Level increased regardless of health but virus ‘picks on’ those already at risk of illness or deathBritain’s first wave of coronavirus raised the risk of death by more than 40% for most adults regardless of their underlying health and other factors, research suggests.Scientists examined medical records for nearly 10 million people aged 40 and over and found that, whatever a person’s risk of dying before the pandemic, it rose 1.43 times on average as the virus spread between March and May 2020. Continue reading...
Animals thought to have developed the illness about 200 years ago after bacterial infections gained resistance to natural antibioticsHedgehogs have been harbouring a type of the MRSA superbug since long before the use of antibiotics in humans and livestock, research suggests.Scientists have found evidence of the superbug arising in nature well before the use of the drugs, which have traditionally been blamed for its emergence. Continue reading...
Cases of people infected at same time with both viruses have been reported in some countriesLevels of flu remain low in the UK despite Covid cases rising considerably over Christmas and the new year, official data shows.The Omicron variant of coronavirus has spread rapidly around the UK, leading to a sharp rise in infections and, subsequently, hospitalisations. According to figures from the Office for National Statistics released on Wednesday, one in 15 people in England had Covid in the week ending 31 December, rising to one in 10 in London. Continue reading...
US biologist and champion of biodiversity who specialised in the study of ants and was regarded as a modern-day Charles DarwinWhen the naturalist Edward O Wilson was a boy of seven, the dorsal spine of a fish that he was reeling in near his home in Mobile, Alabama, damaged his right eye. He lost the sight of that eye and subsequently suffered partial hearing loss in his teens. These disabilities led Wilson, a passionate naturalist from an early age, to focus on small organisms, particularly ants, that he could study at close range.Observing their tiny worlds led him to a global vision of the importance of biological diversity in the survival of species including our own. Wilson, who has died aged 92, has been called a modern Charles Darwin for his influence as both a close observer and a unifying theorist. He was also a campaigner whose humane and elegant writings were among the first in recent times to argue that we have a moral duty to value other species, not only for their own sake but also for the sake of future human generations. Continue reading...
by Damian Carrington Environment editor on (#5TQEZ)
Hundreds of new species include pink voodoo lily and an ylang-ylang tree named after Leonardo DiCaprioA ghost orchid that grows in complete darkness, an insect-trapping tobacco plant and an “exploding firework” flower are among the new species named by scientists in the last year. The species range from a voodoo lily from Cameroon to a rare tooth fungus unearthed near London, UK.A new tree from the ylang-ylang family is the first to be named in 2022 and is being named after the actor and environmentalist Leonardo DiCaprio. He campaigned to revoke a logging concession which threatened the African tree, which features glossy yellow flowers on its trunk. Continue reading...
Dogs react differently to speech and non-speech when listening to human voices, say researchersDogs may appear to have selective hearing when it comes to commands but research suggests they are paying attention to human chit-chat.Researchers – who arranged for headphone-wearing dogs to listen to excerpts from the novella The Little Prince – revealed the brains of our canine companions can tell the difference between speech and non-speech when listening to human voices, and show different responses to speech in an unfamiliar language. Continue reading...
by Presented and produced by Madeleine Finlay with Ia on (#5TQ83)
On Wednesday, 194,747 daily confirmed Covid cases were reported for the whole of the UK. But this doesn’t include all the people who have caught the virus for the second, or even third time. In fact, official figures for England, Scotland and Northern Ireland don’t include those who have had Covid before, despite warnings from scientists that up to 15% of Omicron cases could be reinfections. Madeleine Finlay speaks to the Guardian’s science editor Ian Sample about why reinfections are so high for Omicron, what these cases could tell us, and how it could affect public health measures in the future Continue reading...
