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Extreme exposure should be avoided, but we’ve gone too far the other way – enjoyed safely, the sun can have enormous health benefits

High summer has returned to the UK , and with it, the usual warnings about the dangers of sunlight and reminders to seek shade and cover up. After years of such advice, most members of the public naturally assume that the science connecting sun exposure to poor health is well established, so people are often shocked to learn that the opposite is true: those who spend more time in the sun tend to be healthier. A lot healthier.

I know because I began researching the subject nine years ago after stumbling upon some studies – and I’ve stayed on the case ever since, now summarising everything we know in my new book, In Defense of Sunlight . It contains good news for many people: we don’t have to fear the sun nearly as much as we thought. In fact, most of us could benefit from a bit more exposure.

Rowan Jacobsen is a former Knight Science Journalism Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a media fellow at the Nova Institute for Health in Baltimore. His book In Defense of Sunlight: The Surprising Science of Sun Exposure is published this month

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Not so long ago, I found a stash of my old ZX Spectrum games in the attic. And rummaging through those tatty boxes - the old half-forgotten bargain bin bangers, the illicit passed-around-the-playground compilation tapes - it wasn't the games I found myself thinking about, it was the memories around them. My mind leapt back to evenings spent poring over stamp-sized magazine screenshots; the Friday night trips to Tescos and the exotic box art tempting me to part with my £2; the POKE codes and the dog-eared anti-piracy sheets; the wild classroom rumours of in-game secrets that would only reveal themselves when elaborate steps were performed. But they're not just my memories, of course; they'll be familiar to many of a certain place and time. And it's this sense of cultural nostalgia that Forbidden Solitaire captures so well.

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Science word of the day: Autotroph

Pronunciation: AW'-tuh-trohf

What it means: Autotrophs are organisms that can feed themselves with inorganic substances such as light (for plants) or methane (certain microbes). Autotrophs were the first single-celled life-forms to colonize the planet, thriving on chemicals bubbling up from the subsurface at deep-sea vents or figuring out how to harness the sun for energy. Heterotrophs (like you, me and all fungi), arrived on the scene later to feast on these DIY-ers.

How to use it in a sentence: Stromatolites, microbial mats built by cyanobacteria, are autotrophs that thrived in ancient shallow seas.

Can you crack our science word of the day puzzle, Chain Word ?

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Award-winning entomologist Dino Martins, known for his work on pollinators, shows in his latest book that even the most gruesome creatures have vital roles to play

Dino J Martins has never been able to resist the small things. The renowned entomologist and evolutionary biologist spent his formative years in biodiversity-rich western Kenya with his foster parents, Joe and Sarah Ellen, looking at birds, flowers and insects on Mt Elgon, and in Kakamega forest and Kerio valley.

He was especially transfixed by the miniature world beneath his feet – dung beetles rolling mounds of cattle dung; safari ants’ migrations across the plains; male butterflies that suck salt and other nutrients from the mud to produce “nuptial gifts” during mating; and bees pollinating the critically endangered African violet alongside crops in a farmer’s field.

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