Judge cites lack of ‘convincing evidence’ that drug is effective, siding with hospital that refused to administer medicationAn Ohio judge has reversed a court order that forced a local hospital to treat a Covid-19 patient with the anti-parasitic drug ivermectin.Related: Military doctors shore up exhausted health teams in US south amid Covid surge 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 conceptsWhy do many of us have the tendency to want, or need, to pee when we hear running water? Is this equal between female and male, and does age affect the phenomenon? David Cockayne, CheshirePost your answers (and new questions) below or send them to nq@theguardian.com. A selection will be published on Sunday. Continue reading...
Watchdog to look at potential takeover of Wales-based Perpetuus Group by Dr Zhongfu Zhou or Taurus InternationalBusiness secretary Kwasi Kwarteng has ordered a national security review of a takeover by a Chinese academic of a small Welsh manufacturer of graphene – the thinnest and lightest “supermaterial” known.In a rare move, Kwarteng instructed the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) to review the planned takeover of Perpetuus Group by Taurus International or any companies associated with Dr Zhongfu Zhou. Continue reading...
by Presented by Shivani Dave and produced by Hannah F on (#5P7V7)
Recently a study from Aston University revealed that the F-word had overtaken bloody to become Britain’s most popular swear word for the first time. Shivani Dave speaks to emeritus professor of psychology Timothy Jay of Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts to find out why people swear and whether or not there are any benefits to using swear words – especially as we move back into public spaces such as the office Continue reading...
Five countries are assessing the BGI Group test amid regulatory concerns about genetic data being sent abroadHealth regulators in five countries are examining a prenatal test that collects the DNA of women and foetuses for research after it emerged the test’s manufacturer has links to China’s military.Some doctors and clinics that promoted and sold the test, marketed under the brand name Nifty, said they were unaware that Shenzhen-based BGI Group also conducts research with the Chinese military. Continue reading...
Footage of a meteoroid passing through the night sky has been captured on a webcam by Solent Ships. The footage was recorded at the port of Southampton on Sunday evening just before 11pm and posted on the Solent Ships YouTube channel Continue reading...
One-year-old twin girls have looked at each other for the first time after a complex surgery to separate them at Soroka medical centre in Beersheba, Israel. Dozens of experts from Israel and abroad were involved in the preparation and 12-hour procedure.The team used 3D- and virtual-reality models to map the complex operation. This enabled simulations and practice to be undertaken before the actual procedure.Soroka's chief paediatric neurosurgeon, Mickey Gideon, said: 'We have done the reconstruction of the brain membrane, a reconstruction of the skull and now the plastic surgeons continue the surgery for the sealing of the skin' Continue reading...
The solution to today’s puzzleEarlier today I set the following puzzle, inspired by the Borromean rings (left), which are three interlocking loops with the property that when you remove any one of them, the other two are no longer linked. In the puzzle everything falls apart when one element is removed. Continue reading...
Researchers solve mystery of why southern hemisphere whales switch suddenly but in north it is gradualFrom Abba’s Mamma Mia stealing the crown from Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody to Rihanna’s Diamonds knocking Psy’s Gangnam Style off the top of the charts – even the catchiest song eventually becomes superseded by a new number.But the phenomenon is not unique to humans: male humpback whales also sing – and change their tunes. Continue reading...
Prof Paul Davies suggests viruses may form vital part of ecosystems on other planetsThe Covid pandemic has already turned life as we know it upside down – and no doubt prompted some people to want to leave the planet.Now a leading scientist has warned that viruses may not only be found on Earth, but might occur – should life exist – elsewhere in the universe. Continue reading...
We would like to hear your reaction to the existing 10-year-limit being extended up to 55 yearsThe 10-year storage limit for freezing embryos, eggs and sperm will be replaced with a right for individuals or couples to keep them for up to a maximum of 55 years.We would like to know what you think about the extension, and what difference you think it will make. Continue reading...
You will nail this oneUPDATE: To read the solution click hereThe image above is the Borromean rings, three interlinked rings that have the curious property that when any one of the rings is removed, the other two are no longer linked.The rings are studied by mathematicians and have long been used as a metaphor for the interdependence of three parts, since either all three are linked, or none are. (The name comes from the Borromeo family of Renaissance Italy, which had the pattern on their coat of arms.) Continue reading...
Use the bright star of Altair in Aquila to orientate yourself to see Delphinus, one of the smallest constellationsThis week’s constellation is a pure delight. Delphinus, the dolphin, is one of the smallest, faintest constellations in the sky, but once seen it is impossible to get the image of a celestial dolphin jumping up from the Milky Way out of your mind. Continue reading...
