Operations can have cognitive side-effects, particularly in the over-65s but also in the very young. How can science minimise the danger?In 2004, Mario Cibelli was preparing a 75-year-old patient for a big cardiac operation when the patient’s daughter asked for a quick word. “She explained to me how worried she was about the surgery,” says Cibelli, a consultant in anaesthesia and intensive care at the University Hospitals Birmingham. “I said: ‘Look, everybody’s worried about heart surgery, it comes with risks, but normally people benefit from it.’ And then she told me that her father had undergone a cardiac procedure two years before and he had changed dramatically.”Cibelli listened as the woman described how her father, a former physics professor, had shown signs of significant cognitive decline after the initial operation. Once a keen chess player, he was now unable to play the game and struggled to even do basic crosswords. Continue reading...
Research into C difficile found antibiotic resistance is growing as a result of overuse on farm stockScientists have uncovered evidence that dangerous versions of superbugs can spread from pigs to humans. The discovery underlines fears that intensive use of antibiotics on farms is leading to the spread of microbes resistant to them.The discovery of the link has been made by Semeh Bejaoui and Dorte Frees of Copenhagen University and Soren Persson at Denmark’s Statens Serum Institute and focuses on the superbug Clostridioides difficile, which is considered one of the world’s major antibiotic resistance threats. Continue reading...
Strain reported in 12 countries causing at least 169 cases in young children, most of them in the UKAt least one child has died from a mystery strain of severe hepatitis which has now been reported in 12 countries, the World Health Organization has confirmed.The UN body said on Saturday that it is aware of 169 rare cases of acute hepatitis, an inflammation of the liver, in young children. Of these, 17 became so sick they needed liver transplants. Continue reading...
The Department for Transport’s breezy predictions about driverless cars transforming Britain into a ‘global science superpower’ are both premature and optimistic“Britain moves closer to a self-driving revolution,” said a perky message from the Department for Transport that popped into my inbox on Wednesday morning. The purpose of the message was to let us know that the government is changing the Highway Code to “ensure the first self-driving vehicles are introduced safely on UK roads” and to “clarify drivers’ responsibilities in self-driving vehicles, including when a driver must be ready to take back control”.The changes will specify that while travelling in self-driving mode, motorists must be ready to resume control in a timely way if they are prompted to, such as when they approach motorway exits. They also signal a puzzling change to current regulations, allowing drivers “to view content that is not related to driving on built-in display screens while the self-driving vehicle is in control”. So you could watch Gardeners’ World on iPlayer, but not YouTube videos of F1 races? Reassuringly, though, it will still be illegal to use mobile phones in self-driving mode, “given the greater risk they pose in distracting drivers as shown in research”. Continue reading...
In 1966, a British psychiatrist had an idea: to change the course of history by asking the public to share their eerie intuitionsOn the morning of 21 October 1966, a dark, glistening wave of coal waste burst out of the hillside above the Welsh village of Aberfan and poured down. People later compared the roar of the collapsing mine tip to a low-flying jet aircraft or thunder or a runaway train. At first, sheep, hedges, cattle, a farmhouse with three people inside were smothered. Then the wave reached Pantglas junior school and Pantglas county secondary school, burying the former, which was full of children answering the register. One hundred and forty-four people were killed by the tip slide in Aberfan, 116 of them children, mostly between the ages of seven and 10.In the aftermath, a roadblock was set up to control access to the disaster, but more or less anyone in a uniform or an official-looking car could find a way through. During the morning of 22 October, a green Ford Zephyr nosed its way into the village. At the wheel was John Barker, a 42-year-old psychiatrist at Shelton hospital near Shrewsbury with a keen interest in unusual mental conditions. Barker was tall and broad and dressed in a suit and tie. At the time, he was working on a book about whether it was possible to be frightened to death. In the early news reports from Aberfan, Barker had heard that a boy had escaped from the school unharmed but later died of shock. The psychiatrist had come to investigate, but realised he had arrived too soon. When Barker reached the village, victims were still being dug out. “I soon realised it would have been quite inopportune to make any inquiries about this child,” he wrote afterwards. The devastation reminded Barker of the blitz, when he had been a teenager, growing up in south London, but the loss of life in Aberfan was worse for being so concentrated and the dead so young. “Parents who had lost their children were standing in the street, looking stunned and hopeless and many were still weeping. There was hardly anybody I encountered who had not lost someone.” Continue reading...
