Table of contents for January 2025 in BBC Science Focus Magazine

An estimated 25–40 per cent of people worldwide suffer from allergic rhinitis, a condition that causes inflamed nasal mucous membranes. Now, scientists think they know the cause of this perpetual sniffling: people with allergies have different fungi in their noses. This may be somewhat repulsive to hear, but we all have nose fungi. They make up our nasal mycobiome – the community of fungal microorganisms found in our nostrils and sinuses. Our bodies rely on microscopic organisms for essential roles such as boosting our immune systems and fighting off harmful pathogens. “Participants with respiratory diseases had richer, more diverse nose fungi” To study the nasal mycobiome, scientists took nasal swabs from 214 patients with allergies and 125 healthy participants. These swabs revealed that the most common types of nose fungi…

Every year millions of us dream up New Year's resolutions in the hope of making permanent, positive changes to our lives. But a few weeks later, most of them are little more than vague memories. More often than not, we're back to our old routines by the end of January – projects have been abandoned, promises have been broken and the resolutions we vowed we would stick to this time have been tossed on the scrapheap. But what is it about New Year's resolutions that makes keeping them so difficult? And what can we do to make it easier? Well, the good news is a New Year's resolution is just a good habit dressed up in seasonal clothing. And with a little understanding of the psychology of how habitual behaviours…

As you might already be aware, January isn't the nicest month to give things up – it's cold, it's dark and those holiday TV marathons feel a lifetime away. Yet, in the aftermath of the festive season, Dry January is becoming increasingly popular – an estimated 15 per cent of US adults (260 million people) and 9 million Brits took part in 2024. And, according to recent scientific findings, they had good reason to. First of all, it's worth mentioning that unless you're a heavy-enough drinker to experience withdrawal when you stop, there are no drawbacks to a month without alcohol – or cutting it out of your life entirely. “The best evidence shows that the relationship between alcohol consumption and health is basically linear – it's probably not true…

The UK needs more houses. Demand is outstripping supply and it's driving up prices, making affordable housing harder to come by. That's just one of the reasons behind the government's intention to build 1.5 million new homes over the next five years. But as of 2025, the UK's Future Homes Standard comes into effect, which requires all newly built homes to be more energy efficient and produce 75–80-per-cent fewer emissions than those built under the 2013 regulations. Builders plan to meet the new regulations by orienting homes to maximise natural light, using low-carbon materials like cross-laminated timber (which captures carbon dioxide – CO2 – while it grows, emitting less CO2 than concrete to produce), and integrating renewable energy systems such as solar panels and heat pumps. Advanced ventilation systems and…

PENCILS AT THE READY! ACROSS 1 British judge doesn't start gesture (6) 4 Undergarments are hits (5) 8 What's found in Spanish rubber plant (5) 9 Persist in talking about nothing but a weapon (7) 10 Permissible to run away (5) 12 Telegram about father is efficient (7) 13 Soldier left lamer log about figure (13) 15 Where ingredients may be worried (2,1,4) 17 Creep lies about having daughter (5) 19 Territorial dispute amongst gardeners? (4,3) 20 Turn pets out, distressed (5) 22 Price review includes kitchen implement (5) 23 Exceed as a gambler (6) DOWN 1 Cooked slab has third of this flavouring (5) 2 Scared to include a personal vehicle (3) 3 Spoken about section of M25, say (7) 4 Fight for what's left (5) 5 Slapped clothes on journalist (9) 6 Ray makes star smile (7) 7 Cowardly telegram showing defence measure (7,4) 11 Anger back…

Is it possible to navigate your way to better brain health? That was the tantalising question raised by a recent study in the British Medical Journal, which found that being a taxi or ambulance driver may offer protection against dementia. Researchers from Harvard University studied the working lives and causes of death in millions of Americans. After comparing some 400 occupations, they found that taxi and ambulance drivers were the least likely to die from Alzheimer's disease. Being good at finding your way around might help you stick around longer. That's the theory, anyway. Bus drivers, for example, don't seem to have the same protection, possibly because they tend to drive the same routes. “Our findings raise the possibility that frequent navigational and spatial processing tasks, as performed by taxi and…

The Secret Genius of Plants Earth is carpeted with plants. This fascinating programme delves into what we know about how they grow, adapt and survive. Watch now on BBC iPlayer The Earthshot Prize Prince William takes us to South Africa for a celebration of innovative solutions that are helping to protect the planet for future generations. Watch now on BBC iPlayer The Life Scientific with Tim Peake The last episode from 2024 saw Prof Jim Al-Khalili catch up with British astronaut Tim Peake to talk about life in orbit. Listen now on BBC Sounds…

