Science | The Guardian

Research shows that a positive attitude to ageing can lead to a longer, healthier life, while negative beliefs can have hugely detrimental effectsFor more than a decade, Paddy Jones has been wowing audiences across the world with her salsa dancing. She came to fame on the Spanish talent show Tú Sí Que Vales (You’re Worth It) in 2009 and has since found success in the UK, through Britain’s Got Talent; in Germany, on Das Supertalent; in Argentina, on the dancing show Bailando; and in Italy, where she performed at the Sanremo music festival in 2018 alongside the band Lo Stato Sociale.Jones also happens to be in her mid-80s, making her the world’s oldest acrobatic salsa dancer, according to Guinness World Records. Growing up in the UK, Jones had been a keen dancer and had performed professionally before she married her husband, David, at 22 and had four children. It was only in retirement that she began dancing again – to widespread acclaim. “I don’t plead my age because I don’t feel 80 or act it,” Jones told an interviewer in 2014. Continue reading...

The start of the coming year will be defined by the UK’s vaccination gap, but the issue is more complex than you thinkAmid rocketing Covid infection rates, rising hospitalisation numbers and test shortages, the opening weeks of 2022 are going to be defined by the UK’s vaccine gap.According to the latest official figures, 91% of people aged over 18 in the UK have had at least one Covid jab, 88% have received two and 64% have had their third. But the 9% who have yet to be vaccinated at all accounts for about five million people, whose preponderance among those now being hospitalised is clearly a huge problem. Continue reading...

Social media and many other facets of modern life are destroying our ability to concentrate. We need to reclaim our minds while we still canWhen he was nine years old, my godson Adam developed a brief but freakishly intense obsession with Elvis Presley. He took to singing Jailhouse Rock at the top of his voice with all the low crooning and pelvis-jiggling of the King himself. One day, as I tucked him in, he looked at me very earnestly and asked: “Johann, will you take me to Graceland one day?” Without really thinking, I agreed. I never gave it another thought, until everything had gone wrong.Ten years later, Adam was lost. He had dropped out of school when he was 15, and he spent almost all his waking hours alternating blankly between screens – a blur of YouTube, WhatsApp and porn. (I’ve changed his name and some minor details to preserve his privacy.) He seemed to be whirring at the speed of Snapchat, and nothing still or serious could gain any traction in his mind. During the decade in which Adam had become a man, this fracturing seemed to be happening to many of us. Our ability to pay attention was cracking and breaking. I had just turned 40, and wherever my generation gathered, we would lament our lost capacity for concentration. I still read a lot of books, but with each year that passed, it felt more and more like running up a down escalator. Then one evening, as we lay on my sofa, each staring at our own ceaselessly shrieking screens, I looked at him and felt a low dread. “Adam,” I said softly, “let’s go to Graceland.” I reminded him of the promise I had made. I could see that the idea of breaking this numbing routine ignited something in him, but I told him there was one condition he had to stick to if we went. He had to switch his phone off during the day. He swore he would. Continue reading...

Throughout 2021, two leading lights of the Royal Statistical Society Covid-19 Task Force drew on data for a weekly Observer column, and found themselves in the middle of Covid culture warsIndividual experiences and suffering are, of course, at the heart of the pandemic. But one way to understand what has happened is through putting those experiences together – and statistics are those personal stories writ large. And this pandemic has brought unprecedented demand to explain all the numbers that have been flying around.This has not been without its problems and we’ve had to learn some hard lessons, such as the journalistic skill of brevity. Since January 2021, we’ve been writing a weekly column in this paper about Covid numbers, covering everything from infections to deaths, vaccines to mental health, masks to lockdowns. Continue reading...

A new book outlines the mistakes and missteps that made UK pandemic worseThere was a distinctive moment, at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, that neatly encapsulated the mistakes and confusion of Britain’s early efforts to tackle the disease, says Mark Woolhouse. At a No 10 briefing in March 2020, cabinet minister Michael Gove warned the virus did not discriminate. “Everyone is at risk,” he announced.And nothing could be further from the truth, argues Professor Woolhouse, an expert on infectious diseases at Edinburgh University. “I am afraid Gove’s statement was simply not true,” he says. “In fact, this is a very discriminatory virus. Some people are much more at risk from it than others. People over 75 are an astonishing 10,000 times more at risk than those who are under 15.” Continue reading...