Sufferers urged to join consultation after Aquiette pills deemed safe to buy without prescriptionMillions of women suffering from an overactive bladder have been urged to take part in a consultation that could make a treatment available over the counter for the first time.The call for evidence, launched on Saturday, could lead to the medicine Aquiette being reclassified so that it can be bought at a pharmacy without a prescription. Continue reading...
If we are going to send more humans to the Moon and eventually to Mars, will the goal be to benefit the people of the US and the world, or to make billionaires even richer?On 20 July 1969, 650 million people throughout the world watched with bated breath as Neil Armstrong successfully fulfilled President Kennedy’s vision. The United States achieved what had seemed impossible just a few decades before. We had sent a man to the moon.On that historic day, the entire world came together to celebrate the enormous accomplishment as Armstrong’s voice boomed from our television sets: “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”Bernie Sanders is a US senator and the chair of the Senate budget committee. He represents the state of Vermont Continue reading...
For first time it is possible to detect patterns in cancers’ DNA – opening up to possible personalised treatmentsAnalysis of thousands of tumours has unveiled a treasure trove of clues about the causes of cancer, representing a significant step towards the personalisation of treatment.Researchers say that for the first time it is possible to detect patterns – called mutational signatures – in the DNA of cancers. Continue reading...
The singer’s refusal to have replacement surgery reinforces horribly negative ideas about older bodiesPsst, want to feel old? Liam Gallagher, the eternally chippy younger brother of rock, apparently now needs a hip replacement. At 49, the ex-Oasis frontman is suffering from arthritis, which he seems to be approaching with customary but misplaced stubbornness. This week it emerged that he is refusing to have the surgery his doctor recommended, because hip replacements are for old people. And who wants that?“I think I’d rather just be in pain,” he explained to Mojo magazine. “It’s the stigma, saying you’ve had your hips replaced.” Either he hasn’t seen the reboot of Sex and the City in which a fiftysomething Carrie has surgery on hers, or else – surprise, surprise – one lone stab at reinventing the idea of growing older for primetime isn’t nearly enough.Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...
Researchers at London hospitals call for urgent new treatments for persistent infectionsDoctors in the UK have called for urgent new treatments to clear persistent Covid infections after identifying the first person in the world known to have harboured the virus for more than a year.The patient, who had a weakened immune system, caught the virus in 2020 and tested positive for Covid for 505 days before they died. Previously, the longest known PCR-confirmed case of Covid was a US cancer survivor in her 40s who tested positive for 335 days. Continue reading...
My friend Godfrey Fowler, who has died aged 90, was a leading and reforming family doctor for 30 years; he was warm, modest and convivial. For much of his career he also headed a department of medical general practice at Oxford University, training students and undertaking research into preventive medicine.Godfrey was founding clinical reader in the new department from 1978, having been persuaded to take this role by Sir Richard Doll, then regius professor of medicine. The department became what is now the large and successful Nuffield department of primary care sciences. Godfrey took the role part-time, so he could continue as a GP. His first challenges were to devise new general practice teaching, such as in consultation skills, and to convince Oxfordshire GPs to provide up to 70 placements a year – a target he met successfully. Continue reading...
My grandfather Abraham Yoffe, who has died aged 102, was an explosives expert, a research physicist at Cambridge University’s Cavendish laboratory, and a founding fellow of Darwin College, Cambridge.Abe was born in Jerusalem to Haim Yoffe, a rabbi, and his wife, Leah (nee Kreindal). He lived in Australia as a child, attending Melbourne high school. He studied chemistry at the University of Melbourne, graduating in 1941, and stayed for a master’s. Continue reading...
by Hannah Devlin Science correspondent on (#5YDDP)
Latest run is expected to scrutinise findings from last year that may turn into another blockbuster discoveryThe Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will restart on Friday after a three-year hiatus and is expected to resolve a scientific cliffhanger on whether a mysterious anomaly could point to the existence of a fifth fundamental force of nature.The tantalising findings reported last year have reignited hopes that the 20 mile-long collider could deliver a second blockbuster discovery, more than a decade after the Higgs boson. Continue reading...
