Medical scientists have taken an important step towards understanding how the diseased liver can repair itself in a breakthrough that could eventually lead to the development of new treatments for chronic liver illnesses, which at present can only be cured by organ transplants.

Leading neuroscientists believe that the UK Government may be about to sanction the development of chemical incapacitants for British police that would be banned in warfare under an international treaty on chemical weapons.

A greenfinch looks on suspiciously from afar. The finest details of his green and yellow plumage and his eyes twitching from side to side are visible through the binoculars.

Written in lively style by two American academics, this book questions the stability of the "food empire" on which humanity depends. We are complacent, they claim, due to four assumptions: there will be more "biochemical fixes" to maintain bumper crops; continuation of the "mild, sunny weather" of recent centuries; dependence on fragile monocultures; reliance on cheap fossil fuels to power freezers and synthesise fertilisers. "For a hundred years," the authors point out, "our industrial food empire has been astoundingly successful but all empires stumble and fall."

Further to yesterday's obituary of the Nobel Prize-winning scientist Baruch Blumberg, Tam Dalyell writes:

Rather a lot happened in the first part of BBC4's Women in Love – two drownings, at least one fight, a rape – though you wouldn't necessarily know it. The quiet, almost whimsical, nature of William Ivory's script allowed events to unfold gently, playing second fiddle to the internal dramas of the characters. It's a risky strategy: an adaptation of D H Lawrence's dual novels, The Rainbow and Women in Love, in which the predominant themes are sex and guilt could be a recipe for introspective torpor if ever there was one. And yet, to my mind, it all came off.

Alberto Granado was the young doctor who accompanied his fellow Argentinian and childhood pal Ernesto “Che” Guevara on an idealistic motorcycle odyssey through South America in the early 1950s.

Early data from the 1,000 Genomes Project, an international effort to build a detailed map of human genetic variation, is already offering new clues about human disease, including why some people are more severely affected by disease than others.

As a new virus cuts a swathe through their numbers, Gillian Orr discovers that we are only starting to unlock the secrets of these alluring amphibians

Credit card scams which seek to take advantage of the lifestyle aspiration of Britain's more affluent consumers are a growing threat. More than 250 online suppliers were shut down last year after customers complained of trickery

The number of state schools considering ditching GCSEs in favour of an exam based on traditional O-level principles which eschews coursework in favour of traditional end-of-term testing has tripled in the past couple of months.

Wit, satire and a good dose of Freud permeate this relishable sci-fi horror about two Frankenstein scientists and their eerily expressive hybrid child

Parkside Federation is the first state school to offer the more demanding IGSCE, to replace the 'dumbed down' alternative.

I'm sitting at the back of a small classroom in the London centre for Kaplan, hoping my incipient flu will be an excuse for lacklustre participation. The US exam prep company is a little piece of America nestled alongside the National Portrait Galley. It's all bustling fresh-faced women and computer terminals. I'm here to sit the introductory class with a small group of eager beavers who want to improve their lives by going to business school and are resigned to taking the Graduate Management Admission Test.