FDA expected to issue full emergency authorization for periodic antibody injections, or PrEP, to complement vaccinationsA proud sports mom, Shantay Brown longs to pack into a crowded stadium for her son’s Ohio State football games and scream her face off over the action on the field.Related: Doctors treating unvaccinated Covid patients are succumbing to compassion fatigue Continue reading...
by Richard Luscombe in Miami and agencies on (#5PQCV)
Four-person crew asked for the public’s help in reaching fundraising target of $200m for the children’s charity St JudeElon Musk surprised his first all-private crew of space tourists with a welcome home gift after their trailblazing trip to orbit ended on Saturday night: a $50m donation to the children’s charity St Jude.Related: ‘The point is ambition’: are we ready to follow Netflix into space? Continue reading...
Exclusive: NHS launching large trial of approach that could boost number of transplants and their success rateThousands of lives could be saved globally by giving patients a 10p statin before transplants, doctors have said, as the NHS launches the world’s largest clinical trial in organ donors.The medical breakthrough is predicted to dramatically increase the supply of organs for transplant. Currently, demand for organs vastly exceeds the number available. Every year thousands of people die waiting for a transplant, including hundreds in Britain. Continue reading...
The long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific and philosophical conceptsI understand that tears flush away foreign objects from the eye. But what advantage does crying have when one is feeling sad (or happy)? Perhaps it is to signal an extreme of emotion, but then why would a solitary sad person cry when there was no one around? David DobbsSend new questions to nq@theguardian.com. Continue reading...
by Michael McGowan (now) and Caitlin Cassidy (earlier on (#5PPZ1)
8.11am BSTWe’re wrapping up for the evening, but before we do, here’s a summary of today’s major developments.7.55am BSTWith that, I will hand you back to Caitlin Cassidy for the rest of the afternoon. Thanks as always for reading. Continue reading...
As we engage again in social situations, the new etiquette rules are bewilderingThe other day, flogging tickets to the school summer fair – now the autumn fair due to last term’s endless self-isolation – another parent leaned across the trestle table and squeezed my arm.The sheer unexpectedness of it threw me. It felt as surprising as a slap. When did I last make physical contact with someone outside my immediate family? This woman wasn’t someone I knew well, despite having kids in the same class. It was, nonetheless, a gesture of unmistakable warmth, but 18 months of fear-driven pandemic precautions can be hard to shake off. Continue reading...
SpaceX’s Dragon capsule carrying four 'amateur astronauts' parachutes safely into the Atlantic off the Florida coast after a three-day orbiting journey. The crew was the first to circle the world without a professional astronaut. The billionaire who paid undisclosed millions for the trip and his three guests wanted to show that ordinary people could blast into orbit by themselves, and SpaceX founder Elon Musk took them on as the company’s first rocket-riding tourists.
The four-person crew thanked mission control as they splashed down in the AtlanticFour space tourists ended their trailblazing trip to orbit on Saturday with a splashdown in the Atlantic off the Florida coast.Their SpaceX capsule parachuted into the ocean just before sunset, not far from where their chartered flight began three days earlier. Continue reading...
After asking for public help with their investigations, scientists have received thousands of reports and specimens of dead, shrivelled frogsIn the middle of Sydney’s lockdown, scientist Jodi Rowley has been retrieving frozen dead frogs from her doorstep.Occasionally one will arrive dried and shrivelled up in the post. Continue reading...
Household names may have unwittingly helped spread fake news, investigation revealsDozens of the world’s biggest brands, including Nike, Amazon, Ted Baker and Asos, have been advertising on websites that spread Covid-19 misinformation and conspiracy theories, it has emerged. The companies, as well as an NHS service, are among a string of household names whose ads appear to have helped fund websites that host false and outlandish claims, for example that powerful people secretly engineered the pandemic, or that vaccines have caused thousands of deaths.Analysis of nearly 60 sites, performed by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and shared with the Observer, found that ads were placed through the “opaque” digital advertising market, which is forecast to be worth more than $455bn (£387bn) this year. Continue reading...
One headteacher threatened with legal action by own governor over student jabsSecondary schools in the UK have been plunged into the centre of the row over Covid vaccines for 12- to 15-year-olds, with anti-vaxxers at school gates and a headteacher threatened with legal action by one of his own governors.Letters circulated by campaign groups and parents are accusing schools of sanctioning “medical experimentation” if they allow the Covid vaccination programme for 12- to 15-year-olds to go ahead. Continue reading...