How contagious is the Delta Covid variant? Take charge of this interactive and watch how small changes in isolation or reproduction rates of Covid-19 can affect our battle against it.One important characteristic of viruses and other pathogens is how contagious or infectious they are. One key measure of this is the R0, or basic reproduction number, which indicates how many new cases one infected person generates.
by Denis Campbell Health policy editor on (#5P6QW)
Ministers said the change from a 10-year limit was needed because of the trend towards later parenthoodPeople who want to start a family will be able to freeze their eggs, sperm and embryos for up to 55 years in an overhaul of fertility rules intended to help prospective parents.The existing 10-year limit on the length of time those planning to use in-vitro fertilisation can store the genetic materials needed is being scrapped, the government said on Monday. Continue reading...
by Denis Campbell Health policy editor on (#5P6Q0)
Study at Birmingham lung disease service points to printer toner and cleaning products as potential triggersWorking in offices can give people asthma from exposure to substances such as printer toner and cleaning products, according to new research by an NHS doctor.The findings show that working in an office is not necessarily safe and that working from home may be better to protect people’s health, said Dr Christopher Huntley. Continue reading...
by Jane Clinton (now), Matthew Weaver (earlier) on (#5P63C)
This blog is now closed – thanks for following along. We’ll launch a new blog in a few hours’ time. In the meantime, you can find all our coronavirus coverage here.11.44pm BSTThis blog is now closed – thanks for following along. We’ll launch a new blog in a few hours’ time. In the meantime, you can find all our coronavirus coverage here.10.59pm BSTTwo flights from London carrying 164,970 and 292,500 doses of the Pfizer vaccine landed in Sydney on Sunday evening.The prime minister, Scott Morrison, announced the four million dose deal with the UK last week.Australia Covid updates: Pfizer vaccines arrive from UK as NSW expects cases to grow – follow live https://t.co/ywUEPZtYUI Continue reading...
The joy of physics | TV theme tunes | Weather forecasts | The cost of warYour correspondence on quantum mechanics (Editorial, 30 August; Letters, 3 September) reminded me of a conversation that I had 50 years ago with a German biologist. He told me that as a teenager he had wanted to be a theoretical physicist and went to a lecture by Wolfgang Pauli on the latter’s exclusion principle. Seeking out Pauli at the end, he said: “That was wonderful, I could see exactly what you meant.” Pauli’s reply: “If you could see it, you didn’t get it.” I gathered that was why he chose biology.
Charlotte Northedge wrote a new novel in lockdown. She considers others who have realised the dreams of their youthI wrote a novel in the last lockdown. To be clear, it wasn’t one of those creative outpourings some people had in between yoga with Adriene and baking banana bread. I had a deadline. Some days, I thought I’d never cut through the brain fog brought about by living through a pandemic. But gradually, as the initial panic subsided and the usual distractions of daily life fell away, I found the words did start to come, and the process of writing my second book was much more fluid and focused than my first.Which is hardly surprising. I started my debut while on maternity leave with my second baby. I had dreamed of writing a novel since I was a child. I was one of those bookish kids whose weekly highlight was a visit to the library and who spent the best part of my teens squirrelling away short stories and beginnings of novels that never seemed to go anywhere. When I moved to London after my English degree, I joined a writing group and started a thriller. 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 conceptsWhat evolutionary advantage comes from women having considerably less body hair than men? Mal Jones, CardiffSend new questions to nq@theguardian.com. Continue reading...
Faced with danger, we act without thinking, as Nicola Kelly found when a day out with her family almost ended in disasterWe were running late that day. Three months into parenthood and time seemed to be perpetually against us – a constant battle against the clock to get the baby fed, changed and out the door.It was the first Saturday afternoon since the pubs had reopened in England and we were meeting friends for lunch. The streets around southeast London were teeming. Wobbly tables spilled out on to the pavement, trays packed with pints, friends hugging, reunited after too long apart. Continue reading...
by David Spiegelhalter and Anthony Masters on (#5P64D)
It pays to always check what is actually being countedLast Wednesday, the Evening Standard trumpeted “Covid deaths rocket to 207 in deadliest day in nearly 6 months”. In fact, deaths within 24 days of a positive test were slightly down over the previous week. So what did it get wrong?It appears it fell for the common misunderstanding, even after 18 months of pandemic, that the daily death figure represents those occurring in the last 24 hours, whereas it is deaths that have been reported in that period and reports are fewer on weekends and holidays. The spike of 207 picked up the backlog from the bank holiday weekend – only 50 had been reported the previous day. Continue reading...
