Bezos, Musk and Branson have achieved much – but the biggest challenge facing humanity is not the stars, but our planetFor three of the world’s most famous billionaires, space is indeed the final frontier – for their egos. Jeff Bezos, the planet’s richest man, launched into the great beyond last week via his Blue Origin venture, days after Sir Richard Branson did the same on a Virgin Galactic craft. Elon Musk, the sometime world’s richest man, has yet to join his rivals in the heavens with his SpaceX business, but has bought a ticket to ride with Branson at some point.Space travel is the stuff of legend and these lauded entrepreneurs are clearly caught up in the mythology. Humanity and space have connotations of bravery, and technological and intellectual brilliance, that run through the ages, from Galileo to Gagarin and the moon landings. Continue reading...

Fears over ‘experimental’ inoculation show that more needs to be done to counter harmful misinformation

The Amazon founder returned to Earth last week with a pledge to help save the planet, but technology alone is not the answerSo Jeff Bezos made it safely back to the universe that most of us lesser mortals inhabit. He graciously thanked his Amazon employees and customers (that’s you and me, folks) who made the realisation of his childhood Star Trek dreams possible. “I want to thank every Amazon employee and every Amazon customer because you guys paid for this,” he said. “Seriously, for every Amazon customer out there and every employee thank you from the bottom of my heart very much. It’s very appreciated.”Aw, shucks. Thanks, Jeff. In a post-flight press conference he declared that the venture had reinforced his commitment to tackling the climate crisis and using his project as a stepping stone towards colonising space for the benefit of Earth. “We’re going to build a road to space,” he said, “so our kids, and their kids, can build the future. This is not about escaping Earth … this is the only good planet in the solar system and we have to take care of it. When you go to space and see how fragile it is you want to take care of it even more.” Continue reading...

Deputy chief medical officer Michael Kidd says NSW will get additional 50,000 vaccines from national stockpile. This blog is now closed

Being a good listener isn’t just about shutting up and not interrupting – it’s about really taking in what someone is telling youWhen I was a young girl, a fabulous woman called Pam who lived opposite us would come to do my mum’s hair once a week. Pam was a retired hairdresser and beautician who had been taught partly by Vivien Leigh’s mother.I knew this because I listened as she and my mother talked. My mum would sit under the stand hairdryer with wads of cotton wool curling out from under her hairnet to protect her ears from the heat, and Pam would talk and talk: about Margaret Thatcher (my mum wasn’t a fan); their early lives (Pam’s in Yorkshire, my mum’s in Naples); and about life up and down the London street where we all lived. Continue reading...

Science is the only method we have of understanding the world, making predictions, and rationally adapting our own behaviour

Risk of reinfection with Delta may be 46% greater than with the Alpha variant, national testing data finds

Cases increased in all four nations, says Office for National Statistics

Hope’s scientific mission is to study atmosphere and climate of Mars and is remarkable successIt is one year since the United Arab Emirates launched the Hope space mission from the Tanegashima Space Centre in Kagoshima prefecture, in south-west Japan, to begin its journey to Mars.By 9 February 2021, Hope had crossed 493m km of space and performed the Mars Orbit Insertion (MOI) manoeuvre. On 23 March, Hope manoeuvred into its final operating orbit, a highly elliptical path that carried it from 20,000km to 43,000km in altitude above Mars, and, after a period of commissioning the instruments, science operations began on 23 May. Continue reading...

Longer schedule led to more Covid antibodies and higher proportion of helper T-cells, supporting immune memory – researchers

Payments described as ‘waste of public money’ represent almost 14% of the $90bn program

More than 200 million Europeans fully vaccinated but programme still behind summer target; more Olympic athletes confirmed to have Covid

Separate pilot daily testing programme will be expanded to up to 500 food and drink supply chain employersWorkers from 16 key sectors including health, transport and energy will not have to isolate after being pinged by the NHS Covid app, as it was revealed that more than 600,000 people in England and Wales were sent self-isolation alerts last week.The raft of changes, after days of frantic talks with industry leaders, came amid open Conservative revolt over the so-called “pingdemic” with the former health secretary Jeremy Hunt warning the government that it was facing a crisis of public trust in the system. Continue reading...

Sulphur-crested cockatoos are learning to pry open bins, with researchers finding the new skill has caught on in 44 Sydney suburbs in just two years. With help from the public, Australian and German ecologists have documented cockatoos learning the bin-diving behaviour through social interactions. The research, published in the journal Science, also found differences in the cockatoos’ bin-opening technique between different suburbs, arising from 'local subcultures'.

Scientists say efforts to increase vaccinations by tactics seen as coercive are less useful than good communication via role models

Several factors, including the portion of those at highest risk among the double-vaccinated and antibody levels, account for the data

The flight by the Amazon boss could mark the unchecked commercial exploitation of the ultimate virgin environmentOne very small step for mankind, one giant ego trip for Jeff Bezos. The world’s richest man ejaculated himself into space this week, in what was not quite the first suborbital tourist flight – Richard Branson beat him up there – but definitely the fastest. “Everybody who’s been up into space, they say that it changes them,” Bezos said earnestly, of a trip that lasted roughly the time it takes to hard boil an egg.If you say so, Jeff. But it looked very much like the intergalactic equivalent of one of those cruises where a vast herd is disgorged ashore for a brief, bewildered trample over the nearest landmark before being rounded up and whisked away to the next port. Sure, you’ve been to Venice, technically. But which one was Venice, again? Continue reading...

