Breakthrough offers hope of restoration of sight to people suffering vision loss because of dry AMDAn 88-year-old woman has told of her joy at becoming the first patient in the UK to benefit from a groundbreaking bionic eye implant that enabled her to detect signals for the first time since going blind.The woman from Dagenham suffers from geographic atrophy. The condition is the most common form of dry age-related macular degeneration (AMD), which affects millions of people worldwide and can cause loss of sight. Continue reading...

The scrapping of plan B is driven by the prime minister’s political panic, not scientific guidanceNo one is under the illusion that the ending of Covid restrictions in England from next week is driven by science. The prime minister’s announcement on Wednesday was prompted by political desperation, not data. The daily death rate on Wednesday was reported as 359.Scientists warn that infections are likely to resurge. While the level of infection across the population and health staff absences are falling sharply, the chair of the British Medical Association warned that hospitalisations are double the level that they were when plan B was introduced, and case rates close to twice as high. Dr Chaand Nagpaul noted that the NHS remains under crippling pressure, with a record backlog of six million patients. Continue reading...

Implants that Musk says could allow paralysed people to walk already tested on a macaque and a pigThe billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk’s brain chip startup is preparing to launch clinical trials in humans.Musk, who co-founded Neuralink in 2016, has promised that the technology “will enable someone with paralysis to use a smartphone with their mind faster than someone using thumbs”. Continue reading...

Exclusive: QuantBioRes says it designs treatments for viral diseases based on electromagnetic frequencyA Danish “biotech” company in which Novak Djokovic holds a majority stake is working on a “frequency” treatment for Covid-19 that an expert says bears similarities to the principles of homeopathy.The world No 1 men’s tennis player was forced to leave Australia on Sunday after the country’s immigration minister cancelled his visa on the basis that his presence in Australia might risk “civil unrest” as he is a “talisman of anti-vaccination sentiment”. Continue reading...

Space Entertainment Enterprise, co-producers of Tom Cruise’s forthcoming space-set film, have announced a production studio 250 miles above EarthThe company co-producing Tom Cruise’s forthcoming space film has unveiled plans for a film production studio and a sports arena in zero gravity.Space Entertainment Enterprise (SEE) has said their planned completion date is December 2024 for the module, named SEE-1, which will dock on Axiom Station, the commercial wing of the International Space Station (ISS). Continue reading...

Information gathered by project could also be used to clear roads and assess avalanche risksBack in 1856, the American naturalist Henry David Thoreau remarked of snowflakes: “How full of the creative genius is the air in which these are generated! I should hardly admire more if real stars fell and lodged on my coat.”The six-sided snowflakes described by Thoreau are one of the many shapes that snowflakes can take on, and now a citizen science project called Snowflake ID is using people’s powers of observation to help train a specially designed camera to classify the different types of snowflake that fall. Continue reading...

Government says gene editing can develop climate crisis resistant crops while critics fear it is another step towards GMResearch into the gene editing of plants in the UK will become much easier with new rules brought forward by the government that will encourage field trials and other development efforts.Ministers said cutting red tape on gene editing research would help to develop new strains of crops that need less pesticide, have less environmental impact and provide better nutrition. The new rules, introduced in the form of a statutory instrument laid in parliament on Thursday, will apply only to research, rather than allowing gene-edited crops into widespread cultivation or consumption. Continue reading...

Could the food we eat and the air we breathe be damaging our immune systems? The number of people with autoimmune diseases, from rheumatoid arthritis to type 1 diabetes, began to increase around 40 years ago in the west. Now, some are also emerging in countries that had never seen the diseases before.Ian Sample speaks to genetic scientist and consultant gastroenterologist James Lee about how this points to what western lifestyles might be doing to our health, and how genetics could reveal exactly how our immune systems are malfunctioningArchive: King 5 News, WXYZ Channel 7 Continue reading...

