President pushes back against resistance to vaccine mandates, saying they are ‘not to control your life, but to save your life’

At least 66m-year-old fossil discovered in southern China reveals posture previously unseen in dinosaursScientists have announced the discovery of an exquisitely preserved dinosaur embryo from at least 66m years ago that was preparing to hatch from its egg just like a chicken.The fossil was discovered in Ganzhou, southern China and belonged to a toothless theropod dinosaur, or oviraptorosaur, which the researchers dubbed “Baby Yingliang”. Continue reading...

Agency will give go-ahead for Pfizer and Merck to launch groundbreaking oral treatments perhaps this weekUS federal regulators are expected to approve the first pills to treat Covid-19 as early as this week, it was reported on Tuesday.According to sources quoted by Bloomberg News, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will give the go-ahead for Pfizer and Merck to launch groundbreaking oral treatments perhaps as soon as Wednesday. Continue reading...

Understanding service workers’ current challenges, and adjusting your expectations accordingly, can ease shopping frustrationsAs we approach our second Christmas at the mercy of a virus that just won’t quit, one would think people would have accepted that supply chain issues and other Covid-related problems might mean low stock and delayed deliveries, as has been the case for going on two years. But after speaking to business owners and frontline retail staff, it seems this is far from true.The retail workers told me that most customers were perfectly gracious and well-behaved, but all reported a small group of shoppers that were hostile – even aggressive – in-store, online and on the phone, over matters that were quite clearly out of the service worker’s control. The word traumatised came up more than once. Continue reading...

Court papers reveal how long watchdog knew of potential problems at Wolverhampton site

Paxlovid is expected to work well against Omicron. The real problem is that production is insufficientWhat if there was a pill you could take as soon as you test positive for Covid, that stopped the virus in its tracks? A pill that reduced the viral number of copies in your upper airway (known as viral load) by more than tenfold, markedly reducing contagiousness to others? And that reduced the chance of hospitalization by nearly 90%?There is such a pill, called Paxlovid, which was developed specifically for the Sars-CoV-2 virus, derived from a molecule that was effective in the lab against the original SARS virus, and is a potent inhibitor of the main protease of the virus, called Mpro. It’s the chokepoint for preventing the virus from replicating. It has been tested in two randomized clinical trials compared with a placebo, and not only was its potency established, but it proved to be as safe as the placebo.Eric Topol is the founder and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, professor of molecular medicine, and executive vice-president of Scripps Research Continue reading...

Largest ever specimen, a 2.7 metre-long creature known as Arthropleura, discovered by ‘fluke’ on UK beachGiant millipedes as long as a car and weighing 50kg once hunted across northern England, experts have revealed, following the discovery of a 326m-year-old fossil.The largest fossil of a giant millipede was found by a “fluke” on a Northumberland beach at Howick, after a section of cliff fell on to the shore. Continue reading...

Home-brewed yoghurt on International Space Station may be just a small leap for a group of budding scientists

Having long Covid made me reassess my health and wellbeing, and the benefits have been profoundAt the start of 2021, I was diagnosed with long Covid. It was a huge relief to finally know why I had been struggling so much with my health – extreme fatigue, continuous coughing and, most distressing of all, brain fog and panic attacks. The diagnosis was also the beginning of a journey that would take me – of all places – to a life-changing decision about what I eat.After further tests, I was told it was very likely that I had caught Covid a while ago, possibly at the start of the pandemic, before tests were available. I’m very fortunate to have a brilliant and caring GP who listens to me and provides me with support. He signed me off work for two months and helped me understand that I needed real rest to assist my recovery. Continue reading...

Reaction comes after Boris Johnson announces there will be no additional measures put in place for now

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says Omicron is infecting people who have been vaccinated and could double its infections every 1.5 to three days

Trump once again claimed credit for producing the vaccine, saying vaccine wariness was ‘playing into the hands’ of his opponentsDonald Trump revealed he received a booster shot of the Covid-19 vaccine, drawing boos from a crowd of his supporters in Dallas.The former president made the disclosure on Sunday night during the final stop of The History Tour, a live interview show he has been doing with the former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly. Continue reading...

