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Shares of Oxford Nanopore close up 44%, giving co-founder paper fortune of £63m

Last week, supermodel Linda Evangelista posted on her Instagram page describing undergoing a procedure called CoolSculpting, claiming it has left her ‘permanently deformed’. With this, which is also known as cryolipolysis, and other non-surgical cosmetic treatments on the rise, particularly among younger people, Madeleine Finlay investigates how these procedures work and how risky they really are Continue reading...

David Spiegelhalter and Anthony Masters delve into the detail behind the data and explore the true human cost of the pandemicAlong with successive waves of infection, the coronavirus pandemic has provided us with a tsunami of data and graphs. Thanks to the Public Health England dashboard and websites such as Our World in Data, every internet user can access accurate and timely information on Covid cases, deaths, hospitalisations and vaccines, broken down by age, gender and location.However, while this wealth of information can be immensely valuable, it can also cause problems. Taken out of context and spun in a misleading way, raw coronavirus numbers can be a source of disinformation, which through social media can spread as efficiently as the virus itself. A simple fact, such as the median age of coronavirus victims (83) actually exceeding UK life expectancy at birth (81) can lead to governments and the public not taking Covid as seriously as they should. (Having lived to 83, one would ordinarily expect to live longer still – what matters is life expectancy conditional on having reached this age.) Continue reading...

Discovery along with another species enhances island’s reputation as Europe’s best place to find dinosaursThe fossilised remains of a dinosaur, nicknamed “the horned crocodile-faced hell heron”, have been unearthed on the Isle of Wight.The 125m-year-old predator had a 9 metre-long body, powerful claws, a gigantic skull covered in horns and bumps, and long crocodile-like teeth. The fearsome creature lived on the fringes of ancient floodplains where it would have lain in wait for aquatic prey, research suggests. Continue reading...

With the pandemic not yet over, experts analyse risks of catching the virus

The wealth of the Tesla boss and would-be space coloniser has overtaken that of his Amazon rival. How does he plan to celebrate? By being as puerile as possible

AI has taken the place of astrology as humans have worked through the millennia for knowledge of when it will rain

Discovery of DNA modifications raises hope of treatment for disorders that particularly afflict twinsThe medical mystery of what causes some twins to be born identical may have been solved by scientists in the Netherlands, raising hopes for treatment of congenital disorders that disproportionately afflict them.Identical twins form after a fertilised egg, called a zygote, splits into two embryos sharing exactly the same genes. The reason for the split is unknown. Continue reading...

Authors from Carl Jung to Aldous Huxley and Susan Blackmore explore the deep mysteries of what it means to be a personDo you know what sort of animal you are? It’s rather important to know. If you call yourself a humanist, for instance, don’t you need some idea of what a human is so that you can make sure your behaviour accords with your ethics? If you think that humans are just a little lower than the angels, as the Judaeo-Christian tradition says, shouldn’t you know how much lower, so you can be appropriately aspirational but not frustrated or cocky?And then there’s the problem of personal identity. When you say “I love you”, or “I‘m afraid”, how confident are you about wielding that mighty and mysterious pronoun? Are you as confident as modern neuroscientists that “you” are just the chemical events that happen in your brain? Does that explanation satisfy you? Continue reading...

Yes rockets are exciting but what are you eight years old?

Government removes costs and red tape in go-ahead for more trials of gene edited cropsThe prospect of genetically modified foods being grown and sold in the UK has come a step closer after changes to farming regulations that will allow field trials of gene edited crops in England.Companies or research organisations wishing to conduct field trials will still have to notify the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the government announced on Wednesday, but existing costs and red tape will be removed so more trials are likely to go ahead. Continue reading...

Barbara Wagstaff and Mercie Lack’s photographs of 1939 excavation left in plastic bag at National TrustIt was 12 years ago that conservator Anita Bools first laid eyes on photographs which had been left in a plastic bag at the reception of the National Trust site Sutton Hoo by a mystery donor.She remembered they were laid out on tables for her to see and decide how important they might be. “It was one of those moments you get prickles down the back of your neck. I thought ‘my goodness … this is the genuine thing’. It almost felt like the archaeological discovery itself.” Continue reading...