Now the drug regulator has provisionally approved Paxlovid and Lagevrio, we ask experts how big a game-changer they could be

Czech government scraps decree to avoid ‘deepening fissures’ in country; Bulgaria reports highest daily tally of pandemic with 11,181 infections

Lancet analysis highlights need for urgent action to address antibiotic-resistant bacterial infectionsAntimicrobial resistance poses a significant threat to humanity, health leaders have warned, as a study reveals it has become a leading cause of death worldwide and is killing about 3,500 people every day.More than 1.2 million – and potentially millions more – died in 2019 as a direct result of antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections, according to the most comprehensive estimate to date of the global impact of antimicrobial resistance (AMR).

As with any other ineradicable disease, prevention and treatment can be integrated into societyDelaying and preventing infection as much as possible through this pandemic was a worthwhile strategy. In early 2020, there were few treatments, limited testing and no vaccines. The costs of those lockdowns were big, but the effort to buy time paid off. In that time, science has transformed Covid from a deadly virus to a much less serious, nasty disease – one that is manageable at home, for the vast majority of those vaccinated. It has, largely, defanged it.But even as we have had success treating and preventing serious infections, Sars-CoV-2 has become increasingly transmissible. ONS survey data indicates that one in 15 are positive in England, with similar numbers for the other three nations. While the good news is that the Omicron variant is resulting in less severe disease and a smaller fraction of hospitalisations, so many people are infected and isolating that critical services are struggling with staffing. This is what is driving governments to rethink isolation policies, and ask whether they are becoming more disruptive than the virus itself.Prof Devi Sridhar is chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh Continue reading...

Eating upside down | Riding the Gypsy Queen | School mottos | Big dogs | Letters that divided BritainI remember being taught in biology class in our 1950s grammar school in Manchester that peristalsis works both ways (Dairylea cheese ad showing child eating while upside down banned over choking risk, 19 January). Under teacher supervision, two of us held a boy upside down by his ankles while he drank half a bottle of milk through a straw. We all survived the demonstration.

Australian Academy of Science says locally operated Earth observation satellites would ensure Australia’s independence

Committing to six minutes of reading a night before bed sounds easy – and it is. Not only can it improve sleep and reduce stress, but you’ll be better read tooWe’re all on a never-ending pursuit to perfect the art of good shuteye. Theories abound, so it is easy to find yourself in a maze of advice, mindfulness techniques and mum’s advice about the magic of a cup of warm milk at night.But one tactic I found ticked all my boxes: reading for just six minutes before you go to sleep. Relaxing your brain in a way that Netflix before bed just can’t, this simple trick has both improved my sleep and put an end to my reading slump. Continue reading...

Schistostega pennata can grow into huge colonies in the dark and carpet caves in glowing green lightThere are caves where ethereal golden-green lights glow on the ground like emeralds. These light displays are from a luminous moss called Schistostega pennata, known as goblin’s gold, a name that conjures up legends of cave-dwelling creatures. But in daylight, the magical green glow vanishes.The moss is superbly adapted to life in the dark. When its spores germinate they grow filaments that fan out, scavenging for any faint light they can find. Cells on the surface of the moss are covered with tiny lenses that focus any dim light deep down into the bottom of the cells where chloroplasts move around to harvest any pinpricks of light. Continue reading...

Gold and silver tubes, each more than a metre long, were discovered in North CaucasusA set of ancient gold and silver tubes dating to about 5,500 years ago and unearthed in North Caucasus in Russia could be the world’s oldest surviving drinking straws, experts have claimed.The eight thin-walled tubes, each more than a metre in length with a narrow perforated tip, were found in the largest of three compartments containing human remains, discovered during the excavation of a mound near Maykop in the summer of 1897. Continue reading...

Rebecca Sharrock is one of a handful of people worldwide with highly superior autobiographical memory. But remembering minute details of your own life has its downsidesEvery morning since January 2004, Rebecca Sharrock crosses off the date on a calendar in her room. Like many people, the 31-year-old uses it to keep track of time, distinguishing the present day from the ones that came before.Unlike many, Sharrock can remember what happened on specific days five, 10, 15 years ago. Continue reading...

