by Damien Gayle Environment correspondent on (#66JRV)
Researchers think sound of vehicles can interfere with birds’ normal song when trying to warn off nearby rivalsIt isn’t just people who get road rage. Robins in the countryside become more aggressive when they hear the sound of traffic, according to a study.Beloved for their plump appearance, proud bearing and sweet song, European robins are actually fiercely competitive creatures, whose calls and behaviours are part of a struggle for territorial dominance fought daily with their neighbours. Continue reading...
Coroner to look at whether misplaced medical tube contributed to death of Ismail Mohamed Abdulwahab, 13A misplaced medical tube may have contributed to the death of the first child in the UK to die after contracting Covid, a review of the case heard on Tuesday.Thirteen-year-old Ismail Mohamed Abdulwahab’s death on 30 March 2020 at King’s College hospital in London prompted widespread shock, which was compounded when it emerged that his immediate family, including six siblings, could not attend his funeral because of Covid lockdown restrictions. Continue reading...
‘Rare’ blanket measure may be used at primary schools after at least nine UK deaths from bacterial infectionPrimary schoolchildren at risk from a severe form of strep A could be given preventive antibiotics as a blanket measure, in a move described as “rare” by health officials.At least nine children have died due to complications from strep A bacterial infections since September, with one senior health official suggesting the early start to the strep A season in the UK could be a knock-on effect to immunity levels caused by Covid measures, although others have downplayed the impact lockdowns may have had. Continue reading...
by Presented by Madeleine Finlay with sound design by on (#66HNY)
The UK Health Security Agency issued a rare alert on Friday, telling parents to look out for signs of strep A infection in their children. Since September, eight children in England and Wales have died after becoming unwell with Group A streptococci bacteria.Typically causing illnesses like skin infections, tonsillitis or scarlet fever, very occasionally strep A can become a life-threatening, invasive disease. But why are we seeing such a steep rise in cases in the UK this year?Madeleine Finlay speaks to Chrissie Jones, associate professor of paediatric infection at the University of Southampton, about the significance of this outbreak and the symptoms to be aware of, and asks Shiranee Sriskandan, professor of infectious diseases at Imperial College London, about how the bacteria can evade our immune systems and whether we may one day have a vaccine.Archive: ITV, Sky News Continue reading...
Unnamed expert tells state media outlet Yicai that Covid could be downgraded from a category A disease to category CCoronavirus is weakening and management protocols could be downgraded, an expert on China’s state media has claimed, after unprecedented protests last week led to a major shift in Beijing’s commitment to its zero-Covid policy.Since January 2020, China has classified Covid-19 as a Category B infectious disease but has managed it under Category A protocols, which give local authorities the power to put patients and their close contacts into quarantine and lock down affected regions. Continue reading...
The tool has impressed experts with its writing ability, proficiency at complex tasks and ease of useChatGPT is a prototype dialogue-based AI chatbot capable of understanding natural human language and generating impressively detailed human-like written text. Continue reading...
Magnificent event can be seen with the naked eye – although an alarm clock may be requiredThere is a magnificent sight to behold this week – but you will need to set your alarm clock. In the early hours of Thursday, Mars will disappear completely behind the full moon, an event known as an occultation.The chart shows the view looking west from London at 4.30am GMT. Throughout the preceding evening, on Wednesday, the moon will inch its way closer to Mars in the night sky. At about 4.58am GMT on Thursday, Mars will disappear behind the moon’s western hemisphere. It will reappear about an hour later from behind the eastern limb. Continue reading...
I got very close to becoming a European Space Agency astronaut, but the final lesson was a bittersweet oneIn February 2021, the European Space Agency (Esa) announced it would be recruiting a new astronaut class, the first since 2008. It encouraged applicants from a broader spectrum of gender, physical ability, age and ethnicity, so I fired off an application and joined a WhatsApp group of like-minded hopefuls. There were 23,000 applicants in total, and some obvious criteria. To get on to the longlist you had to have a couple of degrees in science, preferably in different disciplines, with at least one at master’s level or above. As for the other qualities that might make a good astronaut, we didn’t know precisely what they were looking for, but we could guess: they seem to like people who are outdoorsy, a bit sporty, good in teams and able to put up with quite a lot of discomfort.Above all, they seemed to prefer people who had what they called “operational experience”, which meant pursuits where you made real decisions with some skin in the game, preferably your own. I made both the longlist of 17,000 applicants, and the smaller group of close to 1,500 who went on to the next stage in Hamburg, Germany. We did classroom tests and video games: maths and physics quizzes, some psychometric screening and a bunch of fiendishly difficult pilot aptitude tests. My childhood bashing away on an Atari 2600 hadn’t gone to waste. And the competitors in the room were no slouches: intrepid oceanographers, particle physicists, military test pilots and Antarctic explorers, to list but a few. Continue reading...