Pre-frontal problems I keep hearing and reading references to the (alleged) fact that teenagers' brains have a 'cognitive deficit', which explains their poor decision-making and inability to function in the morning. Dr Dean Burnett covered the topic in one of his columns (June, p32) and I find this completely at odds with the conduct of young people before the invention of the term 'teenager'. My parents, born in the 1920s, had to leave school aged 14, do heavy and demanding work in factories and shipyards until 7pm, and were then expected to do physical labour around the house. How did they, and generations of young people, manage all that without a 'fully developed pre-frontal cortex'? Please explain! Gail Jones, Bedford Dr Dean Burnett replies… To say teenagers have a cognitive deficit…

“Our work opens the door to pushing quantum communications to the next level ” Scientists have achieved the impossible: quantum teleportation. But before you say “Beam me up, Scotty,” this new technology isn't designed for teleporting people or things, but rather information. The scientists behind the breakthrough have figured out how to teleport information over any distance almost instantly. What's more, they think they can make quantum teleportation work using existing communication networks. “This is incredibly exciting because nobody thought it was possible,” said Prof Prem Kumar of Northwestern University in the US, who led the research. “Our work shows a path towards next-generation quantum and classical [communication] networks sharing a unified fibre-optic infrastructure. It opens the door to pushing quantum communications to the next level.” Published in the journal…

Every so often, the Sun throws such a furious tantrum that it hurls highly damaging radioactive atoms towards Earth. These so-called 'superflares' release more than one octillion (one followed by 27 zeroes) joules of energy in one go – that's like 16 trillion trillion atomic bombs detonating simultaneously. A new study suggests that these solar tantrums occur far more frequently than we thought and there's no telling when another might happen. Published in the journal Science, the study reveals that the Sun was at its most violent in 775 AD, with as many as eight other extreme solar particle events happening within the past 12,000 years. But the study also suggests we could be underestimating the frequency and violence of these events, based on the behaviour of other stars in…

A new study has finally provided a reason for why human brains evolved to be so large: the microbes in our guts. The researchers behind the study think these may have helped our bodies to produce enough energy over time to encourage the growth of our most complex and important organ. There are more than 100 trillion microbes in our guts, which is at least double the number of cells in our bodies. In total, the human gut microbiome weighs approximately 2kg (4.4lbs), about the same as a large pineapple. The research found that organisms with larger brains compared to body size can – thanks to their digestive microbes – consume more food and generate more energy than those with smaller brains. Humans may not have the biggest brains –…

As a physicist, I, of course, love all the little particles. Each particle species has a role to play in the Universe and studying them helps us better understand the laws of nature that govern our existence. But as a dark matter researcher, I have to admit that neutrinos are unique in their ability to make life difficult. Neutrinos are slippery little beasts. From their very conception they were, by all accounts, problematic. They were first hypothesised as a desperate attempt to explain why some radioactive decays seemed to break the conservation of energy principle. When the decay occurred, the total measured energy of the decay products wasn't enough to account for the energy that went in. Which seemed impossible. The physicists were thus faced with two bad choices: either…

Lycra-clad fitness fanatics like to dine out on their exercise exploits, whether it's racking up mileage on running tracks or pumping iron in the gym. But while the rest of us might prefer to chew our own arms off than spend half an hour on the treadmill (and those of us with kids or hectic jobs might struggle to find half an hour at all), new research suggests there's more value than you might think in smaller portions of activity spread throughout the day. Studies now show that getting in just a few 'snack-size' quantities of activity each day can help you stay healthier and live longer. One recent paper found that meagre helpings totalling little over three minutes of vigorous activity could cut the risk of all major cardiac…

High above Earth at an altitude of around 480km (300 miles), roughly over Brazil, is something strange. A spot where satellites go haywire, where the Hubble Space Telescope can't collect data and where even the astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) can't go on spacewalks. You can't see it, but it's there. And it's nicknamed the Bermuda Triangle of Space. Officially known as the South Atlantic Anomaly, or SAA, the strange behaviour of electronics in this region is caused by a dent in Earth's magnetic field. While the magnetic field around the planet helps keep us safe from radiation in the form of charged particles, the field is much weaker in this area – and that means more of these dangerous particles. “In this region, charged particles routinely travel…

Sometimes evolution produces an organism so weird and wonderfully different to anything that we know of that scientists are stumped. Enter the Tully monster, a soft-bodied sea creature that swam in the muddy estuaries of what's now Illinois, around 300 million years ago. It was discovered in 1955, by an amateur fossil collector called Francis Tully, who was picking through the Mazon Creek fossil beds in the northeast of the state. Torpedo-shaped, with a triangular tail fin and teeth on the end of its long, bendy proboscis, the Tully monster looked as though someone had stabbed it through the back with a skewer, and then stuck eyes on each end. It was, and I'm using the appropriate scientific term here, absolutely bonkers. Tully took the fossils (above right) to the…

