Five-month long Covid study finds that sufferers fall into four categories based on symptoms

The journalist and author was diagnosed with complex post-traumatic stress disorder in 2019. In this recording of Guardian Australia’s monthly book club, he discusses his book My Year of Living Vulnerably, which explores how trauma affects the brain, and how part of getting better is through learning to loveYou can also check out: Continue reading...

Molecular switch makes human organ three times larger than great apes’, study findsIt is one of the defining attributes of being human: when compared with our closest primate relatives, we have incredibly large brains.Now scientists have shed light on the reasons for the difference, by collecting cells from humans, chimps and gorillas and turning them into lumps of brain in the laboratory. Continue reading...

Whether it’s a new virus or antimicrobial resistance, governments must build on the lessons of 2020 to defeat the next outbreak

UK Health Security Agency to launch on 1 April to ‘plan, prevent and respond’ to external threats to health

Demand for full study protocol of human trials be made public before first participants recruited

I was taught to use my head, not my heart. But acknowledging sadness at what is lost can help us safeguard the futureOver the course of my career, the climate crisis has changed from something only experts could see – reading clues trapped in frozen air bubbles or statistical patterns in long-term data sets – to something that everyone on Earth is living through. For me, it has gone from being something I study to a way that I see the world and experience my life. It’s one thing to publish a study on the hypothetical impact of increasing temperature on California’s people and ecosystems; it’s another to feel my stomach gripped by fear as my parents flee a catastrophic California wildfire cranked up by longer, hotter, drier summers.

All your daily interactions with others, big and small, make up your social biome, and the pandemic has severely damaged most of ours. Here’s how to reinvigorate it

Tree-planting can also increase health risks if it focuses too narrowly on small number of species, paper saysOutbreaks of infectious diseases are more likely in areas of deforestation and monoculture plantations, according to a study that suggests epidemics are likely to increase as biodiversity declines.Land use change is a significant factor in the emergence of zoonotic viruses such as Covid-19 and vector-borne ailments such as malaria, says the paper, published on Wednesday in Frontiers in Veterinary Science. Continue reading...

Screams of ‘murderer’ and ‘liar’ in major cities as president makes televised address to the nation on deadliest day yet

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Drug firm may have provided incomplete view of efficacy data from US trial, says safety monitor

To prevent catastrophe, governments must transform our resilience to climate breakdown, AI and engineered pandemicsIt is profoundly difficult to grapple with risks whose stakes may include the global collapse of civilisation, or even the extinction of humanity. The pandemic has shattered our illusions of safety and reminded us that despite all the progress made in science and technology, we remain vulnerable to catastrophes that can overturn our entire way of life. These are live possibilities, not mere hypotheses, and our governments will have to confront them.As Britain emerges from Covid-19, it could find itself at the forefront of the response to future disasters. The government’s recent integrated review, Britain’s taking of the G7 presidency and the Cop26 climate conference, which will be hosted in Glasgow later this year, are all occasions to address global crises. But in order to ensure that the UK really is prepared, we need to first identify the biggest risks that we face in the coming decades. Continue reading...

To mark National Puppy Day, Elizabeth Lo’s acclaimed film Stray gives humans rare insight into the canine gaze, courtesy of homeless mutts in IstanbulFrom the moment Zeytin makes her first appearance in Elizabeth Lo’s feature Stray, there is no doubt you are in the presence of a unique spirit. As she surveys an Istanbul side street at dawn, her features are alert, her gaze is uncompromising and her deep, dark eyes sparkle with intelligence. There’s something of Katharine Hepburn in The African Queen about her, or maybe Brad Pitt in one of his less kempt moments. But non-dog comparisons don’t do her justice. This is one indomitable bitch.Lo first encountered Zeytin and her friend Nazar on a 2017 casting trip to Turkey, and knew immediately that she had found the star she was looking for – which is to say, a dog who could carry a human film. “We were wandering through a busy underground tunnel filled with people when suddenly these two giant stray dogs streaked past us,” she says. “They were running with such a sense of purpose and it was so intriguing. What appointments did these dogs have to keep?” Continue reading...