As a child, the gift of a dictionary sparked my love of rare words – which snowballed like a hogamadogChristmas morning. I must have been about seven years old. My grandparents had just arrived at our house and my family’s presents were all being excitedly exchanged. At last, they came to me, and my grandmother handed over something that seemed absolutely enormous. It was broad, flat, solid and extraordinarily heavy. With little clue about what to expect, I tore it open and found myself holding a hardback illustrated children’s edition of the Oxford English Dictionary.Most kids, I am sure, would have rolled their eyes. Enthusiasm would have been feigned and the book would have been subtly placed to one side in favour of a Nintendo Game Boy (or whatever the gift of choice was in the early 90s). But for me – nerdish, bookish, studious – this was, without doubt, a perfect gift. Continue reading...
For decades public health authorities have encouraged us to choose healthier foods – yet most choices available to Americans are bad onesDiet-related chronic disease is the perennial number one killer in the United States, responsible for more deaths than Covid-19 even at the pandemic’s peak. Yet we cannot manage to define this as a “crisis”. In fact, our response is lame: for decades we’ve been telling people to “eat better”, a strategy that hasn’t worked, and never will.It cannot, as long as the majority of calories we produce are unhealthy. It is the availability of and access to types of food that determines our diets, and those, in turn, are factors of agricultural policy. For a healthy population, we must mandate or at least incentivize growing real food for nutrition, not cheap meat and corn and soya beans for junk food. Continue reading...
People attending large gatherings to watch matches are urged to be cautious about visiting vulnerable relatives afterwardsEngland’s progress in the World Cup could drive up the number of Covid cases across the country this winter, scientists have warned.Researchers say that mass gatherings in pubs, and in homes where friends and relatives get together to watch the team compete in Qatar, could lead to a rise in infections. Continue reading...
Billy Liar’s loose grasp on reality is common today but experts say it is less benign. That is, if you believe themBilly Liar, created in the 1950s, is a fantasist; a teller of tall tales who lives much of his time in the imaginary world of Ambrosia.He is engaged to two girls and fancies a third. He is desperate to get out of the dead-end town of Stradhoughton where he lives with his working-class family and where he has secreted 211 “luxury” calendars under his bed that he should have posted nine months before, on behalf of his employers, Shadrack & Duxbury, “funeral furnishers”. Continue reading...
Lab-grown nerve cells will replace those destroyed by disease – scientists hope treatment may be available in five yearsEarly next year, a radical new treatment for Parkinson’s disease involving tissue transplants will receive its first trial with patients – including a group from the UK.Stem cells grown in the laboratory and transformed into nerve cells will be used to replace those destroyed by the disease. It is hoped that these will stop the spread of debilitating symptoms. Continue reading...
Researchers are a step closer to unravelling the cruel mystery of the dementia that afflicts my wife and so many othersIn an age of excessive information, we have each developed a filtering system. To compensate, we acquire our own keywords, which pierce these systems, or, in the old parlance, make our ears prick up, be they the names of favourite teams, musicians, pastimes, conspiracy theories. Brexit.In recent years, I have joined millions of others in acquiring the more unfortunate triggers of “dementia” and “Alzheimer’s”, but these keywords are not always the harbingers of bad news. Last week, the headlines linking them with others, such as “breakthrough” and “treatment”, will have set many of us off into a frenzy of information-gathering. Continue reading...
Despite daily Covid-19 cases near all-time highs and recent protests over lockdowns, US intelligence see no threat to Xi’s stabilityChinese leader Xi Jinping is unwilling to accept western vaccines despite the challenges China is facing with Covid-19, and while recent protests there are not a threat to Communist party rule, they could affect his personal standing, US director of national intelligence Avril Haines said.Although China’s daily Covid cases are near all-time highs, some cities are taking steps to loosen testing and quarantine rules after Xi’s zero-Covid policy triggered a sharp economic slowdown and public unrest opposing Covid-19 lockdowns. Continue reading...