Spacefaring adventurers, living and experimenting with new technology, could potentially spawn a post-human eraAfter years of delay, and massive cost over-runs, the James Webb space telescope (the JWST) was launched on Christmas Day. It will need to perform complex automated operations now it’s in space.The first and most challenging is happening this week: unfurling a heat shield the size of a tennis court. After this, its 6.5-metre mirror must be assembled from 18 pieces packed within the launching rocket’s nose-cone. There’s much that can go wrong and astronomers will remain anxious for the several months that will elapse before all necessary manoevres and tests are completed. Continue reading...

Six research groups’ findings all suggest variant multiplies more in throats and causes less serious disease

The disruptions of the past two years have prompted changes in many lives. Readers tell us about the changes they are making

Scientists answer important questions about coronavirus rules around Britain amid the Omicron wave of infections

He started in his 30s, has asthma, and can go more than a week without a cigarette – so why does this writer still not think it’s time to stop?I have asthma, and there’s a fairly major respiratory disease going around, as you may have heard, and also I am a smoker. A quick inventory of my coat pockets: inhaler, face mask, Marlboro Gold. I never fell into smoking as a teenager when everyone else seemed to think it was cool, but took it up in my 30s, as others might develop an interest in birdwatching, or CrossFit. Four or five a day, for the best part of a decade, and more at the weekends. This piece is anonymous because my mother cannot know. I don’t have the words to express how unbelievably stupid I feel about all this.There’s quite a lot going on here, and not all of it is solely of interest to me and my therapist. You might imagine that a continuing and lung-buggering international emergency which a study says is specifically more dangerous for smokers would mean there were fewer idiots like me. But in fact, stress and boredom are more than a match for serious health concerns: research published in August last year suggested that the number of young adults smoking in England went up by about a quarter during the first lockdown. There was a spike in the number of people across all ages giving up smoking in England during that same first lockdown period – but no sign of the plummeting rates you might rationally expect. Then again, nothing about this habit has ever been rational. Continue reading...

It’s only when you learn to accept who you are, flaws and all, that you can make real, worthwhile changeIt’s the time of year for reinventions – or, perhaps more accurately, preparing for reinventions. For buying the diet book, drawing up the new morning routine, bookmarking the therapists’ websites or purchasing the storage cabinets for the soon-to-be-perfectly-organised house. As with all attempts at personal transformation, at new year or otherwise, this is the fun part. You get to experience all the excitement of becoming an entirely different person, without having yet had to put in the effort – and without having failed. Like untrodden early morning snow, the vision of who you’ll become remains pristine. Usually, though, something inside you knows the truth: in a few days’ time, the whole thing will have turned into unpleasant grey slush.Personal reinventions fail partly for the obvious reasons: you set your goals too high; or your existing obligations at work or home get in the way; or you find (who could have imagined it?) that the unimpressive level of self-discipline you’ve demonstrated for your entire life until this moment can’t magically be tripled overnight. But there’s also a deeper problem with quests for wholesale transformation, which explains why they rarely work as intended – and why, as 2022 begins, embracing the existing version of yourself, with all its messiness and imperfections, might be the most transformative thing you’ve ever done. Continue reading...

Of substances tested, strongest effects were seen for clove extract, though sample size was smallA thumping headache, a tongue that feels like a carpet and a strong sense of queasiness and regret – it is a condition with which many will be all too familiar on New Year’s Day. But while it may seem tempting to reach for a hangover “cure”, researchers have chosen New Year’s Day to tell us that most will offer cold comfort.Scientists say they have evaluated studies looking at 23 different substances alleged to help prevent or treat a hangover, but found all of the “remedies” had low-quality evidence for how well they worked. Continue reading...

From government systems to family units to our own psyches, the pandemic brought revelation. What will we change?A retreating ocean is often the first sign of a tsunami. The water along the shoreline is dragged back dramatically, exposing parts of the shore and seabed that are normally underwater.It’s helpful to frame the first two years of the pandemic in similar terms to this ocean drawback. Detaching from our own specific circumstances, and our own specific pandemic pain, we have a unique opportunity to actually see the metaphorical seafloor of the world. Continue reading...

Messages may contain unhinged expletives, threatening tropes … or one of my interviews set to music

Exclusive: Guardian survey shows level of intimidation, including death threats, against scientific and medical advisers

Paxlovid found to be ‘safe and effective’ at reducing hospitalisation and death among vulnerable adults

Covid expert hopeful for ‘relatively normal’ winter 2022-23 but prevalence limits celebrations across continent

Scientists are working at speed to assess transmission rates, vaccine effectiveness and severity of cases

Scientific consensus absent as impasse between China and west continues to hamper tracing effort

A look back at 12 months of key summits, devastating weather and alarming discoveriesThe year began with a counting up of the damage after the catastrophic extreme weather events of 2020, from fires to floods. Looking at the US alone, California more than doubled its previous annual wildfire record with more than 1.7m hectares (4.1m acres) burned and Nasa concluded that 2020 had been the joint hottest year on record. The US’s Noaa and the UK Met Office put it in close second to 2016.In my view, we’ve already waited too long to deal with this climate crisis and we can’t wait any longer. We see it with our own eyes, we feel it, we know it in our bones, and it’s time to act.Joe Biden Continue reading...

