Science | The Guardian

The virus won’t disappear – it will just become endemic. But it could still put pressure on health systems in years to comeAs Cop26 gets under way in Glasgow this weekend, one collective action problem is taking centre stage against the backdrop of another. Covid-19 has been described as a dress rehearsal for our ability to solve the bigger problem of the climate crisis, so it seems important to point out that the pandemic isn’t over. Instead, joined-up thinking has become more important than ever for solving the problem of Covid-19.The endgame has been obvious for a while: rather than getting rid of Covid-19 entirely, countries will get used to it. The technical word for a disease that we’re obliged to host indefinitely is “endemic”. It means that the disease-causing agent – the Sars-CoV-2 virus in this case – is always circulating in the population, causing periodic but more-or-less predictable disease outbreaks. No country has entered the calmer waters of endemicity yet; we’re all still on the white-knuckle ride of the pandemic phase.Laura Spinney is a science journalist and the author of Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How it Changed the World Continue reading...

Final preparations begin for Nasa’s Artemis programme to return astronauts to moonNasa’s Orion crew capsule has been secured to the top of the Space Launch System rocket at the Kennedy Space Center, Florida. Final preparations are beginning for the first uncrewed launch in Nasa’s Artemis programme to return astronauts to the moon.The fully stacked rocket stands at 322ft (98 metres), about 6ft taller than Big Ben in London. The European Space Agency has provided the critical service module that gives the Orion capsule electricity, air, water, communications and propulsion. Continue reading...

Species was direct ancestor of early humans in Africa and discovery has led to reassessment of epochResearchers have announced the naming of a newly discovered species of human ancestor, Homo bodoensis.The species lived in Africa about 500,000 years ago, during the Middle Pleistocene age, and was the direct ancestor of modern humans, according to scientists. The name bodoensis derives from a skull found in Bodo D’ar in the Awash River valley of Ethiopia. Continue reading...

Simon Clarke explained his absence from pre-budget photo op was due to condition that affects thousands in UKA minister has been praised for “leading by example” after he spoke openly about his experience of agoraphobia, a condition that leads to thousands of hospital admissions every year.Simon Clarke, the chief secretary to the Treasury, said on Wednesday he would not take part in the traditional pre-budget photo with the chancellor as he is agoraphobic. He said the condition “prevents me from being comfortable in some open spaces”. Continue reading...

Physicist hailed as the father of Pakistan’s atomic weapons industry who confessed to smuggling nuclear secretsThe father of Pakistan’s atomic weapons industry and the greatest proliferator of nuclear weapons in history, Abdul Qadeer Khan, who has died aged 85 after testing positive for Covid-19, was heralded as a hero in his native country, but he left a troubling legacy for the west. Along with Pakistan, the states of Libya, North Korea and Iran all benefited from the nuclear physicist’s dealings. His story is also deeply connected with the travails of neighbouring Afghanistan.There are two basic paths to make the material that provides the explosive power of a nuclear weapons. The first is to process plutonium. The second is to use high-speed centrifuges to enrich uranium to weapons-grade material, called highly enriched uranium (HEU). Continue reading...

Tuberculosis campaigners tell G20 leaders $1bn is needed annually for vaccine research to reverse decades of underfundingA group of tuberculosis survivors are calling for more funding and action to find new vaccines, after the numbers dying of the infection rose for the first time in 10 years.In 2020, 1.5 million were killed by TB and 10 million infected, according to the World Health Organization. Campaigners want world leaders to invest $1bn (£730m) every year into vaccine research, spurred on by the momentum from the Covid jab development. Continue reading...

The clocks go back in the UK this Sunday and many will welcome the extra hour in bed. But research suggests that changing the time like this could be bad for the body. Anand Jagatia speaks to the Guardian’s science correspondent Linda Geddes and chronobiologist Prof Till Roenneberg about how daylight saving time affects our biology – and whether we should get rid of it permanently Continue reading...

