History tells us the end of a deadly outbreak isn’t just about medical data – it’s about political and social changes tooMore than two years after the World Health Organization declared the Covid-19 outbreak a pandemic and more than 18 months after Covid-19 vaccinations were first widely administered, it can still seem there is little consensus on what stage of the epidemic we are now at. Is the epidemic over, with British restrictions lifted a year ago and airline travel surging? Or do soaring case rates and continued individual health measures suggest the epidemic is nowhere near its end?The trouble is that epidemics do not have the sort of neat, objective endings we may imagine. A swift and decisive endpoint, achieved through the speedy application of scientific innovation – a magic bullet treatment – is usually wishful thinking. It is unlikely we will see anything like that with Covid-19.Erica Charters is professor of the global history of medicine at the University of Oxford, where she leads a multidisciplinary project on How Epidemics End Continue reading...

Success of AlphaFold program could have huge impact on global problems such as famine and diseaseArtificial intelligence has deciphered the structure of virtually every protein known to science, paving the way for the development of new medicines or technologies to tackle global challenges such as famine or pollution.Proteins are the building blocks of life. Formed of chains of amino acids, folded up into complex shapes, their 3D structure largely determines their function. Once you know how a protein folds up, you can start to understand how it works, and how to change its behaviour. Although DNA provides the instructions for making the chain of amino acids, predicting how they interact to form a 3D shape was more tricky and, until recently, scientists had only deciphered a fraction of the 200m or so proteins known to science. Continue reading...

Monitoring sewage thought to be a quicker, more cost-effective way to understand the spread of the virusResearchers in Thailand are examining wastewater for signs of monkeypox, as part of surveillance efforts to detect the spread of the virus.Academics from Naresuan University, in Phitsanulok province, northern Thailand, began testing sewage at Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi airport in May, adopting a technique that has also been used to track the spread of Covid-19. Continue reading...

Getting a good shot is tricky so here are some tips to capture Piscis Austrinids, Southern Delta Aquariids and Alpha Capricornids

Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak have clashed on a number of issues as they battle to become the next prime minister. However, as heated debates hit our television screens, the climate emergency has been alarmingly absent from discussions.Ian Sample chats to Guardian environment correspondent Fiona Harvey about which candidate is ‘least bad’ when it comes to green policies, and why one of the world’s most urgent issues has taken a back seat in the leadership contestArchive: ITV News, Daily Record, Sky News Continue reading...

Researchers say about 5% of infected adults may develop long-lasting changes to sense of smell or tasteMillions of people worldwide may have long-term smell or taste problems as a result of Covid-19, with women more likely to be affected, a study suggests.About 5% of adults infected with the coronavirus may develop long-lasting changes to their sense of smell or taste, according to the research published in the BMJ. Continue reading...

Francis Crick Institute in London says area of spike protein of Sars-CoV-2 could form basis of jab against variants and common coldScientists have made a “promising” advance towards developing a universal coronavirus vaccine to tackle Covid-19 and the common cold.Researchers at the Francis Crick Institute in London have discovered that a specific area of the spike protein of Sars-CoV-2 – the virus that causes Covid-19 – is a good target for a pan-coronavirus jab that could offer protection against all the Covid-19 variants and common colds. Continue reading...

Virus may have received a boost from rise of kissing that came with westward migrations 4,500 years agoThe herpes variants that cause modern cold sores became widespread in the wake of bronze age migrations, and may have received a boost from the practice of kissing that came with it, researchers say.Scientists in Cambridge analysed the first ancient DNA specimens of herpes simplex virus and found that one variant overtook all others about 4,500 years ago, setting the course for its dominance today. Continue reading...

Director general calls on men who have sex with men to make ‘safe choices’ amid global emergencyThe head of the World Health Organization has advised men at risk of catching monkeypox to consider reducing how many sexual partners they have “for the moment”, after the UN agency declared escalating outbreaks in multiple countries to be a global emergency.The WHO director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said 98% of the monkeypox cases detected since the outbreaks emerged in May had been among gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men. He called for those at risk to take steps to protect themselves. Continue reading...

