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Sapria himalayana has lost about 44% of genes normally found in flowering plantsSapria is an extraordinary plant. It has no leaves, stem or root, can’t make food by photosynthesis, and exists almost its entire life as threads of cells sucking out all its nourishment from vines growing in the rainforests of Borneo. The only time the parasite reveals itself in the open is when it bursts out as a huge flower the size of a dinner plate, coloured red with pale speckles, and stinking of rotting flesh. It’s also a relative of the largest flower in the world, Rafflesia arnoldii, another parasitic plant.Recently, another bizarre feature of Sapria has been revealed. The species Sapria himalayana has lost about 44% of the genes normally found in flowering plants, and has also totally scrapped all the genetic remnants of any chloroplasts, the cell bodies that perform photosynthesis, the first known case of a plant abandoning its chloroplast inheritance. Although other parasitic plants have junked many of their genes, it’s nothing like as extreme as Sapria – the dodder parasite, for example, has only lost 16% of its genes. And to cap its extreme parasitic life, Sapria has also stolen more than 1% of its genes from its host vine. Continue reading...

Public Health England said variant contains number of notable mutations, including the E484K spike protein found in Manaus mutation. This blog is now closed. Follow our new one below

Port Moresby General Hospital is one of the few safe places for women to give birth, but 30% of our workforce has Covid-19 and we may have to shut our doorsAt Port Moresby General Hospital, about 20% of women presenting in labour have symptoms of Covid-19. Of these, about one-third (four to five women a day) test positive.We get the test results back about two to three hours after we take the swabs, so often by the time the woman is delivering her baby it is too late to transfer her to the Covid isolation ward for the birth and staff have attended to her and been exposed to the virus, without being able to don the appropriate level of PPE and practice other precautionary measures to protect themselves. Continue reading...

The mother, a frontline healthcare worker, received her first Moderna dose in January, at 36 weeks pregnantA woman in south Florida who had received one dose of coronavirus vaccine while pregnant recently gave birth to the first known baby born with Covid-19 antibodies “after maternal vaccination”, two pediatricians claimed.The doctors presented their finding in a preprint article, meaning this claim has yet to be peer-reviewed. Continue reading...

Analysis: Germany, France, Spain and Italy head an expanding list of EU countries to have put its use on holdA host of European countries have put all vaccinations with this jab on hold, including Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Denmark, Norway and Ireland. Some others such as Estonia and Austria have suspended vaccinations from particular batches of the vaccine. Continue reading...

Researchers also find that young people overall are more reluctant about receiving a vaccination

Six-millennia-old skeleton of child also unearthed during dig in Judean Desert by Israeli archeologistsIsraeli archaeologists have unearthed two dozen Dead Sea scroll fragments from a remote cave in the Judean Desert, the first discovery of such Jewish religious texts in more than half a century.“For the first time in approximately 60 years, archaeological excavations have uncovered fragments of a biblical scroll,” the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) said in a statement. Continue reading...

Boris Johnson can decide whether to heed calls for wide-ranging inquiry or keep a tighter focus

Creation of mini-organs using stem cells will help research into tear-related disordersStop your sobbing – because scientists can do it for you. Using stem cells, Dutch researchers have grown miniature human tear glands capable of “crying”.Initially, when scientists were looking at developing this technology, their first port of call was the inner lining of the gut, because it replaces itself every five days. They took a tiny piece of gut tissue filled with stem cells and fed it proteins called growth factors to stimulate cell growth, expecting the stem cells to rapidly proliferate. Continue reading...

US astrophysicists have located a travelling black hole that is sucking in matter as it goes. Should we be worried?Name: Supermassive black holes.Age: God knows. The Big Bang is estimated to have occurred about 14bn years ago. Continue reading...

Vaccine hesitancy among immigrant communities and people of color is a genuine issue. But the larger problem isn’t hesitancy – it’s access

Researchers use 3D sound mapping to show aerodynamic forces during flight explain eponymous soundHummingbirds might be instantly recognisable from their eponymous sound, but the cause of the characteristic has long been a mystery.Now researchers say they have cracked the conundrum, finally taking the “hmm?” out of hummingbirds. Continue reading...

A Canadian supplier known for wild salmon has teamed up with geneticists to prove what really ends up on the plate

It has been over a century since the groundwork of quantum physics was first formulated and yet the strange consequences of the theory still elude both scientists and philosophers. Why does light sometimes behave as a wave, and other times like a particle? Why does the outcome of an experiment apparently depend on whether the particles are being observed or not? In the first of two episodes, Ian Sample sits down with physicist Carlo Rovelli to discuss the strange consequences of quantum and the explanation he sets out in his new book, Helgoland Continue reading...

