by Presented by Madeleine Finlay, produced by Anand J on (#5TYZR)
Last week, the tech CEO Elizabeth Holmes – once described as ‘the next Steve Jobs’ – was convicted of fraud, and could face decades in prison. Her now collapsed company, Theranos, promised to revolutionise medicine with a machine that could run hundreds of health tests on just a pinprick of blood. Those claims have since been exposed as false – but could they ever have been true?Madeleine Finlay speaks to the Guardian’s wealth correspondent, Rupert Neate, about Silicon Valley’s trial of the century, and pathologist Dr Benjamin Mazer about why Theranos’s vision seemed impossible from the startArchive: ABC News, TedMed, CBS Mornings, NBC News, CNBC Continue reading...
The revolutionary new scope could provide a glimpse of the cosmos dating back billions of years, but first some painstaking adjustments are neededNasa has embarked on the months-long, painstaking process of bringing its newly launched James Webb space telescope into focus, a task due for completion in time for the revolutionary eye in the sky to begin peering into the cosmos by early summer.Mission control engineers at Nasa’s Goddard space flight centre in Greenbelt, Maryland, began by sending their initial commands to tiny motors called actuators that slowly position and fine-tune the telescope’s principal mirror. Continue reading...
Study confirms anecdotal evidence that lockdowns protected children against non-Covid illnessesHospital admissions for common childhood infections in England dropped by as much as 94% during the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic, according to the first major study of its kind.Doctors have previously reported anecdotally how Covid measures such as lockdowns inadvertently led to children being better protected against other illnesses. Continue reading...
Writers from Julian Barnes to Oliver Sacks and Petina Gappah find some profound truths in what gets lost to memoryI have always been fascinated by the human memory – its capacity, its acuity, its connections to emotions and our basic senses. Somehow the blob of gray gunk in my skull manages to recall everything from the statute of frauds I memorised in law school to the lyrics of pretty much any new wave single released in the 1980s. It’s the reason one whiff of Ralph Lauren Polo cologne takes me right back to a gropey nightmare in the cab of a pickup truck with the high school quarterback.But despite memory’s remarkable breadth and depth, we also know that it is fallible. Fragile. Even manipulable. Cognitive research has proved, for example, that eyewitness memory is far more confident and far less accurate than we instinctively believe. If we can’t believe our own memories, how can we trust ourselves? Memory is also reversible, and what we have forgotten is often as telling as what we recall. Continue reading...
The medical community must find answers for those suffering from long Covid. They are running out of time and hopeMy wife, Heidi, took her own life after a 13-month battle with long Covid that started as a mostly asymptomatic coronavirus infection. Long Covid took her from one of the healthiest, most vibrant people I’ve ever known to a person so debilitated that she could not bear another day on this planet.I came home one day last May to find that she’d decided to end her pain. As our 13-year-old son waited outside for the paramedics, I tried desperately to revive her. I did a good enough job that by the time we got her to the hospital they could restart her heart, but she was brain dead on arrival. The emergency room doctor assumed that she died from depression. When I told him, “She wasn’t depressed, it was long Covid,” he looked at me with bewilderment and asked, “What’s long Covid?” Continue reading...
Scientists and politicians have focused on the short-term impact of the virus – but we can no longer leave chronic patients to struggleDespite apprehension about high Covid-19 rates, my family Christmas in Yorkshire was wonderful. Unfortunately, the week after was marred by headache, fever and malaise. And a PCR test confirmed the worst – I had Covid-19 for the second time. My second encounter has been dominated by severe fatigue and reduced concentration, which though improving, have not yet resolved more than two weeks later. Worryingly, what I know about long Covid suggests that this could persist for several months – or longer.The World Health Organization defines long Covid as ongoing symptoms “three months from the onset of Covid-19”. In December, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) estimated that more than 1.3 million people in the UK had symptoms for four weeks or more after Covid-19, of whom 892,000 people (70%) had symptoms that persisted for at least 12 weeks, and 506,000 (40%) for at least one year. Dr Melissa Heightman, who leads the University College London hospital specialist long Covid clinic says that breathlessness, fatigue, cough, myalgia, chest pain, headache, “brain fog” and palpitations are most commonly reported. But many other symptoms may be present.Amitava Banerjee is professor of clinical data science and honorary consultant cardiologist at University College London and is leading the Stimulate-ICP study to investigate long Covid Continue reading...