James Lovelock, the creator of the Gaia hypothesis, has died on his 103rd birthday. The climate scientist originated the theory that life on Earth is self-regulating. Lovelock often warned the global population of the stark reality of climate change and was committed to his work in his one-man laboratory in an old mill in Cornwall since the mid-1960s

The scientist was best known for his theory that the Earth is a self-regulating community of organismsJames Lovelock, the creator of the Gaia hypothesis, has died on his 103rd birthday. The climate scientist died at home on Tuesday surrounded by loved ones, his family said.Lovelock, who was one of the UK’s most respected independent scientists, had been in good health until six months ago, when he had a bad fall. Continue reading...

New moon will provide ideal viewing conditions for the Piscis Austrinids, Southern Delta Aquariids and Alpha Capricornids meteor showers this week as cosmic debris from comets enters Earth’s atmosphere, before the Perseids peak in August

Analysis: Fractures in the partnership have appeared before, but if Moscow exits, keeping the station in orbit would not be easyThe International Space Station, which circles the planet from 250 miles up, is often considered to be above the earthly conflicts that play out beneath. The orbiting outpost has weathered its share of political turmoil in more than two decades of hosting humans. As a symbol of post-cold war cooperation, the US-Russian partnership has been a clear success. But it has not always been a smooth ride.This week’s announcement by Yury Borisov, the new head of Roscosmos, that Russia will quit the International Space Station after 2024, is only the latest expression of the country’s discontent. In 2015, Roscosmos said it would leave the partnership in 2024, unbolt its modules, and use them to build an outpost of its own. A Russian space station remains one of the agency’s prime ambitions. Continue reading...

The results are reassuring: the changes are small and short-lived, and other studies show the jab does not affect fertility

White inflight jacket worn on mission to the moon fetches record price for a US space artefactThe jacket worn by Buzz Aldrin on his first mission to the moon has become the most valuable American space artefact ever sold at auction, fetching $2.77m (£2.3m).The article was sold by Sotheby’s in New York on Tuesday as part of the most valuable single sale of space exploration items ever staged, which achieved a total of $8.2m. Continue reading...

Greensphere Capital aims to invest up to £100m in research into some of world’s most pressing challengesThe Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew has secured a multimillion-pound investment to help commercialise its research into climate change-resistant crops, zero-carbon fertiliser and plant- and cell-based meat and dairy products.Greensphere Capital, a sustainability-focused fund, is aiming to invest up to £100m in the work carried out by Kew, a research institution and the UK’s largest botanic garden, as well as other organisations, to commercialise and scale-up study into managing risks around the climate crisis and biodiversity loss. Continue reading...

Evidence from 252m years ago shows surviving animals bounced back stronger, fitter, faster and smarterMass extinctions are not all bad news: survivors bounce back stronger, fitter, faster and smarter than before. Palaeontologists studying the most deadly mass extinction of all time – the end-Permian, 252m years ago – have shown that predators rapidly became swifter and more deadly, while prey animals adapted and found new ways to survive.Incredible fossil fish assemblages from China reveal that new hunting modes emerged earlier than previously thought, including fish with masses of teeth, adapted to crushing shells, and streamlined “lizard” fish that specialised in ambush, shooting out from murky lairs. Meanwhile, the animals that they preyed upon had to develop defences. “Some got thicker shells, or developed spines, or themselves became faster in order to help them escape,” said Feixiang Wu, from the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, whose findings are reported in Frontiers in Earth Science. Continue reading...

Researchers say impact of rise to 2 million cases meant it was ‘a significant part of pandemic’s legacy’Long Covid is costing the UK up to £1.5bn a year in lost earnings, researchers say, after the number of people suffering persistent symptoms of the virus doubled over the last 12 months.The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said the impact of a rise in long Covid cases from 1 to 2 million showed it was likely to be “a significant part of the pandemic’s legacy”. Continue reading...

