Science | The Guardian

Conch, unearthed in cave in Pyrenees in 1931, had been carefully drilled and shaped to make musicA 17,000-year-old conch shell that lay forgotten for more than 80 years in a museum collection has been discovered to be the oldest known wind instrument of its type, after researchers found it had been modified by its prehistoric owners to be played like a horn.First unearthed in a richly decorated cave in the Pyrenees in 1931, the large shell was initially overlooked by archaeologists, who assumed it was a communal “loving cup” used by the Palaeolithic people whose wall art adorns the space. Continue reading...

I still have the stamped and dated certificates for smallpox and yellow fever that were required for travel in the 1950s and 60s, writes Dr David BoswellJust before the inoculation programme was rolled out, I wrote to my GP pointing out that soon travel agents, airlines and other countries would require certificates of vaccination against Covid-19, and asking what was being done to provide these (Coronavirus vaccine strategy needs rethink after resistant variants emerge, say scientists, 8 February). I got no reply.Now this is a major issue. Yet one is only given a tiny card recording the date and type of vaccine. This is clearly inadequate, and why should GPs be expected to provide, on request, their own versions, which would probably not be recognised internationally, anyway? Continue reading...

President says he is aiming for ‘top league in space race’ as rival UAE basks in Mars successThe Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has unveiled an ambitious 10-year space programme, a first for the country that highlights Ankara’s plans to compete with other countries both on the world stage and beyond.Speaking on Tuesday evening during a live televised event laced with special effects, the president said the first goal of the comprehensive programme was to make contact with the moon in 2023, the centennial of the founding of the Turkish republic. Continue reading...

European commission leader says bloc late to authorise jabs and ‘not where it wants to be’

The vaccine is still a vital weapon against Covid-19, even if it doesn’t stop mild cases caused by the new variant

Bright speck in space near Alpha Centauri A may be evidence of asteroids or dust – or a technical glitchAstronomers have glimpsed what may be a previously unknown planet circling one of the closest stars to Earth.Researchers spotted the bright dot near Alpha Centauri A, one of a pair of stars that swing around each other so tightly they appear as one in the southern constellation of Centaurus. The stars form what is called a binary system 4.37 light years away, a mere stone’s throw in cosmic terms. Continue reading...

Physical closeness isn’t necessary for us to have a profound effect on one another’s biology, for good or illLast week, my whole outlook on the world was transformed by a sheet of blank paper. Not just any paper, but beautifully embossed stationery, silky to the touch and decadent to write on. It was a gift from a dear friend and colleague. We collaborate over Zoom every week, so I could have thanked him on video, but instead I wrote a short note of gratitude and love, and posted it to him. His delight on receipt a few days later mirrored my own, and we shared a moment of emotional connection.Before that moment, I was immersed in yet another “Blursday” full of Covid-saturated, this-will-never-end moroseness, staring alone at a screen that makes my skin look pallid. Afterwards, to my surprise, I was alight in a sprawling web of human connections. But I shouldn’t have been surprised: I am a neuroscientist who studies how the brain creates your mood. In fact, if you understand a bit about your brain’s inner workings, it may help you to cultivate comfort from those around you, whether physically or in spirit, in difficult times. Continue reading...

Japan has secured 144m shots of the vaccine, but it does not have enough of the specialised syringes to be able to draw six shots from each vial

Huge animals abandoned on Colombian drug lord’s hacienda zoo are loved by locals but their sheer numbers threaten environmentHippos imported illegally into Colombia for Pablo Escobar’s private zoo have gone feral in the lush tropical countryside and must be culled before their invasive presence starts to wipe out indigenous flora and fauna, scientists have warned.One of the notorious drug lord’s great extravagances saw him amass a collection of hippos, kangaroos, giraffes, elephants and other exotic animals in his hacienda fortress from where he established the world’s biggest cocaine empire in the 1980s. Continue reading...

Public Health England expert says figure suggests B1351 has not taken hold in Britain

Initial study brings hope vaccine will reduce Covid transmission

Health secretary sets out new measures as Scottish government announces even stricter plans

A new course – the space engineering technician apprenticeship – offers the chance to join an expanding industryFor young people eager to launch into the world of work, career horizons are expanding to infinity and beyond. The next generation of space engineers began training last month through a new apprenticeship scheme.The space engineering technician apprenticeship is the first to be recognised by the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education and is the result of a collaboration between the University of Leicester, the UK Space Agency and aerospace giant Airbus. The apprenticeship aims to provide young recruits with space-specific technical skills, including spacecraft manufacturing and design, testing and satellite integration. More than 50 apprentices will have started their training by the end of 2021, with plans to ramp up recruitment. Continue reading...

