Science | The Guardian

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...

Only one in seven people in low-income countries are fully vaccinated with poorest pushed to the ‘back of the queue’The international target to vaccinate 70% of the world’s population against Covid by mid-2022 was missed because poorer countries were at the “back of the queue” when vaccines were rolled out, say campaigners.The latest figures from Our World in Data show huge inequalities in vaccination rates around the world, with just one in seven people in low-income countries fully vaccinated. By comparison, nearly three in four people in high-income nations have been vaccinated for around a year. Continue reading...

US president Joe Biden campaigned on climate issues, but recent events may have sounded a death knell for his promises. Last week, his attempts to pass sweeping climate legislation were thwarted – by a senator in his own party. And in June, a landmark US Supreme Court ruling has greatly limited the federal government’s ability to regulate emissions from the fossil fuel industry. So where does that leave the Democrats’ climate plans? Ian Sample speaks to Prof Elizabeth Bomberg about what these developments mean for the Biden administration and the rest of the worldArchive: Continue reading...

More than two years into the pandemic, the virus continues to evolve in unpredictable and surprising ways, says science correspondent Hannah DevlinWe’re now more than two years into the Covid pandemic in the UK, and despite successive rounds of vaccinations and booster shots the virus is still rife. More than one in 19 people currently have it.The Guardian’s science correspondent Hannah Devlin tells Michael Safi that the way Covid is evolving continues to surprise scientists. Many believed that Covid would behave like other coronaviruses and be a seasonal illness that an annual winter jab could protect against. But this latest wave is in summer, and it has come very close on the heels of the last wave. Not only that but it seems to be continually finding new ways to get around the protections of the body’s immune system. Even those who have had the virus and multiple jabs are still getting reinfected. Continue reading...

Hannah Fry tries to change the minds of seven Covid vaccine refuseniks in this documentary … and you’ll need a saint’s patience to tolerate some of the responsesCan we inaugurate a Bafta for most patient TV host? The mathematician and science podcaster Prof Hannah Fry needs some reward for Unvaccinated (BBC Two), a documentary that requires a near-saintly level of tolerance just to watch, never mind present.Fry gathers seven of the roughly 4 million Britons who have chosen not to receive a Covid vaccine, in the hope of better understanding them. The unvaccinated septet convene in one of those cosily appointed houses TV producers feel obliged to hire when their documentary might become a reality-TV event – although since nobody actually moves in, the only consequence of this is that Fry has a series of debates in rooms that look poorly ventilated, which makes her brave physically as well as intellectually. Continue reading...

Native Hawaiians have protested the $2.65bn project, saying it will further defile an area already harmed by other observatoriesThe National Science Foundation will examine the environmental impacts of a proposed optical telescope on the summit of Hawaii’s tallest mountain, a project that has faced strong opposition from Native Hawaiians who consider the area sacred.Native Hawaiians have long protested the plan to build what would be one of the world’s largest optical telescopes on Mauna Kea, and say the $2.65bn project will further defile an area already harmed by a dozen other observatories. Continue reading...

‘Appalling’ advice on coping with the cost of living crisis from prestigious agency provokes anger among researchersPostgraduates chosen for their “excellent potential” to become future leaders in environmental science and sustainable business should consider selling Avon products, pet-sitting and joining clinical trials to cope with the cost of living crisis.The advice – issued on Wednesday by the prestigious Aries Doctoral Training Partnership funded by the Natural Environment Research Council at the University of East Anglia – provoked outrage among researchers who described the letter as “appalling”, “ridiculous” and “unbelievable”. Continue reading...

With medical and food supplies hit, volunteers foraged in the British countryside for useful species

Researchers say increased risk of cardiovascular problems also persists in month after infectionPeople who catch Covid-19 have a greater risk of being diagnosed with diabetes and cardiovascular conditions for weeks after the infection has taken hold, according to a major UK study.The risk of heart and circulation problems, such as irregular heartbeats and blood clots on the lungs, was nearly six times higher in Covid patients than uninfected people of the same age and sex, and 80% higher for diabetes, during the month after infection, researchers found. Continue reading...

