Study was one of the first to evaluate alterations in human mutation rates in response to manmade disasterFor decades popular culture has portrayed babies born to the survivors of nuclear accidents as mutants with additional heads or at high risk of cancers. But now a study of children whose parents were exposed to radiation from the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 suggests they carry no more DNA mutations than children born to any other parents.The study, published in Science, is one of the first to systematically evaluate alterations in human mutation rates in response to a manmade disaster, such as accidental radiation exposure. Continue reading...

Latest updates: England’s R number rises to between 0.8 and 1, suggesting pandemic is still shrinking but at a slightly slower rate than last week

Academics will follow progress of 10,000 poorer students affected by the Covid-19 pandemic

Yoshihide Suga under pressure to act after sharp rise in infections in Tokyo, only months before Olympics

Event marks first time SpaceX reused a capsule and rocket to launch astronauts for NasaSpaceX launched four astronauts into orbit on Friday using a recycled rocket and capsule, the third crew flight in less than a year for Elon Musk’s rapidly expanding company.The astronauts from the US, Japan and France should reach the International Space Station early on Saturday morning, following a 23-hour ride in the same Dragon capsule used by SpaceX’s debut crew last May. They will spend six months at the orbiting lab. Continue reading...

Mark McGowan says calls a snap three-day shutdown in Perth and Peel after coronavirus spreads from hotel quarantine. This blog is now closed

Researchers in Glasgow find two cases where cats were infected by owners with coronavirus symptoms

Vaccine developed by scientists at Jenner Institute, Oxford, shows up to 77% efficacy in trial over 12 monthsA vaccine against malaria has been shown to be highly effective in trials in Africa, holding out the real possibility of slashing the death toll of a disease that kills 400,000 mostly small children every year.The vaccine, developed by scientists at the Jenner Institute of Oxford University, showed up to 77% efficacy in a trial of 450 children in Burkina Faso over 12 months. Continue reading...

Australian company applies for permission to conduct trial of men and women aged 18 to 55Australia is set to host the first human clinical trial of a genetically modified adenovirus vaccine for Covid-19 delivered via nasal spray.Avance Clinical, an Australian contract research organisation, has applied to the office of the gene technology regulator for permission to conduct the phase 1 clinical trial on behalf US company Tetherex Pharmaceuticals Corporation. Continue reading...

Flight path of Kalahari’s six-tonne asteroid is first tracing of meteorite shedding rock to solar system originAstronomers have reconstructed the 22m-year-long voyage of an asteroid that hurtled through the solar system and exploded over Botswana, showering meteorites across the Kalahari desert.It is the first time scientists have traced showering space rock to its source – in this case Vesta, one of largest bodies in the asteroid belt that circles the sun between Jupiter and Mars. Continue reading...

Analysis of test results from more than 350,000 people finds older people just as protected as younger

This blog is now closed. For up to date coverage of the coronavirus pandemic, head to the link below:

In the wake of the pandemic, mental ill health is on the rise, putting more pressure on what some say is an already broken system. Editor-in-chief Lenore Taylor and associate editor Lucy Clark speak to Gabrielle Jackson about what’s causing Australia’s mental health crisis, and how to fix itCheck out the full Australia’s mental health crisis series here.In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is on 13 11 14 and Beyond Blue can be reached on 1300 22 4636. Other international helplines can be found at www.befrienders.org Continue reading...

More than 4 million Australians received mental health-related prescriptions in 2018-19 some 70% of which were for antidepressants

Hospitals pushed to brink after more than 1 million people infected in four days

Australia increasingly isolated as prime minister sticks to 26-28% emissions cut by 2030 on 2005 levelsScott Morrison has confirmed Australia won’t increase its emissions reduction target at a virtual climate summit hosted by the US president, Joe Biden, but the prime minister says his message to allies and global peers will be Australia is “committed” and “performing”.Australia goes into the summit under intensifying diplomatic pressure because the US has significantly ramped up its ambition, with the new administration now pledging to cut emissions by between 50 and 52% on 2005 levels by 2030. Continue reading...