Government mulls new measures to curb Omicron amid second highest daily case toll of pandemic, as hospitalisations in London rise ‘quite steeply’

From questionable Covid treatments to life-saving inventions and discoveries about the natural world – medical editor Melissa Davey and science writer Donna Lu talk to Laura Murphy-Oates about the best and worst science stories of 2021You can also read: Continue reading...

Loneliness is significant mental health concern and can raise risk of death by 45%, say scientistsContact with nature in cities significantly reduces feelings of loneliness, according to a team of scientists.Loneliness is a major public health concern, their research shows, and can raise a person’s risk of death by 45% – more than air pollution, obesity or alcohol abuse. Continue reading...

York-based company makes synthetic antibodies for pharmaceutical firms including AstraZenecaA British biotechnology firm that supplies big pharmaceutical firms with synthetic antibodies for targeted delivery of drugs will float in London this week valued at £80.7m – giving its two founders a combined paper fortune of more than £33m.Aptamer Group was founded in 2008 by Dr Arron Tolley, 44, an early school leaver who later completed a doctorate in biophysics and molecular biology, and Dr David Bunka, a geneticist. Today, the York-based company has partnerships with the vast majority of the world’s top 20 pharmaceutical firms, including Britain’s biggest drugmaker, AstraZeneca, and Japan’s Takeda. Continue reading...

The pandemic has given us new kinds of exhaustion, all of them equally draining. Yet there’s hope in perseveranceDuring the past two years, each stage of the pandemic has brought with it a new species of tired. The first was a heady sort of tiredness, all jittery over-vigilance when the first lockdown happened. The memory of that time has an almost lunar quality: it felt like being marooned in a pod on a hostile deserted landscape but with your lights and radars still blinking, still whirring, powered by adrenaline and restlessness. It was a short, sharp fear, in anticipation of a crisis that would be intense but soon over.

After many delays, Hubble’s successor is set to travel to a cosmic parking spot 1m miles from EarthFinal preparations are under way for the launch of the James Webb space telescope, a landmark observatory built to peer back through space and time to the first stars and galaxies that lit up the universe.Regarded as the successor to Nasa’s Hubble space telescope, the mission is scheduled to blast off at 12.20pm UK time on Christmas Eve onboard an Ariane 5 rocket from Europe’s spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. More than 30 years in the making, the telescope is bound for a parking spot in space 1m miles from Earth. Continue reading...

Even if vaccinations hold back the tide of infections, there will still be too many patients for us to look after

Yusaku Maezawa spent 12 days at the space station, marking Russia’s return to space tourism after a decade-long pauseA Japanese billionaire has returned to Earth after 12 days spent on the International Space Station, where he made videos about performing mundane tasks in space including brushing his teeth and going to the toilet.Online fashion tycoon Yusaku Maezawa and his assistant Yozo Hirano parachuted on to Kazakhstan’s steppe at around the expected landing time of 03.13 GMT on Monday, along with Russian cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin, Russia’s space agency said. Continue reading...

Māori boy who died last week was youngest New Zealander to die with virus and the first child

Latest UK daily cases show a 72% jump on the 48,071 new infections recorded last Sunday; Irish officials say 52% of cases estimated to be new variant

Like countless other new parents, Sara had sailed straight into the ‘iceberg’ of unrealistically high expectations

Analysis: Omicron studies so far have been rapid first takes, but the message for England is loud and clear

Thousands drive miles as appointment-only systems jeopardise aim of offering third vaccination to all adults by end of month

While my husband and two children celebrate Christmas without me, I will be rowing 3,000 miles across the AtlanticFor the past few weeks, I’ve been getting ready for Christmas. As well as putting the tree up ridiculously early, I’ve made the cake, bought the presents and assembled the stockings. Even though my children no longer believe in Santa, the crinkle of my dad’s old golf socks stuffed full of presents on Christmas morning still makes their faces light up.But this year, for the first time since they were born, I won’t be there to celebrate with them. I’m leaving my husband Fred, daughter Inès, 15, and son Vincent, 12, to row 3,000 miles across the Atlantic as part of the annual Talisker Whisky Atlantic Challenge. My four-woman crew of mothers is called the Mothership, and between us we have 11 children, the youngest of whom is four. Continue reading...