In December 2019 the WHO was told of a cluster of pneumonia cases in Wuhan, China. These charts show how Covid-19 has spread across the world since then

Travellers will now be required to return a negative rapid antigen test instead of a PCR test before travel as state records 3,118 new cases

Analysis by Zoe Covid app team shows increase from about 50% last week, with cases among 55- to 75-year-olds ‘rising sharply’

Key to understanding the next part of the pandemic will be the number, and length, of hospitalisationsPublic holidays are notoriously difficult for epidemiologists – people may avoid or delay both testing and hospital visits, making for slightly unreliable numbers. But some things are still clear from the latest Covid data released by the government. Omicron is now responsible for more than 90% of all new infections in England (the other three nations haven’t published a full set of data yet), meaning that its particular effects are now driving the pandemic. And its rate of growth versus earlier this month appears to have slowed considerably.It is barely three weeks ago that Omicron infections were more than doubling every two days. If that rate of increase had continued we would be close to 1 million infections per day by now. Even the Christmas holiday cannot explain the difference between that estimate and the most recent reported infection numbers for England of 117,000. On the other hand, hopes from before Christmas that we may have seen the epidemic peak were almost certainly premature. Overall cases are still increasing, and we haven’t seen the worst daily report yet, but the lower rate of increase means a lower eventual peak than previously thought.Paul Hunter is a professor in medicine at the University of East AngliaThe headline of this article was amended on 30 December 2021 to reflect the fact that it was about England, rather than the UK Continue reading...

SpaceX founder says planned 42,000-strong network will not dominate slots or radio frequenciesElon Musk has rejected criticisms that his company is taking up too much room in space, saying his tens of thousands of planned satellites would be able to coexist with many others.As well as building up Tesla into the world’s most valuable carmaker by pioneering electric cars, Musk has shaken up the space industry by founding SpaceX, a private rocket company that is also seeking to become a major telecommunications entity through a network of tens of thousands of low-orbiting “Starlink” satellites. Continue reading...

I can endure anger, pain and frustration without the need to scream. But I realised that that could, in fact, be a problem. So I travelled to the countryside to try yellingIn the summer of 2020, the London-based psychotherapist Zoë Aston hit the headlines with a scream-therapy campaign she had devised for the Icelandic tourism board. On a website called Looks Like You Need Iceland, visitors were invited to record a scream which would then be blasted out for you in the vast, frozen wilderness. “And when you’re ready,” the blurb ran, “come let it out for real. You’ll feel better, we promise.” All of which assumes a scream-readiness with which I am patently unfamiliar.I am famous in my family for never shouting when I drop a glass or cut myself in the kitchen. The bigger the mess, the quieter I get. The angrier I get, the quieter I get, too. I have never screamed or shouted anyone down. A while back, the thought occurred to me that this might be a problem. What if, one day, I needed to yell? What if I, or someone else, needed the kind of urgent attention a scream is designed to attract?

From electrons behaving as both particles and waves to a cat in a box that’s both dead and alive, the consequences of quantum physics are decidedly weird. So strange, that over a century since its conception, scientists are still arguing about the best way to understand the theory.In the second of two episodes, Ian Sample sits down with the physicist Carlo Rovelli to discuss his ideas for explaining quantum physics, and how it affects our understanding of the world Continue reading...

‘Hell herons’, metallic beetles, tiny shrimp – scientists have been busy describing unusual creatures despite Covid restrictionsSix new dinosaurs, an Indian beetle named after Larry the cat, and dozens of crustaceans critical to the planet’s carbon cycle were among 552 new species identified by scientists at the Natural History Museum this year.In 2021, researchers described previously unknown species across the tree of life, from a pair of giant carnivorous dinosaurs known as spinosaurs – nicknamed the “riverbank hunter” and “hell heron” – to five new snakes that include the Joseph’s racer, which was identified with the help of a 185-year-old painting. Continue reading...