Cryptogyps lacertosus was similar in size to a wedge-tailed eagle but anatomical differences suggest it was a scavenger rather than a hunter

Replacing 20% of our meat with microbial protein could dramatically reduce carbon emissions and the rate of deforestation, a new study has foundReplacing just one fifth of the red meat we eat with microbial proteins derived from fungi or algae could reduce annual deforestation by a massive 56% come 2050, according to a study published this spring.Climate scientists at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research simulated four future scenarios in which humans replace either 0%, 20%, 50% or 80% of the red meat in our diets with microbial protein, which is a low-calorie, high-protein and high-fiber fermented product that’s already an ingredient in some commercial alt-meats, including Quorn and Nature’s Fynd. The researchers then looked at how this dietary change might affect global forests by 2050.Adrienne Matei is a freelance journalist Continue reading...

The H5N1 strain of avian influenza is sweeping across the world, killing millions of birds. In the UK, it’s causing disastrous losses of seabirds – populations that were already being hit by a number of threats, including habitat loss, overfishing and global heating. Biodiversity reporter Phoebe Weston tells Madeleine Finlay about how the virus made it into wild birds, why it’s having such a devastating impact, and the long-term impact bird flu could have on some of our most vulnerable species Continue reading...

VFTS243 has a mass nine times that of the Sun’s and is in a binary system with a companion starA dormant black hole nine times the mass of the Sun has been found outside the Milky Way for the first time, in what researchers have called a “very exciting discovery”.Though it is not the first contender, a researcher from the University of Sheffield says this black hole is “the first to be unambiguously detected outside our galaxy”. Continue reading...

Infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci calls for ‘much more vigorous testing’ as CDC confirms 1,814 cases in the USAs health authorities in the US warn that monkeypox must be taken more seriously, at-risk communities continue to face a limited supply of vaccines and lack of access to testing, while those contracting the virus in the US have struggled to receive treatment, according to reports.“This is something we definitely need to take seriously. We don’t know the scope and the potential of it yet, but we have to act like it will have the capability of spreading much more widely than it’s spreading right now,” Anthony Fauci, Joe Biden’s top medical adviser, said on CNN this weekend. Continue reading...

The advice was to limit alcohol, avoid high-sugar foods and decrease saturated fats – but warnings like this are just going to encourage meI took a DNA test a few weeks ago. It arrived in the post. I had to prick my finger, squeeze out several drops of blood and put them in a box to post to a lab in Scandinavia.It’s about risk management. For the first time, I’m looking to invest long-term in my body and, to do that, I need to explore what could happen in terms of illness. I want to do what I can now, to optimise my chances of living healthily for longer. I want my body and my mind to be aligned; I want to feel strong and supple and capable. I thought it may mean taking a few more supplements. Exercising more. Eating more greens. Continue reading...

No treatment or vaccine exists for Marburg, which can spread from infected animals such as batsTwo cases of the deadly Marburg virus have been identified in Ghana, the first time the Ebola-like disease has been found in the west African nation.Earlier in the month, blood samples taken from two people in the southern Ashanti region suggested they had the Marburg virus. Continue reading...

As infections soar in the third major wave this year, experts say Covid may never settle into a seasonal cyclePaddling pools are out, beer gardens are brimming. But a startling proportion of the UK population will be cooped up in their bedrooms having the strange experience of nursing a fever and sore throat in July as Covid infections continue to soar in the third major wave this year.For most this will be an unpleasant inconvenience rather than a tragedy. But with a fourth wave expected in the autumn, a fifth potentially kicking off by Christmas and experts saying that Covid may never settle into a seasonal cycle, some are questioning whether this steady grind of illness is sustainable. Continue reading...

A new memoir brings humour to the everyday pain of pregnancy and motherhoodI meet Marianne Levy in a laidback café near her north London home, doorways wide enough to accommodate the bulkiest of buggies, highchairs stacked in a corner, our conversation punctuated by the odd high-pitched shriek or crying jag (not ours). It’s the kind of place, Levy says, mothers on maternity leave tend to meet, “Where normal people don’t want to sit, because it’s got a screaming baby.” This place is a regular haunt for her and her children: an eight-year-old daughter and a son, nearly four. “It’s big and wide and the staff don’t actively hate children, they’re kind to them.”There’s something a bit pointed about meeting in such a mother-and-child-friendly space to talk about Levy’s memoir, Don’t Forget To Scream, when the book is a heartfelt attempt to break the discourse about motherhood out of this silo, and bring it to a wider and more diverse audience. It’s an unvarnished look at the grimy, lonely, frightening, alienating side of pregnancy and motherhood, spanning birth phobia and physical trauma, the erosion of Levy’s sense of self and self-worth in the early months and years, and the structural, social, economic bind in which so many mothers find themselves. Twenty years since my eldest child was born, it stirred up emotions I had buried, conjuring stultifying, lonely afternoons of quiet pram-pushing despair. Continue reading...