The stress-reducing, life-extending benefits of religion can offer useful strategies even for non-believers, say scientistsIn his Pensées, published posthumously in 1670, the French philosopher Blaise Pascal appeared to establish a foolproof argument for religious commitment, which he saw as a kind of bet. If the existence of God was even minutely possible, he claimed, then the potential gain was so huge – an “eternity of life and happiness” – that taking the leap of faith was the mathematically rational choice.Pascal’s wager implicitly assumes that religion has no benefits in the real world, but some sacrifices. But what if there were evidence that faith could also contribute to better wellbeing? Scientific studies suggest this is the case. Joining a church, synagogue or temple even appears to extend your lifespan. Continue reading...
Scientists who have replaced plastic packaging with seaweed among those to be given prize by Prince of WalesScientists who have replaced plastic packaging with seaweed are among those who have been given a £1m prize by the Prince of Wales’s Earthshot fund.The prize is aimed at rewarding innovative solutions to tackle the climate and biodiversity emergencies, and is named after former US president John F Kennedy’s Moonshot challenge in the 1960s, which united millions of people around the goal of putting a person on the moon within a decade. Continue reading...
Specimen collected in 1950s pushes back origins of squamates by at least 34m yearsThe fossilised remains of a small, sharp-toothed lizard, left in a cupboard for more than half a century, have pushed back the origins of the group that encompasses modern snakes and lizards by tens of millions of years.The specimen was collected in the 1950s from a quarry near Tortworth in Gloucestershire by the late fossil hunter Pamela L Robinson. But its true identity was not appreciated as the creature was erroneously labelled and stored, until recently when it was found in the Natural History Museum in London. Continue reading...
Highly contagious bacteria behind the infection can in rare cases cause serious illnessesSix children in the UK have died after contracting strep A infection and health officials are warning parents and school staff to look out for its signs and symptoms.While most people who get it will not become extremely sick, the highly contagious bacteria that cause the infection can, in some cases, cause serious illnesses, health complications and death. Continue reading...
The search for a cure for dementia continues, but scientific advance in treatment is a landmark momentFinding a cure for Alzheimer’s disease, the most common form of dementia, is the holy grail of medical research. The incurable malady is – along with other dementias – the leading cause of death in the UK. Until now, no therapy had emerged that could even slow its lethal brain shrinkage, let alone stop or reverse its grim progression. Treating dementia has also been an underfunded cause. By some estimates, more research has been done on Covid in the past three years than on dementia in the past century. Yet this week, a drug that works for Alzheimer’s has appeared on the horizon, raising hopes that there may be some relief from a deadly and cruel condition.The drug, lecanemab, is a landmark in medicine, and the first treatment to slow cognitive decline in Alzheimer’s patients. People understandably focus on breakthroughs that deliver a cure. Dementia is a frightening disease. It may begin innocuously enough, with a little forgetfulness. But the sickness gnaws away at a person’s mental agility, their memory and ultimately their personality. Patients can end up delusional, incontinent and incapable of looking after themselves. Death arrives on average about eight years after the initial diagnosis. Lecanemab’s effect is modest. In a clinical trial involving 1,800 patients in the early stages of Alzheimer’s, the drug slowed its development over 18 months by about a quarter. Continue reading...
Study also found poorer mental health but it is unclear whether this is linked to brain age differenceThe brains of teenagers who lived through Covid lockdowns show signs of premature ageing, research suggests.The researchers compared MRI scans of 81 teens in the US taken before the pandemic, between November 2016 and November 2019, with those of 82 teens collected between October 2020 and March 2022, during the pandemic but after lockdowns were lifted. Continue reading...
Since the bird was ‘rediscovered’ by accident in Borneo in 2020, ornithologists have returned to study the melodious species last documented more than 170 years agoFor more than 170 years, and despite its name, scientists and birdwatchers heard no babbling, chirping, tweeting or any other sounds from the black-browed babbler. The bird was long assumed to be extinct, until an accidental discovery by two local men, Muhammad Suranto and Muhammad Rizky Fauzan, in the forests of Borneo’s South Kalimantan province.“I was out looking for forest products at the limestone hill just behind my home,” recalls Suranto. “I often look for birds and leftover wood to sell. We caught one of these birds on 5 October 2020. I’d seen it for a while, but I was never able to know its species.” Continue reading...
