"Deepfakes" have received a lot of attention as a way to potentially spread misleading or false information and influence public opinion. But two specialists say that might not be a huge concern.

Companies are trying to figure out how to welcome back employees to their offices, and keep them safe once they return. The new normal might involve smartphone apps and badges to track employees.

We're used to thinking of DNA as a rigid blueprint. Karissa Sanbonmatsu researches how our environment affects the way DNA expresses itself—especially when it comes to sex and gender.

Companies around the country are figuring out how to safely reopen office during the pandemic. The new normal might involve smartphone apps and badges to track employees.

The tech giant announces it is extending its previous work-from-home plans for most of its staff and will begin reopening offices this summer.

Influential keyboardist and electronic music pioneer dies following short battle with cancer

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The musician’s breezy vocals sit quite well with his light acoustic guitar plucking on the track

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The British vocalist and singer-songwriter suffered a cardiac arrest on May 6th in Florida

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The track is the Mumbai-based acoustic outfit’s first release this year

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The world music duo on reinventing their 2011 track ‘Karpur Gauram’ with 17 musicians from nine countries

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Twin sisters Nishita and Atisha Lulla talk about recording a previous single in Mumbai, the country-folk influence and more

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The record is filled with soaring vocals, melodic guitar work, stomping grooves and more

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The year-old band also called on Zygnema’s Sidharth Kadadi to produce their second release

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The Bengaluru turn up on dissonance and retain prog flavors on their latest song

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Pianist-singer behind “Tutti Frutti,” “Good Golly Miss Molly” and “Long Tall Sally” set the template that a generation of musicians would follow

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Air-burning plasma thruster may be competitive with jet engines.

Regulatory “flexibility” was never meant to allow fraud, agency says.

The Raptor rocket engine burned for about 4 seconds.

NASA has already assessed the viability of the Falcon Heavy for the task.

A mutation in the virus seems to be getting more common, but we don't know why.

Peer review moves to Twitter, muddling public health information.

They are among the earliest enslaved African people brought to the Americas.

Ex-official alleges cronyism, says warnings about supply shortages were ignored.

"There will be no social distancing in place," union rep wrote to city leaders.

Consumers are starting to see meat shortages after thousands of workers fall ill.

Just 1,000 light years from Earth, its two companion stars are visible to the naked eye.

Posts from high-profile accounts tout questionable virus therapies and cures.

Dr. Joseph Allen studies where building design meets health—he took our questions for 30min.

A new paper analyzes what we know about the sample the probe grabbed last year.

Trump admin allegedly told CDC its reopening guide would "never see the light of day."

A solar-driven hydrogen-producing machine that makes more copies of itself.

LauncherOne to cap eight years of development with upcoming flight.

China now has a capsule potentially capable of returning from the Moon.

YouTube, Facebook crack down on two viral videos for spreading medical misinformation.

Caddis fly larvae typically construct protective cases out of sand grains and silk.

In this age of mobile phones, cybercafes and satellite links, it's harder than ever to truly escape ... but not impossible. Dervla Murphy, who has ventured to the ends of the earth with only the most basic provisions, explains how

The individual traveller's "age of adventure" has long since been ended by "S&T" (science and technology: an abbreviation that dates me). Now our planet's few remaining undeveloped expanses are accessible only to well-funded expeditions protected by mobile phones and helicopters - enterprises unattractive to the temperamental descendents of Mungo Park, Mary Kingsley et al. Happily, it's still possible for such individuals to embark on solo journeys through little-known regions where they can imagine how real explorers used to feel.

Reviewers tend to describe my most exhilarating journeys as "adventures", though to me they are a form of escapism - a concept unfairly tainted with negative connotations. If journeys are designed as alternatives to one's everyday routine, why shouldn't they be escapist? Why not move in time as well as space, and live for a few weeks or months at the slow pace enjoyed by our ancestors? In recent decades everything has become quicker and easier: transport, communications, heating, cooking, cleaning, dressing, shopping, entertaining. "S&T" have reduced physical effort to the minimum - but are we genetically equipped to cope with our effortless new world? The stats show increasing numbers of us developing ulcers, having nervous breakdowns, eating too much or too little, taking to drink and/or drugs, retreating from our own reality in plastic surgery clinics. It's surely time to promote the therapeutic value of slow travel.

