The moon will partially cover the sun in the UK later this week, but some parts of the northern hemisphere will experience a total eclipseThis Thursday, Greenland, Iceland, the Arctic, most of Europe, much of North America and Asia will experience a solar eclipse.Most will see a partial eclipse, where the moon takes a bite out of the sun. From a few specific places in Russia, Greenland and Canada, the event will be visible as an annular eclipse, which occurs when the moon is located near the furthest part of its orbit around the Earth. Continue reading...
‘Internationally significant’ discovery of male with burial chains in Rutland is first of its kindHis ankles secured with heavy, locked iron fetters, the enslaved man appears to have been thrown in a ditch – a final act of indignity in death.Now the discovery of the shackled male skeleton by workers in Rutland – thought to have been aged in his late 20s or early 30s – has been identified as rare and important evidence of slavery in Roman Britain and “an internationally significant find”. Continue reading...
by Edna Mohamed (now); Harry Taylor and Jessica Murra on (#5JQ82)
Delta variant is threat to timetable for England, says Matt Hancock; children aged from 12 in Israel eligible for jab after 55% of adults have had two doses
A key maths tool during the pandemic came about because of an 18th-century debate about Christianity. The lesson we can draw today is that moral philosophy mattersDo the laws of science and mathematics explain everything, without any need to bring God into it? The pious once believed that wrathful deities could unleash plagues. As reason emerged in the temple of thinking, there was a move to claim God was behind the advance of reason. In this struggle between beliefs, new pathways of thought emerged, to the benefit of humanity.The fruits of this theological and scientific collision have been revealed during Covid. The work of Thomas Bayes, an 18th-century clergyman and mathematician, has become central to understanding the pandemic. Bayes’ theorem shows how to calculate the accuracy of lateral flow tests used to map the spread of coronavirus. The maths is used to work out the conditional probability that a person is not infected, given a positive test. This is just the tip of the Bayesian spear. David Spiegelhalter and Anthony Masters wrote in April that many complex pandemic analyses “have been ‘Bayesian’, including modelling lockdown effects, the ONS infection survey, and Pfizer-BioNTech’s vaccine trial”. Continue reading...
How a close and enduring relationship forged in the school playground turned my life aroundMy school bully came in an unlikely package. She was a bushy-haired, bespectacled, briefcase-carrying pocket rocket who made my life miserable for a significant portion of Year 8 when I was 12 years old. I met her on the first day at our large and rowdy comprehensive school. With all my existing friends assigned to different forms, I was on high alert for someone to attach myself to as soon as possible. With her outwardly gawky appearance, she seemed like the ideal candidate and I approached her with the rather arrogant assumption that she would jump at the chance of my friendship.It didn’t take me long to realise I’d severely misjudged the situation. Her meek physical persona belied a serious rebellious streak and I struggled to keep up from the start. When she dared me to join her in “the jungle” – a wooded area of the school grounds off limits to students, I shakily agreed. We eluded capture from the lunchtime supervisors who patrolled its perimeters, but my time in the jungle brought me little exhilaration or pleasure. More tests and challenges soon followed, all proposed with a glint in her eye that I came to dread. Continue reading...
European Space Agency extends deadline for ‘once-in-a-lifetime opportunity’ to be an astronautBritish women are being encouraged to seize a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” to go to space, after the European Space Agency (Esa) extended its deadline to apply to be one of its new astronauts.The agency is seeking to recruit 26 astronauts – a process only undertaken once in about a decade – and is hoping to attract a more diverse cohort. People with some disabilities are being urged to put themselves forward for the first time. Continue reading...
US scientists develop system using a cake tin and marbles to forecast areas posing biggest health threatThe Roman writer Vitruvius wrote of an unhealthy wind blowing off the city’s marshlands, bringing sickness. While this ancient miasmal theory of infection was superseded by germ theory, researchers have found that dust storms really can spread pathogens.Scientists from George Mason University, Virginia, are studying dust storms in the south-western US and their connection with Valley fever, a fungal disease that kills hundreds of people every year. Continue reading...
by Damian Carrington Environment editor on (#5JN03)
Less ice means more global heating, a vicious cycle that also leaves the region open to new oil extractionSea ice across much of the Arctic is thinning twice as fast as previously thought, researchers have found.Arctic ice is melting as the climate crisis drives up temperatures, resulting in a vicious circle in which more dark water is exposed to the sun’s heat, leading to even more heating of the planet. Continue reading...
by Libby Brooks Scotland correspondent on (#5JMZN)
Research maps the extent of the catastrophic Storegga tsunami 8,200 years ago for the first timeTowns and cities across Scotland would be devastated if the country’s coastline was hit by a tsunami of the kind that happened 8,200 years ago, according to an academics’ study.While about 370 miles of Scotland’s northern and eastern coastline were affected when the Storegga tsunami struck, the study suggests a modern-day disaster of the same magnitude would have worse consequences. Continue reading...
