Science | The Guardian

Nobel prizewinning scientist whose work played a significant role in the development of modern particle physics theoryJack Steinberger, who has died aged 99, was one of the three winners of the Nobel prize for physics in 1988 for their work with neutrinos and the discovery of the muon-neutrino. This research did much to advance understanding of fundamental particles.The reality of the ghostly neutrino was not confirmed experimentally until 1956, but back in 1948, working at the University of Chicago, Steinberger had first given indirect hints of its presence in his measurement of decays of the muon – a heavy sibling of the electron. He showed that when a muon converts into an electron, two very light, possibly massless, electrically neutral particles are also produced. These, it was later shown, are neutrinos. Continue reading...

The solution to today’s problemEarlier today I set you the following puzzle, about three extremely logical people in a line. Each person can only see who is in front of them.A hat seller shows them three white and two black hats. She places a hat on each person and hides the remaining two. Continue reading...

A construction worker says they are being forced to work under unsafe conditions, Shirley Osborn highlights the gaps in financial support for low-paid workers and John Lynham laments the absence of effective government communicationI have been closely following the Guardian’s reporting of NHS workers treating Covid patients and their pleas for the public to follow the lockdown restrictions (ICU medics in London plead with public to follow Covid rules, 9 January). I am a project manager working on a commercial construction site in London. I work in a site office where capacity remains at pre-Covid levels and no efforts have been made to provide adequate ventilation. I am expected to conduct inspections in confined spaces at close quarters with others. The wearing of masks is discouraged, as is talking about the pandemic or the risks we are all taking. On raising my concerns with my employer, I was told that I was to come to work or I would lose my job.There are around 500 people working on my site, who travel across London every day. Many are low-paid, with no job security and no incentive to self-isolate or report symptoms for fear of loss of income. The job is for a major developer that can well afford to delay the completion of the project. Continue reading...

NHS urges people to continue donating blood as research will continue on moderately ill patients

You asked us about the fast-spreading coronavirus variant, here are the answers

Staff told to reduce amount used to treat people amid rising number of Covid inpatients

A Q about a queueUPDATE: solution is now upToday’s puzzle concerns these three folk standing in a line, as illustrated below. They are all extremely logical people, and they can only see who is in front of them.A hat seller shows them three white and two black hats. She places a hat on each person and hides the remaining two. Continue reading...

Northern hemisphere skywatchers can search for the planet this month as it rises higher each nightFor northern hemisphere skywatchers, 2021 presents a chance to catch the bright jewel of Mercury in the evening sky. Continue reading...

Creatures that patrolled the oceans 3m years ago were about two metres long at birth, researchers findEnormous megatooth sharks, or megalodons, which patrolled the world’s oceans more than three million years ago, gave birth to babies larger than most adult humans, scientists say.Researchers made the unsettling discovery when they X-rayed the vertebra of a fossilised megalodon and found that it must have been about two metres (6.5 ft) long when it was born. Continue reading...

Analysis shows 12.4 million people infected since start of pandemic, against 2.4 million detected by test and trace

Face coverings should be mandatory the moment you step outside, writes Christine Whatford, while Michael Weedy wants joggers to wear masks“It is inescapable that the facts are changing and we must change our response,” Boris Johnson told the Commons last week (Boris Johnson ‘extremely cautious’ on when England’s schools will reopen, 6 January), so I am surprised this changed response doesn’t include making masks compulsory outside. Masks were considered last spring, and rejected as not being effective. And while it is true that if only some people are wearing them sometimes, they are not protecting themselves, only others from catching it from them, surely if everyone wears them everywhere, everyone is protected?I have a brother living in Spain and a son living in Turkey. In both these countries, mask-wearing everywhere has been compulsory for some time and is strictly adhered to. In March 2020 I could understand a reluctance to go from nothing to compulsory mask-wearing everywhere, as it would have met with public resistance. But with the figures as they now are, isn’t it time to reconsider and look at anything that might slow down the spread?

The face of South Africa’s Covid science on why Africa has been hit less hard than Europe, the new variant in the region, and the danger of vaccine nationalism

Antibodies collected from former patients very rarely target parts of virus mutated in new variant, research finds

Exclusive: coronavirus restrictions and increased uptake of flu vaccine is likely explanation, say experts

Positive thinking and visualising success can be counterproductive – happily, other strategies for fulfilment are availableLike many teenagers, I was once plagued with angst and dissatisfaction – feelings that my parents often met with bemusement rather than sympathy. They were already in their 50s, and, having grown up in postwar Britain, they struggled to understand the sources of my discontentment at the turn of the 21st century.“The problem with your generation is that you always expect to be happy,” my mother once said. I was baffled. Surely happiness was the purpose of living, and we should strive to achieve it at every opportunity? I simply wasn’t prepared to accept my melancholy as something that was beyond my control. Continue reading...