My friend and colleague Don Mason, who has died aged 86, will be remembered for his discoveries about cells of the body’s immune system, notably the regulation of lymphocytes, and how fast and with what specificity their receptors recognise parts of foreign molecules.He began this work in 1973, joining the Medical Research Council’s cellular immunology unit in the Dunn School of Pathology, Oxford University. He stayed for 26 years until his retirement in 1999, by which time he was its director. Continue reading...

Scientists looking at why human fingertips are so sensitive have found the culprit hiding in our printsWhether it is feeling the coarse texture of a pair of jeans, the gnarled bark of a tree or the smooth skin of a lover, our sense of touch is a crucial aspect of how we interact with the world around us.Now scientists say they have shed new light on why human fingertips are so sensitive, revealing that the culprit hides in our fingerprints. Continue reading...

Archaeologist says ability to think and create objects may not have been restricted to homo sapiensWhen Neanderthals, Denisovans and homo sapiens met one another 50,000 years ago, these archaic and modern humans not only interbred during the thousands of years in which they overlapped, but they exchanged ideas that led to a surge in creativity, according to a leading academic.Tom Higham, a professor of archaeological science at the University of Oxford, argues that their exchange explains “a proliferation of objects in the archaeological record”, such as perforated teeth and shell pendants, the use of pigments and colourants, decorated and incised bones, carved figurative art and cave painting: “Through the early 50,000s, up to around 38,000 to 40,000 years ago, we see a massive growth in these types of ornaments that we simply didn’t see before.” Continue reading...

Study of tree rings dating back to Roman empire concludes weather since 2014 has been extraordinaryThe series of severe droughts and heatwaves in Europe since 2014 is the most extreme for more than 2,000 years, research suggests.The study analysed tree rings dating as far back as the Roman empire to create the longest such record to date. The scientists said global heating was the most probable cause of the recent rise in extreme heat. Continue reading...

The trauma of intensive care often triggers long-term mental health problems, and counselling is crucial to rehabilitation

It’s human nature to spot patterns in data. But we should be careful about finding causal links where none may existStories about people getting blood clots soon after taking the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine have become a source of anxiety among European leaders. After a report on a death and three hospitalisations in Norway, which found serious blood clotting in adults who had received the vaccine, Ireland has temporarily suspended the jab. Some anxiety about a new vaccine is understandable, and any suspected reactions should be investigated. But in the current circumstances we need to think slow as well as fast, and resist drawing causal links between events where none may exist.As Ireland’s deputy chief medical officer, Ronan Glynn, has stressed, there is no proof that this vaccine causes blood clots. It’s a common human tendency to attribute a causal effect between different events, even when there isn’t one present: we wash the car and the next day a bird relieves itself all over the bonnet. Typical. Or, more seriously, someone is diagnosed with autism after receiving the MMR vaccine, so people assume a causal connection – even when there isn’t one. And now, people get blood clots after having a vaccine, leading to concern over whether the vaccine is what caused the blood clots. Continue reading...

Parents whose only hope was finding foreign sponsorship or a clinical trial are now looking for homegrown breakthroughsFor three years, Vidya tried to find the cause of her son’s recurrent fevers and low cognitive development. When she found out, she was devastated.Vineeth, 10, has an incurable illness – mucopolysaccharidosis type 2 – that affects his organs. Afflicting just one in a million, the enzyme-replacement medication that can help stop the illness getting any worse costs £100,000 a year, far beyond the reach of even a wealthier Indian parent. Continue reading...

Moon will gain altitude and illumination until Friday when it will sit between giant star and red planet

Here are the current coronavirus hotspots in New South Wales and what to do if you’ve visited them

Suspension follows similar move in Ireland due to reports in Norway of blood clots despite no proof of a link

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Graded exercise therapy is not the right way to treat people with ME or long Covid, argue Dr Charles Shepherd and Rachel HardingDr Alastair Miller, Professor Paul Garner and Professor Peter White are not correct when they state that graded exercise therapy (GET) is a safe and effective treatment for ME/chronic fatigue syndrome (Letters, 11 March).Having reviewed all the published evidence from clinical trials, the new Nice guideline no longer recommends GET as an effective treatment for ME/CFS. Continue reading...

