New variants of concern have changed the game, spreading worldwide and threatening to derail pandemic control effortsAt the end of 2020, there was a strong hope that high levels of vaccination would see humanity finally gain the upper hand over Sars-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19. In an ideal scenario, the virus would then be contained at very low levels without further societal disruption or significant numbers of deaths.But since then, new “variants of concern” have emerged and spread worldwide, putting current pandemic control efforts, including vaccination, at risk of being derailed. Continue reading...
Stories all reported potential benefits of tests, some using smartphone or watch, but 60% failed to mention limitationsMedical tests often offered through smartphones and watches and designed to detect the early signs of disease are being promoted by media without mention of their potential harms, an Australian study published in the leading US medical journal JAMA Internal Medicine has found.Researchers from the University of Sydney and Bond University in Queensland analysed 1,173 news stories from between 2016 and 2019 from newspapers, blogs, magazines, broadcast and podcast transcripts, and wire news services. Continue reading...
The solutions to today’s puzzlesEarlier today I set you two puzzles by the veteran US puzzle inventor Sam Loyd.1. The famous hot cross bun puzzle Continue reading...
Hot cross teasersUPDATE: Read the solutions hereToday’s paschal problems are from the archive of US puzzle maker Sam Loyd [1841-1911]. Two dynamo teasers for ‘dynamo teaser’*.1. The famous hot cross bun puzzle Continue reading...
The constellation is beautifully placed for evening observation in the northern hemisphereAt this time of year in the northern hemisphere, the constellation of Leo, the Lion, is beautifully placed for observation in the evenings. Continue reading...
New ‘quicker and kinder’ treatment combining drugs cuts length of time some patients have to spend in hospitalA new breast cancer treatment will cut the amount of time some patients have to spend in hospital from two and a half hours to five minutes.The treatment, called Phesgo, is being rolled out across England by the NHS and will be offered to breast cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy. It will be available to people with HER2-positive breast cancer, which accounts for 15% of all such cancers. Continue reading...
She was in the Go-Betweens, Tracey Thorn was in the Marine Girls, their 30-year friendship enhanced both their livesOn 31 March 1983, she burst into my dressing room, asking at the top of her voice, “Has anyone here got a lipstick I can borrow?” I looked up to see a tall woman in a Lurex dress, with a mass of blonde hair. Our two bands, Marine Girls and the Go-Betweens, were on the same bill at the Lyceum in London. I was 20, and she was 31. I was a tentative singer, she was a loud, outspoken drummer. I was from suburbia, she was from Brisbane, Australia. And I was still a student, while she had already been a social worker, then joined a feminist punk band called Xero. She’d hitchhiked across Europe with a girlfriend, she’d seen every art film, read every avant-garde book. She’d slept at Shakespeare and Co in Paris, she’d swum with Roger Moore, she could recite Kate Millett’s Sexual Politics. But I didn’t know any of this. I just knew that she looked like self-belief in a minidress, and that she had arrived in my life. “Who was that?” I asked when she had gone. “That,” came the reply, “was Lindy Morrison.”It took a couple of years for us to become friends. We were opposites in many ways, and at different stages of life, but there were similarities: we both lived with the boyfriend we were in a band with; we had strong opinions about everything – feminism, love and art; we liked Marilyn Monroe, Bette Davis, Patti Smith, Simone de Beauvoir, and we had no time for a lot of the men who surrounded us in the music business. I’d watch her on stage, fierce and sweating behind the drum kit, long hair flying in her face, all energy, all concentration, and I was proud to be her friend. Continue reading...
Research into how some HIV-positive people keep the virus at bay promises to yield new treatment possibilities, from vaccines to gene therapiesThe year was 1998 when Joel Blankson encountered a patient he would never forget. Blankson was working in the HIV clinic at John Hopkins School of Medicine, Baltimore, when an HIV-positive woman in her mid-40s arrived for some routine tests.Blankson gave her a PCR test, intending to prescribe a newly developed combination of medicines called antiretroviral therapies to suppress the infection, and prevent her developing Aids. Continue reading...