by Hannah Devlin Science correspondent on (#5YD0Z)
Scientists report shortest known gap between infections in fully vaccinated healthcare workerA 31-year-old woman in Spain caught Covid twice within 20 days, the shortest known gap between infections, scientists have reported.Researchers in Spain gave details of the healthcare worker, who tested positive a few days before Christmas in December 2021 and again in January 2022. The case is further evidence that the Omicron variant can evade immunity from even recent previous infections. Continue reading...
In western US waterways, invasive and voracious brook trout are outcompeting native species – but a modified variant could tip the scalesOn a golden morning in early October, two graduate students from New Mexico State University plunge into the icy current of Leandro Creek. The small waterway flows through the 550,000 acre Vermejo park ranch, a reserve in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, and the pair are in search of an unusual fish.Kelsie Field, 25, from the Department of Wildlife and Conservation Ecology, wears a pair of worn grey waders and carries two eight-gallon buckets, one full of water, the other, of scientific gear: test tubes, an electronic scanner and surgical implements. Michael Miller, 30, shoulders a large, waterproof backpack containing a battery attached to an electrode that resembles a metal detector.Researchers Kelsie Field and Michael Miller go ‘electrofishing’ in New Mexico. Photograph: Jeremy Miller Continue reading...
As soon as we left the planet, we began leaving rubbish in orbit. Now it is putting space stations and astronauts at risk. What can be done about the millions of pieces of debris?In November last year, the five astronauts and two cosmonauts on the International Space Station (ISS) were ordered to suit up and take refuge in their capsules for fear their spaceship might be struck by flying debris. Russia had deliberately destroyed one of its own satellites with a missile, producing a cloud of wreckage that threatened the orbiting outpost. “It’s a crazy way to start a mission,” Nasa told its sheltering crew, who had arrived only days beforehand.The incident revealed how hairy Earth’s orbit has become, and it wasn’t a one-off. Two weeks later, mission controllers received another alert that the ISS might be hit by more debris. This time, Nasa delayed a planned spacewalk amid concerns that the astronauts could be in danger if they went outside. Before the week was out, yet another warning came in, this one forcing the space station to dodge a US rocket body that has been barrelling around Earth since the 90s. It was all worryingly reminiscent of the 2013 movie Gravity, in which debris from a shot-down satellite damages not just the ISS but the Hubble space telescope and a visiting space shuttle. Continue reading...
by Presented by Ian Sample, produced by Madeleine Fin on (#5YCSP)
This week, the US became the first country to ban anti-satellite missile tests, in an effort to protect Earth’s orbit from dangerous space debris. There could be millions of pieces of old satellites and spent rockets zooming around above our atmosphere, at speeds where collisions can be catastrophic. Guardian science editor Ian Sample talks to Prof Don Pollacco and Prof Chris Newman about the threat posed by space junk, and how we can tackle the problem
Angus Rose, 52, ends 37-day hunger strike as parliamentary group agrees to host briefing by Sir Patrick VallanceSir Patrick Vallance, the government’s chief scientific adviser, will address MPs about the climate crisis after a protester’s hunger strike campaign.Angus Rose, 52, refused to eat for 37 days during his vigil outside parliament as he demanded the scientific adviser give a public address to MPs and ministers about the climate crisis. Continue reading...
Technique of reflecting sunlight back into space found to be likely to cause increase in population of disease-carrying mosquitosGeoengineering to prevent the worst impacts of climate breakdown could expose up to a billion more people to malaria, scientists have found.The report, published in Nature Communications, is the first assessment of how geoengineering the climate could affect the burden of infectious diseases. Continue reading...
Scientists don’t yet know if the microbes are causative, but if proven it could save thousands of livesScientists have discovered bacteria linked to aggressive prostate cancer in work hailed as a potential revolution for the prevention and treatment of the most deadly form of the disease.Researchers led by the University of East Anglia performed sophisticated genetic analyses on the urine and prostate tissue of more than 600 men with and without prostate cancer and found five species of bacteria linked to rapid progression of the disease. Continue reading...
