Readers react to a long read on humanist Paul Gilroy, with one saying that discarding the idea of ‘race’ altogether feels rightRe Yohann Koshy’s long read on Paul Gilroy (The last humanist: how Paul Gilroy became the most vital guide to our age of crisis, 5 August), his point that “race is a fiction” and that we should look forward discarding the idea of “race” altogether feels exactly right. The geneticist Adam Rutherford has pointed out that in terms of DNA, racial distinctions by skin colour are meaningless. The sooner we can get to Gilroy’s ideal of “humanism” in a post-racial world, the better.
The answers to today’s counting conundrumEarlier today I set you the following problem about how to count in Ngkolmpu, a language spoken by about 100 people in New Guinea.Ngkolmpu does not have a base ten system like English does. In other words, it doesn’t count in tens, hundreds and thousands. Beyond its different base, however, it behaves very regularly. Continue reading...
DNA suggests body buried in feminine attire with swords had Klinefelter syndrome, researchers sayModern analysis of a 1,000-year-old grave in Finland challenges long-held beliefs about gender roles in ancient societies, and may suggest non-binary people were not only accepted but respected members of their communities, researchers have said.According to a peer-reviewed study in the European Journal of Archaeology, DNA analysis of remains in a late iron age grave at Suontaka Vesitorninmäki in Hattula, southern Finland, may have belonged to a high-status non-binary person. Continue reading...
When I asked other parents, each had noticed a very real preference for their sons. ‘My father-in-law only likes photos that feature our boy,’ one saidBy the time we left the hospital 34 hours after my son, Jules, was born on 14 July, two nurses had commented on the strength of his suck, four friends had written us some version of “Finally, you’ve got your boy!” and even my female obstetrician had commented favorably on the size of his penis. (If you must know, it had to do with the clamp used during his hospital circumcision.)Related: A childhood desire to wear women’s pants has returned. Is it perverted? | Ask Annalisa Continue reading...
People don’t listen to outsiders. They need enlightened insiders to offer them a ladder to climb downWhat should we do about people who refuse to get vaccinated, or who continue to deny that Covid is real? Debate on this issue has raged for months in the US. “Respect them!” scolded conservative commentators. “Shame them!” urged some. Others counselled empathy for them as victims of disinformation.But as the surging Delta variant ushers in the “pandemic of the unvaccinated”, uncertainty about persuading pandemic holdouts has given way to anger and despair. This was exemplified by the recent public reaction to a viral news video showing a Louisiana man recovering from a severe Covid-19 infection in a hospital bed, stating that he would still rather have had to be in hospital than accept a vaccine. It was the first time many of us saw the human face of a puzzling phenomenon which healthcare workers have been telling us about since last year: patients denying the realities of the virus even as they lay sick and dying from it. Continue reading...
A pterosaur fossil found in the outback a decade ago, the largest known flying reptile on the continent, has finally been identified as a new species and is being compared to a dragonWith an estimated seven-metre wing span, 40 razor-sharp teeth, a circular crest below its jaw and no living relatives, a new species of pterosaur discovered in outback Queensland is being touted as the closest thing Australia ever had to a mythical dragon.The creature, thought to have lived 105m years ago, is the largest known flying reptile on the Australian continent and has been described for the first time in an article published on Monday in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. Continue reading...
A rare way to countToday is the International Day of the World’s Indigenous People, which aims to raise awareness of issues concerning indigenous communities. Such as, for example, the survival of their languages. According to the Endangered Languages Project, more than 40 per cent of the world’s 7,000 languages are at risk of extinction.Among the fantastic diversity of the world’s languages is a diversity in counting systems. The following puzzle concerns the number words of Ngkolmpu, a language spoken by about 100 people in New Guinea. (They live in the border area between the Indonesian province of Papua and the country of Papua New Guinea.) Continue reading...
