Chinese capital ramps up efforts to control Omicron outbreak and avoid lockdowns

Winlaton Mill, Gateshead: The landscape here is vast and exhilarating, but a close look reveals a curious plant with a link to the area’s coal pastWhen the 12th Earl of Strathmore, a 19th-century nimby who made an immense fortune from coal, refused to allow trains across his Gibside estate, the North Eastern Railway adopted an expensive alternative route via four viaducts and a cutting. After the line closed in 1962 it became the Derwent Walk Country Park, beloved by ramblers, runners, dog walkers, cyclists, horse riders and birdwatchers.The view from the parapet of the Nine Arches viaduct, spanning the River Derwent’s gorge, is exhilarating: a vibrant pointillist canvas of a tree canopy, painted with bursting leaf buds; an earthbound opportunity to see woodland from the perspective of the red kite that soared over my head this morning. Continue reading...

This fascinating, touching look at phalloplasty (and the ways having an arm-penis can make life tricky) has many moments of levity – and thankfully a happy endingIf, when you saw the title of this documentary, The Man With a Penis on His Arm (Channel 4), your first thought was: “Wait – like the mouse with the ear on its back? But a man and a penis and an arm?” the answer is ineluctably: yes. Just like that.Malcolm, now 45, lost his penis 12 years ago and has had a replacement growing on his arm and awaiting transplant for the past six. As he put it, he was “an ordinary man doing everything a normal man does”. He had a job, “a nice partner” and was living “a man’s life, bringing in the money, putting food on the table”. The arrival of a baby, he says, disrupted things – though we later find out that the death of his father, to whom Malcolm, after time in foster care, had grown very close, killed “the happy part of me” – and he ended up on the streets and addicted to drink and drugs. Continue reading...

Pharma firm criticised over pricing and for keeping monopoly control over vaccine and new Paxlovid pill

Some people experience lingering cognitive decline, with degree of impairment linked to illness severityPeople who have been hospitalised with Covid may be left with difficulties in thinking comparable in magnitude to ageing 20 years, research suggests.As the pandemic swept the world it became apparent that coronavirus could not only cause immediate health problems but also leave some people with often debilitating symptoms – a condition known as long Covid. Continue reading...

We’ve become convinced that if we can eat more healthily, we will be morally better people. But where does this idea come from?Near the end of the hellish first year of the coronavirus pandemic, I was possessed by the desire to eliminate sugar – all refined sugar – from my diet. In retrospect, it probably wasn’t the best time to add a new challenge to my life. My wife and I had been struggling to remote-school three young kids with no childcare. My elderly parents lived out of state and seemed to need a surprising number of reminders that pandemic restrictions were not lifted for Diwali parties or new Bollywood movie releases.Like many people in those early days, we were looking around for masks and trying to make sense of shifting government guidelines about when to wear them. In addition, as a doctor, I was seeing patients in clinic at a time dominated by medical uncertainty, when personal protective equipment was scarce, and my hospital, facing staff shortages, was providing training videos and “how-to” tip sheets to specialists like me who hadn’t practised in an emergency room for years, in case we were needed as backup. It would have been enough to focus on avoiding the virus and managing all this without putting more on my plate. But cutting processed sugar seemed like an opportunity to reassert some measure of order to the daily scrum, or at least to the body that entered the fray each day. Continue reading...

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has recently been switched back on after a three-year hiatus to resolve a mysterious and tantalising result from its previous run. So far, everything discovered at the LHC has agreed with the standard model, the guiding theory of particle physics that describes the building blocks of matter, and the forces that guide them. However, recent findings show particles behaving in a way that can’t be explained by known physics. Madeleine Finlay speaks to Guardian science correspondent Hannah Devlin and Prof Jon Butterworth about why this might be a clue towards solving some of the deepest mysteries of the universe, and how the LHC will be searching for a potential fifth force of nature Continue reading...

The solution to today’s puzzleEarlier today I set you this problem from last year’s British Mathematical Olympiad (BMO), the UK’s top maths competition for pre-university students, which is taken by almost 2,000 teenagers a year.The question was attempted by 90 per cent of the contestants, and about 1 in 3 got full marks. How did you get on? Continue reading...

Breakthrough could improve diagnosis and lead to development of treatment for condition that has baffled doctors for two years

Smash this perplexing ping pong poserUPDATE: To read the solution click hereToday’s puzzle appeared in last year’s British Mathematical Olympiad (BMO), a competition taken by almost 2,000 school pupils in the UK.The BMO is the top national maths contest for pre-university students, and is part of the selection process for the British team at the International Mathematical Olympiad and the European Girls’ Mathematical Olympiad. Continue reading...