Finds at Richborough include skeleton of cat nicknamed Maxipus and potential evidence of figurative arena panelsA big night out for the people of the Roman settlement at Richborough on the Kent coast about 2,000 years ago might have involved gladiatorial contests, wild beast hunting or the occasional execution of a criminal.Taking place in a vast amphitheatre, seating up to 5,000 people, on the western edge of the settlement, such an event was a “special occasion, drawing people from Richborough town and its surrounds”, said Paul Pattison, a senior properties historian at English Heritage. “These were public spectacles, the equivalent of going to a big blockbuster film, in our terms.” Continue reading...

It’s certainly not just women who worry about ageing and procreation – and now men have begun speaking about their own deep anxietiesIt was when Connor woke up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom that he started thinking about it. The 38-year-old civil servant from London got back into bed and couldn’t sleep: he was spiralling. “I thought: ‘Shit, I might not be able to have children. It actually might not happen,’” he says.“It started with me thinking about how I’m looking to buy a house, and everything is happening too late in my life,” Connor says. “Then I started worrying about how long it would take me to save again to get married, after I buy the house. I was doing the maths on that – when will I be able to afford to be married, own a house and start having kids? Probably in my 40s. Then I started freaking out about what the quality of my sperm will be like by then. What if something’s wrong with the child? And then I thought, oh no, what if me and my girlfriend don’t work out? I’ll be in an even worse scenario in a few years.” Continue reading...

Study is the first time DNA from a long-dead person was used to demonstrate a familial link between a living individual and a historical figureA sample of Sitting Bull’s hair has helped scientists confirm that a South Dakota man is the famed 19th-century Native American leader’s great-grandson using a new method to analyse family lineages with DNA fragments from long-dead people.Researchers said on Wednesday that DNA extracted from the hair, which had been stored at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, confirmed the familial relationship between Sitting Bull, who died in 1890, and Ernie LaPointe, 73, of Lead, South Dakota. Continue reading...

Signatories include scientists from US, EU, India and African and South American countriesChief scientists and presidents of the national science academies of more than 20 countries including Sir Patrick Vallance have written to world leaders ahead of the Cop26 climate summit, urging them to set out policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions sharply, to limit global heating to 1.5C.Governments must rapidly step up their policies to deploy low-carbon energy and other technologies and address emissions from the main high-carbon sectors of the economy, as well as bring forward innovative technologies, the signatories urged. Continue reading...

As the professor guides us through the solar system via excessive CGI and poetic chat, you can’t help but think his latest quest would be more effective if it wasn’t so dumbed downI don’t know how you make an hour-long programme that takes you slowly through 14bn years of history, but the BBC and Prof Brian Cox have done it with the first episode of Universe. Possibly it is a space-time paradox that only the good professor himself could solve. (Please do not write in if I deployed the phrase “space-time paradox” incorrectly. I am an arts graduate who begins this series not entirely sure whether solar systems are bigger than galaxies, and needs this programme very much, even if I cannot honestly say I enjoy it.)The four-part BBC Two series, as you have probably guessed from the title, will eventually deal with just about everything astrophysical. But the opener is all about stars – especially our big yin, the sun. It is pegged to Nasa’s Parker solar probe’s mission, though mentions of this are brief bookends. In between, Cox does his thing. Continue reading...

A new study re-emphasises the fact that oversleeping can be harmful for us – and especially for older peopleName: sleep affluence.Zzzzz. Hey! This is a very interesting and very informative column! Continue reading...

Tube came unglued during SpaceX’s first private flight last month, spilling urine on to fans and beneath the floorSpaceX is facing toilet troubles in its capsules before it launches more astronauts into space.The company and Nasa want to make sure the toilet leaks will not compromise the capsule launching early on Sunday from Kennedy Space Center, or another one that has been parked at the International Space Station since April. Continue reading...