Second week of August brings the annual view of shooting stars as Earth enters a comet’s dust trailThe second week of August means only one thing to an astronomer: the annual Perseid meteor shower. Continue reading...
by Presented by Rachel Humphreys with Jennie Agg; pro on (#5N3GA)
When journalist Jennie Agg suffered four miscarriages, she set out to better understand what is known about why women lose pregnancies and why conversations on the subject are still so difficultIn 2017, Jennie Agg had the first of what would be four miscarriages. Despite being told by medics that losing a pregnancy was incredibly common, she found that there was not a lot of solid information out there about what had actually happened to her.Now more and more high-profile women, including the prime minister’s wife, Carrie Johnson, are deciding to share their own stories of miscarriage. But as Jennie tells Rachel Humphreys, the conversations we have about miscarriage have changed very little over the years. Continue reading...
Exhibition at Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge to tell story of little known civilization that flourished from eighth to third century BCWisdom, as Bob Marley put it, is better than gold. From next month however, the precious metal is central to a major new historical exhibition in Cambridge using loaned artefacts telling the story of an ancient civilization little known beyond Kazakhstan.Golden objects unearthed from ancient burial mounds built by the Saka warrior people of central Asia – a culture which flourished from around the eighth century BC to the third century BC – will go on display at the Fitzwilliam Museum. Continue reading...
Discovery that traces of genetic material are all around us opens a non-invasive way to boost biodiversityDNA is in the air – literally. It is wafted around by all the Earth’s creatures, and now scientists have found a way to detect these invisible traces of genetic material so they can identify the animals that released them.The discovery – made independently by British and Danish research groups earlier this year – opens up a powerful way to pinpoint the presence of rare wildlife in deserts, rainforests and other hostile environments. Continue reading...
by David Spiegelhalter and Anthony Masters on (#5N2ZW)
People from ethnic minorities live longer than white people, but are at greater risk from CovidAlthough our world seems increasingly awash with data, there are still data deserts, leading to gaps in understanding.One big omission is that death registrations in England and Wales do not hold information on ethnicity, but an experimental analysis by the Office for National Statistics linked 2011 census records to 88% of death registrations between 2011 and 2014, with results weighted to deal with limitations in the records. It may be surprising that life expectancy at birth was lower in UK White and Mixed ethnic groups than all other self-reported ethnicities. For example, Black African women had an estimated life expectancy of 89 years (87 to 91 years), around six years more than White and Mixed ethnic women, while for Black men it was around 84 years (83 to 85), longer than most other groups. Continue reading...
Those who attack Neil Ferguson and Sage’s pandemic predictions only expose their ignorance about science• Coronavirus – latest updates• See all our coronavirus coverageIt feels like open season on Professor Neil Ferguson right now. Sections of the media and several columnists delight in castigating the epidemiologist, or “Professor Lockdown”, for being “doomster in chief”, constantly predicting catastrophe and then back-pedalling when the worst numbers don’t materialise.Opponents of Covid restrictions blame Ferguson and his team at Imperial College London for persuading Boris Johnson to shake off his libertarian instincts and take us into lockdown. One presenter on new channel GB News described Ferguson as a “numpty” on air, and the very mention of his name attracts groans in some circles. Continue reading...
Scientists are pinning hopes on elaborate detectors to track the elusive material that holds galaxies togetherDeep underground, scientists are closing in on one of the most elusive targets of modern science: dark matter. In subterranean laboratories in the US and Italy, they have set up huge vats of liquid xenon and lined them with highly sensitive detectors in the hope of spotting subatomic collisions that will reveal the presence of this elusive material.However, researchers acknowledge that the current generation of detectors are reaching the limit of their effectiveness and warn that if they fail to detect dark matter with these types of machines, they could be forced to completely reappraise their understanding of the cosmos. Continue reading...
If the PM’s climate spokesperson is in no rush to go electric, then why should we bother?‘I don’t fancy it just yet,” said Allegra Stratton, the No 10 press secretary turned prime minister’s climate spokesperson, when she was asked about getting an electric car. She preferred her old diesel, thank you.If this was merely the most memorable in a series of suboptimal comments from the person hired to communicate the urgency of Cop26, the climate summit, you couldn’t fault it as a summary of Boris Johnson’s position on decisive climate action. He doesn’t fancy it just yet. Continue reading...