A wafer-thin crescent moon will have Aldebaran and the inner planet for companyClose out the UK bank holiday with an absolutely delightful sight this evening.Around 21.00 BST, a wafer-thin crescent moon will hang between the star Aldebaran and the planet Mercury. Begin your search as twilight begins to fall, and look low towards the western horizon. By 9pm, you should be able to see the three celestial objects. Continue reading...

Vaccinated people from about 60 visa-waiver countries now able to enter as part of pandemic reopening plan

Astronomers are hoping to witness the self-destruction of a star, which could help shed light on the creation of matter in our galaxyIf Stephen Smartt gets lucky, he may one day receive a message that will give the astrophysicist an advance warning that one of the most extraordinary displays known to science is about to light up the night sky. Signals relayed by automated telescope arrays and underground detectors will reveal that a star in our galactic neighbourhood has just turned supernova.A supernova occurs when a star destroys itself so completely it can outshine the combined light of an entire galaxy. In the last thousand years, only five have ever been visible to the naked eye. Ironically, all occurred before the invention of the telescope. Continue reading...

Losing someone you love dearly is devastating, but the bond couples shared in life is vital to those who live onThe threat of death is more present in our national unconscious than it has been for decades. A killer virus and a sudden violent invasion in Europe have shaken our sense of safety. A safety that many of us took for granted. The horrific scale of deaths in Ukraine is only just beginning to emerge. Our own mortality and fragility continue to alarm us at profound psychic and physical levels – even if we do not have to hide in bomb shelters.The pandemic left behind a shared sense of trauma, which the invasion reignited in many people’s minds. Trauma overwhelms the sufferer, leaving them powerless and shocked. While the two situations cannot be compared, they share certain aspects. Both represent deadly incursions into people’s lives. We may be far from the conflict in Ukraine, but most of us identify closely with the families being separated, women and children going west, men staying to fight. Some of those fleeing already know they will never meet again. The images of people at railway stations about to be forced apart are among the most heart-breaking I have ever seen. Continue reading...

Stargazers will have to wait years for repeat performance with four planets also appearing in straight lineJupiter and Venus, two of the solar system’s brightest planets, will appear to almost touch in a rare celestial spectacle this weekend.Although in reality they will be millions of miles apart, for stargazers on Earth they will appear to be close enough to almost collide in a planetary conjunction that occurs once a year. Continue reading...

For humanity truly to slip the surly bonds of Earth, private funds and intrepid thrill-seekers will be required

More sophisticated AI means space agencies should not use public funds for risky human missions, says Lord Martin ReesThe world’s space agencies should scrap plans to send astronauts to the moon and Mars and leave them to explorers and billionaires who can privately fund and risk such adventures, the astronomer royal says.Lord Martin Rees said technical improvements and more sophisticated artificial intelligence meant robotic missions were becoming ever more capable of exploration, and even construction, in space, making it unnecessary for space agencies to front far-flung human missions. Continue reading...

Therapy was like finding a key for a door that had been locked my whole life. Here are the nine things it’s taught meListen to an audio version of this articleI am standing outside an ordinary house in a tree-lined street on a midsummer afternoon, about to change my life. I glance through a window and see the reassuring domestic ephemera of books, a computer monitor, a child’s drawing. Next to the front door is a small, typed sign with the details of a psychotherapist. I draw myself up, feeling both grown up and childishly nervous, and ring the buzzer.It is June 2012, and I am nearing 38. The country is preoccupied with whether the Olympics will be ready on time and if England might crash out of the Euros. I have other things on my mind. A few weeks earlier, I made a call. The woman on the end of the line was polite, warm and to the point, and we agreed to meet. Waiting for her to answer the door, I start to sweat: will I like her? Will she think I am a time-waster? What am I going to say? Continue reading...

Concerns rise about surge as scientists say lack of exposure to viruses during Covid restrictions could be factorThe number of children in the UK suffering from severe hepatitis has risen to 145 as concerns mount about the mysterious surge in cases.The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) announced an increase of 34 cases but said most children have recovered and no children have died. There has been no increase from the 10 children who have required a liver transplant, reported on Monday. Continue reading...

With 340m people living under lockdown or restrictions, the administration are sticking to their stance. But at what cost?

French book and documentary coming to the UK in September seeks to ‘debunk the simplistic division’ of gender rolesFrom academic works giving women a supporting role to hunter-gather men, to Raquel Welch’s portrayal of a bikini-clad cavewoman in the 1966 film One Million Years BC, the gender division of the stone age is firmly entrenched in public consciousness.While men strode out to spear woolly mammoths, women, as mothers or exploited objects of male desire, sheltered in caves from the violent world, according to an understanding said to be increasingly removed from the latest research. Continue reading...