An exhibition in the National Museum of Scotland gives us a glimpse into the mind of a genius – and the grisly history of medical scienceLeonardo da Vinci’s notes on human anatomy remained largely forgotten until the mid-18th century when the Scottish anatomist William Hunter learned of them in the royal collection. A new exhibition at the National Museum of Scotland, called Anatomy: A Matter of Death and Life, brings some of these drawings together with a variety of objects and artwork from the Scottish Enlightenment to illuminate the frequently tense relationship between the furthering of anatomical knowledge, and the need of early anatomists to procure dead bodies. Leonardo got around the problem by working with elite patrons and by assisting an academic professor of anatomy; later Dutch and Scottish anatomists often had to pull bodies from gibbets and graveyards. Modern medicine, the art of postponing death, is built on a foundation of this grave robbery, but had its origins in a more collaborative, consensual attitude typified by Leonardo. It’s an approach that has now returned: the exhibition closes with a moving series of videos from Edinburgh’s current professor of anatomy, a medical student and a member of the public, each explaining the vital role of bequests by people who leave their body to medical science.Some of this history is unavoidably grisly: the exhibition resurrects the story of Burke and Hare, two Irishmen of Edinburgh who obtained bodies for the anatomist Robert Knox through the simple expedient of murdering them. Burke’s fate was to be anatomised: on my way to tutorials in Edinburgh’s medical school I used to pass his skeleton, and it was a surprise to see it across the road in the museum. Burke’s signed confession has been loaned from the New York Academy of Medicine, and some detective work has unearthed details of the lives of his victims. There is Johan Zoffany’s painting of William Hunter lecturing, and from Amsterdam, Cornelis Troost’s three-metre The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Willem Röell – more ghoulish (and more accurate) than Rembrandt’s The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp, painted almost 100 years earlier. One particularly striking exhibit is an early 19th-century petition, signed by 248 medical students, asking for bodies to be made available to them through legal means. Continue reading...

Kate Bingham suggests lessons not learned about need for scientific and commercial expertise in governmentOpportunities have been missed to prepare the UK for future pandemics, the former vaccines tsar has said.Dame Kate Bingham, the managing partner at the life sciences venture capital firm SV Health Investors, played a crucial role in the UK’s efforts to vaccinate the population against Covid. As head of the UK vaccine taskforce between May and December 2020, she led a team that persuaded the government to back a wide portfolio of potential jabs, securing millions of doses. Continue reading...

Excessive temperatures can harm every part of our bodies causing, in extreme cases, cancer, strokes and heart attacksSunburn is caused by excessive exposure to the sun’s ultraviolet (UV) rays. The more the body is subjected to sunburn, the more likely a person is to suffer from skin cancer. Too much UV radiation can damage skin cell DNA. DNA tells the cells how to function so, as the damage worsens with each repeated sunburn, cells can start growing out of control, which leads to skin cancer. Continue reading...

The pandemic death toll has just passed 200,000 in the UK. Scientists reach for answers but it’s a messy, slow processThe pace of the news cycle around the Covid-19 pandemic is relentless. Just last week, the UK announced that the grim landmark of 200,000 deaths involving the virus had been reached. And as the current wave of infections, largely fuelled by the Omicron BA.5 variant, starts to recede, fears have been building up that a worse Sars-CoV-2 variant may be on the horizon, in the shape of BA.2.75.There is probably no precedent for a scientific topic having captured the public’s imagination to such an extent – and for so long. In fact, a sizeable proportion of all news articles published over the past two years have been dedicated to the pandemic. It’s also one of the most widely discussed topics on social media, with people from all walks of life taking part in heated, if not at times toxic and confused, debates about the exact meaning of the latest scientific publication. Continue reading...