Study finds the intelligent endangered alpine parrot can be trained to use electronic devices with their tongues

Results of two studies may explain why some people develop diabetes after catching the virus

Global analysis of indoor and outdoor pollution also finds link to low birth weightAir pollution is likely to have been responsible for up to 6 million premature births and 3 million underweight babies worldwide every year, research shows.The analysis, which combines the results of multiple scientific studies, is the first to calculate the total global burden of outdoor and indoor air pollution combined. Continue reading...

Less is known about women’s health than men’s – that’s because research on the former is underfunded, says Silvia HummelJessica Nordell raises several important issues facing women and people from ethnic minorities in accessing quality healthcare (The bias that blinds: why some people get dangerously different medical care, The long read, 21 September). Another important factor is that less is known about women’s health than men’s. A recent analysis of the US National Institutes of Health expenditure (by far the largest funder of health research in the world) concluded that the “NIH applies a disproportionate share of its resources to diseases that affect primarily men, at the expense of those that primarily affect women”. The biggest losers? ME/chronic fatigue syndrome and migraine, funded respectively at 6% and 7% commensurate with the disease burden on patients.Unless metrics relating to discrepancies between the treatment of men and women in all aspects of healthcare are monitored, and those responsible held to account, women will continue to suffer unnecessarily poor health.

Whether atomic priesthoods, 50ft concrete spikes or burying astronauts in concrete, humanity’s attempts to keep free from infection are examined in Until Proven SafeIn January 2020, just a few days before the first Covid-19-infected passengers landed in the United States on a flight from Wuhan, preparations were already being made in a converted car park in Omaha, Nebraska. By complete coincidence, after a decade of planning, the country’s first National Quarantine Unit opened its doors here on the eve of a global pandemic.The timing couldn’t have been better. The need for such a place had been mooted ever since 9/11, followed by a series of anthrax attacks and Sars, all of which had raised fears in Congress over the prospect of bioterrorism and the increasing global threat of infectious diseases. Located roughly equidistant from both coasts, the city of Omaha declared itself to be the ideal place for isolating people potentially infected with deadly contagions, and received almost $20m from the US department of health to establish a state-of-the-art federal quarantine facility. Featuring negative-pressure en suite rooms kitted out with mini-fridges, TVs and exercise bikes, it was like a high-security, wipe-clean hotel. There was only one problem: it had just 20 beds. Continue reading...

As Britain begins its commitment to take in 20,000 people fleeing Afghanistan, we look at the psychological impacts of trying to start again in a new country. Many asylum seekers and refugees have had to flee their homes in extremely distressing circumstances. A lucky few make it to a safe country such as the UK – but what happens next?Anand Jagatia speaks to Afraa, who was forcibly displaced from Syria with her family, and Prof Rachel Tribe, an occupational psychologist who works with asylum seekers and refugeesArchive: BBC Continue reading...

Data also finds smokers more likely to die from disease compared with those who have never smoked

Scientists found dangerous levels of MDMA in nearby River Whitelake after the festivalScientists have found what they called environmentally damaging levels of illegal drugs in the river running through Glastonbury festival owing to public urination on the site.Researchers measured levels of illegal drugs in the river before, during and after the last Glastonbury festival, in 2019, comparing levels upstream and downstream of the event. Continue reading...