Surface features similar to ones seen on Greenland ice sheet suggest underground liquid water that could host organic matterSubterranean pools of salty water may be commonplace on Jupiter’s moon, Europa, according to researchers who believe the sites could be promising spots to search for signs of life beyond Earth.Evidence for the shallow pools, not far beneath the frozen surface of the Jovian moon, emerged when scientists noticed that giant parallel ridges stretching for hundreds of miles on Europa were strikingly similar to surface features discovered on the Greenland ice sheet. Continue reading...
The Fox News pundit is promoting an unusual solution for the apparent crisis in masculinity – testicle tanning to boost testosteroneLet me be the first to admit that I’m not an expert on testicles. I’m not even an amateur enthusiast, if I’m being honest. Still, even with my limited knowledge of the subject, I was taken aback by recent reports that applying infrared beams to the little fellas might be the key to saving men and averting the apocalypse.The source of these unusual claims? Fox News, that perennial font of spuriously sourced wisdom. Tucker Carlson, one of the most popular pundits on the network, recently had the Ohio-based fitness professional Andrew McGovern on his show to discuss how one might “reverse the effects of falling testosterone”. (As everyone knows, if you’ve got a complex question about hormones, personal trainers make far better sources than endocrinologists.) Continue reading...
by Presented and produced by Madeleine Finlay, sound on (#5YAB8)
While telling ghost stories has always been a favourite pastime for many, during the pandemic signs of paranormal activity have reportedly been on the rise. Madeleine Finlay speaks to Prof Chris French about why more of us may have been having eerie experiences, how to explain these phenomena scientifically, and why – even among nonbelievers – ghost stories are still as popular as ever Continue reading...
From high-protein food to plastics and fuel, Swedish scientists are attempting to tap the marine plant’s huge potential“You can just see the buoys of the seafarm,” Dr Sophie Steinhagen yells over the high whine of the boat as it approaches the small islands of Sweden’s Koster archipelago. The engine drops to a sputter, and Steinhagen heaves up a rope to reveal the harvest hanging beneath: strand after strand of sea lettuce, translucent and emerald green.
Bristol study finds that for every five extra BMI units a woman’s risk of endometrial cancer increases by 88%Lifelong excess weight may almost double a woman’s risk of developing womb cancer, research suggests.Scientists and doctors have known for some time that being overweight or obese increases the risk of the disease. About one in three cases in the UK (34%) are linked to excess weight. Continue reading...
According to WHO analysis, figure for country is more than 4 million and not official tally of 520,000India has been accused of attempting to delay an effort by the World Health Organization to revise the global death toll from Covid-19 after its calculations suggested that the country had undercounted its dead by an estimated 3.5 million.India’s official number of deaths from Covid is 520,000. But according to in-depth analysis and investigations into the data by WHO, the total is more than 4 million, which would be by far the highest country death toll in the world. Continue reading...
The solutions to today’s teasersEarlier today I set you the following puzzles, adapted from Math Games with Bad Drawings by Ben Orlin.1. Five nice dice Continue reading...
Beacon of Galaxy message could be sent into heart of Milky Way, where life is deemed most likely to exist“Even if the aliens are short, dour and sexually obsessed,” the late cosmologist Carl Sagan once mused, “if they’re here, I want to know about them.”Driven by the same mindset, a Nasa-led team of international scientists has developed a new message that it proposes to beam across the galaxy in the hope of making first contact with intelligent extraterrestrials. Continue reading...
Go figure, stick figure!UPDATE: The answers to today’s puzzles can be read here.Today’s puzzles begin with a low-fi version of Countdown: you roll five dice and using the basic arithmetical operations aim to get as close as possible to a target number.Then the questions get a bit trickier, and a bit more interesting. Continue reading...