Health workers spent years targeting agonising and blinding eye disease, which was rife in rural areasThe Gambia has become the second country in Africa to eliminate trachoma, one of the leading causes of blindness.The achievement, announced by the World Health Organization on Tuesday, came after decades of work on the disease, which has damaged the sight of about 1.9 million people worldwide. Ghana was the first country in Africa to eliminate the disease in 2018. Continue reading...

Analysis of the paper identified several biases ‘which may give the false impression that smoking is protective in Covid-19’

In the second of two episodes exploring our biological clocks, Linda Geddes speaks to Prof Till Roenneberg about how social restrictions during the pandemic have altered our sleep patterns and whether maintaining these changes could reduce social jetlag

‘If you want to do well, do it yourself’ says head of space agency as collaboration with US strained by earthly disputesRussia is ready to start building its own space station with the aim of launching it into orbit by 2030 if President Vladimir Putin gives the go-ahead, the head of its Roscosmos space agency has said.The project would end more than two decades of close cooperation with the United States aboard the ageing International Space Station (ISS). Continue reading...

These plants can clean contaminated soils, could they also offer a greener way of collecting much-needed substances?A magnificent tall tree called Pycnandra acuminata grows on the island of New Caledonia in the South Pacific, and it does something strange – when its bark is cut it bleeds a bright blue-green latex that contains up to 25% nickel, a metal highly poisonous to most plants in more than tiny amounts.

It is extraordinary that the museum is receiving funding from a fossil fuel giant for an exhibition on, of all things, the climate

Despite their life-saving capabilities, many countries have yet to administer enough doses to reap the full benefits

Researchers say loss of diversity in Sweden’s Atlantic salmon population could compromise ability of fish to adapt to climate changeFish farming may have been devised as a remedy to reinvigorate dwindling fish stocks but this human solution has spawned another problem: lower genetic diversity.Now, a study shows that the genetic makeup of Atlantic salmon populations from a century ago compared with the current stock across 13 Swedish rivers is more genetically similar than distinct, which researchers say could compromise the ability of the fish to adapt to climate change. Continue reading...

After the announcement of an antiviral taskforce, here are some medicines already in use

Taskforce aims to ‘supercharge’ search for antivirals to roll out as soon as autumn, says government

Latest updates: in Downing Street press briefing, prime minister also says one in five adults has now had a second dose

Watchdog says benefits outweigh risks but that warning should be added to product information

UCL data of 10,000 volunteers shows cases 30% higher among those who slept poorly in their 50s, 60s and 70sPeople who regularly sleep for six hours or less each night in middle age are more likely to develop dementia than those who routinely manage seven hours, according to a major study into the disease.Researchers found a 30% greater risk of dementia in those who during their 50s, 60s and 70s consistently had a short night’s sleep, regardless of other risk factors such as heart and metabolic conditions and poor mental health. Continue reading...

American Humanist Association criticises academic for comments about identity using ‘the guise of scientific discourse’, and withdraws its 1996 honourThe American Humanist Association has withdrawn its humanist of the year award from Richard Dawkins, 25 years after he received the honour, criticising the academic and author for “demean[ing] marginalised groups” using “the guise of scientific discourse”.The AHA honoured Dawkins, whose books include The Selfish Gene and The God Delusion, in 1996 for his “significant contributions” in communicating scientific concepts to the public. On Monday, it announced that it was withdrawing the award, referring to a tweet sent by Dawkins earlier this month, in which he compared trans people to Rachel Dolezal, the civil rights activist who posed as a black woman for years. Continue reading...