How I overcome my chronic insomnia with scienceEverything about our day impacts our sleep. How many minutes we spend outside, what and when we eat, what’s happening with our hormones, our habits, emotions, stress and thoughts – all this feeds into the sleep we end up with at night. All of which I was completely oblivious to when battling chronic insomnia for years on end.Sleep anxiety can create a very real and vicious circle. I would spend hours lying in bed, increasingly wired, anxious and exhausted as time ticked by, with prescription sleeping pills within reach for those 3am nights when I had to be up first thing. The problem is that the more we worry about sleep, the higher our stress hormones go – and too much of the stress hormone cortisol, whatever the trigger, disturbs our sleep. We’re left in a state of fight or flight, when we need to be in the opposite state of rest and digest. When my insomnia was at its worst, I’d start my day exhausted, running on empty, and have recurring burn-out days, where an overwhelming fatigue would stop me in my tracks, forcing me to lie down and recharge. Continue reading...
Rearing virus-resistant birds could benefit humans too, say scientists, and Covid may have made us more open to the controversial technologyDiseases such as avian flu trigger the culling of millions of birds each year. But that need not be the case for much longer.Vaccines are one preventive strategy employed in some countries, but they do not stop birds from being infected, getting mild versions of the disease and transmitting it to healthy chickens. In fact, this imperfect shield can make things worse, incentivising the virus to mutate to evade the vaccine. Continue reading...
Dutch people born in 2001 are not as tall as previous generation – is it genetics, migration or nutrition?From brutal conflicts to periods of prosperity, pandemics to triumphs for equality, human history is full of highs and lows. But such fluctuations don’t just affect society: the human body can also be a sign of the times.Studies have shown that our height is not just a matter of genetics but is also influenced by the environment we live in, with key factors including our nutrition and experience of sickness, such as diarrhoea. Continue reading...
It’s not just animals that are at risk of dying out, the world’s crops are in rapid decline. Here’s why it matters what is on your plateIn eastern Turkey, in a golden field overshadowed by grey mountains, I reached out and touched an endangered species. Its ancestors had evolved over millions of years and migrated here long ago. It had been indispensable to life in the villages across this plateau, but its time was running out. “Just a few fields left,” the farmer said. “Extinction will come easily.” This endangered species wasn’t a rare bird or an elusive wild animal, it was food, a type of wheat: a less familiar character in the extinction story now playing out around the world, but one we all need to know.To most of us, one field of wheat might look much like any other, but this crop was extraordinary. Kavilca (pronounced Kav-all-jah) had turned eastern Anatolian landscapes the colour of honey for 400 generations (about 10,000 years). It was one of the world’s earliest cultivated foods, and is now one of the rarest. Continue reading...
Successor to Hubble will be carried into space from Europe’s spaceport in French Guiana atop an Ariane 5 rocketThe European Space Agency (Esa), Nasa and Arianespace have announced that the James Webb space telescope’s target launch date is 18 December. It will be carried into space from Europe’s spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, atop an Ariane 5 rocket, which has been designated flight VA256.It will be the third Ariane 5 flight this year. After completing final tests about three weeks ago, the Webb is being transported by sea from the US and is scheduled to arrive at the launch site by the end of September. Continue reading...
Amid Covid, young people are facing challenges unthinkable for their parents at the same age. Only a long-term commitment to fix the system can help them
Launch marks biggest advancement so far in space tourism as Elon Musk’s company conducts first chartered passenger flightSpaceX has launched the world’s first crew of “amateur astronauts” on a private flight to circle Earth for three days.Wednesday night’s successful launch marked the most ambitious leap yet in space tourism. It’s the first chartered passenger flight for Elon Musk’s space company and the first time a rocket streaked toward orbit with a crew that contained no professional astronauts. Continue reading...
by Lisa O'Carroll Brexit correspondent on (#5PM57)
Minister reveals plans to change laws inherited from EU, with rules on medical devices also in crosshairsRules on genetically modified farming, medical devices and vehicle standards will be top of a bonfire of laws inherited from the EU as the government seeks to change legislation automatically transferred to the UK after Brexit.Thousands of laws and regulations are to be reviewed, modified or repealed under a new programme aimed at cementing the UK’s independence and “Brexit opportunities”, David Frost has announced. Continue reading...
Tools and bones in Moroccan cave could be some of earliest evidence of the hallmark human behaviourFrom the medieval fashion for pointy shoes to Victorian waist-squeezing corsets and modern furry onesies, what we wear is a window to our past.Now researchers say they have found some of the earliest evidence of humans using clothing in a cave in Morocco, with the discovery of bone tools and bones from skinned animals suggesting the practice dates back at least 120,000 years. Continue reading...