Guardian readers respond to John Harris’s piece on understanding the reasons behind vaccine hesitancyJohn Harris may be correct to frame the avoidance of vaccination by a significant portion of the UK population as the consequence of mistrust in authority or government (Understanding, not judgment, should shape our response to those who remain unjabbed, 2 January). However, I and many millions of others do not trust this government at all, but we still accepted vaccination. Social factors may explain the existence of vaccine avoidance, but they do not justify it. Under UK laws, no degree of inequality allows a car driver to transfer to the right side of the road in protest against a mistrusted government.True freedom is the liberty from being harmed by others, regardless of whether those actions are deliberately harmful. The freedom to “innocently” spread disease is not a fundamental right. The enormous human cost of supporting unvaccinated and seriously ill patients in hospital is having a direct impact on all our lives. It is time to take the moral high ground: celebrate the vaccinators and publicly avow that vaccination is good, that being vaccinated is a public duty and that failure to comply by any citizen without adequate medical reasons is a dereliction of that public duty.
Three screenings at this year’s Göteborg festival will ‘transform the audience’s state of mind’ with a live hypnotist on stageThe Göteborg film festival is no stranger to stunts. It has previously featured screenings for a single audience member at a North Sea lighthouse, as well as “coffin screenings” in which lucky viewers were interred inside a sarcophagus to enhance their sensory empathy.This year, festival directors are planning to put the entire audience under by hiring a hypnotist for three gala screenings. Ahead of Swedish premieres for Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Memoria, Shirin Neshat’s Land of Dreams and Christian Tafdrup’s Speak No Evil, a hypnotist will appear on stage to “transform the audience’s state of mind in accordance with the mood and theme of the film”. Continue reading...
by Jessica Murray Midlands correspondent on (#5TP61)
British Army physiotherapist ‘Polar Preet’ skied 700 miles across Antarctica in 40 days, five days ahead of schedulePreet Chandi, thought to be the first woman of colour to complete a solo crossing on Antarctica, has finished her expedition to the south pole almost a week ahead of schedule.Chandi or “Polar Preet”, endured temperatures of -50C as she skied 700 miles across Antarctica in 40 days, seven hours and three minutes, narrowly missing out on setting a new world record by a woman for the trek. Continue reading...
Contrary to what Charles Darwin once argued, emotions enhance our process of reasoning and aid decision-makingCharles Darwin created the most successful theory in the history of biology: the theory of evolution. He was also responsible for another grand theory: the theory of emotion, which dominated his field for more than a century. That theory was dead wrong.The most important tenet of his theory was that the mind consists of two competing forces, the rational and the emotional. He believed emotions played a constructive role in the lives of non-human animals, but in humans emotions were a vestige whose usefulness had been largely superseded by the evolution of reason.Leonard Mlodinow is a physicist and author of EMOTIONAL: The New Thinking about Feelings Continue reading...
Remains of some of the 163 children at Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo to be examined using X-rayThe 200-year-old secrets of the child mummies of the Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo in northern Sicily are to be revealed by a British-led team of scientists using X-ray technology.Dr Kirsty Squires, of Staffordshire University, will head a first attempt to tell the stories of some of the 163 children whose remains lie within the corridors and crypts of the famous underground tomb. Continue reading...
Study finds test works on people with concerning signs such as unexplained weight loss or fatigueScientists have developed a blood test that could help detect cancer in people with nonspecific symptoms such as unexplained weight loss or fatigue.If validated, the test could enable cancer patients to be identified earlier, when they are more likely to respond to treatment, and help flag up who could benefit from early access to drugs designed to tackle metastatic cancer. The test can also tell if the disease has spread. Continue reading...
Campaigners led by schoolgirl get permission to site sculpture of palaeontologist on Dorset coast after four-year battleA statue to the 19th-century fossil hunter and palaeontologist Mary Anning, who was once “lost to history”, is finally set to be unveiled in 2022 in her home town of Lyme Regis after a schoolgirl’s four-year campaign.Campaigners, who have overcome bureaucratic red tape and raised more than £100,000 in crowdfunding, have been granted planning permission to site the bronze in “the perfect spot”, overlooking Black Ven cliffs on the Jurassic coast in Dorset, where she made her pioneering finds. Continue reading...
by Denis Campbell Health policy editor on (#5TMV6)
Female patients found to have 15% more chance of a bad outcome than if procedure was performed by a womanWomen who are operated on by a male surgeon are much more likely to die, experience complications and be readmitted to hospital than when a woman performs the procedure, research reveals.Women are 15% more liable to suffer a bad outcome, and 32% more likely to die, when a man rather than a woman carries out the surgery, according to a study of 1.3 million patients. Continue reading...