What can the behaviour of apes teach us about sex and gender? A great deal, according to a new book by primatologist Frans de Waal – and his findings are already stirring controversySex and gender have come to represent one of the hottest fronts in the modern culture wars. Now, on to this bloody battlefield, calmly dodging banned books, anti-transgender laws and political doublespeak, strolls the distinguished Dutch-American primatologist Frans de Waal, brandishing nearly half a century’s worth of field notebooks and followed, metaphorically speaking, by an astonishingly diverse collection of primates.Given the world it enters, de Waal’s new book, Different: What Apes Can Teach Us About Gender, would arguably have failed if it didn’t stimulate debate. It seems safe from death by indifference, however, since it is dividing opinion even before it is published. Continue reading...
Scientists say the natural world has an important role to play in creating new drugs to fight the diseaseCancer care relies on complex therapies involving radioactive materials and sophisticated drugs and has come far from past remedies based on plants and herbs.However, scientists warn there is still a need to understand the botanical roots of tumour treatments – to maintain new sources of drugs and to ensure plant resources are not overexploited. The natural world still has a lot to teach us about tackling disease. Continue reading...
Director of network that processed millions of tests says smart diagnostics could tackle other major diseasesTwo years of mass Covid testing have paved the way for a revolution in how we diagnose other diseases, the founding director of the Lighthouse labs network has said.In his first interview since the pandemic began, Prof Chris Molloy said that people’s familiarity with using swabs for Covid tests meant that they could also discover and monitor their risk of other conditions, such as diabetes and heart disease. Continue reading...
The Australian physicist on why research is an investment, forgotten female scientists, and the impact of the Ukraine war on scienceBorn in Australia in 1984, Dr Suzie Sheehy is an accelerator physicist who runs research groups at the universities of Oxford and Melbourne, where she is developing new particle accelerators for applications in medicine. As a science communicator, she received the Lord Kelvin award in 2010 for presenting science to school and public audiences. Her first book is The Matter of Everything: Twelve Experiments that Changed Our World.How did you first become interested in physics?
I was heartbroken and angry but horse riding and medieval poetry revealed the quest I was onThis April, I will be older than my elder sister Nell. She died of cancer in December 2019. She was 46 when she died, two years older than me. This year I will be 47. Nell will always be 46. Writing “Nell died” still disturbs me as it did in the months after her death. She was my older sister. She wasn’t supposed to die. As little girls we learned to talk lying in beds beside one another. We sat in the same bath water, shared the same toothbrush, wore the same knickers, fought over the same toys.Her prognosis had been good. Days before her death, we were told she had years – maybe as many as 10 of them – to live. I didn’t think about death; I didn’t want to let it jinx anything by letting its shape enter my consciousness. Ten days later, I was in a hospital room with Nell and our father when a consultant knelt by her bed and told her she had a day to live. I wanted to tell death to stop, to block it from entering the room, to scream at death that I wasn’t ready for it to take her from me. But death when it comes, is unstoppable. So I stood by her bed with her as death came into the room and did its thing. Continue reading...
Remains found in the Rhône Valley, dating back 54,000 years, are earliest discovered outside AfricaIt is a weapon whose effectiveness was overtaken centuries ago by the gun and rifle. Yet the bow and arrow may deserve a prize place in the history of our species, say scientists. They believe archery could have been critical to Homo sapiens’ conquest of the planet, helping modern humans emerge from their African homeland tens of thousands of years ago.Early archers would have been able to kill their prey at a considerable distance while at the same time giving their diets a protein boost without endangering themselves, say researchers. It has also become clear that bow-and-arrow technology is ancient, with some of the oldest arrowheads traced to caves in South Africa and dated to around 64,000 years ago. Continue reading...
Volunteering to test new treatments can net up to £7,000 – enough to help offset the cost of living riseFancy a relaxing two-week getaway where you get your travel expenses paid, plus your own en suite room with all mod cons including a TV, PlayStation games console and free wifi? What’s more, it won’t cost you anything – in fact, they are so keen for you to come that you’ll be paid £4,200.If that sounds appealing, then you might want to think about booking a stay at FluCamp. However, as the name suggests, there’s a catch to this “holiday”: FluCamp runs residential clinical trials in the UK to test potential treatments for colds and flu. Continue reading...