Grandchildren, their parents and the original participants gather for 30th year of Bristol health projectIt was a clinic with health staff in scrubs and masks and all sorts of scans, sensors and medical kits at the ready – but the atmosphere in the waiting area was more party-line than sombre.“I’ve always enjoyed coming here,” said 30-year-old Sam Burton, who was with her mum, Deborah Burton, 61, and her daughter, Lily, three. “When I was little, it was a day off school and it never felt like a medical trial, it was fun; now I feel we’re part of something really important, something that has produced so much information, led to so much research.” Continue reading...
Anthony Fauci’s firmness in the face of Trump’s anti-scientific stance is rightly celebrated, but this documentary doesn’t fully examine his record on AidsRetirement age doesn’t apply to the increasingly legendary Dr Anthony Fauci, who at 80 years old continues in US public life like a benign version of J Edgar Hoover, or maybe like a supreme court justice. This documentary from National Geographic gives him something like the Ruth Bader Ginsburg treatment. Fauci is the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, having taken up that post in 1984 and served under seven presidents (so far), from Reagan to Biden; he is now at the vanguard of the fight against Covid-19, and is the rational conscience of America when it comes to calmly facing down the political anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers encouraged by Trump.This is a celebratory film, and it’s easy to agree with its praise for Fauci’s intellectual heroism, especially when reactionary anti-science charlatanism is running rampant across the internet and the political right. But the documentary maybe doesn’t nail the historical paradox at its centre: Fauci has been vilified twice in his life, from different directions. During the Aids crisis of the 1980s, he was hammered by Act Up for not doing enough, and during Covid, he is hammered by the Maga-ites for doing too much. Gay activists said he was part of a conventional hetero establishment that proceeded cautiously against Aids, not taking it seriously as a public health emergency; Trumpites say he is part of the big government establishment that’s all too active in curtailing liberties. Continue reading...
Skeleton found by children in New Zealand helps fill in gaps in natural historyIn January 2006 a group of children in summer camp in Waikato, New Zealand, went on a fossil-hunting field trip with a seasoned archaeologist. They kayaked to the upper Kawhia harbour, a hotspot for this sort of activity, and they expected to find fossils of shellfish and the like, as they regularly did on these Hamilton junior naturalist club expeditions.But on this day, just before heading home, close to where they’d left the kayaks and well below the high tide mark, they noticed a trace of fossils that looked like much more than prehistoric crustaceans. After careful extraction, an archaeologist later identified it as the most complete fossilised skeleton of an ancient giant penguin yet uncovered. Continue reading...
Gas stoves can produce air pollution levels indoors that would be illegal outsideI traveled around the developing world for more than a decade seeing and studying first-hand the damage that wood and charcoal do to the lungs of people – mostly women and children – who use it for cooking. Nearly half the world’s population cooks with solid fuels, and I was proud of my work to bring cleaner options and help prevent pneumonia, lung disease and other effects of breathing in smoke on a daily basis.And when I got home from these trips, I would turn on my gas stove to cook meals – never once guessing that the invisible gas piped into my house, and its similarly invisible emissions, were also harmful. Continue reading...
by Presented and produced by Anand Jagatia with repor on (#5PKH2)
Last week, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) world conservation congress took place in Marseille. Guardian biodiversity reporter Phoebe Weston was there and heard about the latest updated ‘red list’ of threatened species, which included a warning that over a third of all shark and ray species now face extinction.To find out more, Anand Jagatia spoke to Phoebe about the findings and what they mean for the fate of sharks, rays and the ecosystems they inhabitArchive: TODAY News, Sky News Australia Continue reading...
Elon Musk's SpaceX venture has launched an all-civilian spaceflight in the first attempt at orbit around the Earth without a professional crew of astronauts. It's the first crew in history made up of nonprofessional astronauts. The successful launch marked the most ambitious leap yet in space tourism.
Scientists say ozone hole is unusually large for this stage in season and growing quicklyThe hole in the ozone layer that develops annually is “rather larger than usual” and is currently bigger than Antartica, say the scientists responsible for monitoring it.Researchers from the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service say that this year’s hole is growing quickly and is larger than 75% of ozone holes at this stage in the season since 1979. Continue reading...
