UK government proposals to recognise vertebrates as sentient beings are welcome, but this should be just the startLook a dog in the eye and a conscious being looks back. A being that feels hunger, thirst, warmth, cold, fear, comfort, pleasure, pain, joy. No one can seriously doubt this. The same is true of any mammal. You cannot watch rats playing hide and seek and doubt that they have feelings – that they are sentient creatures. But as animals become more distant from us in evolutionary terms, some doubt begins to creep in.Consider a bee sneaking past the guards of a rival colony to steal honey. Or the Brazilian ants that, in order to hide their nest at the end of each day, seal off the entrance from the outside. Left out in the cold at night, these ants will never see the morning, but their sacrifice increases the chance that their sisters will. The urge to attribute feelings to insects can be surprisingly strong. Continue reading...

Healthy immune systems work best when exposed to microbes. So what will lockdown have done to our resistance to germs?Every time you kiss another human being intimately for 10 seconds, more than 80m bacteria are transferred from mouth to mouth. If you’re at a party and double dip your tortilla chip into the salsa three times, around 10,000 bacteria will be transferred from your lips to the dip. Say “hi” to your co-workers as you sit down at your office desk and you’ll also be greeted by over 10m bacteria on its surface.Disturbing as these figures may seem, many scientists believe that exposure to these microbes helps fine-tune our immune systems – the network of cells and molecules that protect us from diseases. In 1989, epidemiologist David Strachan first proposed the “hygiene hypothesis” – the idea that being too clean causes defects in the immune system, leading to a rise in inflammatory diseases, such as asthma and allergies. While Strachan’s theory is debated and hygiene saves countless lives, decades of data support the idea that exposure to microbes helps the immune system develop. Continue reading...

Advanced technique used to recover genetic material may help solve the mystery of early manScientists have pinpointed major changes in Europe’s Neanderthal populations – from traces of blood and excrement they left behind in a Spanish cave 100,000 years ago.The discovery is the first important demonstration of a powerful new technique that allows researchers to study DNA recovered from cave sediments. No fossils or stone tools are needed for such studies. Instead, minuscule traces of genetic material that have accumulated in the dust of a cavern floor are employed to reveal ancient secrets. Continue reading...

Starving and trapped by ice, the Norwegian’s crew had discovered how to beat scurvy on an earlier voyage. The benefits proved crucialThirteen years before he became the first person ever to reach the south pole in 1911, the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen experienced his first merciless taste of winter in the Antarctic. Stuck onboard the Belgian expedition ship Belgica, which was grounded in pack ice, he and the rest of the crew contracted scurvy and faced certain death.That is when, according to a new book published later this month, Amundsen started eating raw penguin meat – and discovered a secret that would later give him a huge advantage over Captain Robert Falcon Scott in the race to the south pole. Continue reading...

Misinformation could be causing real harm in the communityLike viruses, false information spreads through networks. In March 2020, more than a quarter of the top Covid-19 related videos on YouTube contained misleading claims and those had more than 60m views worldwide. The World Health Organization’s Covid “myth-busters” page counters ideas such as the notion that eating garlic protects you against infection. But how many people believe such claims?University of Cambridge researchers found in an online survey that about 15% of UK respondents thought it was more reliable than not that “the coronavirus is part of a global effort to enforce mandatory vaccination”, while 9% supported “the new 5G network may be making us more susceptible to the virus”. They found the most important factor linked to resilience to misinformation was numeracy. While we are fully aware that correlation is not causation, it encourages the idea that greater “data literacy” in the population could help bring some critical awareness of the dubious claims circulating on social media. In the meantime, research has shown that an effective strategy is to vigorously “pre-bunk” misinformation – essentially inoculating people against fake news by getting in the warnings first. Continue reading...

All todays events as they happened: China cancels spring Everest climbing season from Tibetan side while Portugal to reopen to UK tourists from Monday

Top adviser warns of India variant impact as scientists urge delay in lockdown changes

It can be debilitating and last a lifetime, but type 2 diabetes, if caught early, can be reversed with weight lossIt’s 10 years since Professor Roy Taylor revolutionised treatment for type 2 diabetes with a groundbreaking study that showed the disease could be reversed through rapid weight loss. Until his research was published, type 2 diabetes was thought to be an incurable, lifelong condition. Now, for many people, we know it is not.But his achievements – and the thousands of people he has cured – are not something he dwells upon. “I’m in a very lucky position of being able to do this research,” he says, “which really extends what I’ve been doing as a doctor throughout my life.” He laughs at the suggestion that he must occasionally marvel at his own success: “No, no,” he chuckles. “Lots of occupations make a useful contribution to society. I wouldn’t set myself apart.” Continue reading...