The travel writer Pico Iyer has known Tokyo - Guardian readers' favourite non-European city - for decades but is still captivated by its curiosities and contradictions

It makes perfect sense that Tokyo is Guardian readers' favourite overseas city. Now that Shanghai looks in parts like Beverly Hills and Delhi is lighting up with Thai restaurants, there are few cities on the planet that are less western than Tokyo – even if it's not necessarily a part of any east that you might recognise. The abiding allure of Japan's huge network of tiny details is that, like something in a Salman Rushdie novel, it seems to blur all notions of high and low, east and west, old and new into one state-of-the-art global amusement park that is wildly fresh and novel in its best incarnations, and at least zany in its worst.

I've lived at a safe distance from Japan's capital for 23 years now, in Kyoto and Nara, three or four hours away by train and several centuries away in terms of their antique pasts. But if I were going to Tokyo tomorrow, I would, on arrival, hold off on the "maid cafes" in the nerds' electronic hive of Akihabara, on the Hysteric Glamour fashions around Harajuku, even on the gleaming shops of the Ginza that have long made Tokyo seem an early visitor from the 23rd century. Instead I'd begin by looking for the old.

The author of The Miniaturist on the beguiling blend of tradition and modernity (and pancakes) in a city that provided the inspiration for her 17th-century-set debut novel and Waterstones Book of the Year 2014

• Top 10 free things to do in Amsterdam
  
• A new Amsterdam – and a new Rijksmuseum

Amsterdam is classically romantic but is also funky, forward-thinking and citizen-friendly. In the old centre, around the southern canal belt, there are these beautiful 17th-century merchants’ houses that 21st-century Amsterdammers still live in. I’ve always thought it wears its historical cloak quite casually and doesn’t just dwell in the past.

The Rijksmuseum is stunning and I love it as a fascinating, cool, accessible museum, as well as for the part it played in inspiring The Miniaturist. I came across Petronella Oortman’s doll’s house there by chance. It’s an exact scale replica of her real home, and Oortman spent a fortune having it created. I thought at the time it was an interesting story, but I didn’t think I was going to write a novel about it. I’m in its debt, really.

From Tashkent to Samarkand and Bukhara, travel writer Caroline Eden believes Uzbekistan offers a dazzling mix of traditional style and a modern outlook

Twenty five years after the fall of the USSR, it’s interesting how the Soviet-era hangover lingers in Uzbekistan. Hulking apartment blocks are gradually being upgraded, and while you won’t spot statues of Lenin (they’ve been replaced by the nomadic conqueror Tamerlane and celebrated medic Ibn-Sina) you will see plenty of samovars (Russian kettles) and Soviet military medals for sale in the markets. But you will also see master ikat weavers reviving weaving traditions, and many musicians and artists are now turning to their Islamic heritage for influence. This mix of Soviet legacy and Uzbek Islam is one of the things that makes the country so fascinating.

Despite much change, the Nepalese capital’s staggering views and warm memories are as vivid as ever for the veteran mountaineer and leader of 19 Himalayan expeditions

My first sight of Kathmandu and the Himalayas was in 1960 as part of Lt Col Jimmy Roberts’s expedition – we made the first successful ascent of Annapurna II. At 7,937 metres, it’s a superb peak that’s just short of what mountaineers see as the magical height: 8,000 metres.

Arriving in Kathmandu was extraordinary. There was only one hotel, the Royal, an old palace run by a wonderful, eccentric Russian called Boris. There was also just one guesthouse, and practically no tourists.

The oldest national park ranger in the US tells us why she’s proud of the second world war home front park in Richmond, just across the bay from San Francisco

I settled in the greater Bay Area as a six-year-old in 1927. When I graduated from high school in 1938, my two opportunities for employment were working in agriculture or being a domestic servant. At that time, labour unions weren’t racially integrated and, during the war, I worked as a clerk for the segregated boilermakers’ union.

The 89-year-old naturalist and broadcaster is brimming with enthusiasm for his latest TV series, Great Barrier Reef, and the wonder of filming underwater in a submarine. The first of three shows starts on BBC1 on 30 December

The first time I visited the Great Barrier Reef was in 1957 when I was on my way to New Guinea. In those days, television didn’t have a lot of money so, when you got to the other side of the world, you took advantage of it as you never knew when you were going to get back again, and so I took in the Barrier Reef on the way.