Experts reveal ‘cautious excitement’ over unstable particles that fail to decay as standard model suggestsScientists at the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva have spotted an unusual signal in their data that may be the first hint of a new kind of physics.The LHCb collaboration, one of four main teams at the LHC, analysed 10 years of data on how unstable particles called B mesons, created momentarily in the vast machine, decayed into more familiar matter such as electrons. Continue reading...

Having altered how we think about time, the physicist sets his sights on perhaps the most maddeningly difficult theory of allCarlo Rovelli, the Italian theoretical physicist, is one of the great scientific explicators of our time. His wafer-thin essay collection, Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, sold more than 1m copies in English translation in 2015 and remains the world’s fastest-selling science book. In The Order of Time and Reality Is Not What It Seems, Rovelli illuminated the disquieting uncertainties of Einsteinian relativity, gravitational waves and other tentative physics. Nobody said that post-Newtonian physics was easy, but Rovelli’s gift is to bring difficult ideas down a level. His books continue a tradition of jargon-free popular scientific writing from Galileo to Darwin that disappeared in the academic specialisations of the past century. Only in recent years has science become, in publishing terms, popular and attractive again.Rovelli’s new book, Helgoland, attempts to explain the maddeningly difficult theory of quantum mechanics. The theory was first developed in 1925 by the young German physicist Werner Heisenberg during a summer holiday he spent on the barren North Sea island of Helgoland. It was there that the 23-year-old, stricken by hay fever, conceived of the “strangely beautiful interior” of an atom’s mathematical structure and, at a stroke, overturned the certainties of classical physics. Gone was the old idea that atoms consisted of tiny electrons that moved mechanically round heavier protons – as planets orbit the sun. Heisenberg’s intuition was that electrons moved in diffuse, cloudlike waves. Continue reading...

On 23 March 2020, the UK prime minister, Boris Johnson, announced the first lockdown in response to the growing number of cases of Covid-19. At the same time, countries around the world began to close their schools, restaurants, and offices and ask citizens to physically distance from one another. In the 12 months since, more than 2 million people have died, viral variants have emerged, and we have developed safe and effective vaccines.One year into the pandemic, Science Weekly is asking: what happens next? Ian Sample talks to the professors Martin Landray, Mike Tildesley, and Deborah Dunn-Walters about Covid treatments, vaccines and what the next 12 months may hold Continue reading...

Results of Recovery drug trial also credited with successful treatment of 22,000 people in the UK, says NHS England

No funding earmarked for research agency and Europe’s Horizon scheme despite imminent start to financial yearThe government risks creating a serious funding gap for science, Labour has warned, saying that delays over budgets and cuts to research are undermining the sector and giving the lie to ministers’ boasts about Britain’s status as a science superpower.The party has highlighted a continued standoff over post-Brexit funding for collaboration with European scientists via the Horizon research programme, as well as the lack of an agreed budget for the main government science funding scheme, saying the government risked “badly letting down” the sector. Continue reading...

Vaccinating the world is the only way out of Covid, but a mixture of nationalism and protectionism is blocking the exitCovid-19 has proved to be the greatest humanitarian and economic disaster of the century. A reported 2.7 million people have already died from the pathogen. Its recession is estimated to be twice as deep as that associated with the 2008 crash. Ultimately, the only way out of the pandemic is to vaccinate the world. Yet there has been an alarming outbreak of a “my country first” approach to vaccine allocation. In February, the US announced that it would not donate any doses to poor countries until it had a plentiful supply. Fewer than 10 days later, India cracked down on vaccine exports. These are political decisions, as no one doubts either country’s ability to vaccinate their own populations.That is why the EU’s threat to limit the export of locally produced vaccines is so concerning. Brussels has enough vaccines. Having stumbled, the bloc’s leaders know it looks bad to see doses leaving the EU for Britain, which has already vaccinated half its population. European leaders should realise that only cooperation can end the pandemic. Without worldwide coordination, there will be no way to get jabs to the 8 billion people on the planet. Vaccinating the globe at once has never been done. “But if we can put a rover on Mars,” the director general of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, wrote in the Guardian this month, “we can surely produce billions of vaccines and save lives on earth.” Continue reading...