How the Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker became one of the world’s most contentious thinkersOn a recent afternoon, Steven Pinker, the cognitive psychologist and bestselling author of upbeat books about human progress, was sitting in his summer home on Cape Cod, thinking about Bill Gates. Pinker was gearing up to record a radio series on critical thinking for the BBC, and he wanted the world’s fourth richest man to join him for an episode on the climate emergency. “People tend to approach challenges in one of two ways – as problem-solving or as conflict,” Pinker, who appreciates the force of a tidy dichotomy, said. “You can think of it as Bill versus Greta. And I’m very much in Bill’s camp.”A few weeks earlier, Gates had been photographed in Manhattan carrying a copy of Pinker’s soon to be published 12th book, Rationality, which inspired the BBC series. “We sent it to his people,” Pinker said. Pinker is an avid promoter of his own work, and for the past 25 years he has had a great deal to promote. Since the 1990s, he has written a string of popular books on language, the mind and human behaviour, but in the past decade, he has become best known for his counterintuitive take on the state of the world. In the shadow of the financial crisis, while other authors were writing books about how society was profoundly broken, Pinker took the opposite tack, arguing that things were, in fact, better than ever. Continue reading...

Researchers find space in Gorham’s Cave complex that has been closed off for at least 40,000 yearsResearchers excavating a cave network on the Rock of Gibraltar have discovered a new chamber, sealed off from the world for at least 40,000 years, that could shed light on the culture and customs of the Neanderthals who occupied the area for a thousand centuries.In 2012, experts began examining Vanguard Cave, part of the Gorham’s Cave complex, to determine its true dimensions and to see whether it contained passages and chambers that had been plugged by sand. Continue reading...

Study prompts experts to call for nutrition to be included in public health strategiesChildren who eat five or more portions of fruit and vegetables a day have the best mental health, according to the first study of its kind.Higher intake is associated with better mental wellbeing among secondary school pupils, and a nutritious breakfast and lunch is linked to emotional wellbeing in pupils across all ages, the research shows. Continue reading...

Study shows people with normal BMI can achieve remission of type 2 diabetes by losing 10-15% weightPeople risk developing type 2 diabetes if they can no longer fit into the jeans they were wearing when they were 21, according to one of the world’s leading experts on the disease.And if people discovered they could no longer fit into the same-sized trousers then they were “carrying too much fat”, Prof Roy Taylor, from Newcastle University, said. Continue reading...

My friend Quentin Bone, who has died aged 89, was an outstanding marine zoologist whose publications on how fish swim made him a leader in this field while still in his 30s.His 1966 paper comparing and contrasting details of fine structure, innervation and performance of the two very different sorts of muscle that drive a fish through water, became a citation classic. His jointly authored Biology of Fishes (1982) is now in its third edition.

American astronomer, leading asteroid hunter and co-discoverer of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, which crashed into JupiterCarolyn Shoemaker was a housewife with no science degree when, aged 51, she started searching for comets and asteroids with her astrogeologist husband, Gene Shoemaker. By the time of her death at the age of 92 from a fall, she had established herself as one of the leading hunters of such bodies of her generation.She found a total of 32 comets and, according to the IAU Minor Planet Center, 377 asteroids, of which 160 were her sole discoveries. Among the comets was one of the most famous of all time, Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, which crashed into Jupiter in a spectacular display in 1994. Continue reading...

UK and China are racing to develop forms of the super-strength technology that has potential aerospace and weaponry usesA large shed on an unassuming industrial estate beside Swansea’s River Tawe does not at first glance seem vital to the UK’s national security. The facility, run by a small company called Perpetuus , sits beside a mortuary and a parcel depot.Earlier this month, the company, which makes graphene – a “wonder material” made of a single layer of carbon atoms – grabbed the attention of the government, which said it would investigate a possible takeover involving a Chinese academic, in a highly unusual move that startled industry observers. Continue reading...

One of the largest mining operations ever seen on Earth aims to despoil an ocean we are only barely beginning to understandA short bureaucratic note from a brutally degraded microstate in the South Pacific to a little-known institution in the Caribbean is about to change the world. Few people are aware of its potential consequences, but the impacts are certain to be far-reaching. The only question is whether that change will be to the detriment of the global environment or the benefit of international governance.In late June, the island republic of Nauru informed the International Seabed Authority (ISA) based in Kingston, Jamaica of its intention to start mining the seabed in two years’ time via a subsidiary of a Canadian firm, The Metals Company (TMC, until recently known as DeepGreen). Innocuous as it sounds, this note was a starting gun for a resource race on the planet’s last vast frontier: the abyssal plains that stretch between continental shelves deep below the oceans. Continue reading...

