Stem

Scientists find ‘mutant’ gene behind foul-smelling species of wild ginger

Small genetic changes in enzyme that prevents bad breath in humans lead to sulphurous scent in some asarum

With a smell of rotting flesh the flowers of certain species of wild ginger are unlikely to be used in a wedding bouquet – although they are irresistible to carrion-loving flies. Now researchers say they have worked out how the sulphurous scent is produced.

Scientists say the odour is down to small changes in an enzyme that prevents bad breath in humans.

The Guardian view on drought warnings: risks to the food supply need confronting | Editorial

Lack of rain and floods both threaten crops. Ministers should heed the experts’ warnings

It is so ingrained in British culture to celebrate sunshine that unless you are a farmer or gardener, it is unusual to complain about the lack of rain. But alarms are being sounded by environmentalists and farmers after a very dry spring followed a winter during which parts of the country, including Northern Ireland, had only 70% of average rainfall.

Security updates for Thursday

LWN
Security updates have been issued by Debian (chromium, libapache2-mod-auth-openidc, mariadb-10.5, and openssh), Red Hat (osbuild-composer), Slackware (mariadb), SUSE (apache2-mod_auth_openidc, glib2, ImageMagick, libsoup, libsoup2, libva, openvpn, sqlite3, and weblate), and Ubuntu (libsoup3, php-horde-css-parser, and python-django).