Plans to ease restrictions have been rolled back in several countries owing to new variants taking hold

Analysis: as lockdown restrictions ease, the country now faces a race between vaccination and infection

Experts have different theories as to how the cow-sized Arctic animal ended up so far south

Dr Tony Hulse and Dr Caroline Ponmani say they are seeing evidence of diabetes being triggered by the virus in children, while JK Cruickshank explains why there is a likelihood of the condition arising after a Covid-19 infectionThe possibility that Covid-19 could trigger diabetes (Doctors suggest Covid-19 could cause diabetes, 19 March) fits with the experiences of paediatricians treating diabetic children in London and the south-east. Following the first Covid-19 wave, we undertook a study of 178 children from 12 hospitals in south and north-east London, Kent and Sussex who had developed type 1 diabetes between January and July 2020. We found that the prevalence of newly diagnosed children was high when compared with the levels of type 1 diabetes seen in the previous four years. But two inner south London hospitals had unusually high numbers of children with type 1 diabetes.The children who had developed diabetes in the pandemic were significantly sicker than before, with a higher level of diabetic ketoacidosis when they arrived at hospital. This did not relate to a delay in coming to hospital. We also know of two children where there was evidence that their diabetes was triggered by a Covid-19 infection. We are undertaking detailed studies as we believe that there may be link between the two conditions; the cause of type 1 diabetes is complex, but it appears that asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic Covid-19 infections may be a trigger factor.

The solution to today’s puzzle about trust, secrets and the world’s weirdest proofEarlier today I set the following puzzle, based on the remarkable mathematical concept of a ‘zero-knowledge proof,’ which has applications in cyber security. (To find out why this concept is so revolutionary, and how it relates to the puzzle, you can read the original article here.)The stolen paper clip Continue reading...

Three-month gap between vaccinations is recommended but HealthEngine website allows bookings for second jab within days of firstOne of the booking websites contracted by the federal government for the Covid vaccine rollout is erroneously allowing Australians to book in for their second dose within days of their first shot, a problem general practitioners say is compounding demand on their clinics.The next stage of the vaccine rollout, phase 1b, officially started on Monday, allowing a cohort of 6 million higher-risk Australians to begin receiving their vaccinations at about 1,000 GP clinics or 100 commonwealth-run respiratory clinics. Continue reading...

I have had no more than a few hours on my own in a year. All this time with my family means I never have time to think

Cloud of ash and gas engulfed Roman city within minutes and suffocated inhabitants, research saysA giant cloud of ash and gases released by Vesuvius in 79 AD took about 15 minutes to kill the inhabitants of Pompeii, research suggests.The estimated 2,000 people who died in the ancient Roman city when they could not escape were not overwhelmed by the lava, but rather asphyxiated by the gases and ashes and later covered in volcanic debris to leave a mark of their physical presence millennia later. Continue reading...

As Britain prepares for a ‘national day of reflection’, an imam, an ex-nurse’s daughter and a community volunteer recall events of the past year

What makes an elite sports star suddenly unable to do the very thing they have been practising for years? And is there anything they can do about it? By A Mark Williams and Tim Wigmore Continue reading...

The pandemic has revealed the true value of social interaction – and even changed my outlook on meeting new peopleLast year, in what would turn out to be my last night out for a while, I found myself in a dreaded situation: at a friend’s drinks, speaking to a total stranger. Not long into our conversation, my brain started searching for escape routes. I had a full glass and there was a queue for the loo, so I put my acting skills to the test and told this perfectly harmless person that I – a man who has never smoked – “needed a cigarette”.I’m comfortable admitting that, before Covid, I didn’t think “meeting new people” was on my list of preferred pastimes. My Golden Globe-worthy performance as “man with cigarette” suggests I could possibly (definitely) be guilty of writing new people off before getting to know them, particularly if there wasn’t an immediate “spark” between us. As much as I love my friends, maintaining relationships takes time, so why open myself up to someone new if there’s no obvious connection? Continue reading...