Exercise better than relying on painkillers to improve quality of life long term, says guidanceBritons with arthritis are being urged to lose weight and exercise more rather than rely on painkillers as the main therapies for their condition.NHS guidance from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) says people who are overweight should be told their pain can be reduced if they shed the pounds. Continue reading...

Adding oxygen to blood using ECMO process found to cause big increase in survival rate in severe UK casesScores of severely ill Covid-19 sufferers survived because they were given the NHS’s highest form of intensive care in which an artificial lung breathes for them, a study has found.Patients in the UK who underwent extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) were more likely to survive than those who did not have the treatment, according to the research. Continue reading...

Three customers accompanied by former Nasa astronaut paid $55m for place on Ax-1 missionThe first private crew of astronauts has returned from the International Space Station (ISS).Michael López-Alegría, Larry Connor, Eytan Stibbe and Mark Pathy are not employed by a government, but are part of the Ax-1 mission from Axiom Space Inc. López-Alegría is a former Nasa astronaut with four previous spaceflights under his belt: three on the space shuttle and one to the ISS on a Soyuz launcher. He is Axiom’s chief astronaut. Continue reading...

Research shows high degree of variability between individual animals – with implications for ownersFrom sociable labradors to aggressive pitbulls, when it comes to canine behaviour there are no end of stereotypes. But research suggests such traits may have less to do with breed than previously thought.Modern dog breeds began to emerge in the Victorian era and are often physically distinct – for example, great danes are huge and chihuahuas tiny. But it has often been thought breed can predict behaviour, too. Continue reading...

More than 50 high school students working with university and industry experts to design, build and launch a CubeSat

Too much and too little sleep linked with worse cognitive performance and mental healthSeven hours of sleep each night is the ideal amount in middle to old age, research suggests.The study of nearly 500,000 adults aged between 38 and 73 found that both too much and too little sleep were linked with worse cognitive performance and mental health, including anxiety and depression. A consistent amount of sleep also appeared to be beneficial. Continue reading...

‘Zoonotic spillovers’ expected to rise with at least 15,000 instances of viruses leaping between species over next 50 yearsThere will be at least 15,000 instances of viruses leaping between species over the next 50 years, with the climate crisis helping fuel a “potentially devastating” spread of disease that will imperil animals and people and risk further pandemics, researchers have warned.As the planet heats up, many animal species will be forced to move into new areas to find suitable conditions. They will bring their parasites and pathogens with them, causing them to spread between species that haven’t interacted before. This will heighten the risk of what is called “zoonotic spillover”, where viruses transfer from animals to people, potentially triggering another pandemic of the magnitude of Covid-19. Continue reading...

Research shows more than half of girls think science and technology careers are preserve of boysBrownies are to learn coding and Guides will investigate chatbots in a bid to shift stubborn attitudes among girls that science, technology, engineering and mathematics (Stem) careers are just for boys.The drive to engage thousands more girls in technology comes after research by Girlguiding found more than half (52%) of girls and women between the ages of 11 and 21 believed that Stem was for boys. The strength of feeling is unchanged since 2016. Continue reading...

Leeds University shares library of 1950s vernacular and launches project to preserve today’s phrasesWas you or were you having your tea, dinner or supper last night? Before it, were you feeling clammish, clemmed, starving, hungry, leary or just plain clempt?Are you still whanging in Yorkshire? Haining in Somerset? Hocksing in Cambridgeshire? Hoying in Durham? Pegging in Cheshire? Pelting in Northamptonshire? Yarking in Leicestershire? Or do you throw now? Continue reading...

Over the past few weeks, countries around the world have reported an unexpected increase in the number of children with hepatitis. So far about 200 cases have been reported. More than half have come from the UK, but there have also been reports from Spain, Japan and the US, among others. Although this is still a very rare disease, it is severe, with 10% of affected children needing a liver transplant. So what might explain this unusual rise? Guardian science editor Ian Sample speaks to Prof Deirdre Kelly about the current theories as to what could be happening, and how concerned we should be

Rare fossils from three of the late-Triassic marine reptiles found in Swiss Alps include 10cm tooth – big enough to snag giant squidThe remains of a huge sea creature with enormous teeth that could have helped it capture giant squid have been found in the Swiss Alps.Ichthyosaurs were large marine reptiles with an elongated, snakey shape. They first emerged after the end of the Permian extinction, an event also known as the “great dying”, which occurred about 250m years ago and which wiped out more than two-thirds of species on land and 96% of marine species. Continue reading...