Waitrose stocks Sunions, developed by decades of cross-breeding less pungent strains of onionChopping onions is a recurring kitchen nightmare that often reduces home cooks to tears, but red eyes could be a thing of the past as “tearless” onions go on sale in the UK for the first time.Next week Waitrose will start selling Sunions in its stores, a “brown, tearless and sweet” onion variety that is being billed as a “gamechanger” for red-eyed chefs. The onions, which are being marketed using the strapline “not a single tear”, have taken more than 30 years to perfect. Continue reading...
Analysis: As doctors monitor world’s first human recipient of pig heart, safety and ethical concerns remainThe world’s first transplant of a genetically altered pig heart into an ailing human is a landmark for medical science, but the operation, and the approach more broadly, raise substantial safety and ethical concerns.Surgeons at the University of Maryland Medical Center spent eight hours on Friday evening transplanting the heart from the pig into 57-year-old David Bennett, who had been in hospital for more than a month with terminal heart failure. Continue reading...
Last year the oceans absorbed heat equivalent to seven Hiroshima atomic bombs detonating each second, 24 hours a day, 365 days a yearI was fortunate to play a small part in a new study, just published in the journal Advances in Atmospheric Sciences, which shows that the Earth broke yet another heat record last year. Twenty-three scientists from around the world teamed up to analyze thousands of temperature measurements taken throughout the world’s oceans. The measurements, taken at least 2,000 meters (about 6,500ft) deep and spread across the globe, paint a clear picture: the Earth is warming, humans are the culprit, and the warming will continue indefinitely until we collectively take action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.We used measurements from the oceans because they are absorbing the vast majority of the heat associated with global warming. In fact, more than 90% of global warming heat ends up in the oceans. I like to say that “global warming is really ocean warming”. If you want to know how fast climate change is happening, the answer is in the oceans. Continue reading...
The pandemic has left our best-laid plans in disarray, but we can still have spur-of-the-moment adventuresBack in the wild old days, my best buddy and I used to call going out “looking for trouble”. We weren’t hoping for a punch-up or a little light robbery, but a spontaneous adventure involving music, strangers or just the city at night. All that spur-of-the-moment fun has taken quite a beating since the pandemic began, for many millions of us. First came the lockdowns, social distancing and closed venues, then the cautious reopening when even a trip to the pub or an art gallery had to be booked weeks in advance. And now, just when it seemed the world was finally getting back to normal, Omicron has come wielding its everything’s-off-again sledgehammer, crushing all those dreams of nights out, holidays and raucous parties. Not only does it seem foolish to plan anything, but after two years of frustration and self-restraint, it’s hard to summon up the enthusiasm to do anything off the cuff.And that’s quite a loss. While we often think anticipation is half the fun, in 2016 researchers from two US universities found that people enjoyed activities more when they were impromptu. Scheduling a coffee break or a movie, for instance, made them feel “less free-flowing and more work-like”, wrote the authors. As Jane Austen put it 200 years ago in Emma: “Why not seize the pleasure at once? – How often is happiness destroyed by preparation, foolish preparation!” Continue reading...
by Harriet Sherwood Arts and culture correspondent on (#5TWG7)
Findings surpass experts’ expectations after buildings, wells, coins and wide road discoveredA wealthy Roman trading town, whose inhabitants adorned themselves with jewellery and ate from fine pottery, has been discovered half a metre below the surface of a remote field in Northamptonshire.A 10-metre-wide Roman road, domestic and industrial buildings, more than 300 coins and at least four wells have been unearthed at the site, where 80 archaeologists have been working for the past 12 months. Continue reading...