Tarot used to be seen as the domain of the credulous. It’s now seen as a means of coping with the present, thanks to psychology-minded practitioners like Jessica DoreWhen Jessica Dore was growing up, her mother had a tarot deck from which she’d pull cards – much to the mounting mortification of her daughter. As a child, Dore went along with it as fortune-telling fun. But “as an adolescent, it was sort of like ‘Mind your own business’”, she says wryly.It meant Dore was at least familiar with tarot. The deck of 78 cards, split between major arcana and minor arcana (“greater” and “lesser secrets”), is used with varying degrees of sincerity to divine past, present and future. “But I never had any sense that it could be something that would be of value for me in my life,” Dore says. Continue reading...

If William Shatner’s foray into space got you interested, let Coxy fill in the gaps. Plus: DI Perez continues the case in Shetland. Here’s what to watch this evening Continue reading...

Analysis: early uncertainty around vaccination advice for expectant mothers has left them confused and hesitant

Royal Brompton and Harefield send teams to save cardiogenic shock patients at other hospitals

Saturn-sized planet candidate has been identified in Whirlpool Galaxy 28m light years awayA possible Saturn-sized planet identified in the distant Whirlpool Galaxy could be the first exoplanet to be detected outside the Milky Way.The exoplanet candidate appears to be orbiting an X-ray binary – made up of a normal star and a collapsed star or black hole – with its distance from this binary roughly equivalent to the distance of Uranus from the sun. Continue reading...

In England, masks are expected and recommended in crowded and enclosed spaces – but not legally required. Many have abandoned them altogether. What would convince everyone to put them back on?Dave stopped wearing his face mask “the second I didn’t have to. I grudgingly wore it, because it was the right thing to do and because it was mandatory,” says the teacher from East Sussex. “But I felt, and still do, that the reason we were told to wear masks was to make scared people feel less scared.” He didn’t feel awkward abandoning his mask, he says, as “hardly anybody bothers”, but he will put one on when visiting the vet, pharmacist or doctor, because he knows they want him to. “I feel it’s the respectful thing to do, but it’s a bit of theatre.”Every month since July, when the legal requirement to wear face masks – along with other restrictions – ended in England, the number of mask-wearers has dropped. In figures released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) last week, 82% of adults reported they had worn a mask outside their home in the previous seven days – a drop from 86% the previous month. But that seems high to me. In my own highly unscientific survey of people coming out of a shopping centre in a south coast town centre last week, only around one in 25 were wearing a mask and overwhelmingly they tended to be older people – the most vulnerable social group. “When everyone else stopped, I stopped,” says Holly. Her friend Chantelle works in a supermarket and also hasn’t worn a mask since July. Does she mind customers not wearing masks? “Not really,” she says, “because I’m not wearing one. Doing an eight-hour shift in it was horrible.” Would they go back to wearing masks? “If we had to, then yeah, I would,” says Holly, but neither would by choice. Continue reading...

Many experts have called for the reintroduction of some public health measures to reduce transmission rates. However, the government has repeatedly said it is not yet bringing in its ‘plan B’ for England. Madeleine Finlay speaks to science correspondent Nicola Davis about what it could entail and whether it would help us avoid the need for more stringent and longer-lasting measures down the line Continue reading...

The Global Preparedness Monitoring Board is calling for a coherent action plan to counter future health emergencies

Follows attacks on Covid nurses in the country where less than 1% of the population is fully vaccinatedPapua New Guinea authorities have approved a mass burial to take pressure off Port Moresby’s hospital morgue where bodies are stacked on top of each other as Covid-19 cases surge.The burial of more than 200 bodies comes as health teams around the country report being attacked as they took part in vaccination programs. Continue reading...

Minister ‘quite concerned’ about delay to finalising UK’s participation in €80bn Horizon Europe schemeA fresh Brexit row has been blown open with Brussels after David Frost accused the EU of being close to breaching the trade deal struck last Christmas.He said the UK was “getting quite concerned” about Brussels delaying ratification of the UK’s participation in the €80bn (£67bn) Horizon Europe research programme, costing British scientists their place in pan-European research programmes. Continue reading...