Ask yourself what your ideal personality will be and, with self-awareness and repetitive practice, traits will followAt some point most of us have been assigned a neat label for our personality, as if it were a brand of clothing. It could have occurred during a job interview, for an online dating profile, or in a social-media quiz that matches your traits with a character from Game of Thrones. Or perhaps you’ve endured a conversation with friends in which everyone is declared an “introvert” or “extrovert”, the two tribes into which the entire world’s population can seemingly be divided. ​The dogma of personality classifications, says psychologist and author Dr Benjamin Hardy, is that they reveal “your true core authentic self – and that [once you have] discovered it, you can finally live your true life.” They are supposed to be empowering and are presented as definitive. They work on the assumption that personality is a rigid thing, cast in plaster.Speaking over Zoom from his home in Florida, Hardy says all this is “bogus”. In his recent book Personality Isn’t Permanent, he argues personality isn’t fixed at all. Some shifts occur naturally as we go about our lives – but we can also consciously alter our traits should we so desire. He speaks about personality – “your consistent attitudes and behaviours, your way of showing up in situations” – as a collection of learnable skills, like riding a bike. Continue reading...

It’s cheap, widely available and might help us fend off the virus. So should we all be dosing up on the sunshine nutrient?In March, as coronavirus deaths in the UK began to mount, two hospitals in northeast England began taking vitamin D readings from patients and prescribing them with extremely high doses of the nutrient. Studies had suggested that having sufficient levels of vitamin D, which is created in the skin’s lower layers through the absorption of sunlight, plays a central role in immune and metabolic function and reduces the risk of certain community-acquired respiratory illnesses. But the conclusions were disputed, and no official guidance existed. When the endocrinology and respiratory units at Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS foundation trust made an informal recommendation to its clinicians to prescribe vitamin D, the decision was considered unusual. “Our view was that this treatment is so safe and the crisis is so enormous that we don’t have time to debate,” said Dr Richard Quinton, a consultant endocrinologist at the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle.Soon clinicians and endocrinologists around the world began arguing about whether sufficient levels of vitamin D might positively impact coronavirus-related mortality rates. Some considered the nutrient an effective treatment hiding in plain sight; others thought of it as a waste of time. In March, the government’s scientific advisers examined existing evidence and decided there wasn’t enough to act upon. But in April, dozens of doctors wrote to the British Medical Journal describing the correction of vitamin D deficiencies as “a safe, simple step” that “convincingly holds out a potential, significant, feasible Covid-19 mitigation remedy”. Continue reading...

Libertarianism has led to rich countries vying for vaccines. Collaboration, not competition, is the only the way forward

25 years ago, a mutation was discovered that makes some people susceptible to the disease, and now it has transformed treatmentTen years ago, Tony Herbert developed a lump on the right side of his chest. The clump of tissue grew and became painful and he was tested for breast cancer. The result was positive.“I had surgery and chemotherapy and that worked,” he said last week. But how had Herbert managed to develop a condition that is so rare in men? Only about 400 cases of male breast cancer are diagnosed every year in the UK compared with around 55,000 in women. A genetic test revealed the answer. Herbert had inherited a pathogenic version of a gene called BRCA2 and this mutation had triggered his condition. Continue reading...

Experts condemn government’s ‘short-term’ response and urge it to rethink its approach

Literature and now science suggest muttering in the second or third person can help with anxiety in difficult momentsNo one actively likes wearing a mask, but for some of us putting one on does more than merely help to stop the spread. Last week, I interviewed a neuroscientist and experimental psychologist who told me that a few people have told him that if they wear theirs outside, at least no one will see them talking to themselves as they doggedly march yet again around their local park. Is talking to yourself a sign of incipient madness? On this, he had good news: no, it isn’t. The latest science, in fact, suggests that muttering to yourself in the second or third person (“Rachel, you are not imagining things”) really can help to quieten an inner voice that may be a little too loud for comfort.As we spoke, something fell into place for me, for doesn’t literature suggest that human beings have always done this? Consider the diaries of Dr Johnson’s biographer, James Boswell, in which he often slips out of the first person when he’s anxious: an effect that’s comical and touching. “Yesterday you was pretty well,” reads his entry for 4 April 1764. “But confused and changed and desperate. After dinner, you said to Rose, ‘I have passed a very disagreeable winter of it, with little enjoyment.’ You was truly splenetic. You said to him after, ‘When I recollect, ’twas not so.’ You are imbecile.” I’ve always thought of Boswell as the most deeply human of writers. But now I shall forever think of him as deeply sane, too: a pioneer of mind control as well as of biography. Continue reading...