Study of over 32,000 people included review of risks of cerebral venous sinus thrombosis

A puzzle about trust, secrets, and the world’s weirdest proofUPDATE: The solution can be read hereToday’s puzzle is based on a ground-breaking mathematical concept which last week won one of its pioneers the Abel Prize, considered the Nobel Prize of maths.The concept is the zero-knowledge proof, and it has many applications in digital cryptography. Let me briefly explain. Continue reading...

I got the gig at a school by stressing my people skills. It turns out I meant I can’t keep my mouth shutI am coming to the end of my tenure as a lateral flow test volunteer at a secondary school. I got the gig by stressing how well qualified I was at public-facing endeavours.This turned out not to be true. It went OK when the kids were off school and we were just testing the teachers, but then all these adolescents swarmed in. They are quite self-conscious, aren’t they? I feel sure there has been literature about this. They absolutely hate to be recognised. If I see the son of a friend, I’ll halloo him mightily: “Hi, Johnny, it’s ME! Under my mask, I’m your mum’s friend!” as if it’s the world’s greatest coincidence, as if I have just fetched up at a petrol station at the end of the universe and, look, there is my cousin drinking a Frappuccino. Continue reading...

With a dark sky and some patience you should be able to see an open star clusterThis week is all about tracking down a faint, open star cluster with the unaided eye. You will need a dark sky and some patience, but once successful you will feel like you have found some buried treasure up there.The star cluster in question is known as the Beehive cluster, or Praesepe, the Latin word for manger. It sits in the faint constellation of Cancer, the crab. Praesepe is an open star cluster, a former stellar nursery whose stars are gradually moving apart to merge with the background of stars in the galaxy. Continue reading...

Researchers will test several drugs at once to speed up identification of those that slow or reverse symptomsDoctors in the UK are to launch a world-first clinical trial to assess whether drugs already on the market can prevent multiple sclerosis (MS) from worsening over time and even reverse the disabilities it causes.The groundbreaking Octopus trial, so named because of its various arms, will allow researchers to investigate the potential benefits of several drugs at once, in the hope of identifying effective new treatments three times faster than if the medicines were trialled separately. Continue reading...

My father, Benjamin Abeles, who has died aged 95, was a renowned physicist whose research led to the technology used to power the Voyager spacecraft. An incredibly hard-working man, he overcame tremendous obstacles in his youth.Born in Vienna, the youngest of two children of Selma (nee Kronberger), a leather artisan, and Ernst Abeles, a businessmen, Benjamin arrived in the UK from Prague as a child refugee on the Kindertransport organised by Nicholas Winton in 1939. He took odd jobs in London, often living in bomb shelters, until in 1943 he enlisted in 311 (Czechoslovak) Squadron of the RAF. Continue reading...

Specialist hospital stresses: ‘We have strong suspicion of transmission from human to pet, not vice versa’

Wellcome Trust director speaks out as Brits are urged to back huge fundraising campaign to deliver jabs to 190 other countries

Hospital admissions and deaths are declining as priority groups vaccinated but number of new diagnoses has stabilised

Scientists warn that Nobel summit and long-term decisions to save the planet are at risk from targeted attacks online

It’s not enough now for science to move in a stately fashion with great cautionThere’s nothing like living through a global pandemic to engender a dawning realisation that real-world science is a different beast from the “hypothesise, test, repeat” science we learn at school. And that just because a claim is made by an eminent scientist it is not automatically elevated to a gold standard truth.A year ago, I would have predicted that the role of science in a global pandemic would be fairly straightforward. The scientists do the science. Then they tell the rest of us what to do, and lives get saved. I would have been shocked if someone had told me how politicised the scientific debate would become, that people claiming to be informed by science would be arguing on the basis of the same facts that we should take directly contradictory action, when the stakes couldn’t be higher. Continue reading...