Dr Karen Postle says Tory MPs’ views on masks would be mildly amusing if it weren’t for the gravely serious consequences, while Susannah Kipling despairs that ‘virtue’ is being hijacked as a term of abuse. Plus letters from Emma Blashford-Snell, Mike Terry, Rosemary Gill and Christine GallagherAre Tory ministers vying with one another in a contest to portray the most libertarian, populist views in the face of scientific and medical evidence and advice? First we have Jacob Rees-Mogg’s arrant nonsense about the Tories not needing masks because their convivial spirit is preventing the spread of Covid.Then the care minister, Gillian Keegan, bizarrely opines that wearing masks is virtue signalling and should be purely personal choice (Tory minister says face masks should not become a ‘sign of virtue’, 22 October). It could be mildly amusing if it weren’t for the gravely serious consequences of such ignorant nonsense. Continue reading...

Australia’s Parkes Observatory detected an ET-like pattern that suggested something was out there. But it was just a case of mixed signals

Indris sound like ‘bagpipes being stepped on’ but their 1:2 beats are the first to be identified in non-human mammalsThey have fluffy ears, a penetrating stare and a penchant for monogamy. But it turns out that indris – a large, critically endangered species of lemur – have an even more fascinating trait: an unexpected sense of rhythm.Indri indri are known for their distinctive singing, a sound not unlike a set of bagpipes being stepped on. The creatures often strike up a song with members of their family either in duets or choruses, featuring sounds from roars to wails. Continue reading...

Does your internal monologue play out on a television, in an attic, as a bickering Italian couple – or is it entirely, blissfully silent?Claudia*, a sailor from Lichfield in her late 30s, is not Italian. She has never been to Italy. She has no Italian family or friends. And she has no idea why a belligerent Italian couple have taken over her inner voice, duking it out in Claudia’s brain while she sits back and listens.“I have no idea where this has come from,” says Claudia, apologetically. “It’s probably offensive to Italians.” The couple are like the family in the Dolmio pasta sauce adverts: flamboyant, portly, prone to waving their hands and shouting. If Claudia has a big decision to make in her life, the Italians take over. Continue reading...

Discovery of foundations of ‘industrial scale’ medieval tannery at abbey has astonished expertsIt is Britain’s biggest and most famous monastic ruin and one that conjures up bucolic images of peace, reflection and very little noise apart, perhaps, from the occasional waft of Gregorian chanting.In reality, archaeologists have revealed, Fountains Abbey near Ripon was as busy, noisy and industrialised as anywhere in 12th- and 13th-century Britain. Continue reading...

Seventh-largest constellation is most easily spotted by finding the square denoting the horse’s bodyWe began the month with a look at the constellation of Cassiopeia, the vain queen who inspired the wrath of Poseidon, so we will end it with a look at another constellation derived from that same myth: Pegasus, the winged horse.In the Greek myth, the hero Perseus rode Pegasus to the shoreline to save Cassiopeia’s daughter, Andromeda, from Cetus, the sea monster unleashed by Poseidon. As such, Pegasus is another of the original 48 constellations listed in the 2nd century by the astronomer Ptolemy. Continue reading...

Latest updates: NHS chief says Saturday was ‘biggest day yet for booster jabs’; tighter restrictions will come into effect to ease Romania’s struggling hospitals

Bill Cash says UK still not being made full member of Horizon Europe science programme linked to dispute over NI protocolUK scientists are being “frozen out” of the £80bn EU research programme Horizon Europe because of the ongoing dispute over the Northern Ireland Brexit protocol, a House of Commons committee has claimed.Participation in the science research programme is being hampered by the ongoing dispute, the European scrutiny committee chair, Sir Bill Cash, said. Continue reading...

