. 2) That means there should be more than enough time for advanced civilizations to develop and flourish across the galaxy. So where the heck are they? This simple, yet powerful argument became known as the  Fermi Paradox , and it still boggles many sage minds today. Aliens should be common, yet there is no convincing evidence that they exist. Here are 12 possible reasons why this is so. 1. There aren't any aliens to find.  As unlikely as it seems in a galaxy with hundreds of billions of stars and as many as  40 billion Earth-size planets in habitable zones , we could be alone. 2. There is no intelligent life besides us.  (This assumes, o...

Is it OK to use protein powder when you're pregant? Find out how much protein you and your baby need, what the best sources are, and how to make sure you're getting enough “As a doctor and recent fitness enthusiast, I love listening to your podcasts because I know you'll only give me evidence-based information with a dash of common sense.  What I'd like to know is if protein powders are safe in pregnancy and if so, which ones in particular.” Before I talk about protein powder specifically, let’s talk briefly about protein in general during pregnancy.  Protein needs increase during pregnancy, along with the requirements for lots of other nutrients. How much protein you take in during you pregnancy can affect things like the baby’s birthweight and body composition, head circumference, and could even affect the baby’s long term risks of diabetes, heart disease, or obesity. How Much Protein Do You Need During Pregnancy? You probably won’t be surprised to learn ...

In the evolutionary history of humans, reading and writing are relatively new functions. As a result, in order to read written language, human brains have had to  recruit and adapt parts of the visual system  to interface with language centers. This is a process researchers have long believed occurred primarily in the cerebral cortex, the outer layer of the brain. But in a new study where illiterate people in their thirties were trained to read over six months, researchers have discovered that reading actually activates much deeper brain structures as well, opening doors to a better understanding of how we learn, and possible new interventions for dyslexia. Their  results  were recently published in the journal  Science Advances . In order to learn to read, "a kind of recycling process has to take place in the brain," Falk Huettig, one of the collaborating researchers at Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, tells Mental Floss by ema...

Be sure to bring both popcorn and bug spray to “Mosquito,” a film about how something tiny can be such a big threat. “Mosquito” is one of several health-oriented features being shown as part of the  AFI DOCS Documentary Film Festival  June 14-18 in Washington and Silver Spring. And it’s a reminder that although the Zika epidemic has officially just  ended in Puerto Rico , that’s probably not the last we’ll hear of infants whose microcephaly was caused by the virus. Director Su Rynard lets viewers experience the heartbreak of that neurological condition through a Puerto Rican family that holds monthly birthday parties for their tiny, afflicted son because doctors say he probably won’t make it through his first year. There’s nothing new about  mosquitoes spreading horrific diseases , explain a variety of international experts, including one with a cute model of the insect on his desk. (He uses it to teach a group of African children about a new technique for ...

 we learn what the world's population would look like if it were compressed to 100 people, while the same proportions of people kept the same attributes they have now. There are a lot of interesting tidbits in here, but perhaps most surprising from an American perspective is that of the 100 people, 59 would live in Asia, while only 8 would live in North America. Cars are also rare around the world--only 15 people would own cars, while the other 85 use other modes of transportation. Incredibly, 80 of the minimized population own cell phones. More seriously, the statistics on wealth inequality are galling--85% of the wealth in the world are owned by only 10 people, and 70 people own only 3% of global wealth. This thought experiment is a fascinating way to consider the way people live around the world, which technologies spread rapidly, and which don't.

New research finds that overweight children have less friends and are involved in fewer social groups than their thinner counterparts. In the study, USC researchers assessed 714 students in the Netherlands, 210 of whom were nominated as friends but did not take the survey. Among the 504 preteens surveyed, researchers found overweight children are excluded from friendships, call classmates friends when the feeling is not mutual, and are disliked by peers. Moreover, overweight children dislike more classmates than their thinner peers.

Researcher Jamin Halberstadt said Jonah Lomu seems like a good example of a well-matched rounded name and face combination.  If you have an angular face with spiky hair and your name is Bob, you should consider changing your name. Ditto if your name is Kirk, and you have a round face.  If these people swapped names, however, they would be better off.  This is according to a series of studies conducted by University of Otago's Professor Jamin Halberstadt and PhD candidate David Barton.

1) Your devices can spy on you (and your kids) Many IoT  device  manufacturers and suppliers show little regard for customers' privacy. Some even make money from customer data. Consumer electronics company Vizio recently  agreed to pay  US regulators US$2.2 million, after allegedly failing to get appropriate consent from users to track their TV viewing habits. Late last year, the  Norwegian Consumer Council found  that a children's doll recorded anything said to it by children and sent the recordings to a US company. The company reserved the right to share and use the data for a broad range of purposes. 2) Many IoT devices are vulnerable to hacking The same doll was  also found  to have a security flaw that allowed strangers to talk and listen through the doll. Security vulnerabilities such as these can be exploited to cause damage in both the physical and virtual worlds. IoT devices were recently involved in some of the largest "d...