Wearable devices powered by kinetic energy of cows will gather data to help track cattle wellbeingCows on farms could soon have their health, reproductive readiness and location monitored by smart technology powered by the kinetic energy of the animal’s movements.Devices that monitor the health of each cow or keep them within invisible fences are already used on farms but these smart tools are often powered by chemical batteries, which add to energy used by an emissions-intensive industry. Continue reading...
Firm restoring nature on two estates hopes to give ordinary investors 5% annual return over 10 yearsOrdinary people are being invited to invest in projects to rewild the Scottish Highlands by a company that is restoring nature on two estates and seeking to expand its rewilding portfolio.“Citizen rewilders” can invest a minimum of £50 and up to £200,000 in £10 shares in Highlands Rewilding, which hopes to provide a 5% annual return on the investment over 10 years. Continue reading...
by Presented by Ian Sample with Phoebe Weston, produc on (#66CBK)
The UK is in the middle of its worst outbreak of bird flu. The current strain of H5N1 avian influenza has devastated wild bird populations, killing thousands and affecting threatened species such as puffins and hen harriers. Bird flu has also been wreaking havoc on poultry, and since 7 November, all captive birds in England have been kept indoors to prevent them catching the virus.How are both wild and captive bird populations coping with the current strain of avian flu? And is the UK prepared to deal with another major animal disease outbreak? Ian Sample speaks with Phoebe Weston, a biodiversity writer for the Guardian, and Paul Wigley, a professor in animal microbial ecosystems at the University of Bristol.Archive: BBC News, Sky News Continue reading...
Theoretical achievement hailed, though sending people through a physical wormhole remains in the realms of science fictionIt’s a mainstay of science fiction, it’s tiny and it doesn’t exist in physical space, but researchers say they’ve created what is, theoretically, a worm hole.Researchers have announced that they simulated two miniscule black holes in a quantum computer and transmitted a message between them through what amounted to a tunnel in space-time. Continue reading...
Dating back more than 65m years, specimen’s mobile palate challenges understanding of avian evolutionFossil experts have cooked the goose of a key tenet in avian evolution after finding a premodern bird from more than 65m years ago that could move its beak like modern fowl.The toothy animal was discovered in the 1990s by an amateur fossil collector at a quarry in Belgium and dates to about 66.7m years ago – shortly before the asteroid strike that wiped out non-avian dinosaurs. Continue reading...
Filing is latest action against Elon Musk’s rocket venture as Twitter and Tesla are also roiled by lawsuitsSpaceX has become the subject of another worker dispute just weeks after unfair labor complaints were filed against the company.A former engineer at SpaceX, the Elon Musk-run rocket company, filed an age discrimination complaint against the firm with the state of Washington, alleging he was repeatedly passed up for opportunities in favor of younger, less experienced colleagues and was retaliated against when he filed complaints with the company’s human resources department and chief operating officer. Continue reading...
Resident tells of days filled with health codes, constant threat of shutdowns and moments of hopeLife in Beijing these days is spent either in lockdown or preparing for lockdown. Stockpiling food at home, just in case, has become the new norm. Meeting friends is hard because every few weeks one of us is sealed inside their home for days. Carrying out the daily routine of only working, eating and sleeping has become interminably boring and there are the complicated new technologies and rules we have to navigate.The health code dominates every aspect of our lives here. Because the results of my mandatory Covid test, taken every 48 hours, are connected to my public transport pass, I don’t have to use my health code to get into the subway station. But when I arrive at the gate outside my work building, I have to show my scan result to the guard. The young man in uniform gives me a slight nod, his facial expression hidden under the mask. A smattering of cars run through the bright gingko tree-lined streets. Continue reading...
With digital bioacoustics, scientists can eavesdrop on the natural world – and they’re learning some astonishing thingsScientists have recently made some remarkable discoveries about non-human sounds. With the aid of digital bioacoustics – tiny, portable digital recorders similar to those found in your smartphone – researchers are documenting the universal importance of sound to life on Earth.By placing these digital microphones all over Earth, from the depths of the ocean to the Arctic and the Amazon, scientists are discovering the hidden sounds of nature, many of which occur at ultrasonic or infrasonic frequencies, above or below human hearing range. Non-humans are in continuous conversation, much of which the naked human ear cannot hear. But digital bioacoustics helps us hear these sounds, by functioning as a planetary-scale hearing aid and enabling humans to record nature’s sounds beyond the limits of our sensory capacities. With the help of artificial intelligence (AI), researchers are now decoding complex communication in other species. Continue reading...