Study shows that our knowledge of why tumours form is still inadequateScientists will have to rethink how environmental triggers allow tumours to form and develop, one of Britain’s leading cancer experts warned last week. Michael Stratton, director of the Wellcome Sanger Institute, said recent results from an international cancer research study – which aimed to pinpoint environmental triggers involved in oeosophageal cancer – indicated current scientific understanding of tumour formation was inadequate.The research – on a type known as oesophageal squamous cell carcinoma – was aimed at uncovering why certain parts of the world suffer extremely high rates of the disease. These areas include parts of Iran, Turkey, Kenya and China where the disease is the most common form of cancer. In many other parts of the world, its incidence is relatively low. Continue reading...

Discovery of nobleman Khuwy shows that Egyptians were using advanced embalming methods 1,000 years before assumed dateThe ancient Egyptians were carrying out sophisticated mummifications of their dead 1,000 years earlier than previously thought, according to new evidence which could lead to a rewriting of the history books.The preserved body of a high-ranking nobleman called Khuwy, discovered in 2019, has been found to be far older than assumed and is, in fact, one of the oldest Egyptian mummies ever discovered. It has been dated to the Old Kingdom, proving that mummification techniques some 4,000 years ago were highly advanced. Continue reading...

Don’t beat yourself up if Covid times get to you. We need release from all the stressFor me, it was a shoe. One missing shoe. Honestly, it wasn’t even a great shoe, just one that I wear to walk the dog. But it was gone. Apparently to the same place all the solitary socks have gone, up there in footwear heaven. And, really, after the two years that we’d had, one would be forgiven for expecting me to roll right on through that. After all, I am a pandemic survivor.But instead, I sat on the bottom step and cried. Continue reading...

Survey shows minister is falling short in pledge to send out 300,000 devices

Health authorities compared vaccination rates with Zodiac signs, but the results may require further investigationExciting news for people who believe in science enough to want mass vaccination, but not enough to think horoscopes are made up: Utah’s Salt Lake county health department says there’s a big difference in vaccination rates depending on your Zodiac sign.At least, that’s what officials found when they analysed anonymised data on 1.2million residents, providing a table of the least and most vaccinated star signs.How many people of each Zodiac sign are vaccinated: Salt Lake county did this using anonymized state data. That’s likely quite accurate.How many people of each Zodiac sign live in the county overall: They estimated this by looking at the nationwide distribution of Zodiac signs, using data from the University of Texas-Austin. Then they assumed their county would have a similar distribution. Continue reading...

Frances Haugen’s ‘testimony tour’ of revelations about the tech company makes good copy, but will its executives listen?If you wanted a paragon of astute, thoroughly modern whistleblowing, then Frances Haugen is your woman. She is the former Facebook employee who revealed that the company knew about the harm that some of its products, especially Instagram, were causing but did little or nothing about them because it prioritised growth and revenue above all else.A good CV is essential to establish your street cred and Haugen ticks all the Silicon Valley boxes. A degree in electrical engineering? Check. An MBA from Harvard? Check. Specialised in algorithmic management? Check. Experience with, and knowledge of, ranking algorithms at a number of tech companies? Check (Google, Pinterest, Yelp). And of course you’ll have held down a substantial position in the company about which you are blowing the whistle. Again, Haugen ticks that box: at Facebook, she was the lead product manager on the civic misinformation team, which dealt with issues of democracy and misinformation; she later worked on counterespionage. Continue reading...

Uncanny and creepy, premonitions that turn out to be authentic can feel profound. But is there science to explain them?Around seven years ago, Garrett, was in a local Pizza Hut with his friends, having a day so ordinary that it is cumbersome to describe. He was 16 – or thereabouts – and had been told by teachers to go around nearby businesses and ask for gift vouchers that the school could use as prizes in a raffle. There were five other teenagers with Garrett, and they’d just finished speaking to the restaurant manager when suddenly, out of nowhere, Garrett’s his body was flooded with shock. He felt cold and clammy and had an “overwhelming sense that something had happened”. He desperately tried to stop himself crying in front of his peers.“It was like I’d just been told something terrible,” the now 23-year-old from the southwest of England says (his name has been changed on his request). “I couldn’t tell you exactly what it was, but I just knew something had happened.” Garrett returned home and tried to distract himself from a feeling he describes as grief. The phone rang. His mum answered it. A few hours earlier – around the time Garrett was in the restaurant – his grandfather had died from a sudden heart attack while on a cruise. Continue reading...