Biologists recently created a chimera with both human and monkey cells. But not all scientists are happy to blur species boundariesWhen King Minos of Crete was given a magnificent bull by the sea god Poseidon for a sacrifice, he could not bring himself to kill it. In anger, Poseidon enchanted Minos’s wife Pasiphaë to be filled with lust for the creature. The result of their trans-species mating was the bull-headed monster the Minotaur.Hybrids of humans and animals throng within myth and legend: centaurs, mermaids, goat-footed Pan. We’re both fascinated and uneasy about the boundary that separates us from other animals – and whether it is leaky. Continue reading...

US team succeeds in captive breeding of sunflower sea stars and aims to reintroduce them to the wildScientists in a San Juan Island laboratory in Washington state have successfully raised sunflower sea stars, or starfish, in captivity for the first time, in an effort to help save these charismatic ocean creatures from extinction.Sunflower sea stars, whose colours vary widely, can grow as big as a bicycle wheel and have about 20 legs. They were once abundant in coastal waters from Alaska to Mexico, but since 2013, nearly 6 billion of these now critically endangered animals have died from a gruesome wasting disease linked to warming seas. Populations have plummeted by more than 90%. Continue reading...

State-run media says landing ‘spectacularly conquered’ a new milestone; it joins US Perseverance rover which landed in FebruaryAn unmanned Chinese spacecraft has successfully landed on the surface of Mars, Chinese state news agency Xinhua has reported, making China the second space-faring nation after the US to land on the red planet.The official Xinhua news agency said the lander had touched down on Saturday, citing the China National Space Administration. Continue reading...

Latest updates: prime minister announces acceleration of vaccination programme as Indian variant threatens June lockdown easing

AI inspires hypothesis that sleeping human brain might try to break its overfamiliarity with daily dataIt’s a common enough scenario: you walk into your local supermarket to buy some milk, but by the time you get to the till, the milk bottle has turned into a talking fish. Then you remember you’ve got your GCSE maths exam in the morning, but you haven’t attended a maths lesson for nearly three decades.Dreams can be bafflingly bizarre, but according to a new theory of why we dream, that’s the whole point. By injecting some random weirdness into our humdrum existence, dreams leave us better equipped to cope with the unexpected. Continue reading...

A list of possible measures that could be taken by the government to limit the spread of the variant

Soil scientist with a key role in creating the Environmental Change Network and the University of the ArcticWhen Bill Heal, who has died aged 86, began studying soil decomposers in the 1950s, researchers aimed to understand the ecosystem in which they functioned. Growing awareness of global heating in the decades since has given this work increased urgency: the very slow rates of decomposition of plant material in peat enable the removal of great quantities of heat-trapping carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, as well as storage of carbon in its acidic and waterlogged conditions.Soil decomposers constitute the “factory of life”. Below-ground organisms, ranging in size from bacteria and nematodes to earthworms and molluscs, comprise a quarter of Earth’s living species. In order to study how they break down dead plants and animals, researchers inserted cotton fabric strips vertically into soil, with the degree of decomposition assessed by the loss of the strip’s tensile strength. Continue reading...

Analysis: If B.1.617.2 proves highly transmissible, hospitalisations could peak again, models show

The good news is, we think existing vaccines will protect us against this rapidly spreading strain. But we need more data

Deployment of jabs could be speeded up for multi-generational households in areas virus is spreading quickly

A moving and clear-eyed history of bodily freedoms that takes as its central character Wilhelm Reich, inventor of the orgone accumulatorRight at the end of this exhilarating journey through a century’s struggles over the human body, Olivia Laing invites her reader to “imagine, for a minute, what it would be like to inhabit a body without fear”. This simple hope comes to sound like a radical demand for the impossible; after such a vivid catalogue of the many humiliations and cruelties a body can be made to bear, it isn’t easy to imagine.Laing’s impassioned commitment to the promise of bodily freedom, of every body’s right to move and feel and love without harming or being harmed, shines through every sentence of the book. But she is too canny a writer to miss the rich and bitter irony in which efforts to realise this promise so often get caught: every movement to liberate the body comes to be marked in some way by the constrictive regime it’s trying to escape. The writer who best grasped this irony was the Marquis de Sade, of whom Laing writes with an open and compelling ambivalence. De Sade’s nihilistic fantasies of sexual torture are a discomfiting reminder of how easily the liberty of one individual becomes the enslavement and abasement of others. Continue reading...

For example this display shows a cat asleep in a ray of sunshine! Is that legal?