City project that used lateral flow tests to monitor population took pressure off NHS at critical time

Billionaires in space, an end-date for deforestation, facing up to racial bias in healthcare – we asked scientists to share the most important developments of 2021Space made the headlines on many occasions in 2021: the landing of Nasa’s Perseverance rover on Mars, the arrival of a rare meteorite in the UK, the launch of a mission to hit an asteroid, the discovery of almost 200 new planets beyond the solar system – all shared their moment of fame with the public. However, the most extensive coverage of space news was probably of the 11-minute flight to outside the edge of Earth’s atmosphere made by William Shatner, AKA Captain James T Kirk of the USS Enterprise, in October 2021. Continue reading...

Health workers at King’s College hospital fear a surge in admissions as the Omicron wave gathers force, but are cautiously optimisticOn the third floor of one of the country’s biggest hospital trusts, a team of intensive care specialists in masks and visors huddle around a screened bay where a critically ill patient lies unconscious surrounded by cables and tubes.The elderly man’s breathing is supported by a ventilator and he is connected to an arterial line to measure blood pressure. He is fed by a gastric tube, and a nearby stack of six monitors provide updates on his condition, from oxygen levels to heart rate. Continue reading...

Charities ask for more government help and blame confusion over access to care, shortage of boosters and lack of shielding support

The instrument will be the largest and most powerful telescope ever to be launched into spaceThe much-delayed launch of the James Webb space telescope will go ahead on 24 December, Nasa and the company overseeing the launch have confirmed.The project, begun in 1989, was originally expected to deploy the instrument – which will be the largest and most powerful telescope ever to be launched into space – in the early 2000s. Continue reading...

Deaths could hit 6,000 a day and delaying restrictions until New Year will cut effectiveness, say Sage expertsRead more: is there any good news at all on Omicron?The scale of the threat posed by the Omicron variant was laid bare by government scientists last night as they warned that there are now hundreds of thousands of infections every day. That daily number could reach between 600,000 and 2 million by the end of the month if new restrictions are not brought in immediately.The government’s SPI-M-O group of scientists, which reports to the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), also warned that, based on their modelling, hospitalisations could peak between 3,000 and 10,000 a day and deaths at between 600 and 6,000 a day. Continue reading...

As part of a Guardian series about chronic pain and long Covid, Linda Geddes explores the growing realisation that pain can be a disease in and of itself. Gabrielle Jackson, associate editor of audio and visual, introduces this storyYou can read the original article here: Sufferers of chronic pain have long been told it’s all in their head. We now know that’s wrongYou can also read and watch more from our series about chronic pain here: The pain that can’t be seen Continue reading...

From a humble garage to international backing, Space Forge plans to manufacture alloys, medicines and semiconductors in microgravityLast year, when Josh Western and Andrew Bacon set up their company Space Forge, they had a garage to work in and little else. Today, the two Cardiff-based entrepreneurs have a staff of 25 and are now planning further expansion after raising £7.6m of international seed-funding.The financing – to be announced later this week – should allow the company to start a remarkable aerospace endeavour: deploying satellites in which new alloys, medicines and semiconductors can be manufactured in outer space and then brought back to Earth. The first missions are now planned for the end of 2022. Continue reading...

Analysis: scientists are only starting to understand new Covid mutation but there is encouraging news from the laboratory, South Africa and on antiviral drugs

Tom Hollander made us laugh at the hypocrisy of religion, but also showed us human kindness

Total number of cases now at 24,968, while number of deaths from new variant in England has risen to seven

My aunt Margaret Waddy, who has died aged 77 of a pulmonary embolism, was a horticulturist and a teacher, a quiz fan and a committed volunteer with Samaritans in Cambridge.Margaret was born in London but her early life was spent in the Gold Coast, now Ghana, where her parents, Bernard (known as BB) Waddy, a doctor in tropical medicine, and Mary (nee Lawrence), worked for the Colonial Service. At the age of five she was sent to Britain to be educated at the Convent of the Sacred Heart in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, a Roman Catholic boarding school. Continue reading...