A third dose of the vaccine provides significant protection, but that should not mean those who are unvaccinated go without

Covid has put academics like Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance at the heart of government, but smart politicians are essential tooHow many lives would have been saved in the pandemic if the UK government had truly “followed the science”? The question is unanswerable but hardly academic. We cannot accurately quantify how many lives were lost by the politically driven delays to lockdown in the first and second waves, but the number is not small.So would we have done better simply to put scientists in charge of pandemic policy? Might we hand over climate change policy to them, too? In fact, would their evidence-based methods make them better leaders all round? Continue reading...

Vast collection of a trillion stars is farthest celestial object that can be seen with the unaided eyeAs the nights continue to draw in, we can put those darker evenings to good use. It is the beginning of observing season, and for stargazers in the northern hemisphere, there is a celestial jewel to track down: the Andromeda galaxy. Continue reading...

Exclusive: Researchers believe such antibodies could be used to treat people with severe coronavirus

Naomi Kori Pomat, the first female doctor in her province, died in country’s first government-confirmed death of a health worker from virusTributes have poured in for a doctor in Papua New Guinea’s Western Province who died last week, in the country’s first death of a healthcare worker from Covid-19 confirmed by the government.Dr Naomi Kori Pomat, 60, the director for curative health services at the Western Provincial Health Authority (WPHA), was medevaced to Port Moresby after contracting the virus and died on 19 September. Continue reading...

Pandemic behind biggest fall in life expectancy in western Europe since second world war, say researchersThe Covid pandemic has caused the biggest decrease in life expectancy in western Europe since the second world war, according to a study.Data from most of the 29 countries – spanning most of Europe, the US and Chile – that were analysed by scientists recorded reductions in life expectancy last year and at a scale that wiped out years of progress. Continue reading...

Thanks for following along – this blog is now closed. You can catch up with the latest coronavirus coverage here.11.45pm BSTAn estimated 2.5 million blood tests to diagnose diabetes were missed during the first six months of the pandemic, according to a study by The Benchmarking Partnership.The research group also said a further 1.4 million routine blood tests which enable diabetic people to manage their condition were missed or delayed from the day of the first national lockdown on March 23, until September 30 2020.11.44pm BSTThanks for following along – this blog is now closed. You can catch up with the latest coronavirus coverage here. Continue reading...

Pioneering psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who specialised in studying the effects of stillbirth on women’s mental healthThe psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Stanford Bourne, who has died aged 92 of congestive cardiac failure, broke the silence in the 1960s surrounding the anguish of stillbirth. His work opened up discussion, addressed medical bias, and guided doctors and midwives towards a more compassionate approach.In the 60s, 18,000 women a year had a stillborn baby, but it was cloaked in secrecy. Well-meaning staff quickly removed babies before parents could see, name or hold them, and they were “disposed of” – cremated or buried with nothing to mark the spot. Parents were expected to stifle their grief and often urged to “try for another”. 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 conceptsIf the Earth were flat, how would our lives be different?

Adolescents always liked hanging out together, as new evidence of human activity from more than 20,000 years ago revealsThe White Sands of New Mexico have been a popular tourist attraction for a remarkably long time. Modern travellers come to gaze at the vistas of glistening, pure dunes of gypsum that stretch for miles in all directions.But previous visitors had very different goals. Thousands of years ago, Homo sapiens came here to hunt giant sloths, mammoths and other megafauna. In doing so, they left signs of their presence whose analysis now promises to transform our understanding of the populating of our planet. Continue reading...