Do you like to get up and go as the sun rises, or do you prefer the quiet hush of the late evening? Many of us tend to see ourselves as being ‘morning larks’ or ‘night owls’, naturally falling into an early or late sleep schedule. These are known as our ‘chronotypes’. Studies have shown that those with later chronotypes are at risk of a range of negative health outcomes, from an increased likelihood of developing type 2 diabetes to depression. In the first of two episodes exploring our biological clocks, Linda Geddes speaks to Prof Debra Skene and Dr Samuel Jones to find out why our internal timings differ, and why it seems worse to be a night owl Continue reading...

Since the pandemic began, a crack team of scientists have been working to track Covid variants as they appear, to try to stop them from spreading. The Guardian’s health editor, Sarah Boseley, has been speaking to some of themAt the end of last year, a crack team of British scientists discovered a new coronavirus variant that would spread across the world. The Guardian’s health editor, Sarah Boseley, tells Rachel Humphreys about how the scientists went about tracing the variant.The UK is world-leading in its genomic sequencing and surveillance. When the coronavirus first reached the UK, genomic scientists began a major collaborative effort to sequence samples from people who had fallen ill. The Covid-19 Genomics UK (Cog-UK) consortium included the four public health agencies, the Wellcome Sanger Institute and more than a dozen universities. All viruses evolve and change over time; a virus with one or two mutations is called a variant. Genome sequencing aims to track those changes, which most of the time are insignificant. By late December, the UK was responsible for about half of all the world’s genome sequencing of the coronavirus. Continue reading...

Paleontologists say a mass grave in Utah shows the dinosaurs may not have always been solitary predators as previously thoughtTyrannosaur dinosaurs may not have been solitary predators as long envisioned but more like social carnivores such as wolves, new research announced on Monday has found.Paleontologists developed the theory while studying a mass tyrannosaur death site found seven years ago in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah, one of two monuments that the Biden administration is considering restoring to their full size after former president Donald Trump shrank them. Continue reading...

Ingenuity successfully takes flight, hovering at height of about 3 metres before touching back downNasa is celebrating the first powered, controlled flight on another planet after its Ingenuity helicopter rose into the Martian sky, hovered for a moment, then gently returned to the dusty surface.The robotic craft climbed to an altitude of about 3 metres on its maiden flight on Monday morning, having hitched a ride to Mars with Nasa’s Perseverance rover, which touched down in February on a mission to search for signs of life. Continue reading...

India added to travel red list, Hancock tells MPs, as number of Indian variant cases in UK rises to 103. This live blog is now closed – please follow the global coronavirus live blog for updates

The solutions to today’s puzzlesEarlier today I set you the following two puzzles. The first is from the UK’s Mathematical Olympiad for Girls:Painting the houses Continue reading...

Nasa’s Ingenuity Mars helicopter has completed the first powered, controlled flight on another planet, the space agency has announced.The small helicopter successfully took flight on the red planet on Monday morning, hovering in the air at about 3 metres (10ft), before descending and touching back down on the Martian surface

While most followed restrictions, one in seven admitted to decreasing levels of compliance

Nasa has said its Ingenuity aircraft flew above the Martian surface in the first powered, controlled flight on another planet Continue reading...

Oxford scientists will track whether participants are reinfected when re-exposed to coronavirus

A colourful puzzle from the UK girls’ maths olympiadUpdate: the solutions can now be read here.Today’s puzzle celebrates the UK’s outstanding performance at last week’s European Girls’ Mathematical Olympiad, which is the world’s most prestigious female-only maths competition for pre-university students.Yuhka Machino and Jenni Voon, both aged 17, placed 6th and 7th overall, each earning gold medals. Overall, the UK ranked fifth out of 55 countries, behind Russia, the USA, Peru and Romania. (The event was held online, allowing 17 non-European countries to participate as guests.) Continue reading...