by Presented by Ian Sample and produced by Madeleine on (#5TWEP)
It’s been called the most important glacier in the world. The Thwaites glacier in Antarctica is the size of Florida, and contains enough water to raise sea levels by over half a metre. Over the past 30 years it has been melting at an increasing pace, and currently contributes 4% of annual global sea level rise. Ian Sample speaks to marine geophysicist Dr Rob Larter about a new research mission to the Thwaites glacier, the role of Boaty McBoatface and what it’s like to see a region melt away before your eyes Continue reading...
Patient is doing well three days after the highly experimental surgery, doctors say, though it’s too soon to know if it is a successIn a medical first, doctors in Maryland have transplanted a genetically modified pig’s heart into a human patient in a last-ditch effort to save his life.Doctors at the University of Maryland medical center said Monday that the patient was doing well three days after the highly experimental surgery, though it is too soon to know if the operation has been a success. Continue reading...
The solution to today’s puzzleEarlier today I set you the puzzle below, which is based on Gödel’s incompleteness theorem. As I discussed in the original post, this theorem is one of the most famous in maths and states that in any mathematical system there will always be true statements that cannot be proved.For example, in a formal mathematical setting, the statement ‘This sentence is unprovable” is both true and formally unprovable. When Gödel published his theorem in 1931 it up-ended the study of the foundations of mathematics and its consequences are still being felt today. Continue reading...
Dominic Cummings | Science | Prayers | MarmaladeThe Conservatives warned that if Jeremy Corbyn were elected prime minister he would take Britain back to the 1980s. With all the cheese and wine parties at Downing Street (Dominic Cummings makes new claim of party in No 10 garden in lockdown, 7 January), it seems as if Johnson is aiming for the 1970s.
Contrary to mythical depictions of the iconic steeds as towering beasts, most in England were less than 14.2 hands highIn films and literature they are usually depicted as hulking, foot-stomping, snorting beasts but a new study has claimed that the medieval warhorse was typically a much slighter, daintier animal.A team of archaeologists and historians searching for the truth about the steeds that carried knights into battle has concluded that most were probably only the size of a modern-day pony. Continue reading...
Access to vaccines, masks and tests will help us make the awkward transition from pandemic to endemicIn May 2020, we and other scientists predicted that many regions of the world might never reach the herd immunity threshold for Covid-19 – the point at which enough people are immune to infection that transmission begins to slow down.This remains true today, even as vaccines have become accessible in wealthy nations and many people have built up immunity through vaccinations, boosters and previous infections.Erin Mordecai is an associate professor of biology at Stanford University. Mallory Harris is a PhD candidate at Stanford University, where she studies infectious disease Continue reading...
The proof that rocked mathsIn 1931, the Austrian logician Kurt Gödel published his incompleteness theorem, a result widely considered one of the greatest intellectual achievements of modern times.The theorem states that in any reasonable mathematical system there will always be true statements that cannot be proved. The result was a huge shock to the mathematical community, where the prevailing view was an unshakeable optimism about the power and reach of their subject. It had been assumed that maths was “complete”, meaning that all mathematical statements are either provable or refutable. The 25-year-old Gödel demonstrated this was incorrect by constructing a true statement that was not provable. Maths, he announced, has its limits. Continue reading...
by Hannah Devlin Science correspondent on (#5TV5H)
Ichthyosaur about 10 metres long and dating back 180m years discovered at Rutland WaterA gigantic prehistoric “sea dragon” discovered in the Midlands has been described as one of the greatest finds in the history of British palaeontology.The ichthyosaur, which is about 180m years old with a skeleton measuring about 10 metres in length and a skull weighing about a tonne, is the largest and most complete fossil of its kind ever found in the UK. Joe Davis of the Leicestershire and Rutland Wildlife Trust discovered it during the routine draining of a lagoon island at the Rutland Water reservoir in February 2021. Continue reading...