US researchers show negative version of placebo effect behind many symptoms such as headaches and fatigueMore than two-thirds of the common side-effects people experience after a Covid jab can be attributed to a negative version of the placebo effect rather than the vaccine itself, researchers claim.Scientists in the US examined data from 12 clinical trials of Covid vaccines and found that the “nocebo effect” accounted for about 76% of all common adverse reactions after the first dose and nearly 52% after the second dose. Continue reading...

Priti Patel’s crackdown on peaceful protesters ignores all the evidence about how to handle large demonstrationsOn the first day of 2022 – the hottest New Year’s Day on record – Priti Patel announced that cracking down on eco protesters would be one of her priorities for the year.It wasn’t simply rhetoric. The police, crime, sentencing and courts bill for England and Wales being debated in parliament provides the police with a dramatic extension to their powers to stop or constrain protest. It even contains a provision allowing police to fine protesters for inadvertent breaches of restrictions they “ought” to have known about.Stephen Reicher is a member of the Sage subcommittee advising on behavioural science. He is a professor of Psychology at the University of St Andrews. During Cop26 he was part of a research team, funded by the New Institute in Hamburg, which was studying the dynamics of protest.

The coronavirus variant has spread across the UK at incredible speed – but there are signs that the wave may have reached its peak.Madeleine Finlay talks to the Guardian science correspondent Nicola Davis about what we can expect in the weeks and months to come, and whether a second ‘exit wave’ could be here in the summerArchive: CNA, Sky News Continue reading...

Which type of mask should you be wearing? Earlier in the coronavirus pandemic, the public was encouraged to wear reusable cloth masks or surgical masks, while P2/N95 respirators were not recommended for community use. But the Omicron variant’s increased transmissibility has prompted the question: should you consider switching your reusable mask for a respirator instead?► Subscribe to Guardian Australia on YouTube

The first full moon of 2022 – named the Wolf moon by native north Americans because wolves can be heard howling at the moon more around this time of year due to hunger Continue reading...

Combined vaccine should be ready in time for winter infectious season in 2023, says drug firm’s chief executiveModerna is aiming to launch a single booster vaccination that will protect against both Covid-19 and flu within two years, its chief executive has said.Stéphane Bancel said that the combined vaccine – which will protect against Covid-19, influenza and RSV, a common respiratory virus – could be available before the winter infectious season in 2023. Continue reading...

Dogs can figure out some things that even chimps can’t. Our science correspondent puts her puppy retriever to the testIt’s a cold winter’s day, and I’m standing in a room watching my dog stare fixedly at two flower pots. I’m about to get an answer to a burning question: is my puppy a clever girl?Dogs have been our companions for millennia, domesticated sometime between 15,000 and 30,000 years ago. And the bond endures: according to the latest figures from the Pet Food Manufacturers Association 33% of households in the UK have a dog. Continue reading...

First up will be Gemini, the twins, then Cancer, the crab, and finally Leo, the lionThis week, the full moon will cruise through three zodiacal constellations. First Gemini, the twins; then Cancer, the crab; and finally Leo, the lion.The chart shows the view at 2100 GMT on 17 January, looking east-south-east from London. The moon will be full and sitting just below the two brightest stars of Gemini: Castor and Pollux. The brighter of the two, and the star nearest to the moon, is the yellow-tinged Pollux, while the one above is the whiter but dimmer Castor. Continue reading...

One reader’s experience of the effects on family members of the conspiracy theories surrounding vaccinationsI read David Green’s letter on anti-vaxxers (12 January) and empathised with the letter written in response (13 January). The week before Christmas my dad died of Covid. The intensive care consultant couldn’t have been clearer that, in her opinion, if he had been vaccinated he would not have developed Covid pneumonia to the severity that he did.He died very frightened and asking his family to come and be with him, and we couldn’t. The experience traumatised my sister so badly that she was hospitalised with psychosis three days after his passing. The reason he wasn’t vaccinated is because his mind was poisoned with conspiracy theories and misinformation exacerbated by two years of lockdown and reduced social contact. While I am angry that he would not get vaccinated, I don’t think any good would ever come from criminalising his choice. Continue reading...