French nun Sister Andrée tested positive in her retirement home in Toulon but had no symptoms

Donations surge during Covid crisis for work by Prof Chris Exley, author of study linking vaccines and autism

From doubts about safety in older people to questions about variants, scientists have faced a battle to convince the public and regulators

Theories including virus jumping from animal to human or via frozen food being explored by team in China

Neuropsychiatrist who brought brain and mind together in studies of mental healthAlwyn Lishman liked to tell people that he wrote his classic textbook Organic Psychiatry (1978) only because the £500 advance would enable him to buy the Bechstein grand piano that he coveted. Yet he put his heart and soul into it, setting the subject of neuropsychiatry on a new footing, and trained generations of successors to approach mental illness with insights from both brain and mind.Trained in neurology and psychiatry, Lishman, who has died aged 89, was not the first to bridge the two subjects. There was a strong tradition among German neurologists of the late-19th century to look for underlying physical causes for conditions such as dementia and schizophrenia. But when he qualified in medicine in postwar Britain, Lishman found that neurology had little to say about the mind, while psychiatry was strongly influenced by psychoanalysis. He made it his mission to build a new discipline that combined the two. While using newly available techniques to explore abnormalities in the brain, he rooted his practice in psychiatry, listening to his patients and taking their circumstances into account. Continue reading...

Caseworkers made to turn on ‘geo-tracking’ over concerns about personal data leaving UK

People from Bangladeshi and Pakistani backgrounds faring worse than black people in second wave of pandemicEvidence that ethnic minorities are at elevated risk of contracting and dying from Covid-19 compared with their white counterparts is well established. But a new sweeping analysis in England shows that between the first and second waves of the pandemic in 2020, death rates in black communities improved, but continued to remain high in people from Bangladeshi and Pakistani backgrounds.The analysis – which is yet to be peer-reviewed or published in a medical journal – suggests that while the public health messaging focused on ethnic minorities has had a beneficial impact on some communities, others need customised outreach, the authors said. Continue reading...

Turtles have been around for more than 200m years, and can be found almost everywhere on the planet. Yet, they are surprisingly uniform and many species around today are facing an uncertain future – at risk from trade, habitat destruction and the climate crisis. Looking at a new study investigating the evolutionary history of turtles, Age of Extinction reporter Phoebe Weston talks to Prof Bob Thomson about what his work can tell us about the factors shaping their diversity and how we can support turtles’ dwindling numbers Continue reading...

Pollen released by plants is also more intense than in 1990 in bad news for those with allergies, research in US and Canada findsThe climate crisis is multiplying the miseries faced by people with allergies, with new research finding that the pollen season in North America is now an average 20 days longer than it was three decades ago.Related: How urban planners' preference for male trees has made your hay fever worse Continue reading...

There is a race between viral variants and vaccines – and for humanity’s sake the latter must win

Health secretary tells over-70s in England to contact NHS through the online national booking service if they have not had vaccine offer. This live blog has now closed – please follow the global coronavirus live blog for updates

The solution to today’s Q&A puzzleEarlier today I asked you the following puzzle.Ask Johnny Continue reading...

Drugmakers are looking at ways to improve their vaccines so they are ready for mutations of the virus

Oxford vaccine shown to have only limited effect against South African variant of coronavirus

A new twist on the all time classic maths trickUPDATE: the solution can now be read here.“Think of a number” tricks are such a puzzle staple that the BBC even named a kids show after them. (To readers under the age of 40, Think of a Number was hosted by Zoe Ball’s dad Johnny, and to many Britons, this one included, it was an indelible cultural highlight of growing up in the late 1970s/early 1980s.)The following puzzle is a brilliant version of a ‘think of a number’ type problem, which I had not seen until recently. The solution is wonderfully ingenious. If you don’t crack it now, or at all (as it consumes your day, sorry), you will be rewarded when I reveal the answer at 5pm. Continue reading...

A trio of winged constellations can be seen in the east but there are other creatures to spot, including Delphinus and VulpeculaThis week, there are a trio of flying creatures to watch out for in the pre-dawn sky. The chart shows the view looking east from London at about 6am this week. Highest in the sky is Cygnus, the swan. This large constellation falls into the ‘once seen, never forgotten’ category. Its great wings and long neck stretch across the sky. Continue reading...

Mosque serving largest Muslim community in UK seeks to reassure those hesitant about the shot

The long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific and philosophical conceptsHow do spacecraft manoeuvre in space? Surely, in a vacuum, reaction force will not work?