Brineura, already given to children with life-limiting genetic disease, to be injected into back of eye in Great Ormond Street trialEight children born with a “devastating” genetic disease in England have become the first in the world to receive a pioneering treatment aimed at stopping them from going blind.Doctors at Great Ormond Street hospital in London are trialling a drug they believe may save the eyesight of the children who have CLN2-type Batten disease. Brineura, already successful in animals, is being administered to four boys and four girls on a compassionate use basis. Continue reading...
Self-help podcasts triumphantly brought to book, Raven Leilani’s insightful portrait of sex, race and the city, and Amitava Kumar does battle with fake newsJake Humphrey and Prof Damian Hughes
My life is a constant struggle against the primitive part of my brain – and the forces designed to exploit itI experience frequent, urgent cravings for very specific things and act on them immediately. As soon as I open my eyes I often know exactly what I want: to wear a particular little outfit, buy a sandwich of a certain heft and filling from this shop in this postcode, eat it (for instance) on a bench under a tree. It’s a shame that the place in me capable of conjuring these whims also regularly churns out other, much more boring urges, and occasionally dangerous ones too. My brain is a constant game of Hungry Hungry Hippos, my dopamine receptors snapping noisily at an alarming rate, urging me to do things that actually bring me very little pleasure at all. Why do I want things that don’t make me feel good? I’m at the mercy of my lizard brain and the mechanisms of society designed to exploit it.The concept of the three-tiered brain – a primitive reptilian brain nestled like a living fossil in the clay of our most recently evolved, superior brains, was proposed in the 1960s by the neuroscientist Paul MacLean. Its scientific credulity holds about as much significance to me as that of the astrology app that sends me notifications each morning – it just provides a structure for me to think about my habits and how to change them. In short, the reptilian brain is the most primitive part of the brain. I visualise it quite literally as the lizard-like baby from Eraserhead, mewling and requiring constant attention from the other parts of the brain, the parts that have evolved over 10m years to quieten its cries.Eli Goldstone is the author of Strange Heart Beating Continue reading...
by Robin McKie Observer science editor on (#5TTFX)
New DNA research by London-based scientists hopes to find cure for rapidly spreading conditionsMore and more people around the world are suffering because their immune systems can no longer tell the difference between healthy cells and invading micro-organisms. Disease defences that once protected them are instead attacking their tissue and organs.Major international research efforts are being made to fight this trend – including an initiative at London’s Francis Crick Institute, where two world experts, James Lee and Carola Vinuesa, have set up separate research groups to help pinpoint the precise causes of autoimmune disease, as these conditions are known. Continue reading...
‘Time machine’ will allow astronomers to study the beginning of the universe shortly after the Big BangNasa engineers have completed the final unfolding of the huge primary mirror of the agency’s James Webb space telescope. The manoeuvre was the final step of the $10bn observatory’s two-week deployment phase that began with its launch on Christmas Day.The telescope, which has already travelled more than 600,000 miles across space, is the largest, most powerful space telescope ever built and had to be folded up tightly so it would fit inside its Ariane 5 launch rocket. Continue reading...
Amid a hectic life, meditation can help make you happier and healthierJillian Lavender, a much-sought-after meditation teacher and author of a new book Why Meditate?, is on a mission to eliminate stress from people’s lives – not to manage it, or cope with, but to get rid of it. Altogether.“People talk about stress as something we have to learn to live with, particularly anxiety,” she says. “Actually we can do something about stress.” She believes we need to change our mindset around what she sees as one of the greatest causes of suffering today. There is no such thing as “good stress”, she says. “People are tired, exhausted and stressed. And they compensate for that by all sorts of behaviours and habits. I want to bring us into a normal state, a balanced state that is healthy.” Continue reading...