UK’s disregards and pardons scheme set to be expanded to ‘right wrongs of the past’Any conviction that was imposed on someone purely due to consensual homosexual activity under now-abolished laws will be included in a scheme aimed at “righting the wrongs of the past”, the UK home secretary is set to announce.Priti Patel said more people would have convictions for same-sex sexual activity wiped from their records, as she sought to expand the government’s disregards and pardons scheme from a narrow set of laws. Continue reading...
Activists say crackdown is driven by Xi Jinping, who has ‘declared a war on independent journalism’Chen Kun was living in Indonesia with his wife and daughter when he learned from his brother Mei’s boss that he had been “taken away for investigation” by Chinese police.He immediately suspected it was to do with his brother’s website, a citizen news project called Terminus 2049. Since 2018 Mei, his colleague Cai Wei, and Cai’s partner – surnamed Tang – had been archiving articles about issues including #MeToo and migrant rights, and reposting them whenever they were deleted from China’s strictly monitored and censored online platforms. It was April 2020, and for the last few months Terminus 2049 had been targeting stories about the Covid-19 outbreak and response. Continue reading...
by Presented by Madeleine Finlay with David Cox, prod on (#5TMCW)
New year resolutions often include eating more healthily, doing exercise and trying to shift some of the extra weight put on over Christmas. Yet research suggests the vast majority of people who do lose weight ultimately end up putting nearly all of it back on. So why is it so difficult? Madeleine Finlay speaks to health journalist and ex-neuroscientist David Cox on the science of metabolism, and what it means for our health
If not for clouds, the half-tonne fireball would have been easily visible in the day, maybe about 100 times the brightness of a full moonA meteor that caused an earthshaking boom over suburban Pittsburgh on New Year’s Day exploded in the atmosphere with an energy blast equivalent to an estimated 30 tonnes (27,200kg) of TNT, officials said.The National Weather Service in Pittsburgh initially responded, suggesting the most likely explanation was a “meteor explosion” as people took to social media in search of answers. Continue reading...
They say laughter is the best medicine – and trauma patients in Bristol are about to put the theory to the testName: Comedy.Age: The term comedy (from the Greek κωμῳδία, or kōmōidía) originated in ancient Greece, where poets would perform political satire in theatres in order to influence voters. Continue reading...
by Ross Ellenhorn and Dimitri Mugianis on (#5TKF9)
Wall Street and Peter Thiel are all investing in psychedelics. But Oxycotin showed the harm profit-hungry corporations can cause with ‘wonder drugs’The new Hulu series Dopesick is a dramatic reminder of the devastation that has been wrought by the opioid epidemic. Like the book on which it was based, and like other journalism about the Oxycontin crisis, the show makes it clear that members of the Sackler family, Purdue, unscrupulous doctors, and the FDA all played a part in causing the rampant overprescription of Oxycontin. Suddenly every kind of pain – not only physical but also psychological and social – seemed to have a single answer: Oxycontin. Opioids are one of the oldest drugs in the human pharmacopeia, but Oxycontin’s new patents made every person in pain a source of easy money for Purdue. This led to a wave of addiction and overdose. When regulators cracked down on legal pills, many people turned to the illicit drug market, putting them in even greater danger.Yet even as America reckons with the aftermath of the Oxycontin disaster, it’s embracing a new class of supposed wonder drugs. Like opioids, these “new” drugs are long-time favorites: psychedelics. Ironically, one of their supposedly miraculous qualities is their power in treating substance use disorders. The FDA – whose lax oversight and close ties to corporate lobbyists played such a crucial role in the Oxycontin debacle – has placed MDMA and psilocybin on expedited approval tracks for the treatment of PTSD and treatment-resistant depression. MDMA-assisted therapy for PTSD is in advanced trials, and could receive FDA approval as soon as 2023.Ross Ellenhorn is a sociologist and psychotherapist and the founder and CEO of Ellenhorn. Dimitri Mugianis is a harm reductionist, activist, musician, poet, writer, and anarchist, with over two decades of experience as a psychedelic practitioner. Ellenhorn and Mugianis are the founders of Cardea Continue reading...