MAROMIZAHA FOREST, MADAGASCAR While its colouring and size are certainly spectacular, the thing that really makes the Madagascar moon moth (Argema mittrei) stand out is its long, trailing tails. These unusual features led to it being nicknamed the 'comet moth'. The tails aren't all for show, however. It's thought they're used as a defence against predators. In particular, bats. The tails twist and flutter behind the moth as it flies, and the movement interferes with a bat's echolocation, making it harder for the predator to pinpoint its prey. If the bat isn't put off and persists with its attack, the tail becomes the likely target, ensuring the more vulnerable parts of the moth's body remain out of harm's way. The 'eyes' on the moon moth's wings also play a role…

How much energy we use and where it comes from is the central problem of the climate crisis. A new discovery of vast reserves of hydrogen hiding under Earth's surface could help address that problem, but it's unclear how much of a difference it could make. Geologic hydrogen is formed during natural geochemical processes inside Earth and, so far, has been discovered in just a few places, including Albania and Mali. But a new study estimates these reserves stretch all around the globe. The researchers behind the study suggest that if we were able to extract just two per cent of this geologic hydrogen, it could provide us with 1.4 × 1016 joules of energy. This may sound impressive, but it's only equivalent to 35 minutes of the global population's…

Dogs have been close four-legged friends of people as far back as we can remember, but exactly how long has this partnership been going? Scientists might finally know the answer, thanks to a new study on archaeological remains from Alaska. The research suggests the close relationship between humans and the ancestors of today's dogs began 12,000 years ago. “We now have evidence that canines and people had close relationships earlier than we knew they did in the Americas,” said the study's lead author François Lanoë, an assistant research professor at the University of Arizona School of Anthropology. “People who are interested in the origins of the Americas want to know if those first Americans came with dogs. Until you find those animals in archaeological sites, we can speculate about it,…

A bumper crop of extraordinary species living in the Greater Mekong region of Southeast Asia was revealed in a new report, published by conservation organisation the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) in December. The rich wildlife zone, which runs from Myanmar to Vietnam, sees an average of 130 new species identified per year. But according to the report, 2023 saw a total of 234 discovered by hundreds of scientists from around the world – including 173 plants, 26 reptiles, 17 amphibians, 15 fishes and three mammals. Among these are a ginger root that smells like mango, a leafless orchid found in a market, a high-altitude crocodile newt and a shrew mole that weighs only 8g (0.3oz) and is now one of the 10 lightest land mammals on Earth. The…

Pop culture has been warning us about robots for decades. Whether it's I, Robot or The Terminator, nightmares of machines gone rogue are etched on our brains. And they always begin the same way: with benign bots built to make our lives easier. The very same sort we're starting to see today – bipedal bots that look and move just like us. But the more they resemble us, the more unsettling they become. Even today's very best models can't cross the uncanny valley. Here are five of the most advanced bots that, for all their astounding abilities, still fail to do one simple thing: put anyone at ease… Ameca The bot that has feelings and isn't afraid to show them Ameca, created by Engineered Arts, has been dubbed 'the world's…

The urge to become invisible goes back a long way. Hunters and soldiers have been finding ways to camouflage themselves for centuries, but scientists are edging closer to truly making things invisible. Modern stealth tech can not only shield planes from radar, but can also conceal heat signatures from infrared cameras and stop sound waves from being heard. So how close are we to developing invisibility technology? HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT We see objects because when light interacts with them the light is absorbed and reflected. Transparent objects, such as windows, allow light to pass through them almost undisturbed. For an invisibility cloak to hide an opaque object, it would need to redirect the light around it instead. One of the earliest proof-of-concept cloaking devices was developed in 2006 by…

Lots of strange things happened in 2023. But one thing (arguably the most notable thing to happen that year) went largely unnoticed. For the first time since the 1980s, the number of people with obesity in the US decreased. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, the obesity rate dropped by almost two per cent – from 41.9 per cent in 2017–2020 to 40.3 per cent in 2021–2023. So what caused this sudden change in American health? While we can't say for certain that it was a result of weight-loss drugs, data from the Kaiser Family Foundation (an independent source for health policy research) says that one in eight US adults has used a weight-loss drug like Ozempic at some point in their life. And since around half of…

HOW TO SEE JUPITER AND MARS WHEN: LATE JANUARY 2025 If you head outside at around 9pm at the end of January, face south and look up, assuming the sky is clear, the brightest star-like object you'll see is the planet Jupiter. Located roughly two-thirds up the sky, Jupiter is brighter than anything else around it. The slightly dimmer – and distinctly redder – Mars can be seen further to the east (left), but both planets are currently arranged above Orion; Jupiter to the northwest of the constellation, Mars northeast. Both planets look impressive to the naked eye, but how do they fare through binoculars? Well, to be honest, Mars just looks brighter. This is also true for Jupiter, but holding binoculars very still may grab you a view of…