Failure to recognise the need for a response could be a blunder we rue for decades to comeWhatever your standpoint on whether the pandemic is over, or what “living with the virus” should mean, it is clear some manifestation of Covid-19 will be with us for some time to come. Not least for the estimated 1.7 million people in the UK living with long Covid.And lest any who made a full and rapid recovery from infection still wonder whether long Covid might be a self-reported creation of the indolent, this is a now a large, well-documented, convergent cluster of clear physiological symptoms, and it is common to every part of the globe affected by Covid-19. Many sufferers of my acquaintance were keen cyclists, runners, skiers and dancers, but are now disabled and deprived of their former passions, while some are unable to resume their former professions. Doctors and scientists the world over now consider this a recognised part of the Sars-CoV-2 symptom profile.Danny Altmann is a professor of immunology at Imperial College London. He has contributed advice to the Cabinet Office, the all-party parliamentary group on long Covid and the EU Continue reading...
Test subjects from International Space Station may shed light on link between space travel and high incidence of painful conditionWhen astronauts travel into space they can expect some extraordinary new experiences. But they may also face a more mundane and potentially mission-ending one: kidney stones.According to Nasa, kidney stones have been reported more than 30 times by astronauts upon returning to earth. Now researchers are beginning to unpick why space travel is linked to the painful condition. Continue reading...
There is so much intelligence on this planet other than ours. Realising that will be key to adapting to climate breakdownFor the past couple of years, I’ve been working with researchers in northern Greece who are farming metal. In a remote, beautiful field, high in the Pindus mountains in Epirus, they are experimenting with a trio of shrubs known to scientists as “hyperaccumulators”: plants which have evolved the capacity to thrive in naturally metal-rich soils that are toxic to most other kinds of life. They do this by drawing the metal out of the ground and storing it in their leaves and stems, where it can be harvested like any other crop. As well as providing a source for rare metals – in this case nickel, although hyperaccumulators have been found for zinc, aluminium, cadmium and many other metals, including gold – these plants actively benefit the earth by remediating the soil, making it suitable for growing other crops, and by sequestering carbon in their roots. One day, they might supplant more destructive and polluting forms of mining.The three plants being tested in Greece – part of a network of research plots across Europe – are endemic to the region. Alyssum murale, which grows in low bushes topped by bunches of yellow flowers, is native to Albania and northern Greece; Leptoplax emarginata – taller and spindlier, with clusters of green leaves and white petals – is found only in Greece; and Bornmuellera tymphaea, the most efficient of the three, which straggles across the ground in a dense layer of white blossom, is found only on the slopes of the Pindus (its name comes from Mount Tymfi, one of the highest peaks of the range). Continue reading...
Michelin-starred chefs see opportunities and creative challenge in catering for commercial space travelWhen a trio of paying customers and their astronaut chaperone were blasted off to the International Space Station, their voyage was touted as a milestone for the commercialisation of spaceflight.For the Michelin-starred Spanish chef José Andrés, however, the recently departed mission ushered in another – albeit more niche – breakthrough: the first time paella was sent into orbit. Continue reading...
by Ammar Kalia, Hannah Verdier, Graeme Virtue, Ali Ca on (#5Y6VF)
The most soothing voice on the box tells an apocalyptic tale in Dinosaurs: The Final Day. Plus: a killer on the loose in Grantchester. Here’s what to watch this evening Continue reading...
Archaeological dig also finds body-shaped lead sarcophagus buried at the heart of the fire-ravaged monumentAn archaeological dig under Notre Dame Cathedral has uncovered an extraordinary treasure of statues, sculptures, tombs and pieces of an original rood screen dating back to the 13th century.The find included several ancient tombs from the middle ages and a body-shaped lead sarcophagus buried at the heart of the fire-ravaged monument under the floor of the transept crossing. Continue reading...
Medicines regulator says it is first in world to approve Valneva productA Covid-19 vaccine developed by the French pharmaceutical company Valneva has been given regulatory approval by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, bringing the total number of jabs approved for use in the UK to six.As the Covid pandemic swept the world, scientists began developing vaccines against it, with the Pfizer/BioNTech jab being the first in the UK to be authorised for emergency use by the MHRA in 2020. Since then the MHRA has approved the Moderna, Oxford/AstraZeneca, Janssen and Novavax vaccines, although, according to NHS England, Janssen and Novavax are not currently available. Continue reading...
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