Melbourne psychologist Chris Cheers says the pandemic’s effect has been akin to grief, and acceptance of it is hard to reachAfter 18 months, psychologist Chris Cheers has begun to understand emotional responses to the global Covid pandemic as a kind of grief.It’s a collective grief, experienced by the whole world at once, but also deeply personal: our losses are not the same just as our experiences have not been the same. Continue reading...
I have never been seriously ill or spent a night in hospital, but I’m plagued by fears that a terrible sickness is coming for me. How did I fall victim to health anxiety?“This minute I was well, and am ill, this minute.” The pain arrives slowly, like a Polaroid sharpening into view, but the fear comes suddenly: a channel switched, a cloud sped across the sun. It’s June 1989, I recently turned 20, and I am supposed to be studying for first-year exams in English, at University College Dublin. Instead, I’m letting a morning’s MTV binge slide into the afternoon and paying keen attention to the fingers of my right hand, which have begun to ache. In the days that follow – though I only half believe it’s happening – stiffness spreads to my wrist and elbow, to the other arm, to my hips and knees. I start hobbling, and hunch over on the bus on my way to university. I will have to repeat some exams, but my affliction will have vanished by midsummer, walked off one hot day in St Stephen’s Green.Most of my life, from early adolescence onwards, has been punctuated by these episodes, more or less alarming, depending on my symptoms and the disease I have decided is expressed there. Fretful interludes have remained secret, never spoken about to parents, friends or professionals. Others have been, or felt, dramatic: the shock of a sudden lump, rash or pain must be taken to a GP, then to specialists, only to be quickly dismissed, or dissolved in the weeks-long agony of appointments and results. Still others have lingered for months or even years, dragging at daily life, relationships, career prospects. Continue reading...
by Lisa Cox Photography: Annette Ruzicka on (#5P4X4)
A small team of ecologists and scientists are working to find new ways to bolster populations of Australia’s endangered native animals Continue reading...
Coronavirus patients with high-risk comorbidities are being given a newly approved antibody drug, which limits the virus’s ability to replicate in the body
The space cemetery, named for the fictional captain in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, is where the International Space Station is likely to end upAt the furthest point from any landmass on earth, and 4km under the sea, lies the space cemetery.When their outer space journeys come to an end, old satellites, rocket parts and space stations are sent to this desolate spot in the Pacific Ocean to rest on the dark seabed forever. Continue reading...
House in southern France yielded find of outstanding wall paintings dating from 1st century BCOn the right bank of the Rhône in the Provençal town of Arles, the Roman-built House of the Harpist is being hailed as a remarkable record of ancient architecture and interior decoration.Now, experts have opened their workshop to reveal their painstaking attempts to piece together the vast jigsaw of magnificent and never before seen frescoes discovered in the property thought to date back more than two millennia. Continue reading...
Readers respond to an editorial about understanding quantum theory and defining the laws of physicsYour editorial on quantum physics (30 August) starts with a quote from Richard Feynman – “nobody understands quantum mechanics” – and then says “that is no longer true”. One of us (Norman Dombey) was taught quantum theory by Feynman at Caltech; the other (John Charap) was taught by Paul Dirac at Cambridge. Quantum theory was devised by several physicists including Dirac, Erwin Schrödinger and Werner Heisenberg in the 1920s and 1930s, and Dirac made their work relativistic.It is absurd to say that quantum mechanics is now understood whereas it was not 50 years ago. There have of course been advances in our understanding of quantum phenomena, but the conceptual framework of quantum physics remains as it was. The examples you give of nuclear plants, medical scans and lasers involve straightforward applications of quantum mechanics that were understood 50 years ago. Continue reading...
As living creatures, we are exquisitely evolved to interact with the world through perception, says David HughesGaia Vince, reviewing Anil Seth’s Being You: A New Science of Consciousness (The exhilarating new science of consciousness, 25 August), extols the thesis that because our perception of the world is a complex physical process, perception is itself a “hallucination” and “a big lie created by our deceptive brains”. But when we consider that dogs hear sounds we don’t, flies look through compound eyes, birds navigate using inbuilt GPS, it does seem perverse to claim that the very physicality of being alive downgrades perception to spontaneous fakery.Does, for example, the complex biochemistry of our arm and shoulder muscles make striking a tennis ball a hallucination? Are all our sensations of touch illusory? A Wimbledon winner and someone who has a burn would surely disagree. We are, as living creatures, exquisitely evolved to interact with the world through perception. Our survival depends on it. It is not dying of thirst that is a hallucination, it is the dehydration that accompanies such a death that causes hallucination: the misperception of reality. Continue reading...