Rocket due to reach the International Space Station this weekend is loaded with 7,300lb of fresh food and supplies for an orbiting labSpaceX has launched a supply mission bound for the International Space Station on Thursday, carrying with it thousands of tiny sea creatures along with a plaque-fighting toothpaste experiment and powerful solar panels.The 7,300lb (3,300kg) shipment – which also includes fresh lemons, onions, avocados and cherry tomatoes for the station’s seven astronauts – should arrive Saturday. Continue reading...
Learning you have ADHD on TikTok is now such a common phenomenon it has become its own meme, but it can be trickyIt’s kind of embarrassing to say, but the social media app TikTok figured out I had ADHD before I did.For 23 years my parents, my teachers, my doctor, my psychologist and my own brain all missed the warning signs, yet somehow it only took that app’s algorithm a few days to accidentally diagnose me. Continue reading...
by Damian Carrington Environment editor on (#5JM81)
Analysis shows significant risk of cascading events even at 2C of heating, with severe long-term effectsIce sheets and ocean currents at risk of climate tipping points can destabilise each other as the world heats up, leading to a domino effect with severe consequences for humanity, according to a risk analysis.Tipping points occur when global heating pushes temperatures beyond a critical threshold, leading to accelerated and irreversible impacts. Some large ice sheets in Antarctica are thought to already have passed their tipping points, meaning large sea-level rises in coming centuries. Continue reading...
The psychologist and author believes we are tapping into only a small corner of our potential. In his latest book, he explains how to harness all our senses and gut instinctsSteve Biddulph is telling me about a patient who came to him after a life-changing incident in a car park. The woman, Andie, was getting into her car when she noticed a figure in the distance moving towards her. The young man looked nice, well dressed. He called to her, but she couldn’t make out his words. Andie’s stomach twinged. She had been raised to be polite and helpful, but the knot in her stomach tightened. She shut the car door and drove away. Later, she learned that the next woman to enter that quiet car park was brutally attacked.Biddulph is a psychologist, known for his bestselling parenting books Raising Boys and Raising Girls. In his latest book, though, he has turned his attention to the human race in general and, in particular, to the tiny clench in Andie’s stomach that overrode her conditioning and gave her the right answer. Fully Human is a paean to what Biddulph calls “supersense”: the ability of our bodies to make our deepest feelings known to us – and of our brains to process these twinges and flutters into a simple “yes” or “no”. Continue reading...
The revelation that I’ve got eight weeks of pain ahead of me has made me realise: we humans get out of practice when it comes to falling downThe older you get, the more dramatic it feels to fall over. I think this is less to do with creeping fragility than how out of practice adults are at it. When you are a kid, you fall over all the time and bounce straight back up like Wile E Coyote after he’s been flattened by a steamroller. When you take a tumble in middle age, your life flashes past you before you hit the ground, at which point you see stars and then, for an instant, keep perfectly still before you dare to explore what life-changing injuries you may have sustained.In my 20s, I played a lot of football as a goalkeeper; I enjoyed throwing myself about. The last time I played, quite recently, I was delighted to find I could still get substantially airborne. I was less delighted to find that upon coming back to Earth I nigh-on passed out and needed half the team to help me back to my feet. Never mind pilates, yoga and whatnot, we should be able to go to falling-over sessions during which we’re pulled, pushed and tripped over willy-nilly until we get reaccustomed to falling over. Continue reading...
For decades, anthropologists have been telling us that it’s often the informal, unplanned interactions and rituals that matter most in any work environment. So how much are we missing by giving them up?In the summer of 2020, Daniel Beunza, a voluble Spanish social scientist who taught at Cass business school in London, organised a stream of video calls with a dozen senior bankers in the US and Europe. Beunza wanted to know how they had run a trading desk while working from home. Did finance require flesh-and-blood humans?Beunza had studied bank trading floors for two decades, and had noticed a paradox. Digital technologies had entered finance in the late 20th century, pushing markets into cyberspace and enabling most financial work to be done outside the office – in theory. “For $1,400 a month you can have the [Bloomberg] machine at home. You can have the best information, all the data at your disposal,” Beunza was told in 2000 by the head of one Wall Street trading desk, whom he called “Bob”. But the digital revolution had not caused banks’ offices and trading rooms to disappear. “The tendency is the reverse,” Bob said. “Banks are building bigger and bigger trading rooms.” Continue reading...
by Presented by Ian Sample and Produced by Shivani Da on (#5JKEQ)
As temperatures soar in the UK, the Guardian’s Science Weekly team have decided to pull this episode out of the archive. Prof Callum Roberts is a British oceanographer, author and one of the world’s leading marine biologists. Sitting down with Ian Sample in 2019, he talks about his journey into exploring this marine habitat
Nasa sets aside $1bn for two ventures, which will be first US exploration of the planet since 1989Nasa is returning to Venus for the first time in more than three decades to gain a better understanding of the history of what scientists believe could have been the first habitable planet in the solar system.Plans for two separate and ambitious deep space missions to Earth’s nearest neighbour were announced on Wednesday by the head of the US space agency, Bill Nelson. Launches were targeted for a 2028-2030 time frame, he said. Continue reading...