The biotechnology is comparable to traditional breeding methods and vital to create livestock resistant to disease, droughts and heatwaves, says groupLeading UK researchers, vets and farmers have urged ministers to free livestock science of unnecessary legal curbs as the country prepares, post-Brexit, to ease gene-editing rules. Such a move would allow the creation of new breeds of animals resistant to disease, heat and drought, they argue.The government is expected to propose easing gene-editing restrictions in the near future to enable the creation of new generations of crops. However, the group – which has written to the environment secretary, George Eustice – worries there is less interest in using the technology to create new breeds of pigs, cows and poultry. Continue reading...

Whistled languages exist on every inhabited continent – now some scientists think similar dialects could have preceded the spoken wordFor centuries, shepherds from the small village of Aas in the French Pyrenees led their sheep and cattle up to mountain pastures for the summer months. To ease the solitude, they would communicate with each other or with the village below in a whistled form of the local Gascon dialect, transmitting and receiving information accurately over distances of up to 10 kilometres.They “spoke” in simple phrases – “What’s the time?”, “Come and eat,”, “Bring the sheep home” – but each word and syllable was articulated as in speech. Outsiders often mistook the whistling for simple signalling (“I’m over here!”), and the irony, says linguist and bioacoustician Julien Meyer of Grenoble Alpes University in France, is that the world of academia only realised its oversight around the middle of the 20th century, just as the whistled language of Aas was dying on the lips of its last speakers. Continue reading...

Neither actor nor Blue Origin has commented on mission as some point out report appears same day as promotion for his new albumHe was once Starfleet’s youngest captain, a fearless explorer leading the USS Enterprise on an intergalactic odyssey. Now the actor who famously portrayed Captain James Tiberius Kirk on Star Trek for four decades is reportedly set to boldly go on a real-life space adventure – at the age of 90.Related: ‘Take it easy, nothing matters in the end’: William Shatner at 90, on love, loss and Leonard Nimoy Continue reading...

Finding a humorous angle to some of my darkest episodes – and sharing them with strangers – was strangely cathartic“Have you gone mad?” asked one friend. “You’re so brave. I could never do that. Wouldn’t meditation be wiser?” said another. For someone with a long history of depression and anxiety, plus a morbid fear of public speaking, taking up standup comedy might seem like a masochistic decision. Yet to me it makes perfect sense. Excruciating fear of failure is at the heart of most people’s aversion to attempting to make a room full of strangers laugh. But controlling that fear, and not succumbing to it, is the central reason I’ve chosen to expose myself in this very public and potentially humiliating way.I grew up in comfortable, middle-class suburban Hertfordshire in the 1970s and 80s, but my upbringing was a complex one of emotional uncertainty. Years of therapy have lent me an understanding of how I learned to cope over the years. To avoid facing difficult issues during my childhood and teenage years I buried my emotions, and that evasion only escalated in adulthood. By my early 20s, I was mentally ill-equipped to deal with life’s thornier challenges. Continue reading...

Astrophysicist Jacco van Loon on the hunt for alien life, why logic can solve the climate crisis and what happens when the sun becomes a red giantFor years, astrophysicists have been saying that alien life must exist, but finding out where and in what form has proved elusive. We may be edging closer: a team from the University of Cambridge has discovered a new class of habitable planets they claim will lead to evidence of life in the next three years. Is ET out there? Or is this search, like that for the holy grail, more about us than them? I asked Jacco van Loon, astrophysicist and director of Keele Observatory in Staffordshire, for his opinion.Hi Jacco! Explain your job as though I were five years old.

Studies suggesting ivermectin is an effective Covid treatment relied on evidence ‘that has substantially evaporated under close scrutiny’, fresh research shows

Scientific community is outraged, saying charges of organised crime are an attempt by Mexico’s president to silence themMexico’s scientific community has reacted with outrage after the country’s chief prosecutor requested arrest warrants for 31 scientists, researchers and academics on accusations of organised crime, money laundering and embezzlement – charges that could land them alongside drug cartel kingpins in one of the country’s most notorious lockups.A judge at the maximum security Altiplano prison – from which Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán escaped in 2015 – denied granting the arrest warrants on Wednesday. But the federal prosecutor immediately announced plans to pursue arrest warrants for the third time. Continue reading...