Evidence of past infection was detected in 46% of samples, compared with 17% in February

Yuri Borisov, head of Roscosmos, says Moscow will fulfil obligations to ISS partners before quitting projectRussia will pull out of the International Space Station (ISS) after 2024 and focus on building its own orbiting outpost, the country’s space chief has said, in a move that will end a symbolic two-decade orbital partnership between Moscow and the west.Yuri Borisov, the newly appointed head of the space agency Roscosmos, said during a meeting with Vladimir Putin that Russia would fulfil its obligations to its partners on the ISS before leaving the project. Continue reading...

City continues to be a hotspot for the virus, accounting for about a quarter of all of the confirmed cases in the USThere are now more than 1,000 confirmed cases of monkeypox in New York City, which continues to be a hotspot for the virus, health officials said on Monday.New York reached 1,040 cases as of Monday, said the most recent information released by the city. That accounts for about a quarter of all of the confirmed cases in the US. Continue reading...

Natural History Museum scientists seek to unlock mysteries of deep sea but some fear activity will disturb diversity of the depths

Exploration of the Pacific Ocean’s Clarion-Clipperton Zone, a 5,000-metre abyssal plain that extends between Hawaii and Mexico, has brought to light megafauna previously unknown to science

British company, bailed out by government, and former rival could take on Elon Musk’s Starlink after tie-upThe British satellite company OneWeb and its French rival Eutelsat have announced they have signed an initial merger deal that could help them challenge the likes of the Elon Musk-owned SpaceX’s Starlink.The transaction, following reports that both companies were in tie-up talks, values OneWeb at $3.4bn (£2.8bn). It would be structured as an exchange of OneWeb shares by its shareholders with new shares issued by Eutelsat, leaving the latter owning 100% of OneWeb. Continue reading...

The impacts of the climate crisis are undeniably here. Heatwaves, droughts, wildfires and flooding are causing devastation around the world. And yet, we still aren’t seeing the drastic action that’s required to avert climate disaster. As things get worse, it’s easy to give up hope – but ‘climate doomism’ is just as dangerous as climate denial.Anand Jagatia speaks to psychotherapist Caroline Hickman about her research on climate anxiety, and how we can turn feelings of doom into positive actionArchive: ABC News, BBC News, UN Continue reading...

Stephen Coleman advises paying attention to the ways in which mood inflects democratic politicsJonathan Freedland offers the astute insight that Brexit is more a felt vibe than a literal definition (Brexit is a mood, not a policy – and Liz Truss captures it in all its delusion, 22 July).If so, how should democracies argue about and represent moods? What is the mood-world equivalent of a political manifesto? Should we expect democratic citizens to vote in moods or for moods? Must mood politics always be the province of demagogues and manipulators? Continue reading...

Sea creature, thought to have used tentacles to capture food, is named Auroralumina attenboroughiiA hundred years from now, Sir David Attenborough’s body may have turned to dust, but a fossilised sea creature, thought to represent Earth’s earliest animal predator, will continue to bear his name.Discovered in Charnwood Forest, Leicestershire, where Attenborough hunted for fossils as a child, the creature predates what was previously thought to be the oldest predator by 20m years. Continue reading...

The answer to today’s percolation poserEarlier today I asked you the following problem about a hexagonal grid similar to the one that was used in Blockbusters, a student quiz show from the 1980s and 1990s.The grid is also a model of the mathematical theory of percolation – but more of that later. Continue reading...

Scientists say simultaneous infection with viruses may explain rise in cases, with 12 UK children requiring liver transplantsSimultaneous infection with two common viruses is thought to explain a recent surge in childhood hepatitis cases, which has led to 12 UK children requiring liver transplants so far.Two research groups have detected high levels of adeno-associated virus 2 (AAV2) – a little-known virus not previously associated with human disease – in almost all of the affected British children they have tested. AAV2 is unable to replicate by itself but can do so in the presence of a second virus. Continue reading...