The microscopic animals can withstand extreme conditions that would kill humans, and may one day help in the development of Covid vaccines. How do they do it?On 11 April 2019, a spacecraft crashed on to the Moon. The Israeli Beresheet probe was supposed to land gently in the Mare Serenitatis, a huge plain of basalt rock formed in a volcanic eruption billions of years ago. It would have been the first privately funded mission to land on the Moon. But owing to a last-minute instrument failure Beresheet did not slow down enough and slammed into the surface at 500 kilometres per hour.From the Moon’s point of view, this was a failed alien invasion. Beresheet was carrying animals called tardigrades, which look like stunted, microscopic caterpillars. They may not seem like an obvious candidate for interplanetary travel, but tardigrades are famed among biologists for their ability to survive conditions that would kill almost any other animal. It is possible that some of them survived the crash. Continue reading...

Major research projects will be cancelled, including those designed to head off future disease threats, warn scientistsThe government’s drastic cut to overseas aid risks damaging the world’s ability to fight the next global health disaster and keep Britain safe, some of its own scientific advisers on Covid are warning.In a significant escalation of the backlash against the cut, which will see major research projects cancelled this year, current and former members of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) are among thousands of academics to confront the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, over cuts affecting projects that target the main threats to human health. Continue reading...

It’s been the hardest four years of my life but now I know my son will always be a part of meIt’s 9 March 2017. I am sitting in an ambulance, holding a plastic cup which contains tea from a machine. I’ve just been told my son is dead. I’m in a kind of paralysis. I feel the cold, smooth vinyl of the trolley I’m sitting on beneath me and look vacantly at the equipment and signs around me. Mind Your Head. Sharps Bin. No Smoking. Clinical Waste.I am alone, apart from a paramedic who is with me. At this particular moment my world has shrunk to the inside of the ambulance. An alienating sense of shock and horror has taken over and reduced me to a stiff and silent state. After a while I am helped out of the vehicle and taken to a nearby Victorian building. I am led into a wood-panelled room where I sit on a sofa. Continue reading...

Charles Oti should be in his NHS job fighting the virus. Instead, the Home Office wants to send him to NigeriaAn infection control specialist who has been offered a job as a senior NHS biomedical scientist to help tackle the pandemic is facing deportation by the Home Office, prompting fresh calls for a more “humane” approach to skilled migrants.The government has refused Charles Oti, 46, from Nigeria the right to remain in the UK even though the job he was offered is among the government’s most sought-after skilled positions. Continue reading...

In China, scientists have turned vast swathes of arid land into a lush oasis. Now a team of maverick engineers want to do the same to the SinaiFlying into Egypt in early February to make the most important presentation of his life, Ties van der Hoeven prepared by listening to the podcast 13 Minutes To The Moon – the story of how Nasa accomplished the lunar landings. The mission he was discussing with the Egyptian government was more earthbound in nature, but every bit as ambitious. It could even represent a giant leap for mankind.Van der Hoeven is a co-founder of the Weather Makers, a Dutch firm of “holistic engineers” with a plan to regreen the Sinai peninsula – the small triangle of land that connects Egypt to Asia. Within a couple of decades, the Weather Makers believe, the Sinai could be transformed from a hot, dry, barren desert into a green haven teeming with life: forests, wetlands, farming land, wild flora and fauna. A regreened Sinai would alter local weather patterns and even change the direction of the winds, bringing more rain, the Weather Makers believe – hence their name. Continue reading...

The government promised to increase funding for vital scientific R&D to 2.4% of GDP – but its target is already slippingEarlier this week, the government put science at the heart of its strategy for the UK’s place in the world. In its integrated review, it argued that cutting-edge science and strong leadership from the UK could make a huge difference for humanity. Researchers in the UK could benefit both the UK and the wider world by working to solve global problems such as climate change, antimicrobial resistance and pandemics.This is completely right – scientists in the UK absolutely can do this. And I’d like to be celebrating the fact that the government has set out this ambitious vision. Unfortunately, the rhetoric doesn’t match the reality. Continue reading...

‘Chance discovery’ near the temple of Zeus was probably used as votive offering, Greek ministry saysRain has helped uncover a small bull idol at ancient Olympia in what the Greek culture ministry said on Friday was a “chance discovery”.It said the bronze idol, found intact, was spotted by an archaeologist at the sprawling ancient site that inspired the modern Olympic Games during a scheduled visit by ministry officials. Continue reading...