Critical sequence of tests begins in space simulator to prepare Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer for its journey to the great gas giant

Study finds antibodies against Sars-CoV-2 three-and-a-half times higher in people vaccinated again after 12 weeks rather than three

Boris Johnson should get the preliminaries under way and advance the start dateThe good news is that Boris Johnson has finally announced a public inquiry into the United Kingdom’s Covid-19 pandemic. Public inquiries remain pivotal in our public life, even today, and it was inconceivable that there would not be one on what the prime minister this week called “a trauma like no other”. For many months though, Mr Johnson has prevaricated on the timing and the details. It always seemed to be never quite the right moment. Now, amid expectations that the worst of the pandemic may possibly be ending at least in this country, that excuse is running out of road.The bad news is that Mr Johnson is still playing for time. The public inquiry will not start until spring 2022. This is a ludicrous delay. When it gets under way, it will be lengthy and extensive. Although the terms of reference have not been set, Mr Johnson acknowledges that they are likely to be wide. That means the inquiry will probably have to cover, among other things, Britain’s pandemic preparedness, the state’s lockdown and economic responses, the record of the NHS, the problems in social care, the impact on ethnic minorities and other at-risk groups, test-and-trace efforts, medical treatments and vaccines, modelling, statistics, public messaging and international comparisons. It is a huge agenda. Continue reading...

Hollywood star is aiming to be first to shoot a feature film in space, but Russia has launched rival bid

My mentor and friend Michael Atkinson, who has died aged 95, was for many years professor of gastroenterology at the University of Nottingham, where one of his most important contributions was the development of the Atkinson tube, which helps people with oesophageal cancer to swallow.Born in Rawdon, just outside Leeds, to Herbert, a plumbers’ merchant, and his wife, Janet (nee Palliser), a postmistress, Michael went to Aireborough grammar school in West Yorkshire, then University College London for his medical education during the second world war. Continue reading...

Public health officials and scientists are investigating a rise in infections to verify the risk

With restrictions in England due to be further relaxed on 17 May, new coronavirus variants first detected in India are spreading across the UK. Public Health England designated one, known as B.1.617.2, as a ‘variant of concern’ last week. It is now the second most common variant in the country. Anand Jagatia speaks to the Guardian science correspondent Nicola Davis and Prof Ravi Gupta about what we know and how concerned we should be

Boris Johnson promises a public inquiry into the pandemic, but our scientific community could provide more honest answersBoris Johnson’s promise of a public inquiry into the handling of the pandemic is welcome, but tardy and vague. It is scarcely surprising that the government has been dragging its feet, for no independent, objective and credible inquiry could be anything but devastating about the political handling of the crisis. The long and lethal litany of blunders and cover-ups presented in Jonathan Calvert and George Arbuthnott’s book Failures of State beggars belief, even while it is so recent in memory.Official inquiries are rarely characterised by frankness or timeliness. Like the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war, they tend to become drawn-out exercises in political point-scoring, at best detonating a weak charge long after the event. If the Covid inquiry does ever happen (Johnson hardly has a good track record of keeping promises), it is likely to be trammeled by evasion, foot-dragging and blame-shifting on a scale that will make Chilcot look terse and incisive in comparison. Continue reading...

Vital international scientific work, including studies into how viruses spread, is being jeopardised by short-sighted cutsGiven the ambitions outlined in the government’s integrated review of “Global Britain in a Competitive Age”, you could be forgiven for thinking that research into the causes, detection and control of emerging infectious diseases with pandemic potential was being taken pretty seriously at the highest level. The government will “build on the lessons of the Covid-19 pandemic to improve our use of data to anticipate and respond to future crises”, and intends to “drive towards a more science-led approach to the problems we face”. Or so it claims.At the sharp end, the reality is very different. The integrated review was published five days after UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), the body representing the UK’s seven research councils, posted an open letter explaining that its official development assistance (ODA) allocation had been slashed and there was now a £120m deficit in funds promised to research already up and running. This has left the programme I lead, the One Health Poultry Hub, with a 70% cut in its funding. Continue reading...

Reports that Sage will meet on Thursday to discuss threat with PHE figures expected to show big jump in cases linked to variant

Should you have a lateral flow test before sex? Is it essential to wait until you’re fully vaccinated? Doctors, scientists and other experts answer the big questions

While its doors have been closed to the public, scientists have been busy digitising its vast archive – from 100-year-old insects to rare mineralsThe main exhibition room at the Natural History Museum in London is cathedral-like, with Hope the blue whale suspended mid-air like a demigod. Filled with specimens collected by explorers, this remarkable place teaches us about the evolution of life on our planet.There is a “great unlocking” happening in this building, home to one of the world’s largest natural history collections. Insects on pins and old minerals that have been sitting in mahogany display cases for hundreds of years are being re-examined, digitised and brought into the 21st century. Continue reading...