Supporting the people most at-risk of this awful disease is the only way to reduce its impact and stop its spreadProbably the last thing you want to hear is that the World Health Organization has declared another disease – this time monkeypox – to be a public health emergency of international concern. Monkeypox is a virus similar to smallpox that causes fever, swollen lymph nodes and distinctive rashes on the face, palms, the soles of the feet and genitalia. Gay and bisexual men are most at risk, as are other men who have sex with men. It can be a serious disease with the case fatality rate around 3-6%, although the vast majority of people manage to recover at home without hospitalisation or medication.This WHO declaration is unusual in that the organisation’s director general, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, overruled a split emergency committee (an expert advisory committee from around the world in virology, epidemiology and public health) to insist that the loudest alarm bell should be rung. His justification was: “We have an outbreak that has spread around the world rapidly, through new modes of transmission, about which we understand too little and which meets the criteria in the international health regulations.” Continue reading...

Faced with tough choices, people usually fall back on gut instinct or seek the advice of friends. Now, there’s an alternativeWhom should you marry? Where should you live? How should you spend your time? For centuries, people have relied on their gut instincts to figure out the answers to these life-changing questions. Now, though, there is a better way. We are living through a data explosion, as vast amounts of information about all aspects of human behaviour have become more and more accessible. We can use this big data to help determine the best course to chart.There has long been overwhelming – and often surprising – evidence that algorithms can be much better than people at making difficult decisions. Researchers have collected data on various kinds of choices people make, the information they base those choices on, and how things turn out. They have found, for example, that a simple data-driven algorithm would have been better than judges at deciding whether a defendant should stay in jail or be released; better than doctors at deciding whether a patient should get a procedure; and better than school principals at deciding which teachers should be promoted. Continue reading...

Can I have a P please Bob?UPDATE: You can read the solution hereIn the much-missed student quiz show Blockbusters, teenagers would ask host Bob Holness for a letter from a hexagonal grid. How we laughed when a contestant asked for a P!Holness would reply with a question in the following style: What P is… Continue reading...

Researchers say 55% of COPD patients suffering two or more acute attacks a year earn under £20,000, with the poorest five times more likely to die from the conditionPoorer people are much more likely to die from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) than wealthier patients due to damp housing and low pay, researchers have found.A survey of nearly 6,000 people living with COPD, one of Britain’s most common lung conditions, found that structural inequalities had a significant bearing on whether a patient would survive. Continue reading...

In today’s newsletter: 98% of monkeypox cases so far are in gay or bisexual men but a fear of stigmatising the disease has set public health back

Practise meteor-watching skills in preparation for August’s Perseid shower in days up to 30 JulyPractise your meteor-watching skills this week in preparation for next month’s main event: the August Perseid meteor shower.This week, it is the turn of the fainter Delta Aquariid meteors to reach its peak. Nominally expected on 30 July, the truth is that they are consistent for days surrounding the crescendo. This year is a good one to look because the Delta Aquariids tend to be faint, yet the new moon occurs on 28 July meaning that it will be long gone from the sky around midnight when the meteors become most visible. Continue reading...

Ashish Jha, coronavirus response coordinator, defends Biden administration response but California Democrat wants answers

The long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific and philosophical conceptsWhich species exhibits the most diverse physical characteristics? I can’t think of a more varied example than the domestic dog (Canis familiaris). Teri Robertson, NorthamptonSend new questions to nq@theguardian.com. Continue reading...