Exclusive: Waning antibody levels are possible warning sign of lower protection in months after vaccination

Research suggests that chronic loneliness may be as damaging to health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. But do we know what loneliness actually is?As a clinical psychologist who specializes in friendships and social connection, I am deeply concerned about the feelings of loneliness that so many of us are experiencing.Three in five American adults report feeling lonely and 18% (roughly 46 million people) report that they have just one person or nobody that they can trust or turn to for help in their personal lives. These worrisome numbers are echoed across studies and across borders. Continue reading...

WHO proposal to audit Chinese laboratories is ‘arrogance towards science’, says health official

On a visit to the UK from the US, I have seen how incoherent government policy is allowing Delta to run rampant

The politics of this new, extreme individualism will make collective responses to social crises impossibleSoon, a few of the more shameless newspaper commentators will urge the rest of us to “learn to live” with climate breakdown. Soon, a couple of especially sharp-elbowed cabinet ministers will sigh to the Spectator that, yes, carbon emissions should ideally be slashed – but we must make a trade-off between “lives and livelihoods”. Soon, a little platoon of Tory backbenchers will respond to TV pictures of another devastating flash flood or deadly heatwave by complaining about “fearmongering”. “Why is the BBC so doomy?” they’ll ask, as the death toll rises.Soon, shockingly soon, the cheap shots, the brazen stat-bending and the coprophagic cynicism that have warped British discourse since March 2020 will migrate from Covid to an even bigger and more lethal crisis: the climate emergency. And just as they have helped shape the self-inflicted catastrophe that England has embarked upon this week, so they will work their terrible influence on that one. Continue reading...

Scott Morrison apologises for missing vaccine targets as New South Wales reports record cases during fourth week of stay-at-home order

We learned in our previous episode about the very real consequences that extreme heat has on human health and wellbeing, but there is little research into what actually happens to our bodies when exposed to extreme heat apart from in the world of sports science. In the second part of our discussion, as fears mount that the Tokyo Olympics will be the hottest on record and the world gears up for Cop26, Shivani Dave speaks to Mike Tipton, a professor of human and applied physiology

Move comes after the Brazilian president wrongly said masks were ineffective and touted unproven cures

I’ve been studying the effects of restrictions on pregnant women since last year. Some are too harshHaving a baby is one of the most significant life events in the human spectrum of experiences.While it is a physical experience, it is also a profoundly social, psychological, cultural, and spiritual experience. This is something that is forgotten at times by busy health providers, but never by those giving birth and their partners. Continue reading...

A lack of note-taking is not always a red flag in therapy, writes Dr Helen Damon, and Ruth Medhurst says that the terminology around illness is totally outdatedYour article (‘It was devastating’: what happens when therapy makes things worse?, 17 July) lists several “red flags” that indicate a therapist is unprofessional, including never taking notes in session. I am a counselling psychologist – a profession regulated by the Health and Care Professions Council and the British Psychological Society. I am also a lecturer on a professional doctorate in counselling psychology and I see clients in private practice. I have previously worked in the NHS and in the education and charity sectors. I would like to clarify that it is not a red flag per se if a therapist does not write notes in session.Maintaining accurate and up-to-date session notes is central to therapeutic practice, but many therapists, myself included, write notes (as soon as possible) after each session. Indeed, one rationale for therapy sessions typically lasting for 50 minutes rather than an hour is that this enables therapists to write notes on their previous session in the space before their next one. Given that there are more than 400 forms of psychological therapy, it is unsurprising that therapists practise in different ways; there are therapeutic rationales for writing and for not writing notes in session. Continue reading...

Slow-moving storms such as recent deluge in Germany could become 14 times more frequent by 2100Catastrophic floods such as those that struck Europe recently could become much more frequent as a result of global heating, researchers say.High-resolution computer models suggest that slow-moving storms could become 14 times more common over land by the end of the century in a worst-case scenario. The slower a storm moves, the more rain it dumps on a small area and the greater the risk of serious flooding. Continue reading...

The discovery of the rare maiden pink at an electricity substation shows how nature can flourish in unlikely spots

Experts weigh in on the ‘anthropomorphic’ design of New Shepard, the Amazon CEO’s Blue Origin rocketJeff Bezos’s 11-minute trip aboard a Blue Origin rocket to the edge of space on Tuesday left the world’s richest man feeling “unbelievably good” and his crew “very happy”. But afterwards, as he wondered aloud how fast he could refuel, the rest of the world was left pondering just why the New Shepard rocket had such a distinctive shape.As social media erupted with innuendo, we contacted a few experts to find out why it looked, in the words of one astrophysicist, so “anthropomorphic”. At one major research institution, the press officer referred us to the gender studies department, but Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, was able to shed some light on the topic. Continue reading...