Manx government has run strict regime to keep island virus-free but isolation exemption for ferry workers causes anger

Projects tackling some of world’s major problems – including the climate crisis – are set to be cancelled or cut back after budget cutsHundreds of key research projects aimed at tackling some of the world’s major problems – from antimicrobial resistance to the climate crisis – will have to be cancelled or cut back thanks to budget cuts imposed by the government.Last week, the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) agency – which controls science funding in Britain – told universities that its budget for international development projects had been cut from £245m to £125m. Continue reading...

Inequalities in vaccine take-up rates highlight need for government to build trust in deprived communities

Data reveals huge disparities between vaccination take-up rates in richer and poorer areas

Prof Neil Ferguson is ‘80% sure’ British Covid cases will stay low until autumn, but warns of need for booster jabs

Psychological burdens from stress to loneliness to lack of sleep have been shown to affect immune responses to other vaccinationsSleep well. Take time out to relax. Connect with your friends and family. Such things would be advisable at any time – but might it be especially important in the coming months. According to a growing body of evidence, our psychological state can shape the immune system’s reaction to a new vaccine – including the development of protective antibodies that will help us to fend off infection.We already know that physical factors, such as the body mass index, can have an immediate effect on vaccine efficacy. In late February, for instance, a study of Italian healthcare workers found that obesity blunted the antibody response to the Pfizer/BioNTech jab. But based on our understanding of various vaccines for other diseases, it seems clear that our mental health and overall stress levels will also play an important role. “There’s quite a spectrum of opinion as to what things may help or harm the immune system,” says Prof Daniel Davis, an immunologist at the University of Manchester. “But most scientists would agree that stress has an effect.” Continue reading...

Behind the numbers: why the devices being used in England’s schools need another test to confirm positive cases

Scientists hope that ice will give up more clues to the fate of the 1845 Arctic expedition to find the Northwest PassageIt remains one of the greatest mysteries of naval exploration. What doomed John Franklin’s 1845 attempt to sail the Northwest Passage, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, in his ships Erebus and Terror?The expedition claimed the lives of all 129 men and has gripped the public’s imagination for the past century and a half. Now Canadian researchers are facing a crucial decision on whether to relaunch attempts to find new clues about the ships’ fate. Continue reading...

Archaeologists unearth monks’ cells and churches with biblical inscriptions dating back to fourth century ADA French-Norwegian archaeological team has discovered new Christian ruins in Egypt’s Western Desert, revealing monastic life in the region in the fifth century AD, the Egyptian antiquities ministry said.“The French-Norwegian mission discovered during its third excavation campaign at the site of Tal Ganoub Qasr al-Agouz in the Bahariya Oasis several buildings made of basalt, others carved into the bedrock and some made of mud bricks,” it said in a statement on Saturday. Continue reading...

It’s been a tough time to be 17 or 18, but there have been some upsides, tooMy sons are 18 and 17. It was the younger’s birthday this week and I made an awful cake that definitely breached my minimum cake standards (I hesitate to criticise Nigella, but there is such a thing as too much peanut butter). He looked a bit overwhelmed when we sang happy birthday, and I worried all day about him and his 17-year-old pandemic life, without access to the places and people that help being 17 make sense. There is nothing I can do about that, so I am fixating on the cake, sitting here wondering if I have time to make a replacement. I don’t, but I might anyway. What else do I have to offer him – another load of laundry?Because neither of my kids actually needs me now. They could live independently without dying of hunger or septic shock (the elder managed five weeks last summer) and after an emergency remedial tutorial on “what can’t go in a microwave” at Christmas, probably without fire or explosion either. They can clean a loo, iron trousers and brave an HMRC helpline; they can make absorption-method rice, a from-scratch pasta sauce and decent chocolate chip cookies. After six months of Covid testing, one has more savings than I do; the other is cagier, but after a decade of not spending his birthday and Christmas money, I suspect he does, too. Continue reading...

This week sees the opening of the first UK high-street clinic offering psychedelic-assisted therapy. Could popping psilocybin be the future of mental healthcare?In the summer of 1981, when he was 13, Grant crashed a trail motorbike into a wall at his parents’ house in Cambridgeshire. He’d been hiding it in the shed, but “it was far too powerful for me, and on my very first time starting it in the garden, I smashed it into a wall”. His mother came outside to find the skinny teenager in a heap next to the crumpled motorbike. “I was in a lot of trouble.”Grant hadn’t given this childhood memory much thought in the intervening years, but one hot August day in 2019, it came back to him with such clarity that, at 53, now a stocky father of two, he suddenly understood it as a clue to his dangerously unhealthy relationship with alcohol. Continue reading...