Exiting the EU was not good for Britain. Greed did not bring us the vaccine. Johnson’s narratives will not stand the light of dayThere can be few people who have not at some stage in their lives felt that they had been “taken for a ride” or conned. Yet that, I think, will be the dawning realisation of a fair proportion of the 37% of the electorate who – without, in most cases, having the faintest idea of the implications – voted on 23 June 2016 to leave the European Union.Now, usually, if one is conned, it is over some relatively minor matter in the great scheme of things, and one learns one’s lesson. But when a significant part of a country is taken for a ride, it cannot be dismissed as a trivial matter from which it can easily recover. Continue reading...
There is plenty of evidence that empathy can be taught in childhood, but it gets more complicated when it comes to adults, especially when it is forcedCan people change?That’s the question behind the multibillion-dollar self-help industry, the proliferation of blogs and podcasts that promise to make you a better human, and the ubiquitous and vacuous “inspo” memes. Continue reading...
Spreading fears over the Oxford vaccine undercuts science and public healthIt has been a disquieting week for those concerned about the lifting of Covid restrictions. Numbers of cases and deaths may be declining but the news that the AstraZeneca vaccine has been linked to cases of rare blood clots and has been suspended for use in younger people in Germany and the Netherlands is a disturbing development. The AstraZeneca jab is the prime hope we have of clearing Britain of this disease and is now, once again, under hostile scrutiny. Not for the first time, this vaccine has become enmeshed in geopolitics and its usefulness questioned. It is a grim story.In this case, fears have been raised that the vaccine may be linked to seven deaths among a total of 30 rare blood-clotting cases that arose after administration of the vaccine. That is of obvious concern, but a quick look at the arithmetic puts those fears into perspective. Those 30 cases occurred among 18 million recipients of the AstraZeneca jab, a risk of less than one in 500,000. Now run this simple thought experiment and ask what would happen if we stopped the vaccination of 500,000 middle-aged people, say, for a month? About 85 would be hospitalised and about five would die from Covid, it is estimated. Those figures reveal the power of vaccinations that have already prevented more than 6,000 Covid deaths in the UK, with tens of thousands of lives likely to be saved this year. Continue reading...
The physicist on Newton finding inspiration amid the great plague, how the multiverse can unite religions, and why a ‘theory of everything’ is within our graspMichio Kaku is a professor of theoretical physics at City College, New York, a proponent of string theory but also a well-known populariser of science, with multiple TV appearances and several bestselling books behind him. His latest book, The God Equation, is a clear and accessible examination of the quest to combine Einstein’s general relativity with quantum theory to create an all-encompassing “theory of everything” about the nature of the universe.How close do you believe science is to accomplishing a theory of everything?
At the end of last year, a crack team of British scientists discovered a new coronavirus strain that would spread across the world. As new variants emerge, can they keep them at bay?In late November last year, the people of Swale in Kent were being lambasted for disobedience. They were being Covid-shamed. The district, home to a large number of apple orchards, as well as the historic towns of Faversham and Sittingbourne, had the highest infection rates in the country. Close behind was nearby Thanet, the two areas totalling a little less than 500 sq km. The rules on wearing masks and social distancing were being “wilfully disregarded”, said Swale council leader Roger Truelove at an emergency meeting. Afterwards he told reporters: “We do get reports of crowding in supermarkets, and so we will be writing to supermarkets.” The council planned to “supercharge the messaging” that people should follow the rules. But they were not to know – how could they? – that the coronavirus had played a particularly nasty trick on their coastal borough.At least two months before anybody spotted that the UK had a problem, a new variant of the virus had emerged without any warning. The hunt for what would later be dubbed the Kent variant took over the lives of some of the UK’s leading scientists for many urgent weeks, leading to the cancellation of Christmas and the UK’s third lockdown. The variant spread so fast, it now accounts for most of the Covid cases in the UK. Continue reading...
Chief medical officer Jeannette Young says state will stop sending Covid-19 patients to Princess Alexandra hospitalQueensland will temporarily stop sending Covid-19 infected patients to Brisbane’s highly-regarded Princess Alexandra hospital after authorities discovered it was the source of two separate clusters which forced the city into a three-day lockdown last week.The news came as the state reported one new locally acquired Covid-19 case. Continue reading...