Likely to contain dozens of undiscovered species, the site is so well-preserved that the contents of fish stomachs and breathing apparatus of spiders can be seenThe Australian paleontologist Matthew McCurry was digging for Jurassic fossils when a farmer dropped by with news of something he’d seen in his paddock – a fossilised leaf in a piece of hard brown rock.Fossil leaves are not usually anything to write home about, but the spot was close, so McCurry and his colleague Michael Frese went to take a look. Continue reading...
Palaeontologists from the Australian Museum have made a remarkable discovery outside of a small town in New South Wales, Australia. Encased in the hard brown rocks of McGrath's Flat are the inhabitants of a rainforest that existed about 15 million years ago.Thousands of fossils have been revealed – from flowering plants to fruits and seeds, insects, spiders, pollen and fish Continue reading...
by Hannah Devlin Science correspondent on (#5TS54)
After missteps and controversy, the quick and easy tests are well on way to becoming part of daily lifeOnce obscure diagnostic devices, lateral flow tests have had a rocky path to mainstream use, but some experts now view their rise to ubiquity as a “heroic” step in the fight against Covid-19 and say they could be here to stay.As the first wave of Covid crashed down in early 2020 and governments scrambled to secure PPE, ventilators and reagents for laboratory testing, behind the scenes some had already foreseen a role for the pregnancy test-style kits. Continue reading...
At pioneering facility in London, researchers use wearable tech to see how toddlers’ brains developWith her Mickey Mouse backpack, coloured Duplo blocks and disarmingly cute smile, Serena could be any young child constructing a toy house for an imaginary character – were it not for the wires and nodules sticking out of her head. But Serena is a pint-sized pioneer at the cutting edge of research into the enduring mystery of what makes toddlers tick. She is among the first children to be studied at the world’s first dedicated ToddlerLab – a multimillion-pound effort to get inside the heads of toddlers.Young children do and say the most extraordinary things, and in neurological terms, they are extraordinary creatures. “The change in between two and five years of age is pretty spectacular: there’s a lot going on in terms of brain development and cognitive development,” said Prof Natasha Kirkham, a reader in developmental psychology at the Birkbeck Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development (CBCD) in London, home to the Wohl Wolfson ToddlerLab. Continue reading...
Maximiliano Herrera, watcher of extreme weather, says last year likely to be in top five or six hottest in historyMore than 400 weather stations around the world beat their all-time highest temperature records in 2021, according to a climatologist who has been compiling weather records for over 30 years.Maximiliano Herrera keeps track of extreme weather around the world, and publishes an annual list of records broken in the previous year. He and many other climatologists and meteorologists who follow these issues closely expect that 2021 will probably not be the hottest year in history (Noaa and Nasa will publish their results in the next few days). Continue reading...
The saola is so elusive that no biologist has seen one in the wild. Now they are racing to find it, so they can save itWeighing 80-100kg and sporting long straight horns, white spots on its face and large facial scent glands, the saola does not sound like an animal that would be hard to spot. But it was not until 1992 that this elusive creature was discovered, becoming the first large mammal new to science in more than 50 years.Nicknamed the “Asian unicorn”, the saola continues to be elusive. They have never been seen by a biologist in the wild and have been camera-trapped only a handful of times. There are reports of villagers trying to keep them in captivity but they have died after a few weeks, probably due to the wrong diet. Continue reading...
Biden wants to extend the operation of the ISS to 2030 before replacing it – will Russia approve?The deadline for the decommissioning of the International Space Station (ISS) is worryingly close, and there is a danger that the commercial replacements the US was hoping for will not be ready to launch in time.With that in mind, on New Year’s Eve, Nasa announced that the Biden-Harris administration wanted to extend the operation of the ISS by six years to 2030. Continue reading...
Experts describe data from first study of its kind as shocking and warn of ‘rapidly growing threat’The number of adults living with dementia worldwide is on course to nearly triple to 153 million by 2050, according to the first study of its kind.Experts described the data as shocking and said it was clear that dementia presented “a major and rapidly growing threat to future health and social care systems” in every community, country and continent. Continue reading...