An unexpected friendship was a breath of fresh air after my turbulent city lifeMuch is said about walking the road less travelled. There’s joy in the unexpected and the unravelling of, well, who knows what. Just over a year ago, I left my London life for rural Wales. I saw it as not a desirable but a necessary pause in what had become a turbulent life. The previous six years had been full of turmoil, death, subsequent grief and estrangement. Before my big move, I ran away for a month to New York, to spend time on my own. I spent the days writing and watching a blur of people rotate in the world as I tried to find my place in it. I had become deeply sad.Walking has never been my thing, but there’s no point in being in the countryside if you’re not going to try it out. So I bought a pair of expensive walking boots and made it my goal to put one foot in front of the other. Which is how I came to meet Wilf, a farmer in his 70s. Most days when I would go out I would see him tending to his sheep. It was a wholesome sight, a shepherd with his flock. There was something eternal about it, a man toiling the earth, as if this one scope held all of eternity. It made everything else look so starkly ephemeral. Continue reading...
Trump’s team reportedly believed that coronavirus would hurt Democratic states – and Democratic governors – worse. But the virus does not discriminateSome of the most powerful conservatives in the United States have, since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, chosen to sow disinformation along with mockery and distrust of proven methods of combating the disease, from masks to vaccines to social distancing. Their actions have afflicted the nation as a whole with more disease and death and economic crisis than good leadership aligned with science might have, and, in spite of hundreds of thousands of well-documented deaths and a new surge, they continue. Their malice has become so normal that its real nature is rarely addressed. Call it biological warfare by propaganda.Call Jared Kushner the spiritual heir of the army besieging the city of Caffa on the Black Sea in 1346, which, according to a contemporaneous account, catapulted plague-infected corpses over the city walls. This is sometimes said to be how the Black Death came to Europe, where it would kill tens of millions of people – a third of the European population – over the next 15 years. A Business Insider article from a year ago noted: “Kushner’s coronavirus team shied away from a national strategy, believing that the virus was hitting Democratic states hardest and that they could blame governors.” An administration more committed to saving lives than scoring points could have contained the pandemic rather than made the US the worst-hit nation in the world. Illnesses and casualties could have been far lower, and we could have been better protected against the Delta variant. Continue reading...
by Nadeem Badshah (now); Mattha Busby, Damien Gayle , on (#5N0YQ)
This blog is closed. You can catch up with all our coverage of the pandemic here.11.52pm BST11.49pm BSTArgentina will relax coronavirus restrictions as infection and mortality rates falls, the government announced.The South American nation is approaching five million cases with more than 107,000 deaths. Continue reading...
Missions with Nasa and Jaxa will use planet’s pull to lose energy, allowing spacecraft to fall closer to sunThe European Space Agency is preparing for back-to-back flybys of the same planet by two different spacecraft just one day apart.On 9 August, the Esa-Nasa Solar Orbiter spacecraft will fly past Venus with a closest approach of 7,995km (4,968 miles). A day later, the Esa-Jaxa BepiColombo mission will make its pass at an altitude of just 550km (342 miles). Continue reading...
by Natalie Grover Science correspondent on (#5N0YE)
Women are reluctant to participate in trials despite being more likely to die of heart diseaseThere are extra barriers to recruiting women for cardiovascular research, even though more women die of heart disease than men, a new study shows.Despite agreement that it is crucial to have proportional representation of both sexes in medical research, a recent review of 740 completed cardiovascular clinical trials conducted between 2010 and 2017 found that women account for roughly 38% of the total participants. Continue reading...
The company said it will have three consumer offerings: a single seat, a multi-seat package and a full-flight buy outVirgin Galactic has said it will open ticket sales on Thursday for space flights starting at $450,000 a seat, weeks after the company’s billionaire founder, Richard Branson, took a high profile flight to to the edge of space.The space-tourism company said Thursday it is making progress toward beginning revenue flights next year. It will sell single seats, package deals and entire flights. Continue reading...