Party says ministers failing to stand up to social media giants as posters continue to churn out disinformation

In time for new year resolutions, a cultural historian chooses some of the best guides to making a better life, dating back to some of our earliest literatureIt is easy to dismiss self-help books and those who read them. But not only do we need serious self-help, we must also take self-help more seriously. Valued at $11bn (£8bn) worldwide, self-help is a major global industry. It both reflects and generates many of our prevailing ideas about the self and about the cultures in which we live. The self-help industry not only seeks to shape the way in which we think, feel and behave, but also provides many of the core metaphors on which we rely to talk about our inner lives. Many of those metaphors, not least that of the mind as a computer that might require reprogramming, are at best unhelpful.Critics of self-help believe that its current popularity is part of an all-pervasive neoliberal imperative to maximise efficiency. They see it as a sinister plot to direct all responsibility for our wellbeing back upon ourselves. Self-help, they feel, casts all our problems as personal, and our failures as owing to a lack of willpower and resilience, when they are in fact caused by the politics of capitalism. But while this may be true of some self-help, the idea of self-improvement has a long and rich history, extending back to ancient wisdom traditions. The wish to improve ourselves is bound up with our need for self-knowledge, for mastery and for transformation. It is a timeless desire and an essential part of what makes us human. Continue reading...

Restrictions return in China, South Africa and Germany as countries around the world struggle to contain new variant

US reports 512,553 cases; UK reports 129,000; France reports 179,807; Portugal 17,172; and Greece 21,657

Scientists say ancient human DNA can be recovered from the cement made by head lice to stick eggs to hairAn unusual source of ancient human DNA could help scientists unpick details of our ancestors’ lives and answer longstanding questions. The source? Nit glue.Scientists studying mummified remains from South America that date back 1,500-2,000 years say they have recovered ancient human DNA from the sticky cement produced by head lice to anchor their eggs to hair. Continue reading...

My father, Alan Ward, who has died aged 96, was a physicist who profoundly influenced science education in Africa.Born in Woodford, Essex, to Ursula (nee Vale) and Edward Ward, who worked in a bank, Alan went to Chichester high school for boys in West Sussex. Following a wartime degree in physics at the University of Birmingham, he completed a PhD in 1949, after which he was sent by the Atomic Energy Research Establishment to study Thorotrast poisoning in Denmark for two years. He married Honor Shedden, also a physicist, in 1950. Continue reading...

The US has cut the self-isolation period to five days, while in England it is seven with negative testsThe US has announced it is cutting the recommended self-isolation time with Covid to five days. How long are people with Covid infectious for, and why do the rules vary between countries?What are the rules for self-isolation in the UK? Continue reading...

Beijing urges US to act responsibly after two near misses that it says posed serious threat to astronauts’ livesChina has accused the US of ignoring international treaty obligations and engaging in irresponsible and unsafe conduct in outer space after two near misses between the Chinese space station and satellites operated by Elon Musk’s SpaceX company.Zhao Lijian, a foreign ministry spokesperson, said on Tuesday that China “urges the US to act responsibly” after incidents involving SpaceX’s Starlink satellites, which he said had posed a serious threat to the lives and safety of astronauts. Continue reading...

It has been more than a century since the groundwork of quantum physics was first formulated and yet the consequences of the theory still elude both scientists and philosophers. Why does light sometimes behave as a wave, and other times as a particle? Why does the outcome of an experiment apparently depend on whether the particles are being observed or not? In the first of two episodes, Ian Sample sits down with the physicist Carlo Rovelli to discuss the strange consequences of quantum theory and the explanation he sets out in his book Helgoland Continue reading...

Amenhotep I ‘unwrapped’ digitally by Cairo scientists, revealing details from his grave jewellery to his teethWith his narrow chin, small nose and curly hair he physically resembles his father, said radiologist Sahar Saleem. Perhaps surprisingly for someone who lived about 3,500 years ago, he also has strikingly good teeth.Saleem is talking about the mummified body of the pharaoh Amenhotep I, a warrior king who has been something of an enigma in that he is one of the few royal mummies not to be unwrapped in modern times. Continue reading...

Founder of the Amazon Biodiversity Center, he discovered that habitat destruction, pollution and global heating were killing species worldwide

The answers to today’s conundrumsEarlier today I set you the following three puzzles:1. What was the question? Continue reading...

Professor Nikolai Petrovsky has been criticised for advocating for Covax-19 vaccine to be approved for use in Australia without making publicly available substantial peer-reviewed clinical evidence to support its efficacy

Cloth or surgical masks just don’t cut it – respirators are far more effective, and they’re comfortable too

German city where early Covid vaccine was developed uses its new-found wealth to slash debt and attract other biotech firmsThe Pfizer/BioNTech jab is having an unexpected side-effect on the German municipality where scientists first developed it: for the first time in three decades the city of Mainz expects to become debt-free thanks to the tax revenues generated by the company’s global success.Mainz’s decision to use its financial windfall to also slash corporate tax rates in the hope of attracting industry, especially biotech companies, however, is drawing criticism from neighbouring cities and economists. Continue reading...