SN11 explodes after high-altitude flight over Texas, the fourth prototype in a row to failFor the fourth time in a row, SpaceX has lost one of its Starship prototypes during a high-altitude test launch.Starship Serial Number 11 (SN11) launched from the company’s test site in Boca Chica, Texas, on 30 March at 8am local time (2pm BST) in thick fog. Similar to the three previous attempts, SN11 climbed to roughly 10km (6.2 miles) in altitude using three methane-fuelled Raptor engines, developed by the company. Continue reading...
by Sally Weale Education correspondent on (#5G2W2)
Government commitment to Horizon Europe fund averts immediate threat to science, say universitiesThe government has stepped in at the 11th hour with an additional £250m in funding to help pay for the UK’s association with Horizon Europe, the European Union’s funding programme for research and innovation.Universities welcomed the move as “a significant affirmation of the government’s belief in research” which would avert the immediate threat to UK science. Continue reading...
The team behind Once Upon a Time in Iraq has compiled a moving and sometimes hopeful three-parter that offers a global perspective on the crisisLike the virus itself, the programmes about it have moved from localised subjects to a slightly wider field and now have expanded to take in a global view. It hasn’t been a perfectly linear progression, of course, but most of the first documentaries were composed largely of footage recorded by medical professionals themselves, at work and then – exhausted and tearful – at home.After that came socially distanced films recording the impact on local communities and bereaved families, the experiences of survivors and the long-term consequences for those who do not make a full recovery. Alongside that have come considerations and critiques of the UK response to the crisis and comparisons – not generally favourable – with that of other countries. Continue reading...
An adolescence of shame about being LGBTQ+ can have lingering effects on our behaviour that stretch well into adulthoodGuilt and shame can be addictive. In certain religious and traditional contexts, it can even be venerated, honoured – the requisite emotion that subdues human ego and maintains humility at the feet of a far higher power. But it can also leave an indelible stain on our character, our personality, and our mental health that endures for years, particularly for those brought up in such conservative environments where guilt and shame were measurements of our own self-worth.“It’s good to cry when you pray. Tears wash away your sins,” an aunt – a devout Maronite Catholic – once remarked to me as a child. I took those words and held them close to my chest, and for many years in my adolescence, Good Friday was the moment of repentance, of a dive deep into my own being in search of guilt. I’d sit, in darkness, burrowing into the corners of my mind, scouring the memories of the previous year in search of acts or incidents that would render me guilty, that would strike the emotional cords, and activate the stress hormone that made tears well up in my eyes. Continue reading...
by Dr Anthony McIntosh, public sculpture manager, Art on (#5G1TM)
With public art collections closed we are bringing the art to you, exploring highlights from across the country in partnership with Art UK. Today’s pick: Brown Dog by Nicola Hicks, in Battersea Park
by Presented by Patrick Greenfield and Phoebe Weston on (#5G1KB)
In part two of The Age of Extinction takeover of Science Weekly, Patrick Greenfield and Phoebe Weston explore a relatively new and controversial technology called DNA barcoding that is helping scientists to differentiate between species – including fungi, which we heard about in part one. As the catastrophic loss of biodiversity around the world continues, could DNA barcoding at least allow us to accurately record the species that are perishing? Continue reading...
by Natalie Grover Science correspondent on (#5G12B)
Research carried out during Covid spectator bans suggests support is not a key factor in match resultsWhile football players sweat it out on the field, their supporters in the stadium shout and sing, giving those playing at home an advantage. When Covid-19 hit, some expected that home advantage to disappear when spectators had to watch games on screens – but research suggests home teams retain a statistical advantage over their visitors.Researchers have long investigated the home advantage phenomenon – implicating crowd support, referee bias, psychological effects of expectations, travel fatigue, familiarity, territoriality, and tactical behaviour as factors, but there is no consensus on which are the main drivers. Continue reading...