Research in South Africa raises hopes that similar responses may be present with other vaccines

Analysis: If the spread continues at this rate, a small proportion of Covid hospitalisations is a serious matterWith the booster programme at full tilt across the UK, immunity against Covid is rising – so it is perhaps not surprising that the concern shown by experts over the steep rise in Omicron infections has left some bemused.For while the new variant is believed to dodge Covid vaccines to some degree, it is thought the jabs still offer good protection against severe disease – particularly after a booster. And greater levels of immunity mean a lower ratio of hospitalisations to cases – something we have seen before in the UK, where about 22% of cases in those aged 65 and older ended up in hospital in early 2021, when Alpha was dominant but few had received a vaccine, compared with about 6% after the vaccine rollout was well under way. Continue reading...

Exclusive: Vessel may have held a perfume or other potion used to anoint kings or in religious ceremoniesWhen the Galloway hoard was unearthed from a ploughed field in western Scotland in 2014, it offered the richest collection of Viking-age objects ever found in Britain or Ireland. But one of the artefacts paled in comparison with treasures such as a gold bird-shaped pin and a silver-gilt vessel because it was within a pouch that was mangled and misshapen after almost 1,000 years in the ground.Now that pouch has been removed and its contents restored, revealing an extraordinary Roman rock crystal jar wrapped in exquisite layers of gold thread by the finest medieval craftsman in the late eighth or early ninth century. Continue reading...

Exclusive: Wood smoke is a more important carcinogen than vehicle fumes, finds Athens analysisWood burning stoves in urban areas are responsible for almost half of people’s exposure to cancer-causing chemicals found in air pollution particles, new research has shown.The polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in tiny pollution particles are produced by burning fuels and have long been known to have carcinogenic effects. The new study examined the sources of the PAHs and found wood burning produced more than the diesel fuel or petrol used in vehicles. Continue reading...

People are wising up to Boris Johnson and choosing to listen to unelected experts over those paid to make bad decisions

Researchers named the subterranean animal Eumillipes persephone after the Greek goddess of the underworld

Analysis: After a steady stream of reports, how likely is it that Boris Johnson will take advice about imposing tougher restrictions?• Boris Johnson joined No 10 party during May 2020 lockdown, say sources

The first microscope used by Charles Darwin was up for auction at Christie's this week, and this video tells the story of its discovery and importance. This intricate and rather beautiful 'box of brass’ contains the microscope used by Darwin at university in Edinburgh and Cambridge as he studied botany, fine-tuning his microscopy skills prior to and during his Beagle voyage. The auctioneer describes the microscope as one of the most exciting lots they've handled, with collectors queuing up to get their bids in Continue reading...

A fleet of modified Saildrones is sending back video and data to help understand extreme weatherSending a small sailing boat to explore the interior of a hurricane may seem like a bad idea, but that is exactly what meteorologists from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration did in October. There was no danger though because the seven-metre vessel was crewless.Saildrones are robot vessels that can stay at sea indefinitely with a combination of wind and solar power. Some, like Saildrone Explorer SD 1045, have been modified to handle 140mph winds and giant waves. Continue reading...

For three consecutive rainy seasons, the eastern Horn of Africa has experienced poor rainfall. Confounded by Covid-19 and desert locust invasions, millions are now facing starvation across parts of Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia. Already, livestock and wildlife are dying of thirst and hunger in large numbers. And at the heart of it all is the worsening climate crisis.Madeleine Finlay asks climate researcher Chris Funk what’s causing these devastating weather patterns and speaks to Nairobi reporter Peter Muiruri about the impact the droughts are having in northern Kenya, and what can be done to make regions more drought-resilient in the future Continue reading...

Researchers find fewer than third of patients show much improvement 12 months after discharge

Chief medical officer Chris Whitty says rise in hospitalisations due to Omicron are fairly certain