Tens of thousands are unwittingly spreading coronavirus – lateral flow devices will confirm infection in under 30 minutes

The government has ordered sufficient doses to inoculate the entire population of the UK against Covid-19 but we are in for a long haul

It’s 1969 and the Observer is boldly predicting a new vacation experienceBefore anyone had even landed on the moon, the Observer Magazine was already thinking way ahead with science correspondent Gerald Leach’s travel guide for the first holidaymakers there in 30 years’ time (‘Wish You Were Here’; 13 July 1969), though it was sensible enough to counterbalance this with a report on the dangers of space travel.Safe to say that the views from the moon will beat those on the Costa Brava. ‘The Earth will dominate the sky, looking nearly four times bigger than the moon does from home, and much brighter.’ Continue reading...

As Covid death toll passes 1,300 a day, doctors and hospital leaders say services are on brink of collapseIn normal times, January is the month for counting the cost of Christmas. The credit card bills arrive. New year resolutions are made. The consequences of recent indulgence have to be faced.This year, however, the price of having celebrated Christmas with loved ones could be far steeper – and counted in lives. Doctors and nurses in the NHS report that they are seeing record numbers of admissions of people with Covid-19. Continue reading...

Local authorities are being called on to expand their plans as well as to support people who need to self-isolate

Astronomer royal and physicist who greatly advanced understanding of cosmic raysSir Arnold Wolfendale, the 14th astronomer royal, who has died aged 93, did much to advance understanding of cosmic rays, the stream of charged particles from outer space that continuously bombard the Earth’s atmosphere. For this purpose he assembled a strong team at Durham University, making it one of Britain’s leading centres for research in this field. In 1956 he joined the physics department as a lecturer, and during his time as professor (1965-92) established a highly regarded astronomy division.Secondary cosmic rays result from primary rays impacting on the Earth’s atmosphere. Among the secondary particles found at ground level are muons, one of the fundamental particles of the standard model of particle physics. Continue reading...

Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan and Japan are among those that won’t start vaccinating for months, in part to see how other populations react to the jab

Blood sample tests from 20 people show vaccine is effective against UK and South Africa variants

Minister says extra check on travellers introduced as ‘we simply cannot take chances’

Many botanists dispute idea of plant sentience, but study of climbing beans sows seed of doubtThey’ve provided us with companionship and purpose during the darkest days of lockdown, not to mention brightening our Instagram feeds. But the potted cacti, yucca, and swiss cheese plants we’ve welcomed into our homes are entirely passive houseguests. Aren’t they?Research suggests that at least one type of plant – the french bean – may be more sentient than we give it credit for: namely, it may possess intent. Continue reading...

EUVST telescope will study how solar winds emanate from the sun, creating ‘space weather’

Research finds they differ by an average of 5.2 early mutations, adding new perspective to nature-versus-nurture debatesGenetic differences between identical twins can begin very early in embryonic development, according to a study that researchers say has implications for examining the effects of nature versus nurture.Identical – or monozygotic – twins come from a single fertilised egg that splits in two. They are important research subjects because they are thought to have minimal genetic differences. This means that when physical or behavioural differences emerge, environmental factors are presumed to be the likely cause. Continue reading...

Commons science committee MPs urge ministers to publish all evidence considered by Sage

Geophysics | Covid tests | Spring decorations | Manchester City goal | Severn Bridge namingYour claim that “at least north is still north” (Terrawatch, 6 January) sounds as reassuring as it is wrong. I’ve always taught my students that opposite poles attract. The north pole of a free magnet will point north. Therefore the earth’s north pole must be a south pole. Historically, north has sometimes been north, but currently it is south. Oddly, my students found my teaching methods confusing.

Results suggest tocilizumab and sarilumab could cut relative risk of death of those in intensive care by 24%

Europe director Hans Kluge says rapid spread of new variant is cause for alarm

There is something undeniably appealing about the cosmos that has kept humans staring upwards in awe – from our Palaeolithic ancestors to modern astronomers. Humans are natural stargazers, but with light pollution increasingly obscuring our view of the heavens, is our relationship with the night sky set to change? In the second of two episodes, Linda Geddes is joined by the author of The Human Cosmos, Jo Marchant, and the astronomer royal, Martin Rees, to explore humanity and the cosmos. Continue reading...