This new class of planet hoped by scientists to harbour alien life is a hot waterworld. Let’s stop Earth turning into oneAstronomers have begun scrutinising a new class of planet that might support alien life: the hycean. This is a portmanteau coinage combining “hydrogen” and “ocean”, since the planets are hot waterworlds with hydrogen-rich atmospheres.In ancient Greek, Oceanus was the great river encompassing the disc of the Earth, personified as the son of Uranus and Gaia. Hydrogen, meanwhile, is Greek for “water-generating”, as H indeed is when combined with O. Continue reading...
Successor to Hubble has been hit by delays and a ballooning budget since work began on it in 1996Nasa has completed the final tests of the James Webb space telescope and is now preparing it for transportation to the launch site in Kourou, French Guiana.Webb is Nasa’s successor to the ageing Hubble space telescope. Work on it began way back in 1996. Back then, it was called the Next Generation space telescope. It was forecast to cost $500m (£363m) and was set for launch in 2007. Continue reading...
Arctic change increased chances of tightly spinning winds above North Pole, authors say, boosting chances of extreme weatherThe climate crisis has not only been leaving deadly heatwaves and more destructive hurricanes in its wake, but also probably creating extreme winter weather events, according to a new report released on Thursday by the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s journal Science.Related: ‘Fire weather’: dangerous days now far more common in US west, study finds Continue reading...
From playing word games to using a memory palace, there are many ways to train your brain as we start to socialise in greater numbersSay what you will about the rule of six: at least it was easy to keep up with everyone. Now that most restrictions in the UK have been lifted, we might not only be catching up with acquaintances we have not seen for well over a year, but meeting new people – and our brains might be struggling to keep up. Here are 10 tips for priming your mind. Continue reading...
Boris Johnson’s passport plan sets the vaxxers against the anti-vaxxers without necessarily making anything saferVaccinations are the high point of human reason. Devised under clinical conditions by scientists interested only in what works, they represent the mastery of the rational world over chaotic nature; and also, of course, they save lives. Vaccine passports, then, should in theory be no more than the rubber stamp of reason. So why does the policy, not to mention the discussion surrounding it, look so irrational?In late July, shortly after nightclubs had reopened for the first time in over a year, Boris Johnson appeared to go against his previous approach – let’s call it, for brevity, “loosey goosey” – and announced a plan to make “full vaccination the condition of entry” to nightclubs and other crowded indoor events. The prime minister didn’t have the experience of Boardmasters, the Cornish festival in mid-August, which seeded so many Covid infections that the county, had it been abroad, would have been placed on the red list. Yet he did have that data by this week, when he restated this intention. Continue reading...
When we find it difficult to say ‘no’ at work or at home, our responsibilities can quickly become overwhelming. For good mental health, focusing on our own needs and capabilities is crucialNo. A tiny, yet mighty word. To hear it can make us feel childlike; sheepish or in trouble. How does it make you feel to say “no”? Strong? Nervous? Guilty? Do you say it often enough?In July, when the gymnast Simone Biles withdrew from most of her Olympics appearances, citing emotional exhaustion that was affecting her ability to perform, her “no” was a thunderbolt. Reactions were largely supportive, but opinions were divided along political lines in the US. White, male sports pundits (and, predictable as the arrow of time, Piers Morgan) used the word “selfish”. It was a similar story when the tennis player Naomi Osaka withdrew from the French Open in May, speaking of “long bouts of depression” and “huge waves of anxiety” before her pre- and post-match press conferences. Continue reading...
by Presented by Phoebe Weston and Patrick Greenfield on (#5P2BY)
Getting trees into the ground isn’t simple. Reforestation often involves trade-offs and challenges. Phoebe Weston checks in on two projects where people are planting trees, and one where it’s not humans doing the planting at all. She and Patrick Greenfield from The age of extinction are back with two new episodes Continue reading...
Health groups say move would leave many patients in England unable to afford medication, intensifying existing health inequalitiesScrapping free prescription charges for people over 60 and raising the qualifying age to 66 could have a devastating impact on the health of tens of thousands of older people, new analysis by Age UK suggests.In a joint open letter urging the government to reconsider proposals to scrap free prescriptions for over-60s in England, 20 healthcare organisations expressed “deep shared concerns” that the move would leave many patients unable to afford medication, intensifying existing health inequalities and having a devastating impact on some older people’s health. Continue reading...
Science | The Guardian