Graves dating back thousands of years are giving up their secrets, as new ways to pin down the sex of old bones are overturning long-held, biased beliefs about gender and loveIn the early summer of 2009, a team of archaeologists arrived at a construction site in a residential neighbourhood of Modena, Italy. Digging had started for a new building and in the process workers unearthed a cemetery, dating back 1,500 years. There were 11 graves, but it quickly became clear that one of them was not like the others. Instead of a single skeleton, Tomb 16 contained two and they were holding hands.“Here’s the demonstration of how love between a man and a woman can really be eternal,” wrote Gazzetta di Modena of the pair, instantly dubbed “the Lovers”. However, according to the original anthropological report, the sex of the Lovers was not obvious from the bones alone. At some point, someone tried to analyse their DNA, but “the data were so bad”, says Federico Lugli at the University of Bologna, that it looked like “just random noise”. Continue reading...

Two years of Covid have wreaked havoc with the nation’s mental health. What can be learned from the survivors of other traumas and is there a way of thinking ourselves to a happier, healthier place?It was October 2020 when I realised I was going to have to ask for help. I’ve always been anxious, but thanks to the pandemic, I developed debilitating health anxiety. A dire winter was coming and any respite we’d had over the summer felt like it was slipping away. I couldn’t get to sleep and when I finally did, I had nightmares. My stomach churned and my hands shook so badly I had to give up caffeine. I developed a chronic reflux cough and, on more than one occasion, got into such an irrational spiral about it being Covid that I had to book a PCR test just to be able to function.“One of the most diabolical things about this pandemic is the on and on-ness of it all,” says Amanda Ripley, author of The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes – and Why. “Humans can withstand a lot of turmoil and instability if they can recover.” Prior to Covid, Ripley studied people who survived tornadoes and terror attacks, emergencies for which the mental health consequences are much better understood than the long, slow-burn, seemingly endless one we find ourselves living through. Continue reading...

Pfizer says its recently approved Paxlovid drug has almost 90% success in preventing severe illness if taken soon after infectionThe recent decision by regulators to approve the antiviral agent Paxlovid for use in the UK adds a formidable new weapon to the arsenal of treatments for Covid-19. Pfizer says the drug has almost 90% success in preventing severe illness in vulnerable adults if taken soon after infection occurs. Paxlovid is one of a growing repertoire of antiviral medicines – which also includes Merck’s agent Molnurpiravir – that can be given to people who have contracted the disease. Crucially, antivirals – which disrupt a virus’s ability to replicate inside an infected cell – provide hope that infected vulnerable individuals, including the very elderly and those with compromised immune systems, can be kept out of hospital.It has taken two years of research for the first antivirals to be approved, with drugs becoming available more than a year after the first Covid vaccines were given in the UK. So why has it taken so long, comparatively, for effective antivirals to be developed? And what role will they play in the UK, which now has broad vaccine protection against Covid? Continue reading...

Study finds ancient hunter-gatherers traded eggshell beads over vast areaScientists have uncovered the world’s oldest social network, a web of connections that flourished 50,000 years ago and stretched for thousands of miles across Africa.But unlike its modern electronic equivalent, this ancient web of social bonds used a far more prosaic medium. It relied on the sharing and trading of beads made of ostrich eggshells – one of humanity’s oldest forms of personal adornment. Continue reading...

Cases seem to be subsiding in states with high vaccination rates, but observers are reluctant to make firm predictionsIn February 2021, Dr Craig Spencer wrote in a Medium post that he was as “eager as anyone to see the end of this pandemic. Thankfully, that may be in sight”.“Covid cases and hospitalizations are dropping,” wrote Spencer, director of Global Health in Emergency Medicine at New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center. “Vaccines are getting into arms. So, what happens next?” Continue reading...