Readers respond to Lucy Foulkes’ article on what we are getting wrong in the conversation around mental healthIt is pleasing that Lucy Foulkes’ experience (What we’re getting wrong in the conversation about mental health, 29 March) of supporting her friend through a relationship breakdown leads her to question the helpfulness of applying psychiatric diagnoses uncritically in this and other situations. Critical approaches to psychiatry, and indeed psychology and psychotherapy, now form a substantial body of work. Most importantly, this includes the experiences of service users who have found themselves to have been treated badly by traditional mental health services.One example, thankfully gaining visibility, is the cultural insensitivity of models of practice that have been developed in Europe and America, but which are then applied uncritically to people from a wide range of backgrounds. A forthcoming book, Racism in Psychology, edited by Craig Newnes, covers this ground in relation to psychology and psychotherapy practice. I know from many years of experience in mental health services that psychiatry and psychology/psychotherapy can be enormously helpful to people when their needs and wishes are carefully listened to and given the highest priority, rather than the insensitive application of theory.
Study finds testosterone associated with risk of developing potentially deadly skin cancer, but causation not provedMen with high levels of testosterone have an increased risk of developing a potentially deadly skin cancer, researchers have found.According to Cancer Research UK, which funded the study, one in 36 UK males and one in 47 UK females will be diagnosed with melanoma skin cancer in their lifetime. It said 86% of melanoma cases were preventable, typically caused by use of sunbeds or staying out in the sun, but other factors played a role in who is most at risk, including age and genetics. Continue reading...
Archaeologist says neolithic discovery may be among oldest salt-processing sites in western EuropeNeolithic people were manufacturing salt in Britain almost 6,000 years ago, before the building of Stonehenge and more than two millennia earlier than was first thought, a new archaeological discovery suggests.Excavations at a site at Street House farm in North Yorkshire have revealed evidence of the earliest salt production site ever found in the UK and one of the first of its kind in western Europe, dating to around 3,800BC. Continue reading...
by Denis Campbell Health policy editor on (#5G04W)
Research finds lower risk among those who drink up to 14 units a week – especially if they drink red winePeople who consume up to 14 units of alcohol a week have less chance of developing cataracts, especially if they drink red wine, a new British study has found.Antioxidants found in wine could help explain why moderate drinkers are at up to 23% less risk of having to have cataract surgery than people who shun alcohol, the researchers believe. Continue reading...
Loss of grants, driven by deep cuts to foreign aid, threatens research and international collaborationsSenior scientists fear that deep cuts to government research spending will have “catastrophic” consequences for the UK, with projects cancelled midway through and some of the brightest minds moving to other countries.Hundreds of research projects tackling issues from the Covid pandemic to antimicrobial resistance and the climate crisis are already being axed after the country’s main science funder, UK Research and Innovation, told universities its budget for official development assistance (ODA) grants had been cut from £245m to £125m. Continue reading...
Commission security proposal would restrict UK access to Horizon Europe quantum computing projectBritain will join China in being locked out of research with the EU on cutting-edge quantum technology, such as new breeds of supercomputers, due to security concerns under a European commission proposal opposed by academics and 19 member states.At a meeting on Friday, commission officials said the EU needed to keep control of intellectual property on key projects and that working with even close allies such as the UK and Switzerland opened up an unacceptable risk. Continue reading...
Whether you are a seasoned astronomer or new to stargazing, we’d like to see your photos from the last few weeksHave you taken a recent photograph of the cosmos that you’re particularly proud of? Whether you are a seasoned astronomer or new to stargazing, we would like to hear from you. Continue reading...
Mega-constellations could cause scientists to miss out on crucial discoveries, warn researchersArtificial satellites and space junk orbiting the Earth can increase the brightness of the night sky, researchers have found, with experts warning such light pollution could hinder astronomers’ ability to make observations of our universe.There are more than 9,200 tonnes of space objects in orbit around the Earth, ranging from defunct satellites to tiny fragments, according to the European Space Agency (ESA). Now it seems space junk not only poses a collision risk but, together with other space objects, is contributing to light pollution. Continue reading...
Spasms, memory loss and hallucinations among symptoms of 43 patients in Acadian region of New Brunswick provinceDoctors in Canada are concerned they could be dealing with a previously unknown brain disease amid a string of cases involving memory loss, hallucinations and muscle atrophy.Politicians in the province of New Brunswick have demanded answers, but with so few cases, experts say there are far more questions than answers and have urged the public not to panic. Continue reading...