It’s easy to inure yourself to fear of rejection, all you have to do is be rejected every single dayIn 2012, 30-year-old Jia Jiang walked up to a stranger and asked if he could borrow $100. “No” was the response from the baffled man sitting in a hotel lobby. He wanted to know why he was being asked, but Jiang didn’t explain; he just said thanks then walked away. This was Jiang’s first day of rejection therapy, a concept created by Canadian entrepreneur Jason Comely that challenged people to approach strangers with weird requests to build their resilience against rejection.Jiang’s fear of rejection centred on a memory of being shunned in school as a young boy. A teacher had invited classmates to come up with compliments for one another, but they all went silent when it was Jiang’s turn. It dented his confidence for decades. By his 30s, he was working as a senior marketing manager, but his dream of developing mobile apps was stalled by fear of his pitches being rejected. Continue reading...

No one has been able to farm the rare, expensive fungus on a commercial scale – until nowThey emit intense aromas of garlic and fermented cheese, and are so rare that they can fetch up to £9,000 a kilogram. Now, the puzzle that has confounded experts for more than half a century, of how to cultivate the elusive white truffle on a commercial scale, appears to have been solved.This week, scientists from France’s National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and the Environment (INRAE), will reveal that, at a secret location in Nouvelle-Aquitaine, western France, they have cultivated 26 white truffles. Continue reading...

After enduring more than two years of pandemic, we’re facing yet another fresh wave. How can we push through the malaise?

It is understandable that railway infrastructure could not cope with last week’s temperatures, but why did Google and Oracle’s facilities go offline?One of the unexpected delights of the heatwave was the sound of a Conservative transport secretary talking sense. Grant Shapps was on the Today programme on Tuesday morning explaining a basic principle of good engineering design: get the specifications right. When you’re creating a new piece of public infrastructure you need to be able to specify the constraints under which the design is expected to function.Shapps explained that the railway system over which he currently presides was designed to operate between temperatures of -10C and 35C. And, in an astute move to preempt a furious Daily Mail editorial about staunch British rail tracks surely being able to cope with temperatures a mere five degrees above their design limit, he pointed out that if the air temperature is 40C, the actual temperature of the rails might be twice that. They are, after all, made of steel and could conceivably buckle in the heat, which is why some lines had been closed that day. Continue reading...

Declaration is strongest call to action agency can make, with most recent such announcement being for CovidThe global monkeypox outbreak has been declared a public health emergency of international concern by the World Health Organization (WHO) – the strongest call to action the agency can make.It is the seventh time such a declaration has been made since 2009, the most recent being for Covid-19, which was given the same label by the WHO in 2020, and follows a meeting of a committee of experts on Thursday. Continue reading...

The actor Brian Cox used to be irked by the success of his upstart namesake. Now, for the first time, he and Prof Brian Cox talk science, Succession and what Shakespeare and black holes have in commonWhen anyone mentions Brian Cox, the first question invariably asked is: which Brian Cox are you talking about? Do you mean Prof Brian Cox, physicist, or actor Brian Cox, from Succession? So imagine how annoying it must be for professor Brian and actor Brian Cox! Which got us thinking: what would happen if we invited both Brians to sit down together for a lengthy chat – something they’ve never done before?Oldham-born particle physicist Prof Brian Edward Cox found fame presenting the BBC’s Wonders of the Solar System and Forces of Nature. Before that, in the 1980s and early 90s, he played keyboards for D:Ream, topping the UK charts with future New Labour anthem Things Can Only Get Better in 1994. His new worldwide tour, Horizons: A 21st Century Space Odyssey, returns home to a week-long residency at London’s Royal Opera House in August, and then runs nationwide until October. Continue reading...

About 15% of people in England have somehow never had Covid, yet 55% of new cases are from this groupHaving somehow dodged Covid since the pandemic kicked off, the proportion of people who have never seen the red line appear on a rapid test are a steadily shrinking minority.On Thursday, the White House announced that the US president, Joe Biden, had tested positive for Covid, becoming the most high-profile figure yet to join the increasingly exclusive club of people who are only now, in the third year of rife disease, notching up their first infection. Continue reading...