Police employ them and scientists study them, but what is life like for the rare few who can never forget a face? Super-recogniser Yenny Seo didn’t think it was anything specialAs a child, Yenny Seo often surprised her mother by pointing out a stranger in the grocery store, remarking it was the same person they passed on the street a few weeks earlier. Likewise, when they watched a movie together, Seo would often recognise “extras” who’d appeared fleetingly in other films.Her mother never thought this was “anything special”, Seo says, and simply assumed she had a particularly observant daughter. Continue reading...

Rachel, 38, said she was discouraged from having the Covid vaccine in the early days of the rollout

When Tanya Frank joined a group of ‘joyriders’, she rediscovered her love of cycling and found a caring communityI always thought that joyriding meant nicking cars and taking them for a spin, often when drunk. It was what some of the wayward lads did on the Chingford Hall council estate where I grew up. So, I was surprised when the Waltham Forest newsletter reported a different kind of joyriding: a cycling group that is free, for women, and that loans bikes to the members who need them. It has grown since its inception, but JoyRiders started right here in my borough where we have an infrastructure of 27km of cycle paths, known as Mini Holland.London was edging out of the last lockdown and one of the most isolating years we have ever experienced when I discovered the group. I had returned to my roots after living in California in the hope that this country might be kinder to my youngest son. He had bounced around in the mental health system in the USA for almost a decade, where the “cure” had been worse than the diagnosis. But the pandemic hampered my plan. When my son was admitted to a psychiatric hospital yet again, only here instead of in America, I knew I needed a better road map to find my way through the pain. Continue reading...

Dr Maria Bottazzi says their vaccine, called Corbevax, is unique because they do not intend to patent itA new Covid-19 vaccine is being developed by Texas scientists using a decades-old conventional method that will make the production and distribution cheaper and more accessible for countries most affected by the pandemic and where new variants are likely to originate due to low inoculation rates.The team, led by Drs Peter Hotez and Maria Bottazzi from the Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development at Baylor College of Medicine, has been developing vaccine prototypes for Sars and Mers since 2011, which they reconstructed to create the new Covid vaccine, dubbed Corbevax, or “the world’s Covid-19 vaccine”. Continue reading...

The Hyderabad-based company says the vaccine will provide ‘sustainable access to low- and middle-income countries’The Indian biotechnology and biopharmaceutical company Biological E has produced the country’s first locally developed Covid-19 vaccine in partnership with the Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development at Baylor College of Medicine.The Hyderabad-based company has already produced 150m doses of the vaccine, called Corbevax, and will produce 100m doses each month beginning in February. It is expected that 1bn doses will be produced by the end of 2022 – just shy of India’s nearly 1.4-billion population. Continue reading...

But experts are confident worst case scenarios for current Covid wave unlikely to occur

Ammonia from animal waste and fertilisers used to grow feed create air pollution and poorer suffer mostWe think of industry and traffic as the main sources of air pollution and overlook farming and food production.A new study from the Chinese University of Hong Kong examined the impacts from changing diets and increased meat production in China since the 1980s. Initially, the changes in agricultural production meant more food and better quality food. Undernourishment was reduced and people benefited from fresher fruit and vegetables, and improved animal products. However, continued increases in meat consumption, more processed food and less whole grains have offset these initial gains. Continue reading...

As I embark on a third year of general practice under Covid, I am more conscious than ever that recovery is different for every illness and every patient. By Gavin Francis Continue reading...

Scientists who were part of original 1996 study stand by their observations claiming new findings are ‘disappointing’A four billion-year-old meteorite from Mars that caused a splash here on Earth decades ago contains no evidence of ancient, primitive Martian life after all, scientists have said.In 1996, a Nasa-led team announced that organic compounds in the rock appeared to have been left by living creatures. Other scientists were skeptical and researchers chipped away at that premise over the decades, most recently by a team led by the Carnegie Institution for Science’s Andrew Steele. Continue reading...