It was right at the beginning of the era of underwater swimming. There had been a Viennese pair, Han and Lotte Hass, who had a show underwater called Diving to Adventure. Those of us who had television sets – our jaws dropped! This wonderful girl in this white costume just knocking sharks on the head with the camera. Amazing!

From Fair Isle to German Bight, Charlie Connelly has visited all 31 sea areas, but still finds the poetry of the daily radio odyssey mesmerising

The shipping forecast is probably the closest thing we have in the modern age to a national epic. The institution’s rhythms and rituals have changed little since it was first broadcast on New Year’s Day 1924: there is poetry in the daily litany and mystery in its terminology. “The radio’s prayer,” Carol Ann Duffy called it. For Seamus Heaney it was “a sibilant penumbra”.

The forecast reminds us we’re a maritime nation and its map binds us to our continent, covering not only our own coasts and waters but an area extending from Norway to Portugal to Iceland. There is democracy in its geography, where tiny Fair Isle carries as much heft as mighty Biscay while Lundy, a sliver of rock in the Bristol Channel, is equal in importance to the Irish Sea. And from the salty old seadog in his brine-encrusted fishing boat to the merchant banker on his yacht, the shipping forecast, all seafarers are equally reliant on it.

Unesco has named the capital of Rajasthan, India, a world heritage site, partly for its jewellery and artisanal traditions, which continue to thrive on one of its main commercial streets

‘Sir, want precious stones?” a man asks me, quietly. I am on the Johari Bazaar, one of Jaipur’s most notable thoroughfares, a straight colonnade screened above by the facades of adjoining houses. Everything is painted orange, terracotta and burnt pink. The man wears white shalwar kameez, and an air of indifference. He unfolds white paper, revealing colourful stones. “Emeralds, sapphires, rubies …” he says. He is among one of several groups of men gathered in this area; they’re local dealers, discussing prices. The avenue, whose name means gem shop road, is lined with dozens of shops displaying magnificent necklaces, bracelets and rings.

On a 9,288km journey inspired by the centennial anniversary of the railway’s completion in 1916, photographer Annie Ling captures life onboard the Trans-Siberian Railway, and beyond the carriage window

On a climbing trip in Australia – to the rock formations below Mount Wellington near Hobart – Murdo MacLeod gets more drama than he bargained for

Climbing guide John Fischer

Amid the historic quarter’s busy streets, a thousand workshops maintain centuries-old craftmaking traditions. These workers’ ancient skills are celebrated in a new exhibition at London’s Royal Geographical Society

“Whatever manufactured items there are in the world,” wrote the Ottoman traveller Evliya Çelebi in 1671, “the poor of Cairo get hold of them, set them out and trade in them.” Nearly 350 years later, this tradition lives on in al-Darb al-Ahmar. This neighbourhood of 100,000 people, south-east of central Cairo, is said to be home to a thousand workshops. The place teems with artisans crafting everything from tents, books, boxes and brass lanterns to glass bowls and silk carpets.

This centuries-old teahouse in Sichuan province and its regulars are a world away from China’s modern megacities

Out in the western suburbs of Sichuan’s capital, Chengdu, the town of Pengzhen is home to what’s said to be the oldest teahouse in China. About 300 years old, the Guanyin Pavilion is at the heart of a tiny community of historic streets where, against a tide of rapid modernisation, the local population proudly preserves its heritage and traditional way of life.

Our project to document communities undergoing irreversible change took us to the frozen Zanskar river, which connects Ladakh and Zanskar in northern India.

Michał and I began our Before its Gone project at the start of 2017, with the aim of identifying, visiting and documenting locations and communities that are experiencing rapid (and irreversible) changes. The idea is to notice these changes so they can be remembered – and learned from.

Our first expedition was along the frozen Zanskar river that links Ladakh and Zanskar in the north Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. When the temperature drops to -30C and mountain passes get covered with metres of snow, the Zanskar region becomes inaccessible for the winter, and the frozen river the only route connecting it with the rest of the world. For hundreds of years villagers across the mountains have used Chadar (the ice road trek) to get to school, work or to see a doctor. But that will change soon, as the Indian government plans to build a new road here. However, as our translator Stanzin Tundup told us, the road may not be the biggest engine for change.

A new virtual exhibition, What the Traveller Saw, the first of its kind by the Royal Geographical Society, marks the centenary of the birth of the writer and former Observer travel editor