Bottled water is atrocious for the environment. You’re better off buying a water filter for healthier, tastier water

As we head into yet another month of lockdown in the UK, with hospitals overwhelmed, how do we cope with the monotony, isolation, boredom and stress? Science Weekly gets inspiration from the people who choose to put themselves through extreme situations – including astronauts, arctic research scientists and submariners Continue reading...

We risk creating healthcare apartheid, where the virus still rages in poorer nations. Ultimately, this will harm all of us

Could such a large amount of money end the Covid pandemic? Eradicate disease? Provide universal healthcare and fund vaccine research?You know that daydream where you suddenly come into a vast fortune? You could buy a castle or a tropical island hideaway, help out all your friends, do a bit of good in the world. But what if it was a truly incredible sum? What if you had $1tn to spend, and a year to do it? And what if the rules of the game were that you had to do it for the world – make some real difference to people’s lives, or to the health of the planet, or to the advancement of science.A trillion dollars – that’s one thousand billion dollars – is at once an absurdly huge amount of money, and not that much in the scheme of things. It is, give or take, 1% of world GDP. It’s what the US spends every year and a half on the military. It is an amount that can be quite easily rustled up through the smoke and mirrors of quantitative easing, which is officially the mass purchase of government bonds, but which looks suspiciously like the spontaneous creation of money. After the 2008 financial crash, more than $4.5tn was quantitatively eased in the US alone. All the other major economies made their own money in this ghostly way. Continue reading...

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Beetles donated to Natural History Museum found to be 4,000 years old indicating climate used to be warmerRarely is finding a pair of wood-eating beetles in a dusty cabinet a cause for celebration. But when Natural History Museum curator Max Barclay chanced upon the dead insects, in one of the museum’s specimen drawers, he spotted an opportunity to solve a decades-old mystery: why a pair of foreign beetles had been submerged in an East Anglian bog. The answer sheds light on the state of the UK’s climate almost 4,000 years ago.The beetles were donated to the collection in the 1970s, by an East Anglian farmer who found them inside a piece of old wood he had dug up in one of his fields, and was splitting for firewood. Alarmed by their size, and curved long, threadlike antennae, and concerned that his farm might be infested with wood-boring insects, he contacted the museum for advice. Continue reading...

The terrible scale of the tragedy cannot be attributed to misfortune. It is a product of negligent governmentIn Soho, central London, stands a replica of a 19th-century public water pump without a handle. The missing part is not a result of vandalism but a tribute to John Snow, the physician who correctly surmised that the pump, supplying contaminated water, was a super-spreading device for cholera. Snow mapped case data and lobbied the local parish authorities for the pump’s deactivation.The coronavirus is a different kind of pathogen (cholera is a bacterial infection), but our understanding of today’s pandemic owes a debt to Snow’s methods. Boris Johnson and his ministers claim to have been led by science over the past year, and mostly they have, but often too late, as well as grudgingly and inconsistently. When evidence has clashed with ideology, the latter has frequently prevailed. Mr Johnson’s fear of upsetting Tory MPs has often seemed stronger than his care for good public health policy. Continue reading...

ONS survey finds people more likely to have cough compared with old variants, though loss of taste or smell less likely

Research finds people stay up later and sleep less before full moon, and do the opposite before new moonFolklore has saddled the moon with major responsibilities: moods, spikes in crime and even psychosis are blamed on the Earth’s only constant natural satellite. But could the “lunar effect” interfere with sleep?Scientists have long understood that human activity is facilitated by light, be it sunlight, moonlight or artificial light. But a study suggests our ability to sleep is distinctly affected by the lunar cycle, even when taking into account artificial sources of light. Continue reading...

The latest research into the fans of rival football teams indicates what I’ve long suspected – adversity has a surprisingly powerful bonding effect

Scientists say temperatures globally at highest level since start of human civilisationThe planet is hotter now than it has been for at least 12,000 years, a period spanning the entire development of human civilisation, according to research.Analysis of ocean surface temperatures shows human-driven climate change has put the world in “uncharted territory”, the scientists say. The planet may even be at its warmest for 125,000 years, although data on that far back is less certain. Continue reading...