Gideon Henderson says debate needed on GM crops and gene editing of plants and animalsGideon Henderson, chief scientist at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, believes the time is ripe for a new public debate on biotechnology, the science of manipulating genes in crops and animals.“The last time we had an extensive public discussion was in the 1990s,” he notes. Then, public outrage at the idea of ‘Frankenfoods’ centred on fears of what might result from newly available techniques that allowed the introduction of genes from one species into a completely different species. Lurid stories of tomatoes altered with fish genes grabbed the headlines. Continue reading...

Climate disaster could be curtailed within a couple of decades if net zero emissions are reached, new study showsThe world may be barreling towards climate disaster but rapidly eliminating planet-heating emissions means global temperatures could stabilize within just a couple of decades, scientists say.For many years it was assumed that further global heating would be locked in for generations even if emissions were rapidly cut. Climate models run by scientists on future temperatures were based on a certain carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere. If this remained at the current high level there would be runaway climate disaster, with temperatures continuing to rise even if emissions were reduced because of a lag time before greenhouse gases accumulate in the atmosphere. Continue reading...

Government has launched consultation to change current strict EU rulesGene editing of crops and livestock may soon be permitted in England for the first time under a consultation launched by the government on Thursday.Ministers said changing the current strict rules, which originate from the EU and make gene editing for crops and livestock almost impossible, would bring widespread benefits to consumers and farmers, including healthier food, environmental improvements and better animal welfare. Continue reading...

Highest daily figure since 21 April brings number of people to have died from virus to 77,346

UK health officials also allowing combining doses from different manufacturers

Move should ease frustrations over low supplies of Pfizer vaccine and EU’s longer authorisation process

The dire state of UK manufacturing has left us dependent on other nations. We may soon find out why some call this a ‘national security risk’Everything now hinges on a vaccine: how many more Britons die, whether the NHS finally breaks, how long the UK stays locked down. All depends on how fast the country can get vaccinated against this plague. Yet we’re in this position in large part because of government failure. When the prime minister imposes lockdowns late and with a sulky grumble; when we haven’t fixed our £22bn test-and-trace system (which, by the way, now bankrolls more outside consultants and contractors than the Treasury has actual civil servants); and when the Dominics and Stanleys are allowed to carry on as if rules are for the little people. If Boris Johnson blunts every political instrument he can lay his pale and meaty hands on, pretty soon a syringe is the only resort.Vaccines were always going to be how the world limped out of this pandemic; but as Taiwan and New Zealand show, even without inoculation it is possible to drive the number of Covid cases significantly down. Compare their record with the UK – which is on course to hit 100,000 Covid-related deaths before January is out, and where a staggering one in 30 Londoners is today infected. The lecterns from which Johnson and his top advisers gave their press conference this week read “Stay Home. Protect the NHS. Save Lives” – exactly as they did at the start of all this last March, as if to confirm how little progress they have made in almost a year. Continue reading...

Vaccines are our best hope for controlling Covid-19. But they should be delivered in ways that we know are effective

Nadhim Zahawi says ‘absolute focus’ is to get 13.9 million people inoculated by mid-February

Researchers have been studying this area for clues as to when the magnetic field might flip entirelyLast year was a tumultuous one, but at least north is still north. Deep inside our planet liquid iron continues to flow the same way, generating a magnetic field that protects us against harmful radiation from the sun. Every so often the flow changes and the magnetic field flips. The last time this happened was 780,000 years ago. Could 2021 be the year when north becomes south?One sign that the Earth might be gearing up for a magnetic reversal is a weakening of the field. We know that the Earth’s magnetic field has decayed by about 5% per century since measurements began in 1840. And much of that decay is associated with a strangely weak spot between South America and southern Africa, known as the South Atlantic Anomaly. This patch has grown over the last 250 years and today the weak field messes with satellite technology. Continue reading...

Bishop Auckland, County Durham: The earthworms have little defence against marauding birds in this uneven struggle amid the mudMud: boot-sucking liquid earth, the winter hazard that country walk footpath guides never mention. And it looks like horses have welcomed every rambler who crossed this stile, surrounding it with a morass of water-filled hoof-holes.Too far from home now to turn back, so I press on, sticking close to the hedge. And while I unburden my muddy boots on grass tussocks, a song thrush hops across the waterlogged field, just a few yards ahead. It pauses, cocks its head to one side, as if listening, then strikes and yanks an earthworm out of its burrow. It catches four more in quick succession, all driven to the surface by days of heavy rain. Continue reading...

Some Victorians stranded in NSW fear homelessness as government warns border shutdown could last until February