Physicists are always looking for eureka moments – but we should be careful with headline-grabbing announcementsThere is something curious about the great experiments and discoveries in fundamental physics from the past few decades. They have covered black holes, gravitational waves, the Higgs particle and quantum entanglement. They have led to Nobel prizes, reached the front pages of newspapers and made the scientific community proud. But they haven’t told us anything new: they have confirmed what we expected about the world. All these phenomena were in the university textbooks I studied almost half a century ago. Their existence was predicted by our best established theories. I do not mean to diminish the awe. On the contrary. It is amazing that the phenomena were observed, and even more amazing that they were figured out before we could see them. Their detection is a celebration of the power of scientific thinking to see into the unseen. Yet a malignant voice could have whispered in our ears at each step: “What’s the great surprise? We expected this.” Fundamental experimental physics has long been, in this sense, quite conservative. It has simply been confirming the best theories of last century over and over again.Last week findings from Fermilab, the US’s particle physics and accelerator laboratory, appeared to contradict what we thought to be the case. The laboratory announced a new measurement of the “magnetic moment” of the muon – one of the universe’s elementary particles, a heavier brother of the electron. The measured value of the muon seems to disagree with the value predicted by the theory. It is an observation that does not complement our established theories; it clashes with them. Continue reading...

Once you’ve traced out the full Ursa Major constellation, look for Polaris and shooting starsThis week, take the time to look north. Start by identifying Ursa Major, the great bear. This large constellation stretches across the northern sky. It is the third largest constellation in the entire sky and has been recognised for millennia across many different cultures, mostly because of its seven brightest stars. Continue reading...

If all goes to plan, craft will ascend to 10 feet above the surface of Mars, hover for 30 seconds, then rotate before descendingNasa on Monday will attempt to fly a miniature helicopter above the surface of Mars in what would be the first powered, controlled flight of an aircraft on another planet.If all goes to plan, the 1.8kg helicopter will slowly ascend to an altitude of three metres above the Martian surface, hover for 30 seconds, then rotate before descending to a gentle landing on all four legs. The flight is due to take place at 3.30am US eastern daylight time (8.30am BST/7.30am GMT). But data confirming the outcome is not expected to reach Nasa until about three hours later. Continue reading...

Countless inquiries have found the same problems afflicting the mental health system, but cost and access barriers still leave those seeking and providing care in despair

Mike Whittaker has a suggestion to reduce test costs for those wishing to travel abroad, while Catherine Dunn says that if the government invested in public health infrastructure, we would have a more effective testing systemYour article (Airlines warn the cost of Covid tests will stop people going abroad, 9 April) considers the cost of Covid tests for a family, calculated as the cost of a single test, multiplied by the number in the travel group.But the tests are to detect if any person in the group has the virus. Hence in principle, the samples from all persons in a travel group could be combined into one single sample tube, which is then tested with a single test. A positive result would then show that somebody in the group had Covid, thereby preventing the whole group from travelling. This would allow costs to be reduced for each travel group.

The long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific and philosophical conceptsScientists and astronomers tell us that the universe is expanding. But what is it expanding into, ie what’s beyond the universe?

An exhibition at London’s Science Museum shows how far carbon capture research has comeTackling climate change may bring unexpected benefits, London’s Science Museum will reveal next month. A special exhibition on carbon capture, the fledgling technology of extracting greenhouse gases from the atmosphere and emissions from factories, will display bottles of vodka, tubes of toothpaste, pens and yoga mats made from carbon drawn out of thin air.In addition, the exhibition – Our Future Planet – will showcase prototypes of the gas-harvesting machines that can provide this carbon. They include the Lackner artificial tree which mirrors the actions of living plants by breathing in carbon dioxide and exhaling oxygen. This Heath Robinson-like device – made up of dangling panels of carbon-absorbing material – was built by Klaus Lackner at Arizona State University and will be the first to be displayed in Britain. Continue reading...

Largest crowd at a major British stadium for more than a year will aid research into events reopening this summer

Scientists are concerned virus or medication used for treating Covid-19 is causing ear damage