Researchers record the earliest moments of a supernova as a shockwave blasts its way through a starThe earliest moments of a supernova – the cataclysmic explosion of a massive star – have been observed in unprecedented detail, in a development researchers say could help us better understand what happens to stars when they die.Using data collected from Nasa’s Kepler space telescope in 2017, astrophysicists recorded the initial light burst from a supernova as a shockwave blasted its way through a star. Continue reading...
Hottest Olympics in history will put pressure on organisers to rethink sport in light of climate crisisOlympic athletes and volunteers in Tokyo are being “tortured” by dangerous heat, meteorologists have said, as the hottest Games in history puts pressure on organisers to rethink the future of sport in a climate-disrupted world.Temperatures hit 34C in the Japanese capital on Thursday with humidity of nearly 70%. Athletes and sports scientists say the combination of heat and moisture has led to “brutal” conditions that must be avoided at future events. Continue reading...
by Damian Carrington Environment editor on (#5N05Y)
A shutdown would have devastating global impacts and must not be allowed to happen, researchers sayClimate scientists have detected warning signs of the collapse of the Gulf Stream, one of the planet’s main potential tipping points.The research found “an almost complete loss of stability over the last century” of the currents that researchers call the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC). The currents are already at their slowest point in at least 1,600 years, but the new analysis shows they may be nearing a shutdown. Continue reading...
by Lindsay Poulton and Ekaterina Ochagavia on (#5N020)
Zac Manuel discusses his documentary about a young Covid vaccine trial participant intent on challenging vaccine hesitancy in her communityOur recent release on the Guardian Documentary strand is This Body, a film about a young woman called Sydney Hall who has decided to go against the skeptics and participate in a Covid vaccine trial. A veterinary student, her trust in science and the medical industry is not one shared with most of her community, especially in the echoes of the Tuskegee syphilis experiment alongside contemporary medical inequalities that continue towards Black America to this day.The director, Zac Manuel, is a New Orleans-based film-maker who hopes that telling stories about the Black southern experience and Black legacy through his work will encourage change in society. We asked him a few questions about his latest film. Continue reading...
by Presented by Shivani Dave, additional reporting fr on (#5MZN0)
Research from the Black Women’s Health Study has found that long-term and frequent users of hair relaxers had roughly a 30% increased risk of breast cancer compared with more infrequent users. Shivani Dave speaks to Dr Kimberly Bertrand, co-investigator of the study and assistant professor of medicine at Boston University, about the research and to journalist Tayo Bero about the effects these findings could have on the black community Continue reading...
Research could lead to doctors being able to tell women how long they have got left to start a familyA series of genetic signals that influences the age women begin menopause has been identified, potentially paving the way to fertility treatment that could extend the natural reproductive lifespan of women.Researchers scanned the genes of more than 200,000 women and found nearly 300 genetic signals that researchers said could help identify why some women are predisposed to early menopause, the health consequences of going through menopause early and whether these signals can be manipulated to improve fertility. Continue reading...
A New Zealand study claims men and women become more satisfied with their bodies over time – bucking the expectations of our youth-obsessed cultureName: Happy retirees.Age: Well, as you know, people retire at different ages, typically from about 60 onwards. Continue reading...
Old Babylonian tablet likely used for surveying uses Pythagorean triples at least 1,000 years before PythagorasAn Australian mathematician has discovered what may be the oldest known example of applied geometry, on a 3,700-year-old Babylonian clay tablet.Known as Si.427, the tablet bears a field plan measuring the boundaries of some land. Continue reading...
A team of investigators used enhanced carbon dating methods to examine human remains from the site in PeruA scientific discovery about Machu Picchu has cast doubt on the reliability of colonial records for modern western historians trying to piece together an understanding of the Inca people who built the site.For more than 75 years, many historians and scientists have worked on the assumption that the famous site in Peru was built some time after AD1438. This was based primarily on 16th-century Spanish accounts from their conquest of the region. However, enhanced radiocarbon dating techniques carried out on remains have now found it could be at least two decades older. Continue reading...