SuperBIT project will suspend telescope under balloon the size of a football stadium 25 miles above surface of EarthA balloon the size of a football stadium could help astronomers get crystal-clear shots of space for a fraction of the cost of an orbital telescope like Hubble.The secret weapon behind the SuperBIT project is a simple helium balloon – albeit one that floats up to 25 miles (40km) above the surface of the Earth and expands to a football-stadium size when fully inflated. Continue reading...

More than 1,000 scientifically significant specimens taken from former quarry after discoveryWhen Sally and Neville Hollingworth started going stir crazy in lockdown, rather than baking bread or doing quizzes on Zoom, the amateur palaeontologists turned to Google Earth.The couple passed the time planning for their next trip – using the satellite images to inspect sites that had previously yielded fossils – when they stumbled across a quarry in the Cotswolds. From the exposure of the geology Neville, who has a PhD in geology, could tell the site was promising, but he was not expecting it to yield one of the best fossil finds in the UK in decades. Continue reading...

1.5 million children lost a caregiver during pandemic, including thousands in the UKAn estimated 1.5 million children worldwide under the age of 18 have lost a parent, grandparent or caregiver due to Covid-19, according to a global study.

The 82-year-old became the oldest person to go to space, six decades after being denied by the US government

He and his fellow space-obsessed billionaires are exactly like the rich men aboard the Titanic who pushed others aside to jump into lifeboatsJeff Bezos is the most reptilian of billionaires. His heart has never shown evidence of a drop of warm blood. Despite all of the public relations that money can buy, his discomfort with normal human emotion shines through every time he is forced to contort his face into a squinting, uncomfortable smile. It seems overwhelmingly likely that once he gets to space, he will peel back the skin from his bald pate like the creatures in V and exclaim to his fellow aliens: “I’m here!”Related: Bezos blasted for traveling to space while Amazon workers toil on planet Earth Continue reading...

Space-obsessed billionaires come under fire with the Amazon founder declaring the critics ‘largely right’As Jeff Bezos blasts into space on Tuesday, his voyage has some people asking whether the billionaire’s time, or at least money, might be better spent here on earth.Bezos, the Amazon founder who has an estimated net worth of $206bn, is taking off from Texas on Tuesday morning on the rocket New Shepard, owned by his company Blue Origin. Continue reading...

Little evidence that social restrictions during the pandemic have added to rates of death and ill-health

The Guardian’s global environment editor, Jonathan Watts, speaks to Shivani Dave about extreme weather events – including the extreme heat recently recorded in the US and Canada. In the first of two parts, we hear how extreme heat comes about and why extreme weather events such as floods and monsoons look set to become more likely and even more extreme Continue reading...

Re-emerging from lockdown can feel fraught with danger, especially for people with a history of anxietyI recently took my first flight since the pandemic began. As I arrived at the airport, I prepared for a scene of utter carnage: people everywhere, all of them insisting on breathing; virulent microbes reveling in a field of unsuspecting targets.As someone with a history of anxiety, I took a deep breath – figuring it would be my last opportunity to do so before landing – and entered the fray. Continue reading...

Statistician says PM’s initial excuse for not self-isolating is part of pattern of pilot studies that lack transparency

First human spaceflight of Blue Origin’s sub-orbital New Shepard rocket to launch in Texas

Fragile health systems are at risk due to high numbers of medical staff leaving to work in richer countries, say experts

Four charts that show why the big unlocking could be coming too soon

Low in the south, the planets are slowly moving apart following December’s great conjunctionIf you missed it last month, this week offers night owls another chance to watch the moon cruise past the giant planets Jupiter and Saturn.Low in the south, Jupiter and Saturn are gradually moving apart following their great conjunction last December, when they appeared so close in the sky that they could not be seen as separate objects. Jupiter currently resides in Aquarius, the water bearer, with Saturn sitting squarely in Capricornus, the goat. Continue reading...

As temperatures rise and pollution increases, wildfires, floods and extreme winds have battered many parts of the world in the last six months Continue reading...

Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak were due to be part of a pilot trialling tests instead of self-isolation

Cases are soaring in many countries, and the social and political effects are becoming clearer“At the root of every pandemic is an encounter between a disease-causing microorganism and a human being … It is a social phenomenon as much as it is a biological one,” writes Laura Spinney in her book Pale Rider, arguing that Spanish flu “pushed India closer to independence, South Africa closer to apartheid, and Switzerland to the brink of civil war”.It will be a long time before we, or our descendants, can fully assess Covid’s impact. But its social and political effects are emerging more clearly. It has played a role in extraordinary turmoil in places from Colombia to Cuba to South Africa, exacerbating poverty and frustration. The unrest is rooted in longstanding social and economic problems. In South Africa, where 10,000 troops have now been deployed, it is the furious response to the jailing of the divisive former president Jacob Zuma, who faces a slew of corruption charges; authorities suspect his followers of orchestrating the violence. But Covid’s erosion of social and economic wellbeing and trust in leaders has surely contributed. Continue reading...

Accepting that all we can control are our actions and our values is a simpler and more empowering way to live