Healthcare and police chiefs also say online activity is channelling hatred against NHS staff

Scientists are working to find out how to stop the transmission of mutations that started in England, South Africa and Brazil

Doctors call for extra efforts amid signs black people and those in poor areas are less likely to receive jabs

The UK needs to learn from the lessons of the past year and come up with a concrete plan to avert a disastrous third wave

Method can increase detection rate among infected people, senior Beijing doctor tells state TV

Should I worry about my addiction to 1,000-piece brainteasers? Not according to the scientists

Forecast predicts handful of developed countries fully vaccinated by late 2021 while others race to catch up

Priti Patel to announce plans in House of Commons after ministers reject blanket policy

European Medicines Agency approval could stipulate age range, says Emer Cooke

Latest updates: prime minister says he takes full responsibility for everything government has done after another 1,631 deaths reported. This live blog is now closed - please follow the global coronavirus live blog for updates

Politicians say project, halted after disappointing trials, a ‘national humiliation’ and a ‘sign of decline’

Commission president says firms must deliver on orders after AstraZeneca warns of shortfall

Ten of the world’s most infectious diseases identified by the WHO not being catered for by drug firmsThe world’s biggest pharmaceutical firms are little prepared for the next pandemic despite a mounting response to the Covid-19 outbreak, an independent report has warned.Jayasree K Iyer, executive director of the Netherlands-based Access to Medicine Foundation, a not-for-profit organisation funded by the UK and Dutch governments and others, highlighted an outbreak of the Nipah virus in China, with a fatality rate of up to 75%, as potentially the next big pandemic risk. Continue reading...

Report said ministers expected EU regulator’s assessment to show jab was only 8% effective among over-65s

There are worries about the change in the vaccination schedule. However, a longer gap between jabs has its advantages too

Canines in Hungarian study appear to pick up unfamiliar terms through playWhether you can teach an old dog new tricks might be a moot point, but it seems some canines can rapidly learn new words, and do so through play.While young children are known to quickly pick up the names of new objects, the skill appears to be rare in animals. Continue reading...

Ever since Edward Jenner developed the first vaccine for smallpox there have been opportunistic people willing to spread misinformation. As the Covid-19 vaccines are administered, what’s the best way to counter them?Sarah and her brother Benjamin (not their real names) have never seen eye to eye. She’s a professional scientist, he – according to Sarah’s description – is someone who is susceptible to conspiracy theories. They maintained an uneasy truce until a few weeks ago. Tensions came to a head when Sarah was on the phone to her mum, talking her through the online procedure to book a slot for her Covid-19 vaccination.If she was still having trouble after they rang off, Sarah suggested, she could ask Benjamin to come over and help. Mother and son live close by and a long way from Sarah; they’ve shared a bubble this past year. “There was a silence,” Sarah says. “And then she replied that he didn’t want to. He’s against the vaccine. Well, that was it for me. You can’t help your 77-year-old mum do something that might save her life? I’m sorry, that’s wrong.” Continue reading...

What did London really smell like during the great stink of 1858? What odours wafted through the Battle of Waterloo? Were cities identifiable by the lingering aromas of the various commodities produced during the industrial revolution? It may not be possible to literally go back in time and give history a sniff, but a new project is aiming to identify and even recreate scents that would have assailed noses between the 16th and early 20th centuries. To find how to decipher the pongs of the past, Nicola Davis speaks to historian Dr William Tullett and heritage scientist Cecilia Bembibre Continue reading...

One in eight people who get coronavirus also have first psychiatric or neurological illness within six months, research finds

The answers to today’s micro puzzlesEarlier today I set you 12 micro puzzles. (There’s an extra one at the bottom of this article.)The first six were ‘equatum’ puzzles: Continue reading...

Moderna says its vaccine works against UK and South Africa variants but it is developing new form to be used as boosterUS scientists are preparing to upgrade Covid-19 vaccines to address variants of the coronavirus now circulating in the UK and South Africa, Dr Anthony Fauci said on Monday. At the same time, Moderna said that though its Covid vaccine worked against the variants, it was developing a new form to be used as a booster shot.Related: Fauci says he was the 'skunk at the picnic' in Trump's Covid team Continue reading...

Country will be first in EU to use antibody cocktails after government buys 200,000 dosesSpecialist clinics in Germany will this week become the first hospitals in the EU to treat Covid-19 patients with expensive and experimental antibody cocktails used to treat the former US president Donald Trump after he caught the virus last October.“Monoclonal antibodies will be used in Germany as the first country in the EU, initially in university clinics,” the health minister, Jens Spahn, told Bild am Sonntag newspaper, confirming that his government had bought 200,000 doses for €400m (£355m). Continue reading...

Trades unions say mortality rates expose ‘huge inequalities’ and call for increase in sick pay

PM says government will review data before 15 February but highlights risk of ‘premature relaxation’

The joy of micro puzzlesUPDATE: Read the solutions here.Today’s puzzles are bijoux. Petite. Bite-sized. They are the canapés of the conundrum world, and so deliciously moreish you will devour them all. They come in two types, and I have included six of one, and half a dozen of the other.First up: ‘equatum’ puzzles, devised by Justin Roughley. These are beautifully elegant number puzzles in which a single word must be transcribed into an equation. Clever stuff, literally. Continue reading...