Face-to-face gatherings produce more ideas – and more inventive ones – than videoconferencing, say researchersAs if the endless muting and freezing, the need for shelves lined with high literature, and the constant fear of a colleague wandering on screen unclothed were not enough to worry about, researchers have found that Zoom stifles creativity.Meeting face to face produced more ideas, and ideas that were more creative, compared with videoconference discussions, according to lab experiments and a field study at a firm with offices around the world. Continue reading...

Paolo Macchiarini, who made headlines for pioneering surgery, charged with aggravated assault over procedureAn Italian doctor who made headlines for pioneering windpipe surgery has gone on trial in Sweden, charged with aggravated assault for performing the experimental procedure.Paolo Macchiarini won praise in 2011 after claiming to have performed the world’s first synthetic trachea transplants using stem cells while he was a surgeon at Stockholm’s Karolinska Institute. Continue reading...

Female physicists question ‘terrifying’ claims made by government commissioner Katharine Birbalsingh to MPsGirls do not choose physics A-level because they dislike “hard maths”, the government’s social mobility commissioner has claimed, prompting anger from leading scientists.Addressing a science and technology committee inquiry on diversity and inclusion in Stem subjects (science, technology, engineering and maths), Katharine Birbalsingh said fewer girls chose physics because “physics isn’t something that girls tend to fancy. They don’t want to do it, they don’t like it,” she said. Continue reading...

Research shows largest ‘turbidity currents’ can carry more sediment than the annual output of all the world’s rivers combined over timeOn 18 November 1929, a magnitude 7.2 earthquake shook the ocean floor off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada. Within minutes transatlantic telephone cables started sequentially snapping, with the furthest cable – 600km from the quake – breaking 13 hours and 17 minutes later.At the time geologists hypothesised that the cables had been broken by a series of earthquakes, but we now know that the culprit was a massive underwater avalanche, known as a “turbidity current”. Continue reading...

A CDC report showed a striking increase in those with coronavirus antibodies between December and FebruaryMore than half of Americans show signs of a previous Covid-19 infection, including three out of every four children, according to a new report released on Tuesday.The findings from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) come after researchers examined blood samples from more than 200,000 Americans and looked for virus-fighting antibodies made from infections, not vaccines. They found that signs of past infection rose dramatically between December and February, when the more contagious Omicron variant surged through the US. Continue reading...

Potentially dangerous mutations of the virus could go unnoticed due to testing cuts, UN health agency saysA dramatic drop in testing for Covid-19 has left the world blind to the virus’s continuing rampage and its potentially dangerous mutations, the head of the World Health Organization has warned.The UN health agency said that reported Covid cases and deaths had been dropping dramatically. “Last week, just over 15,000 deaths were reported to WHO – the lowest weekly total since March 2020,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters. Continue reading...

As the news came out of China that there was a new virus infecting humans, scientists around the world promptly got to work sequencing genomes, gathering data and communicating what they found with the public. One of the scientists catapulted into the public eye was Devi Sridhar, a professor in global public health. Soon, she was advising the Scottish government on their Covid strategy, regularly appearing on TV and had gained a big social media following. Ian Sample speaks to Sridhar about her experience of the pandemic so far, what it was like working alongside politicians, and what she’s learned from it all Continue reading...

Capital to undergo mass testing after 33 new locally transmitted cases as the government stick to zero-Covid strategy

This was the first time Nasa opened its space hatches to tourists, who paid $55m for a week, which was extended to nearly 17 daysThree rich businessmen returned from the International Space Station with their astronaut escort Monday, wrapping up a pricey trip that marked Nasa’s debut as a B&B host.Flying back in a SpaceX capsule, they splashed down in the Atlantic off the Florida coast to close out a 17-day tour that cost them $55m apiece. Continue reading...

Lack of exposure to adenoviruses due to Covid restrictions is most likely explanation for surge, experts sayTen children in the UK have required a liver transplant following a recent surge in severe hepatitis cases among young children, with the current total standing at 114 cases across all four UK nations.A lack of exposure to common adenoviruses due to Covid restrictions during the past two years combined with a recent spike in adenovirus infection as society opens back up is the most likely explanation, experts say. Continue reading...

Clean-up operation | Trouble up north | Alveolar plosives | Ramblers’ descent | Boris Johnson’s lucrative futureIn his fascinating article on space junk, Ian Sample informs us that the radar tracking the debris in the UK is operated by the RAF (Mind that satellite! The mission to clean up dangerous space junk, 21 April). That is reassuring. He adds that it is “analysts from Serco” who interpret the data. Reading that made me feel like ducking for cover.