Jeremy Lockwood spent lockdown identifying two specimens – and is a ‘bit obsessed’ in his search for moreSome of us binged on box sets, others grappled with the challenges of home school and zoned out of Zoom meetings: for many, life under lockdown felt glum. But for Jeremy Lockwood, a retired GP turned palaeontologist, 2021 was a standout year featuring two big dinosaur discoveries and laying plans to make the Isle of Wight famous for its prehistoric inhabitants once more. “It was an absolutely thrilling time for me,” Lockwood said.Lockwood, 64, who retired as a family doctor in the Midlands seven years ago, was behind the widely publicised discovery of a new species of iguanadontian dinosaur with a distinctively large nose and a second species, nicknamed “the horned crocodile-faced Hell Heron”. Continue reading...
Annual shower can produce more than 100 meteors an hourIf the clouds cooperate, you can start the year with a meteor shower. The Quadrantid meteor shower reaches its peak activity on or about 3 January each year. This year, the peak has been estimated to occur at about 10pm GMT, although this can vary by a day or so.The shower produces meteors in the sky any time between 28 December and 12 January. It is known for creating blue meteors with occasional fireballs and under ideal conditions can produce more than 100 meteors an hour. Continue reading...
Guardian Australia’s summertime round-up of written interest and joy selected by Alyx GormanGood morning, happy new year, and welcome to Five Great Reads, a weekday summer story round-up selected by me – Alyx Gorman – lifestyle editor of Guardian Australia.If you’re not getting this as an email, you could be by signing up in the box below. If you are getting this as an email, there will be no box. Perhaps you could pass this on to a friend who isn’t subscribed, but might like to, so they can tell you what the box looks like. Continue reading...
Kenyan conservationist found oldest near-complete human skeleton in 1984, dating from 1.5m years agoThe celebrated Kenyan conservationist and fossil hunter Richard Leakey, whose groundbreaking discoveries helped prove that humankind evolved in Africa, has died aged 77.The president of Kenya, Uhuru Kenyatta, announced Leakey’s death with “deep sorrow”. Continue reading...
People have become ‘more insular and bonding-oriented’ amid Covid, and now many aren’t sure how to start rebuilding their social livesPruning is usually a technique applied to roses in winter, but more recently the gardening term has been cropping up whenever sociologists talk about our social lives. People have been pruning friends.Confined to our homes, or separated by borders, with too much time gifted to us in isolation, and new ways to communicate online, experts say we’ve unwittingly – or in some cases very deliberately – socially distanced ourselves out of a social life. Some say the silver lining is that we’ve been cured of Fomo, others say it heralds a widening of the already growing loneliness gap. So has everyone Marie Kondoed their mates, and what does this mean for the future of friendship? Continue reading...
From lunar missions to anti-asteroid defence systems, there are plenty of exciting scientific developments to look forward toThis year promises to be an important one for space exploration, with several major programmes reaching the launch pad over the next 12 months. The US is to return to the moon, undertaking a set of missions intended to establish a lunar colony there in a few years. China is expected to complete its Tiangong space station while Europe and Russia will attempt to land spacecraft on Mars, having failed at every previous attempt. India, South Korea and Japan are also scheduled to put a number of missions into space. Continue reading...
Scribbling down our thoughts is a great way to make sense of things – and very satisfyingIn 1989, when I was 16, I moved into a pub with my parents and my younger brother, Matty. It was highly exciting. I took to barwork as I liked the chat, and also enjoyed the opportunities offered for eavesdropping. I was curious about the adult world and up until then had learned most of what I knew from books. Now I had all these real lives to study. I should write some of this down, I thought, and would scribble into my diary before bed.We couldn’t believe how busy it was that first Christmas, culminating on New Year’s Eve, when everyone piled out into the main street at midnight and exchanged drunken embraces and warm wishes for 1990. After the pub had emptied and the mammoth job of clearing up was done, we gathered with our staff for a few drinks and the chat turned to resolutions. All the women wanted to lose weight. A couple of people wanted to stop smoking. I announced very firmly that I wanted to write a novel. Continue reading...
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...
by David Spiegelhalter and Anthony Masters on (#5TJJ4)
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...