Blue Abyss applies for permission to build £150m centre with pool that would reach depths of 50mPlans have been submitted to build the world’s deepest artificial pool in Cornwall to train astronauts and help advance undersea robotics.The project would be 40 metres by 50 metres at the surface, with a 16-metre wide shaft plunging to 50 metres at its lowest point – nearly as deep as Nelson’s Column is high – and would also be the world’s largest pool by volume. Continue reading...
If a gynaecologist is embarrassed to use real terms, perhaps he or she should have chosen a different speciality, says Susan Wolfe. While Susan Boyd finds the obsession with the vagina tiresomeRe your article (Most Britons cannot name all parts of the vulva, survey reveals, 30 May), I put some of the blame for this on the medical community for using infantilising euphemisms for female genitalia when addressing adult female patients.For example, four separate private gynaecologists in central London each referred to my adult menopausal uterus as my “tummy”. English women to whom I related my surprise at this replied: “The doctor’s probably just embarrassed.” If a gynaecologist is embarrassed to use real terms for a woman’s body, perhaps he or she should have chosen a different speciality. Continue reading...
Russia and possibly China have developed technology capable of injuring brain and a US company made a prototype in 2004Portable microwave weapons capable of causing the mysterious spate of “Havana Syndrome” brain injuries in US diplomats and spies have been developed by several countries in recent years, according to leading American experts in the field.A US company also made the prototype of such a weapon for the marine corps in 2004. The weapon, codenamed Medusa, was intended to be small enough to fit in a car, and cause a “temporarily incapacitating effect” but “with a low probability of fatality or permanent injury”. Continue reading...
by Ilan Schwartz and Arunaloke Chakrabarti on (#5JJ0P)
Rates of mucormycosis were high even before the pandemic, and now the country is running out of antifungal drugsCovid-19 has killed millions around the world, but for some who are lucky enough to survive the infection, the nightmare is not over: adding insult to injury are deadly fungal infections that follow in the wake of the virus. Making matters worse, inequities that long predated the pandemic have left some countries without the capacity to combat these serious infections.
More than 6,000 buildings in Maceió condemned and research suggests more subsidence to comeIt was early 2018 when residents of the Brazilian city of Maceió first spotted cracks appearing in buildings and roads. Heavy rainfall in mid February, followed by a small earthquake at the beginning of March, appeared to trigger the fractures. The situation in the neighbourhood of Pinheiro was so serious that 6,356 buildings were placed under demolition orders and 25,000 residents had to be moved out.Recent research published in Scientific Reports shows that events were set in train long before the rain arrived. Using satellite measurements to assess land movement between 2004 and 2020, Mahdi Motagh and colleagues at the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences in Potsdam discovered that the surface subsidence began in 2004 and was sinking by up to 27cm a year by 2017. Continue reading...
Man, 41, in Jiangsu, diagnosed on 28 May but risk of avian virus spread is low, says state health agencyA 41-year-old man in China’s eastern province of Jiangsu has been confirmed as the first human case of infection with the H10N3 strain of bird flu, although health officials in China said the risk of large-scale spread remained low.The man, a resident of the city of Zhenjiang, went to hospital on 28 April after developing a fever and other symptoms, China’s national health commission said. Continue reading...
A new study reveals that humans could potentially live to 150 – and dogs can also look forward to much greater longevityName: 150 years old.Age: 150 years old. Continue reading...
Hundreds of flights have been cancelled, and authorities ordered residents of some streets in the Liwan neighbourhood of Guangzhou city to isolateChinese authorities in Guangdong province have cancelled flights and locked down communities in response to what is believed to be the first community outbreak of the Indian variant in China.Guangdong province had been reporting daily single figures of local cases, including asymptomatic cases, for more than a week, until the case load suddenly jumped to 23 on Monday, including three asymptomatic cases, and 11 on Tuesday. Most of Guandong’s cases are in the city of Guangzhou, with some in nearby Foshan, which has a population of 7.2 million. Continue reading...
by Presented by Phoebe Weston and produced by Tiffany on (#5JGF7)
Moths, bats and owls are just some of the animals you can best observe at night, and they tell us a lot about the health of ecosystems. Age of Extinction reporter Phoebe Weston adventures into a dark wood with Chris Salisbury, author of Wild Nights Out, to see what she can learn by watching and listening to wildlife Continue reading...
In a recent survey, more than a third of people in the UK mislabelled this vital part of female anatomy. So where is it – and what is it for?Name: The clitoris.Age: As old as men and – possibly more importantly – women themselves, would you Adam and Eve it? Older still, for non-creationists. Continue reading...
Amateur archaeologist exploring Dunchraigaig cairn found animal depictions by chanceDelicate prehistoric carvings of adult red deer, thought to be the oldest of their type in the UK, have been found in a tomb in one of Scotland’s most famous neolithic sites.The carvings, which depict two male red deer with full-grown antlers and several thought to be young deer, were discovered by chance in Kilmartin Glen in Argyll, home to one of the UK’s richest accumulations of neolithic and bronze age sites. Continue reading...