The planet’s wild creatures face a new threat – from yuppies, empty nesters, singletons and one-parent families.Yuppie lifestyles are as much a threat to wildlife as over-population, writes Tim Radford.

The human race is living beyond its means. A report backed by 1 360 scientists from 95 countries — some of them world leaders in their fields — last week warned that the almost two-thirds of the natural machinery that supports life on Earth is being degraded by human pressure. The study contains what its authors call ”a stark warning” for the entire world.

Some say meat is murder, while others dismiss a meal without animal products as rabbit food. Now a leading United States nutritionist has given both sides something to chew on with a claim that parents who refuse to feed children meat are acting unethically. She says a lack of meat during the critical first few years of life could cause permanent damage.

You’d know that face anywhere? Then thank your right fusiform gyrus. Scientists have identified the bits of the brain that can tell British Prime Minister Tony Blair from James Bond, or whether Margaret Thatcher has borrowed Marilyn Monroe’s hairstyle. The study helps explain that nagging feeling that you know a face, but cannot place it.

Scientists in California have found a way to ”turn off’’ a gene that makes cancerous cells lethal. They eliminated aggressive, incurable liver tumours in laboratory mice in four weeks, they report in an advance paper in Nature this week. Cancer affects one person in three, and kills one in five. But above all, cancer is a DNA disease.

Hailstones the size of tennis balls are knocking people out in Japan. Shortly afterwards it is snowing in India. But that is only the beginning. But The Day After Tomorrow, a climate change movie released in mid-May, has been winning praise from both the research establishment and the environment movement.