Seesawing studies find that red is for winners or black results in more penalties – while others find effects murky at bestHere’s one to ponder while gazing at another dull and drabby December sky. Can colour affect sporting performance? Tiger Woods certainly thinks so. “I wear red on Sundays because my mom thinks that’s my power colour,” he said, while blasting his way to 15 majors. So does Sir Alex Ferguson, who famously changed Manchester United’s grey kits at half-time during a 1996 defeat to Southampton because, he claimed, his players had struggled to pick each other out. Meanwhile, for more than 15 years a battle has raged in sober journals over whether a red uniform can provide a winning edge – and whether other colours lead to a disadvantage.Newspapers, including the Guardian and New York Times, have also reported on the latest developments with breathless fascination. “Red is the tint for winners,” we wrote in 2005. “When all else is equal, a sporting strip of scarlet is enough to tip the balance.” Our report highlighted a highly influential study in Nature that examined combat sports at the 2004 Olympics and found that across 19 of 29 weight classes in boxing, taekwondo, Greco-Roman and freestyle wrestling, red had more winners than blue. Continue reading...

The New Year in numbersUPDATE: Read the solutions hereIf you like number patterns, here’s something to look forward to next year.Shortly after 10pm on February 22, the time and date will consist of a single repeating digit – the last time it will happen this century. Continue reading...

Medical bodies say thin surgical masks do not provide adequate protection for frontline personnelNHS staff treating Covid patients should be given much more protective facewear than thin surgical masks to help them avoid getting infected during the Omicron rise, doctors say.The British Medical Association (BMA), Hospital Consultants and Specialists Association (HCSA) and Doctors’ Association UK are calling for frontline personnel to be given FFP3 masks. Continue reading...

We have been bombarded with negativity recently; but the English language is a treasure trove of joyous vocabulary

Witchcraft and its deep connection with nature restored my mental healthWitchcraft has always played a large role in my life. While many kids were learning badminton or taking trombone lessons, I was reading up on spellcraft and ways to plant my herb garden. I grew up in the late 1990s when my cultural life became saturated with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Charmed and Sabrina the Teenage Witch. Channel-hopping without stumbling across a young woman with magical powers was virtually impossible. But the draw wasn’t just the empowerment that spells and telekinetic forces threw my way; I was intensely charmed by witchcraft’s connection with the world outside and the earth around me.In the evenings I spent time in my garden wrapped up in scarves and blankets to watch the different phases of the moon pass each night; I learned the names of wildflowers growing at the side of the road where no one cast a second glance and wondered how I could use them in a spell. These small things gave me an overwhelming sense of calm, so enthralled was I by constellations, intricate root systems and the dashes of magic I found around me. Perhaps witchcraft was in my blood – my very first word was “moon”. Continue reading...

Despite its reputation as a bourgeois hobby, walking has been a lifeline for millions past and presentIf Christmas is often synonymous with hours spent indoors, the lure of the sofa and endless screentime, our second festive season spent under the shadow of Covid is presumably taking those things to their extremes. The world has shrunk: our lives are full of cautious friends and relatives, cancelled trips and the imperative to stay where we are. The cold and dark complete the picture. Once again, this threatens to be a season of seclusion.To temporarily escape, millions of us will be going for walks – that inbuilt part of many people’s Christmases, which also chimes with how many of us have coped with the past two years. According to Sport England, between January and March this year, against the backdrop of another full national lockdown, 24.7 million people said they had recently engaged in “walking for leisure”, an increase of 5.2 million people compared with 12 months before. In September, the Department for Transport published research showing that in 2020 people in England walked an average of 220 miles (the highest figure since records began nearly 20 years ago) and that the number of walks of a mile or more had jumped by 26% in a single year. The Ramblers, the UK charity and membership organisation that does a huge amount of work around walking and access to open spaces, says that in the second half of 2020 it recruited 30% more new members than it had done a year earlier. These are all fascinating numbers: proof, perhaps, that when our leisure options are suddenly shut down, a lot of us instinctively seek solace in one of the most primal pastimes there is.John Harris is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Government warned it needs to retain innovation facility to deal with future pandemicsMinisters have been urged to retain a facility that can swiftly create and test new vaccines, amid concerns over the sale of a leading centre originally designed to prepare Britain for future pandemics.Some senior medical figures have privately raised concerns that government officials are examining bids for the Vaccine Manufacturing and Innovation Centre (VMIC), near Oxford, which has benefited from millions in public funding during its development. Continue reading...