Medical physicist who pioneered body scanning as a way to diagnose diseaseFrom the earliest X-rays to the latest body scanners, the ability to visualise the inside of the living body has revolutionised medical diagnosis. With a profound understanding of physics, great technical ingenuity and a mission to put these skills to use in the service of medicine, John Mallard, who has died aged 94, was one of the first to establish routine scanning services that revealed tumours in organs such as the brain and the liver. His team at the University of Aberdeen built the first whole-body MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) scanner and produced the first clinically significant MRI images of a hospital patient.Mallard was interested in ends rather than means and pioneered several different forms of imaging technology, adopting another technique each time it offered the chance to produce clearer images or greater safety for the patient. In the beginning, locating tumours or other pathology involved injecting radioactive tracers and picking up their emissions with detectors outside the body. Continue reading...

Preliminary data presented to Sage shows women five times as likely to report new disability or increased fatigueWorking-age women who are hospitalised with coronavirus are five times as likely to develop long Covid as men in the same age group, according to research presented to the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage).Preliminary data shared with scientific advisers suggests that women under 50 are five times as likely as men under 50 to report a new disability, six times as likely to experience greater breathlessness, and twice as likely to feel more fatigued up to 11 months after leaving hospital. Continue reading...

World Health Organization tells countries to continue using jab while it looks into blood clot reports

My family treated my positive Covid test as exciting news, like they had been watching EastEnders for 17 years and finally something had happened

When I damaged my vocal cords, I was forced to change the way I spoke – and discovered how much our voices reveal who we are. By John Colapinto Continue reading...

Researchers claim breakthrough in study of 2,000-year-old Antikythera mechanism, an astronomical calculator found in seaFrom the moment it was discovered more than a century ago, scholars have puzzled over the Antikythera mechanism, a remarkable and baffling astronomical calculator that survives from the ancient world.The hand-powered, 2,000-year-old device displayed the motion of the universe, predicting the movement of the five known planets, the phases of the moon and the solar and lunar eclipses. But quite how it achieved such impressive feats has proved fiendishly hard to untangle. Continue reading...

New species of wētā, a giant flightless cricket, is seen as ‘reflecting traits’ of Jacinda ArdernNew Zealand’s prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, has received what may be her greatest accolade yet: a large insect named in her honour.A new species of wētā – a giant flightless cricket that is endemic to New Zealand – has been named Hemiandrus jacinda for being Labour-party red in colour and “long-limbed”. Continue reading...

Peyo and his owner once competed at dressage events. Now they spend their time doing rounds in a French hospital, often staying with sick people until the end. All photographs by Jeremy Lempin/Divergence Continue reading...

Ecuador’s president to decide on proposal to expand islands’ marine reserve, seen as vital to protect world heritage site from fishing industry

Inquiry into 2012 burglary is revived after French police turn up a DNA match for unrelated crimeGerman police say they have solved a nine-year-old burglary case after DNA found on a half-eaten piece of sausage matched that of a man detained in France over an unrelated crime.Police in the western town of Schwelm said on Thursday the sausage belonged to the victim, and the suspect – a 30-year-old Albanian citizen – appeared to have helped himself to a bite during the break-in in Gevelsberg in March 2012. Continue reading...

Access to IVF and fertility services and postponement of parenthood drive rise in global twinning ratesTwins may be more common today than at any time in history, according to the first comprehensive survey of twin births around the world.Researchers analysed records from more than 100 countries and found a substantial rise in twin birthrates since the 1980s, with one in 42 people now born a twin, equivalent to 1.6 million children a year. According to the study, the global twin birthrate has risen by one-third, on average, over the past 40 years. Continue reading...

No trials of graded exercise have shown to harm patients, say Dr Alastair Miller, Prof Paul Garner and Prof Peter White, so those with post-Covid fatigue syndrome should not be discouraged from trying itDr Joanna Herman is right to call out the lack of care being offered to sufferers of long Covid (People with long Covid urgently need help. Why can’t we access it?, 10 March). The willingness of doctors to speak out as patients has done much to highlight the long-term effects of Covid-19.We know that long Covid is more than one disease, all of which will need different treatments. But we do not know that graded exercise therapy is detrimental to recovery from the post-Covid fatigue syndrome. There are no such studies. Continue reading...

Matt Hancock acts on official advice concerning segment of society more likely to be in poor health