MRNA vaccines appear to neutralise Indian variant; CDC says there is ‘plausible causal association’ between vaccine and dangerous clotting

GB study points to highlighting personal benefits being key to counter vaccine hesitancy

However, UK trial found two doses of the same vaccine triggered less adverse reactions

Boris Johnson has pledged that an independent inquiry will investigate the lessons of the UK pandemic

I felt that we were deprived of quality time together, writes Lesley West, whose husband died this yearRachel Clarke’s article (10 May) resonated with me as it captured completely the effect of the pandemic on the dying. My late husband was diagnosed with aggressive prostate cancer earlier this year and spent his final two weeks in hospital.I was “allowed” to visit if the permission of a doctor was given, and then had to give a code to enter the hospital. Our time together was increased towards the end, but by then he was often not lucid and did not recognise me. Continue reading...

Man, known as T5, was able to write 18 words a minute with more than 94% accuracy on individual lettersA man who was paralysed from the neck down in an accident more than a decade ago has written sentences using a computer system that turns imagined handwriting into words.It is the first time scientists have created sentences from brain activity linked to handwriting and paves the way for more sophisticated devices to help paralysed people communicate faster and more clearly. Continue reading...

Exclusive: Thinning indicates profound impact of humans and could affect satellites and GPSHumanity’s enormous emissions of greenhouse gases are shrinking the stratosphere, a new study has revealed.The thickness of the atmospheric layer has contracted by 400 metres since the 1980s, the researchers found, and will thin by about another kilometre by 2080 without major cuts in emissions. The changes have the potential to affect satellite operations, the GPS navigation system and radio communications. Continue reading...

The UK must risk an in-person meeting in Glasgow if this crucial climate conference is to be a successWalkouts, standoffs, shouting, tears, bloodletting – the UN climate Cops have seen it all. The annual meetings, in which all countries bar a few failed states take part, under the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), are the only global forum for discussing the future of the planet. They have veered between triumph and disaster, marked by dramatic and sometimes traumatic moments. At their best they can be momentous events, shifting the world’s response to the climate crisis into a higher gear, as at the landmark Paris Cop in 2015.This year’s 26th conference of the parties, postponed from last year because of Covid-19 and shaded by the pandemic, will be different. Scheduled to take place in Glasgow in November, these will be the most important talks since 2015. At Cop26, countries will lay out their plans for curbing greenhouse gas emissions this decade – probably the last decade in which we still have a chance of limiting global heating to 1.5C, beyond which corals bleach, low-lying islands face inundation and extreme weather will take hold. Continue reading...

Children’s charity urges UK to set example and start sharing jabs with lower-income countries from June

Sand samples examined by National Trust experts indicate hillside chalk figure was created in the 10th centuryOver the centuries the huge, naked, club-wielding giant carved into a steep hillside in Dorset has been thought prehistoric, Celtic, Roman or even a 17th century lampoon of Oliver Cromwell.After 12 months of new, hi-tech sediment analysis, the National Trust has now revealed the probable truth and experts admit they are taken aback. The bizarre, enigmatic Cerne Giant is none of the above, but late Saxon, possibly 10th century. Continue reading...

Button batteries and magnets found in certain types of children’s toys associated with complicationsThere has been a fivefold increase in magnet ingestion over the past five years in young children amid a steady rise in hospital admissions in London caused by the swallowing of foreign objects, doctors have said.While most of the time objects pass out of the body naturally without incident, button batteries and small permanent magnets found in cordless tools, hard disk drives, magnetic fasteners and certain types of children’s toys have been associated with complications. Continue reading...

Prompted by an illness that took her to the brink of death and back, Jemma Wadham recalls 25 years of expeditions around the globe. Speaking to the professor about her new book, Ice Rivers, Shivani Dave uncovers the importance of glaciers – and what they should mean to us Continue reading...

Concerns raised over food, lack of fresh air and social distancing after coming back from red list countries

Osiris-Rex has been flying around the ancient asteroid since 2018 and collected nearly a pound of rubble last fallWith rubble from an asteroid tucked inside, a Nasa spacecraft fired its engines and began the long journey back to Earth on Monday, leaving the ancient space rock in its rearview mirror.The trip home for the robotic prospector, Osiris-Rex, will take two years. Continue reading...

Latest updates: prime minister unveils new easing of restrictions from 17 May in next steps in England’s roadmap out of lockdown

Experts caution figures subject to time lags but say news reflects impact of lockdowns and vaccination

Medical chiefs cut threat level from 4 to 3, pointing to impact of vaccinations and social distancing