Senior scientists say problems at Immensa site show private firms should not be carrying out PCR tests

The Orion capsule will be launched on the Space Launch System, paving the way for the resumption of people to walk on Earth’s satellite againNasa has announced plans to launch an uncrewed flight around the Moon in February 2022, paving the way for astronauts to once again set foot on Earth’s satellite.The US space agency said on Friday that it was in the final phase of testing to send its Orion capsule on an orbit around the Moon on its Space Launch System rocket. Continue reading...

Chris Boshuizen was one of four astronauts – including William Shatner – who flew into space with Blue Origin. Here he describes the wonder of the journeyIt was a balmy morning in the west Texas desert when Chris Boshuizen stepped into Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin rocket capsule for a journey most of us will never experience.He waved a quick goodbye to the Amazon billionaire and took his seat next to William Shatner as the capsule door bolted shut. Continue reading...

Are you finding it harder than ever to concentrate? Don’t panic: these simple exercises will help you get your attention backPicture your day before you started to read this article. What did you do? In every single moment – getting out of bed, turning on a tap, flicking the kettle switch – your brain was blasted with information. Each second, the eyes will give the brain the equivalent of 10m bits (binary digits) of data. The ears will take in an orchestra of sound waves. Then there’s our thoughts: the average person, researchers estimate, will have more than 6,000 a day. To get anything done, we have to filter out most of this data. We have to focus.Focusing has felt particularly tough during the pandemic. Books are left half-read; eyes wander away from Zoom calls; conversations stall. My inability to concentrate on anything – work, reading, cleaning, cooking – without being distracted over the past 18 months has felt, at times, farcical. Continue reading...

Dame Joan Collins and Brian Cox unimpressed by historic trip, saying ‘let’s take care of this planet first’The Star Trek actor William Shatner’s recent historic space flight saw him boldly go where some fellow actors refuse to follow, as the nonagenarian was labelled a “fool” for taking part in his record-breaking jaunt.Dame Joan Collins, who once appeared in an episode of the science fiction series, and the Succession star Brian Cox, are both unimpressed by Shatner, at 90, becoming the oldest person to travel into space when earlier this month he flew in a rocket built by the Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. Continue reading...

How the Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker became one of the world’s most contentious thinkers. By Alex Blasdel Continue reading...

Researcher ‘staggered’ that institutes used newspaper photos to assess mask use and effect on Covid rates

Researchers say findings in Mozambique demonstrate impact of human interference in natureIvory poaching over decades has led to the evolution of tuskless elephants, researchers have found, proving that humans are “literally changing the anatomy” of wild animals.A previously rare genetic mutation causing tusklessness has become very common in some groups of African elephants after a period in which many were killed for their tusks, according to a study published in the journal Science. Continue reading...

Infections in UK at highest level since July but prime minister says ‘we are within the parameters of what the predictions were’. This live blog is now closed. Please follow the global Covid live blog for further updates

Chance encounters, serendipity, the glint in the eye – as we open up from lockdown, they’re back baby!It was June 2020, really early in the morning, still dark around the edges, and I was crossing the big intersection at Spencer and Bourke streets in Melbourne.I was half asleep and the only people around were tradies. At the other end of the crossing, I locked eyes with one of them and, out of nowhere, suddenly felt weak with lust. Continue reading...

US collector ‘falls in love’ with 8-metre-long dinosaur found in South Dakota and reassembled in ItalyAn 8-metre-long dinosaur skeleton has sold at auction for €6.6m (about £5.5m), more than four times its expected value, to a private collector in the US said to have fallen in love with the largest triceratops ever unearthed.The 66m-year-old skeleton, affectionately known as Big John, is 60% complete, and was unearthed in South Dakota, in the US, in 2014 and put together by specialists in Italy. Continue reading...