The Anti-Virus website takes on figures like Toby Young and Allison Pearson - and its creators think it has them on the run

A fun asterism containing stars from six constellations will have you ranging across the skyThe moon will guide you to a fun asterism this week called the Winter Hexagon. Asterisms are patterns made by connecting stars, whereas constellations are the areas of the sky that contain the asterisms. Continue reading...

López Obrador to speak to Putin about obtaining Russian vaccine; Biden to include South Africa in restrictions for non-US travellers

British Society for Immunology calls for a robust programme monitoring the body’s immune response

Humans are designed to touch and be touched – which is why so many who live on their own have suffered during the pandemic. Will we ever fully recover?There’s only so much a dog can do, even if that is a lot. I live alone with my staffy, and by week eight of the first lockdown she was rolling her eyes at my ever-tightening clutch. I had been sofa-bound with Covid and its after-effects before lockdown was announced, then spring and summer passed without any meaningful touch from another person. I missed the smell of my friends’ clothes and my nephew’s hair, but, more than anything, I missed the groundedness only another human body can bring. The ache in my solar plexus that married these thoughts often caught me off guard.The need for touch exists below the horizon of consciousness. Before birth, when the amniotic fluid in the womb swirls around us and the foetal nervous system can distinguish our own body from our mother’s, our entire concept of self is rooted in touch. “The human body has built all its models based on touch received from caregivers,” says Dr Katerina Fotopoulou, a professor of psychodynamic neuroscience at University College London. “We’re utterly reliant on the caregiver to satisfy the body’s core needs. Little can be done without touch.” Continue reading...

The palliative care doctor and author on a year of Covid in UK hospitals and her hopes for the vaccine

Confusion surrounds the vaccines’ effectiveness. The leading Cambridge professor clarifies the data behind the trialsImagine 100 people are ill with Covid-19. “90% efficacy” means if only they’d had the vaccine, on average only 10 would have got ill. Vaccine efficacy is the relative reduction in the risk: whatever your risk was before, it is reduced by 90% if you get vaccinated. There is a lot of confusion about this number: it does not mean there is a 10% chance of getting Covid-19 if vaccinated – that chance will be massively lower than 10%.Researchers estimate efficacy by comparing numbers of new cases in vaccinated and unvaccinated people, best done through a “randomised control trial”. All volunteers receive an injection but, at random, either the actual vaccine or a placebo.They don’t know which they are getting. Continue reading...

Exactly a year after his first story about coronavirus, our science editor received the Pfizer injection last week. Here he reflects on a remarkable scientific achievement

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Medics told they risk undermining public confidence by querying policy of three-month gap between doses

Researchers at a high-security Sydney lab are learning more about concerning Covid variants from the swabs of international travellersIn December, the UK reported a Covid-19 variant of concern, commonly referred to as the B117 variant, which appeared to be more transmissible. Since then, scientists have established that B117 is somewhere between 50% to 70% more transmissible than other variants. If more people are getting sick, there is more pressure on health systems, and in the UK health services are so overloaded a country-wide lockdown has been enforced.While many scientists say B117 does not appear more deadly, researchers on the UK government’s New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group found it may increase the death rate by 30% to 40%, though their sample size was small and they said more research is needed. With B117 now detected in more than 50 countries, understanding the variant is urgent. Continue reading...

One man’s tragic tale reveals much about the reach and harm of anti-science propagandaGary Matthews fell headlong into a subterranean world haunted by vicious fantasies. But he wasn’t vicious himself. “I knew him since he was 19,” his friend Peter Roscoe told me. “He was a gentle guy. He wanted a better world. I am so sorry in recent times he became convinced that Covid was some kind of hoax.”The “hoax” killed him, his relatives said. He had a positive Covid-19 test and went home to isolate. He died, aged 46, alone in his flat in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, on 13 January. Continue reading...

The way we think about pain could change how much we actually sufferWe’ve all got a story about pain. Maybe it’s that time you broke your arm skating, or the time you finished the game on a twisted ankle, or the 10 hours of labour without an epidural. Maybe your story of pain is a story of violence, the injury and trauma of an assault. Maybe it’s a story of terror. Or it’s heartbreak, the seemingly endless depths of grief and despair after a loss. Whatever it is, (almost) all of us have experienced what we call pain and we’re not in a hurry to experience it again.But have you ever tried to define that pain? When you’re telling the story, how do you explain the pain? Do you try to quantify the injury – how many broken bones, the size of the bruise, the amount of blood? Or do you describe the cause – the type of cancerous cells, the crowning baby, the sharp knife? But what if there was no obvious cause? And how do you communicate the intensity? Is it a searing or scalding burn, a throbbing or dull pressure, a pounding or stabbing headache? Is it worse than a bee sting, but not as bad as a dog bite? Continue reading...

Leading doctors have divided opinion among an exhausted workforce by pointing to socioeconomic factors behind coronavirus death toll