Researchers exploring Antarctica’s seabed have discovered a thriving, unprecedented colony of icefish 'about a third of the size of London'. 'We expected to see the normal Antarctic seafloor … [but] during the first four hours of our dive, we saw nothing but fish nests,' said Autun Purser, of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Germany, and lead author of the study published in Current Biology.

We mustn’t punish those who are fearful of getting the Covid vaccine, writes the mother of an autistic man who suffers from crippling anxietyI was disappointed by Dave Green’s letter (12 January) regarding the penalties he suggests for those who are unvaccinated. I can empathise with his words as a previous cancer patient myself, and also as a frontline nurse, but I disagree with his judgment on “anti-vaxxers”. Those who have chosen not to have the vaccine do not all share the same mindset, and it is worth bearing this in mind before they are all excommunicated from society.My adult son is autistic and is unvaccinated by choice. His belief system may differ from most people’s, but as he is housebound due to crippling anxiety, hopefully he will not be much of a risk to himself or others. Let’s be civilised enough not to alienate him further. Of course, he might have chosen to forgo the Covid vaccine without the complexities of an autism diagnosis, but we cannot punish those who are fearful or those who wish to preserve their self-determination. Continue reading...

Images of men wearing a blue medical face mask perceived as being the most attractive

Researchers make unprecedented discovery of 60m active nests while collecting data in Weddell SeaResearchers exploring Antarctica’s seabed have discovered a thriving, unprecedented colony of icefish “about a third of the size of London”.The surprise discovery of about 60 million active nests was made by a team of biologists while collecting routine data at 1.5-2.5 metres above the seafloor of Antarctica’s southern Weddell Sea. Before this discovery, the largest found colony contained only 60 nests. Continue reading...

Many people are at their peak of infectiousness at the very time that Sajid Javid has said they can now mix freely in societyThere have been many changes to isolation rules in England but the science of how Covid-19 spreads has remained the same. During the first waves of the pandemic, people were required to isolate for 10 days after testing positive. This was subsequently changed to seven days, so long as the person had a negative lateral flow test on days six and seven. Although data is still being collected on the impact of this change, the isolation period has been cut again: today, the health secretary, Sajid Javid, announced that people with Covid will only need to isolate for five days, so long as they show two negative lateral flow tests by day six.I’m deeply concerned about this. There is little scientific evidence to justify these reduced measures. Yes, some would argue that Omicron is mild compared to other variants, and does not result in massive hospitalisations. But a comprehensive review of research into 5,340 infected people around the world showed that the times at which these people were shedding the most virus, and were therefore most infectious to others, was between days three to six. The amount of virus each person shedded tailed off at days seven to nine. By day 10, no viable virus could be recovered from their respiratory tracts.Sally Cutler is professor in medical microbiology at the University of East London Continue reading...

As England’s deputy chief medical officer prepares to step down, here is a selection of his most striking metaphors and similes

Covid will continue to shape our lives even after Omicron infections finally begin falling

Preservation of figure carved from single piece of wood is incredible, say archaeologistsAn extremely rare, carved wooden figure from the early Roman era has been unearthed in a waterlogged ditch in Buckinghamshire, the latest extraordinary find in the UK’s biggest ever archaeological dig along the 150-mile HS2 rail route.The 67cm-tall figure is carved from a single piece of wood. Archaeologists said its preservation was “incredible” given its age and material, but the lack of oxygen in the ditch helped prevent rotting over many centuries. Continue reading...

The surge has led to passengers stranded on ships, staff shortages and tour cancelations in addition to ports turning ships awayA surge in Covid infections on cruise ships is causing mayhem across the industry, leaving passengers stranded aboard ships, exacerbating staff shortages and prompting the CDC to warn US passengers against all cruise travel.The CDC director said this week that Covid cases have increased 30-fold in just two weeks. Every one of the nearly 100 cruise ships currently carrying passengers in US waters has reported enough Covid-19 cases to merit investigation by the CDC, according to the agency’s website. Continue reading...