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

Lockdown has been hard for all of us – even our pets. Now my dog wants my undivided attentionI adore my dog, Peanut. She’s a Miniature Schnauzer with a sweet nature and a button nose. She runs like a rabbit and pulls a lopsided smile when we greet her in the morning.She likes to get close to me, really close. In my face close, then she stares. At times, as I gaze into her moony eyes, I wonder if she wants to suck out my soul. Or perhaps she truly is my daemon? Continue reading...

Using a name inspired by Indonesian farmers, Subak will share information and fund hi-tech solutions to fight global heatingAs monikers go, Subak may seem an odd choice for a new organisation that aims to accelerate hi-tech efforts to combat the climate crisis. The name is Indonesian, it transpires, and refers to an ancient agricultural system that allows farmers to co-ordinate their efforts when irrigating and growing crops.“Subak allows farmers to carefully synchronise their use of water and so maximise rice production,” said Bryony Worthington, founder and board member of the new, not-for-profit climate action group. “And that is exactly what we are going to do – with data. By sharing and channelling data, we can maximise our efforts to combat carbon emissions and global warming. Data is going to be the new water, in other words.” Continue reading...

With few rules left to govern our Covid behaviour, we’ll increasingly take on the pleasure, or burden, of working out the right thing for ourselvesSo the prime minister says that with the removal of Covid restrictions we will now be able to make our own “informed decisions” about what we will and will not do. Generally, we might feel it’s a sign of a good government and a good society that it allows and enables its members to make their own informed decisions about how they want to live their lives. But it’s hard to rejoice at the removal of most Covid restrictions with the current dramatic rise in new infections. When more than 100 experts have signed an open letter in the Lancet calling the full easing of restrictions “dangerous and premature”, it can feel less like relief and freedom, and more like we’re being released into a wild unknown – and one that comes with ever-increasing ethical burdens on us as individuals.For in this new chapter, we need to recognise that the transfer of decision-making powers from government to us is not just about practical decisions but also about important ethical ones. We’ll make decisions about what we choose to do as we continue to spread a harmful new disease to one another causing various kinds of harms. And the risk of dangerous variants increases with each new infection. Let’s not forget that the Alpha variant was created in the UK and quickly spread around the world. So the possibility of us creating new variants also has global implications. Continue reading...

Britain’s own rocket man has arrived to challenge Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk. Hurrah!Thinking, maybe, that it brings some purifying wonder to the pointless exercise, space plutocrats like to emphasise that their wish as grown men to ride in a space rocket dates from more innocent times. “Ever since I was five years old I’ve dreamed of travelling to space,” Jeff Bezos says. Specifically to ride upwards for roughly as far as Huntingdon is from London, float for a few minutes, then come back again? It only increases your respect for the tots who settle for Disneyland.Beating Amazon’s founder to it last week, Richard Branson also aimed to bring to his somewhat shorter (turn back at Newport Pagnell) Virgin stunt, a flavour of Le Petit Prince. “I was once a child with a dream, looking up at the stars,” the author of Screw It, Let’s Do It offered as the origin myth behind a video of him bobbing about in his space suit. It may be an incongruous thought for anyone who has come, after a lifetime’s exposure, to understand Branson’s dream as primarily that of making money and hoisting nearby women into the air. But fair enough, he was probably innocent once, even if it doesn’t, like any early interest in the stars, come across in his autobiography, Losing My Virginity. Continue reading...

Experts point to risks of indoor Covid-19 transmission: ‘If you don’t wear a mask, the virus spreads further. It’s as simple as that’

Study is part of £20m research drive that scientists hope will end stigma around the condition

Models can give us an idea, but are very sensitive to what we don’t knowMathematical models simulated vast numbers of possible futures for after the UK government lifts Covid restrictions in England from 19 July. Many sources of uncertainty mean we don’t know which one, if any, of these projections might occur.First, even with fixed assumptions about the epidemic, the play of chance produces wide prediction intervals. For example, assuming people substantially relax their cautious behaviour after 19 July, the Warwick models lead to peak Covid hospital admissions of 900 to 3,000 a day around the end of August. Continue reading...

The cognitive scientist explains the link between intelligence and telling fibs – and why lying is such a common form of communication in fields from art to politicsMartin Turpin is a PhD researcher at the department of psychology at the University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, who is studying linguistic bullshit. He is the lead author of a recent paper entitled Bullshit Ability As an Honest Signal of Intelligence, which found that people who produce “satisfactory bullshit” are judged to be of high intelligence by their audience.What made you choose bullshit as a topic to research?

RAF chief says system to track objects up to 22,000 miles from Earth is ‘incredibly important’An American space force plan to develop a global monitoring system to track objects up to 22,000 miles from Earth could establish radar stations in the US, UK and Australia.The head of the RAF, Air Chief Marshal Sir Michael Wigston, is in the US for talks over the plans, and said on Saturday the British were “very interested” in the project and hosting one of the American radar stations. Continue reading...

We should be suspicious of the role of the Chinese Communist party in the harvesting of genetic data from unborn babies, argues William MatthewsIn her column (What does the Chinese military want with your unborn baby’s genetic data?, 10 July), Arwa Mahdawi suggested that the alleged involvement of the People’s Liberation Army (which is directly answerable to the Chinese Communist party) with BGI’s data-gathering (likewise answerable as a China-based company) is essentially equivalent to data-gathering by western companies. To suggest that the former case is worse, she argued, “smacks of Sinophobia”.As a scholar of China, I cannot agree. While the harvesting of genetic data by any company is frightening and fraught with ethical issues, it should be obvious that this is a false equivalence. It is undoubtedly worse if genetic data is gathered by a company which must also comply with the rule of the Chinese Communist party (CCP) and its military-industrial complex, a regime which harvests and aggregates data on its citizens on a massive scale and uses it directly to implement the most repressive system of social control on earth in Xinjiang. Continue reading...