A submersible off the coast of Western Australia chanced upon an 45-metre-long deep-sea siphonophore arranged in a feeding spiral, trailing its deadly tentaclesIn 2020, about 600 metres (2,000ft) down in an underwater canyon off the coast of Western Australia, scientists encountered a long gelatinous creature suspended in a giant spiral. “It was like a rope on the horizon. You couldn’t miss it,” says Nerida Wilson from the Western Australian Museum. “It was so huge.”It was a deep-sea siphonophore, a relative of the portuguese man o’ war, or blue bottles, that bob like party balloons on the sea surface, trailing deadly tentacles through the water. This one was probably a new species from the genus Apolemia, a group that generally look like tangled feather boas. Continue reading...
Mammals can produce sound from ventricular folds, used by humans only for Tuvan throat singing and ‘death metal grunting’It has long been known Ozzy Osbourne has a taste for bats. But now it seems the mammals are also fans of his.Bats greet each other with death metal growls, scientists have discovered, and possess a vocal range which far surpasses that of most humans. Continue reading...
The skeleton of ‘Barbara’, a pregnant and injured tyrannosaurus, raises a shocking possibility: that these dinosaurs had a touchy-feely sideName: Barbara.Age: About 66m years old. Continue reading...
Mistake at Immensa Health Clinic Ltd lab in Wolverhampton led to 39,000 tests wrongly labelled negativeAt least 23 deaths might have been caused by a blunder at a privately run laboratory after thousands of positive Covid cases were reported as negative, public health experts have estimated.The error, at the Immensa Health Clinic Ltd lab in Wolverhampton, led to about 39,000 PCR tests returning negative results between 2 September and 12 October 2021 when they should have been positive – mostly in the south-west of England. Continue reading...
‘Phenomenal’ finds are named elaliite and elkinstantonite, and Canadian scientists are analysing third mineralA team of researchers in Canada say they have discovered two new minerals – and potentially a third – after analysing a slice of a 15-tonne meteorite that landed in east Africa.The meteorite, the ninth largest recorded at over 2 metres wide, was unearthed in Somalia in 2020, although local camel herders say it was well known to them for generations and named Nightfall in their songs and poems. Continue reading...
Jon Ferry sells old bones used in the teaching of medicine. But the medical bone trade has a murky history of exploitationIn a small, light-filled Bushwick studio space, a brown box rests on a wooden coffee table. Inside is a human head. “Wanna start?” asks Jon Pichaya Ferry, pulling a box cutter out of the pocket of his black skinny jeans.Inside is a lumpy form wrapped in thin aqua foam, which he tears off to reveal a skull’s mandible. Out comes the rest of the skull; he fits the two parts together and places it on the lid of a coffin in the corner of the room, next to a can of Red Bull. Continue reading...
Researchers find no such link for women, suggesting connection between diet and bowel cancer is clearer for menEating a plant-based diet rich in vegetables, whole grains, nuts and legumes can reduce the risk of bowel cancer in men by more than a fifth, according to research.A large study that involved 79,952 US-based men found that those who ate the largest amounts of healthy plant-based foods had a 22% lower risk of bowel cancer compared with those who ate the least. Continue reading...
by Presented by Madeleine Finlay, produced by Ned Car on (#669SY)
At a recent conference in France, scientists and government representatives voted to scrap the leap second by 2035. Leap seconds are added periodically to synchronise atomic time and astronomical time, which get out of sync because of variations in the Earth’s rotation.Madeleine Finlay speaks to JT Janssen, the chief scientist at NPL, the National Physical Laboratory, about the differences between these two times, and what can go wrong when leap seconds are added to our clocks Continue reading...
Strict measures that continue almost three years into pandemic are prompting widespread protests. Here are the factorsChina’s strategy of controlling Covid-19 with lockdowns, mass testing and quarantines has provoked the greatest show of public dissent against the ruling Communist party in decades.Initially, China succeeded in suppressing the virus, but then more transmissible variants emerged, and in recent weeks the outbreak has grown with record numbers of cases reported. Continue reading...
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