Lab notes: staggeringly profitable scientific publishing, a skull cult and Asteroid Day

‘It is as if the New Yorker or the Economist demanded that journalists write and edit each other’s work for free, and asked the government to foot the bill.’ Illustration: Dom McKenzie

This week’s biggest stories

It is an industry like no other, with profit margins to rival Google – and it was created by one of Britain’s most notorious tycoons: Robert Maxwell. Is the staggeringly profitable business of scientific publishing actually bad for science? While thinking about scalping: fragments of three ancient skulls found in Turkey have all the hallmarks of being carved with flint after being defleshed first. Archaeologists believe this is more evidence that a neolithic “skull cult” embraced rituals around the heads of the dead. To think, if the cult were to exist in the future rather than 11,000 years ago, there might not be any skulls lying around for them to worship because we could all be alive! This is because scientists have argued there is no compelling evidence that we are approaching an upper limit on our mortality, in response to work published in Nature that concluded “maximum longevity has hit a ceiling of 114.9 years”. Here’s wishing a long and happy career for the robotic yellow submarine Boaty McBoatface, whose successful maiden voyage saw it gather “unprecedented data” from one of the deepest and coldest ocean regions on Earth, Orkney Passage in Antarctica.

More news from Guardian Science | Sign up to Lab notes

___

Avebury stone circle

A mysterious square formation has been discovered within the Neolithic stone circle monument at Avebury, Wiltshire, rewriting the narrative of one of the wonders of the prehistoric world.

___

Straight from the lab – top picks from our experts on the blog network

Happy Asteroid Day! A conversation about peaceful, global scientific collaboration | Across the universe

Today, more than 1,000 local events in around 200 countries are being organised to celebrate Asteroid Day. Sanctioned by the United Nations in 2016, it is a global day of education to raise awareness about asteroids.

‘Just go for a run’: testing everyday advice for my depression | Brian flapping

They say that a good walk does wonders for the mind, but what they don’t say is that when you have a dirge of self-loathing eating away at you, moving those little legs just churns your mind into misery butter.

Hot fuzz: the baby bird fossil that gives new meaning to ancient feathers | Lost worlds revisited

We know very little about parenting behaviour in Enantiornithes, but if Belone is anything to go on, Enantiornithine hatchlings were ready for takeoff.

Visit the Science blog network

___

Science Weekly podcast

Something of a renegade … Athene Donald. Photograph: Sophia Evans for the Observer

In a career that spans more than three decades, Professor Dame Athene Donald – an experimental physicist at the University of Cambridge and master of Churchill College – has turned her mind to the likes of crash helmets, starch and more recently, protein. But where did it all begin for her? How hard was it to build a career as one of the only females in the field? And how important are women like in her in the fight for gender equality in science? She talks to Hannah Devlin in the Science Weekly podcast.

___

Eye on science – this week’s top video

Cockatoos play drum solos to attract mates

Cockatoos impress opposite sex with Phil Collins-style drum solos: scientists find male birds performing alone with small sticks before female audience, with calls, periodic blushing, and raising feathers on their crests.