As Cop26 meeting approaches, analysis shows world is on track for 3C temperature increase if present trends continueEvery one of the world’s leading economies, including all the countries that make up the G20, is failing to meet commitments made in the landmark Paris agreement in order to stave off climate catastrophe, a damning new analysis has found.Less than two months before crucial United Nations climate talks take place in Scotland, none of the largest greenhouse gas emitting countries have made sufficient plans to lower pollution to meet what they agreed to in the 2015 Paris climate accord. Continue reading...
Four-person Inspiration4 mission will orbit Earth for up to four days, marking latest step in space tourismThe world’s first crew of “amateur astronauts” is preparing to blast off on a mission that will carry them into orbit before bringing them back down to Earth at the weekend.The four civilians, who have spent the past few months on an astronaut training course, are due to launch on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 8.02pm local time on Wednesday (1.02am UK time on Thursday). Continue reading...
Sticky-haired Triantha occidentalis raises prospect of finding carnivorous relatives of tomatoes and potatoesA plant has been found turning to carnivory only when it flowers. Triantha occidentalis has flower stalks smothered in small sticky hairs that are a deathtrap for small flies and beetles. Although many other plants have sticky hairs to protect against insects, Triantha actually feeds on the bodies of its victims.
Nasa deputy administrator says Australia’s commitment to space exploration puts it at forefront of global leadershipNasa has revealed it is looking forward to seeing an Australian flag on the moon.The disclosure was made by Pam Melroy, who was integral to establishing the Australian Space Agency and is one of only two women to captain the space shuttle. She was sworn in to her new role of Nasa deputy administrator in June, and on Wednesday beamed in to the Australian Space Forum hosted by the Andy Thomas Space Foundation in Adelaide. Continue reading...
Oncologist who pioneered modern treatments for testicular cancer – the jockey Bob Champion was one of his patientsMichael Peckham, who has died aged 86, did much to advance the acceptance of evidence-based medicine. This approach – using well-controlled clinical trial data for improving the treatment of patients – has never received greater attention than now, during the Covid-19 pandemic.In 1986 he moved from trailblazing clinical work as a professor at the Institute of Cancer Research and the Royal Marsden hospital, London, to become director of the British Postgraduate Medical Federation, then a loose association of seven institutes based in the capital. His restless mind envisaged an opportunity for much closer collaborative work between those high-level centres, aiming at advances that would otherwise have been impossible. Continue reading...
The long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific and philosophical conceptsI understand that tears flush away foreign objects from the eye. But what advantage does crying have when one is feeling sad (or happy)? Perhaps it is to signal an extreme of emotion, but then why would a solitary sad person cry when there was no one around? David DobbsPost your answers (and new questions) below or send them to nq@theguardian.com. A selection will be published on Sunday. Continue reading...
by Presented and produced by Madeleine Finlay with re on (#5PGV5)
In a report earlier this summer, the Joint Committee on Vaccinations and Immunisations (JCVI) noted there could be a 50% increase in cases of influenza in comparison to other years. Madeleine Finlay speaks to Ian Sample about the factors at play, from weakened immunity to the expanded vaccine programme, and hears from Derek Smith, professor of infectious disease informatics about how the World Health Organization has decided on which influenza strains to vaccinate against this year Continue reading...
In the UK, the majority of those now in hospital with Covid-19 are unvaccinated. Many face their last days with enormous regret, and their relatives are telling their stories to try to convince others like themMatt Wynter, a 42-year-old music agent from Leek, Staffordshire, was working out in his local gym in mid-August when he saw, to his great surprise, that his best friend, Marcus Birks, was on the television. He jumped off the elliptical trainer and listened carefully.The first thing he noticed was that Birks, who was also from Leek and a performer with the dance group Cappella, looked terrible. He was gasping for breath and his face was pale. “Marcus would never usually have gone on TV without having done his hair and had a shave,” Wynter says. Continue reading...
People with macular degeneration, cataracts and diabetes-related eye disease at greater riskMillions of people with eye conditions including age-related macular degeneration, cataracts and diabetes-related eye disease have an increased risk of developing dementia, new research shows.Vision impairment can be one of the first signs of the disease, which is predicted to affect more than 130 million people worldwide by 2050. Continue reading...
by Hannah Devlin Science correspondent on (#5PFWX)
Calves taught to use toilet area with rewards and mild punishments, limiting ammonia releaseA herd of cows has been “potty-trained” in an experiment that scientists say could pave the way for more environmentally friendly farms.Waste from cattle farms often contaminates soil and waterways and contributes to greenhouse gas emissions and the acidification of soil. For this reason, toilet-training cattle has long been viewed as desirable, but several previous attempts have been unsuccessful. Continue reading...
Science | The Guardian