Exclusive: Guardian learns sentience law could mean strict welfare rules extended to crustaceans and decapodsScientific experiments on crabs and lobsters could be curbed when the animal sentience bill becomes law, the Guardian has learned.There are few restrictions on how crustaceans and decapods can be treated in scientific studies, in contrast with mice and other mammals, for which there are strict welfare laws. Continue reading...

Dispute over Northern Ireland protocol puts associate membership of Horizon Europe scheme in doubtBritish universities are facing a brain drain as the row over Brexit in Northern Ireland threatens £250m in research funding from the EU, it has emerged.The European Research Council (ERC) has written to 98 scientists and academics who were recently approved for €172m (£145m) in grants telling them that if the UK’s associate membership of the €80bn Horizon Europe programme is not ratified they will not be eligible to draw down the money. Continue reading...

Up to 12,000 substances could fall within the scope of the new ‘restrictions roadmap’Thousands of potentially harmful chemicals could soon be prohibited in Europe under new restrictions, which campaigners have hailed as the strongest yet.Earlier this year, scientists said chemical pollution had crossed a “planetary boundary” beyond which lies the breakdown of global ecosystems. Continue reading...

Film-maker Klaartje Quirijns turns the camera on her mother and father as they open up about the trauma of her elder sister’s deathThere is some insightful material in this personal essay-film from Dutch documentary maker and journalist Klaartje Quirijns, avowedly inspired by Philip Larkin’s poem This Be the Verse about your mum and dad fucking you up. It’s a painful probing of a psychological wound in her parents’ lives: the death of Quirijns’s elder sister in a drowning accident. That undoubtedly contributed to the disintegration of their marriage and is something which her elderly parents have never talked about until now: she makes them open up to her about it, on camera.Quirijns was apparently moved to consider this, and to take stock of her own life and upbringing, because of having surgeries on her breast, though she doesn’t actually say the word “cancer” out loud, an avoidance that an analyst might have questioned her about. But at 75 minutes, this film strangely feels too brief to do full justice to the story, and it is in any case intercut with footage of another case of family trauma which Quirijns had evidently been working on for years before deciding to shift focus to her own tale. This second element is about the unhappiness of Michael Moskowitz, whose Holocaust-survivor mother was cruel to him when he was growing up; Moskowitz is shown talking about it all in sessions with his analyst, a wise and gentle man called Dr Kirkland Vaughans. Continue reading...

The two brightest planets will be a beauty to spot if you can find somewhere with a low enough eastern horizonWe will end the month as we started it: with a tricky planetary conjunction. Although challenging, it will be a beauty if you can find somewhere with a low enough eastern horizon. The two brightest planets, Venus and Jupiter, will draw exquisitely close.The chart shows the view looking east from Southampton on 30 April at 0530 BST. All week you will be able to see the planets drawing closer together, and then next week you will see them drifting back away from one another. Continue reading...

There’s been a worrying decline in diphtheria, polio and measles jabs. We should heed the lessons of Covid-19We forgot about measles. And tetanus and diphtheria. And polio. In the race to vaccinate the world against Covid-19, the global drive to suppress some of the biggest killers in history has fallen back.Almost 12bn doses of Covid-19 vaccine have been administered in less than 18 months – a stunning achievement, even if the global distribution has been uneven. Yet more than 30 million children have missed out on other basic vaccinations during the pandemic, with south-east Asia and the eastern Mediterranean region being the worst hit. This means large numbers of young people will be vulnerable to diphtheria, pertussis (whooping cough) and tetanus, as well as measles – a disease that continues to kill tens of thousands of people every year.Gary Finnegan is a health journalist based in Ireland Continue reading...

Leaning into difficult feelings can help you find the way forward, according to a refreshing new wave of books, says Jamie WatersEight years ago, when Whitney Goodman was a newly qualified therapist counselling cancer patients, it struck her that positive thinking was being “very heavily pushed”, both in her profession and the broader culture, as the way to deal with things. She wasn’t convinced that platitudes like “Look on the bright side!” and “Everything happens for a reason!” held the answers for anyone trying to navigate life’s messiness. Between herself, her friends and her patients, “All of us were thinking, ‘Being positive is the only way to live,’ but really it was making us feel disconnected and, ultimately, worse.”This stayed with her and, in 2019, she started an Instagram account, @sitwithwhit, as a tonic to the saccharine inspirational quotes dominating social media feeds. Her posts included: “Sometimes things are hard because they’re just hard and not because you’re incompetent…” and “It’s OK to complain about something you’re grateful for.” It took off: the “radically honest” Miami-based psychotherapist now has more than 500,000 followers. Continue reading...