Researchers say vaccines’ focus must shift to protecting people from hospitalisation and death

At best, vaccines and lockdown could make life more normal by May. But at worst, a new mutation could undo any progress

Rats are clever, resilient, horrifying and yet somehow admirable. And, while we’ve been away, they’ve been colonising our office spacesAn empty office building is a good place to shelter if you’re a rat in a crisis. It will be warm and dry and, if you’re lucky, one of the humans who hastily vacated before the last coronavirus lockdown will have left a half-eaten Pret flapjack in a drawer for you. Not that you’re fussy. The loss of your usual diet of commuter leftovers is a blow, but it’s not insurmountable. “Rats will always find something to eat,” says Richard Ashley, emeritus professor of urban water at the University of Sheffield. “Human waste is ideal, but any natural organic material will do. Houseplants are fine. Leather will do at a push.”You can usually find a way in via the toilets. As a rat, you’re neophobic, which means you don’t like going places where you don’t feel safe. This makes you both hard to trap and unlikely to pop up while a human is actually sitting on the loo, much to the human’s relief. However, if an office is left empty with the central heating on, the water in a U-bend can evaporate and it might be worth risking the vertical migration from cold sewer to warm corporate setting. Continue reading...

Anxious moment for scientists in US, China and UAE as spacecrafts enter crucial stages of long journey to red planetThe skies above Mars will witness some startling aeronautical displays in the next few days when three rival space robot probes reach the red planet after journeying for millions of miles across space.Related: US billionaires vie to make space the next business frontier Continue reading...

The Anglo-Swedish firm already had a strong lineup of cancer drugs when vaccine success gave it a further boostBefore the pandemic, AstraZeneca was highly regarded in the business and pharmaceutical world – seen as one of the UK’s best companies. Now, thanks to Britain’s successful vaccine programme, it is a household name.The Anglo-Swedish firm, which publishes annual results on Thursday, has sprung to prominence as maker of one of the world’s first Covid-19 vaccines, approved for use in the UK, EU and India. Inevitably, headlines have followed. AstraZeneca has been the focal point of the vaccine supply wars between the UK and the EU and has, as part of that row, faced questions over the effectiveness of the jab in the over-65s. Continue reading...

University of the Witwatersrand and Oxford University research shows vaccine has reduced efficacy against mutation

Latest figures show 17.2% of the UK population have now received their first vaccination

London-based photographer and designer Tim Easley has spent the past few years taking emotive monochrome photographs of the moon. “I’ve always loved it,” he says, “and, being from the city, it’s often the only celestial object that you can see.” The 60 or so images have now been collected in a book, The Moon, available from his website.“The moon invokes so much wonder and awe, so I wanted to reflect that,” he says. Continue reading...

Elon Musk, Steven Spielberg and Nicolas Cage among those who collect rocks that can cost millionsThey really are from out of this world, and the prices are astronomical. For those who have everything they need on Earth, what they now want is a little bit of space. Meteorites are attracting the attention of celebrity collectors who have pushed the price of the rocks – which have hurtled through space for hundreds or even thousands of year before crashing into this planet – tenfold over the past decade.More than 70 of the most spectacular meteorites ever found will go under the hammer at Christie’s auction house next week in a sale that is expected to generate millions of pounds. Included in the Deep Impact auction are meteorites embedded with gem stones and others have suffered such an impact from blasting through the atmosphere at up to 160,000mph that they resemble sculptures by Alberto Giacometti or Henry Moore. Continue reading...

Chinese spacecraft aiming to enter orbit in days before putting down lander and rover months laterChina’s Tianwen-1 probe has sent back its first picture of Mars, the Chinese space agency has said, as the mission prepares to touch down later this year.The spacecraft, launched in July around the same time as a US mission, is expected to enter Mars orbit around 10 February. Continue reading...

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Health secretary says NHS still under pressure; Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine as effective against UK variant as original virus, research suggests. This live blog has now closed – please follow the global coronavirus live blog for updates

My grandfather lost his life to TB, but his brother would go on to be part of the scientific team that coined the term ‘coronavirus’When my grandfather’s lungs finally collapsed, so did my family. He spent his final weeks receiving oxygen to help keep him alive, his body having been eaten away by disease. My dad, allowed in to say goodbye for the final time, was horrified to see his father reduced to a thin wisp of a man, surrounded by medical equipment.The compassion shown towards him by NHS staff was extraordinary, even if it took some pressure from my ever-watchful great uncle to make sure my grandfather got the care needed. Everyone did what they could. It wasn’t enough. Continue reading...

Scientists say it offers only slightly lower protection compared with original Covid

Exclusive: UK health secretary asks PHE and Nice to ‘re-review’ prior appraisals

Increasing number of people report feeling worn out and unable to cope due to period of sustained stress

In the UK, all eyes are on South African, Brazilian and Kent variants - with mutations transmitting among the population

Tech barons like Jeff Bezos want to colonize space and our oceans. Their visions of the future aren’t public-spirited or democratic

Island nation status could facilitate border controls to eradicate virus and ease lockdown restrictions