Visitors flock to Herefordshire burial plot that inspired CS Lewis amid excitement at what is being foundHigh above one of western Britain’s loveliest valleys, the silence is broken by the sound of gentle digging, scraping and brushing, along with bursts of excited chatter as another ancient feature is revealed or a curious visitor stops by to find out what is going on.This summer archaeologists have been granted rare permission to excavate part of the Arthur’s Stone site, a neolithic burial plot with soaring views across the Golden Valley in Herefordshire and the Black Mountains of south-east Wales. Continue reading...

Research links potassium-rich foods to lower blood pressure – particularly in women with high salt intakeEating foods such as bananas, avocados and salmon could help reduce the negative effects of salt in women’s diet, research suggests.The study found that potassium-rich diets were associated with lower blood pressure, particularly in women with high salt intake. Continue reading...

Being assertive is hard, especially for a Briton in the US. But age and the pandemic have changed all thatI wanted to do something I knew would make other people annoyed. It was the right thing to do; I was fairly convinced of that fact. I was also confident that, in the language one uses to push through awkward decisions, I had “every right” to do it. If I did this particular thing, it would make my life easier, but it would also result in the disapproval of others. I can do this, I told myself. Actually, no I can’t. Hang on a sec, yes I can! Wait, no. Oh for God’s sake. OK, I’ll do it tomorrow.For some reason, this summer, this particular dynamic is one I’m seeing come up all the time. I live in the US, but my social group is dominated by British and Australian people, who, I suspect, struggle more than Americans with certain types of assertion. The majority of Americans I know can change their minds about something, or turn it down flat, without dragging themselves around a Navy Seal-style internal obstacle course. The Brits and Australians I know – particularly, but not exclusively, the women – find it almost impossible to deliver a clean decision when they know it will result in the anger or disappointment of others. Continue reading...

Single injection of FLT180 removes need for people to inject weekly with clotting factors, study findsA new gene therapy has dramatically cut the risk of bleeding in people with the rare condition haemophilia B, experts have said.Researchers found that a single injection of the gene therapy, called FLT180a, removed the need for people to inject themselves weekly with clotting factors. The study was led by experts from University College London (UCL), the Royal Free hospital in London and the biotechnology company Freeline Therapeutics. Continue reading...

An illuminating guide to the man and the science behind the Higgs boson – and how its discovery ‘ruined’ his lifeExactly 10 years ago, Peter Higgs learned that the subatomic particle named after him had finally been found. He was in Sicily, enjoying lunch in a restaurant. Outside, the stone streets of Erice burned in the midday sun; inside, a Dutch film crew was making a documentary about the boson he had described in a two-page research paper nearly half a century earlier. With Higgs was Alan Walker, another physicist who, since retirement, had served as a kind of personal assistant.Walker stepped away from the table to take a call. When he returned, he quietly told Higgs that it had been John Ellis, a senior theorist at Cern in Switzerland, home of the Large Hadron Collider. He was urging them to come to Geneva for an event billed as an “update” on the search for the boson. “If John Ellis says that, then we should go,” Higgs replied. Four days later, on 4 July 2012, Higgs was sitting in Cern’s main auditorium as scientists working on the collider’s massive detectors reported the discovery of the Higgs boson – a particle that exists for about one ten-thousandth of the time it takes for light to cross a single atom. Continue reading...

The radio telescope at Honeysuckle Creek near Canberra transmitted the first images of Neil Armstrong on the moonWhen the lunar module of Apollo 11 landed on the moon and astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped on to its surface for the first time, millions of people around the world watched the images live on television.Nasa had five tracking stations around the world to record that moment and monitor the mission. The main station was at Goldstone in California, and Spain had one near Madrid. Australia had three: radio telescopes at Honeysuckle Creek and Parkes, and a deep space tracking station at Tidbinbilla. Continue reading...