Prof Jonathan Green and Prof Andrew Whitehouse explain some of the implications of their autism therapy trialJames Cusack’s piece on the results of our new autism therapy trial (A new therapy for children who may have autism risks carrying a hidden cost, 22 September) points out some paradoxes of progress, and the need for ongoing conversation.This therapy works with parents (not the infant at all) to help their awareness and responsiveness to infant differences in communication, restoring a “synchrony” in their reciprocal interaction – the theory being that positive developmental outcomes will naturally flow. And this indeed is what we find happens. Contrary to any sense of “opposing” autism, it cherishes neurodiversity by attending to and understanding it, giving equal opportunity to these infants for an adapted and responsive social environment. The positive developmental outcomes we see are simply a consequence of getting this early communication right; the infant is able to benefit like any child from an adapted social environment. The children continued to be neurodivergent with developmental difficulties but these were more likely to be reduced below a clinical autism threshold. Continue reading...

Experiment aims to address a gender gap where most space medicine research has been carried out on menIt may sound like a prolonged spa break but when 20 women tuck themselves into a waterbed in the south of France for five days this week, it will be under the guise of a scientific study into the impact of space flight on the female body.The experiment, by the European Space Agency, will simulate the impact of microgravity on the musculoskeletal system, immune and cardiovascular health and hormone levels. With an increasing number of female astronauts participating in long-duration missions the immersion study is aimed at addressing a gender gap where the vast majority of space medicine research has been carried out on men. Continue reading...

The UK’s first ever cancer research exhibition pairs up patients with researchers to show the creative paths taken on the cutting edge of human discoveryShortly before the pandemic hit, I found myself dressed in a red lab coat, trying to find a cure for blood cancer. Although that might be overstating things a little. It’s Professor Dominique Bonnet who is at the cutting edge of cancer research, whereas I was just tagging along for a day at the Francis Crick Institute, hoping to get a feel for what a career in the laboratory looks like.It was a fascinating experience, especially seeing how Bonnet’s work could be surprisingly hands-on. I learned that she uses sponges of collagen in her research because the material is so similar to the bone marrow in which our blood cells are made. By dipping these tiny sponges into human stromal cells and then inserting them into the backs of mice to develop naturally, scientists are better able to monitor how cancer progresses and reacts to certain interventions. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the sponges can be removed afterwards, leaving the mice unharmed, although of course other cancer research is not able to be as humane. Continue reading...

Exclusive: Listen to the experts, says deputy chief medical officer Jonathan Van-Tam, not the celebritiesThey didn’t ask for the spotlight, and sometimes they didn’t always seem comfortable under the media glare.But the scientists who came into our lives at the start of the coronavirus pandemic became household names. None more so than Prof Jonathan Van-Tam. Continue reading...

Heather Heying and Bret Weinstein attempt to show how human nature is at odds with modern society, but their science, and style, gratesImagine discovering a fence in the middle of a desert. Not immediately seeing its purpose, you might think: “Let’s get rid of this useless fence!” But are you sure about that? Maybe you’re at the edge of a field of angry wildebeest, and by removing the fence you’ll leave yourself vulnerable to be crushed, Mufasa-style, in a stampede. Better to first find out why the fence is there before attempting to tear it down.So goes the argument made by GK Chesterton in 1929: you should try to understand things before changing them. The evolutionary biologists Heather Heying and Bret Weinstein – whom some readers might remember from 2017, when they resigned from Evergreen College in Washington State after a dramatic culture-war flareup – have written a book that takes Chesterton’s fence as its central metaphor. By disregarding the facts of evolved human nature, they argue, the modern world in all its novelty has destroyed the proverbial fence, leaving us unhealthy, miserable and heading for societal collapse. Continue reading...