Investigation shows 322 cases of "foreign objects" left inside patients' bodies, 214 of surgery on the wrong body part and 58 where patients were fitted with the wrong implant

I once sat in the garden of one of our most idyllic Herefordshire B&Bs, drinking tea and listening to my hostess waxing lyrical about the tranquillity of this quietest of areas: the Welsh Marches. Then we ducked as two fighter jets screamed overhead, preparing for the invasion of Iraq. It was more surprising than it was alarming, but it did remind me that total peace is elusive in these isles. "Noise" takes many forms other than the scream of fighter jets.

The North American monarch butterfly’s amazing migration, travelling thousands of miles each year from its wintering grounds in Mexico to as far north as the Great Lakes of Canada and back, is done without any internal maps, a study has found.

A bird-brained philosophy of science

Technology due to be implemented in the Premier League next season

Stadiums will need to be fitted out from as early as next season

Research into 'man-machine interface' could one day allow people to communicate directly with electronic devices by thought alone

At 28, Simon Rich is the hottest property in Hollywood. Sarah Hughes meets him

He’s 83 years old, but after his wife died, Nicholas Crace decided he wanted to give someone else a second chance. Here, he tells how he gave a kidney to a stranger in her 60s

Rather than do the easy thing and lend her famously languid tones to a set of Christmas standards, former Everything But the Girl singer Thorn has come up with a selection of 10 cover versions (and two self-penned originals), many only tangentially Christmassy, from tasteful, cheese-free sources.

Astronomy is a beautiful science.

The frontman of the rock band The Flaming Lips, who attempted to take a replica grenade on to a domestic flight, prompting a security “lockdown” at Oklahoma City airport, has admitted he had “not quite thought” about the possible consequences of his actions.

Few of us have heard of ferrofluids. But, thanks to their magnetic properties, these oily liquids, packed with tiny iron particles, have a number of applications, from sealing computer hard-drives to enhancing medical imaging – and, more recently, their use as an art medium.