Unesco warns of urban centres sinking because of unsustainable farming and groundwater extractionSubsidence, or the gradual sinking of land, could affect 19% of the world’s population by 2040, according to new research funded by Unesco.If no action is taken, human activity, combined with drought and rising sea levels exacerbated by global heating, could put many of the world’s coastal cities at risk of severe flooding. Continue reading...
Scientists should follow the example of the Chinese professor whose selfless decision to share his breakthrough led to the medical miracle of a vaccineThere are many people deserving of praise for selfless acts during the past 12 months. But one person whose act of scientific generosity ought to be remembered is Zhang Yongzhen. The scientist, who works out of the Shanghai Public Health Clinical Centre, was the first to map the whole genome sequence of Sars-CoV-2. He did so on 5 January 2020 and hoped to share it with researchers by uploading his work to the US National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI).The professor knew he was dealing with a deadly virus – but he had no idea how dangerous. The pathogen has killed more than 1.7 million people and shut down nations, leaving a trail of economic disruption. Concerned that the NCBI would take its time, the scientist sanctioned the sequence’s global public release via an Australian colleague. On 11 January, when Wuhan recorded its first Covid death, the virus’s genomic sequence was posted on an open access site. The 28,000 letters of Covid’s genetic code allowed Oxford University’s Jenner Institute, Moderna and BioNTech to design their vaccines in days. Testing took the rest of the year. To go from an unknown lethal new virus to an approved vaccine in months is a medical miracle. While the immediate sharing of data from a dangerous infectious disease might seem obvious, it goes against the grain of the way science has too often worked. A scientist’s ability to get funding and get ahead has for decades been predicated on competition, not just cooperation. Continue reading...
The concerted global response to the pandemic could be replicated for the fight against the climate crisisIn a world rife with disputes and divisions, there will be one emotion likely to unite most people at the stroke of midnight on 31 December: sheer relief that 2020 is finally over.There’s no risk of overstating it: this past year has pushed our world right to the edge. A single virus leaping from animals to humans was enough to kill 1.6 million people, bring major economies to their knees, and cause untold anguish and suffering all over the world. Continue reading...
by Presented by Madeleine Finlay , Sarah Boseley , an on (#5C8FK)
This year, the Sars-CoV-2 virus has come to dominate both the headlines and our lives. In the second of two episodes reviewing the science of the pandemic so far, the Guardian’s health editor, Sarah Boseley, its science editor, Ian Sample, and producer Madeleine Finlay give their thoughts on what has happened over 2020, alongside professors Eleanor Riley, John Drury and Christina Pagel
Among those honoured are health and social care workers, Covid response volunteers, virus experts and fund-raising centenariansHundreds of key workers and community champions who battled the pandemic have been recognised in the New Year honours list for the UK which celebrates people’s extraordinary response to the Covid-19 crisis.Lewis Hamilton, the Formula One driver, and the cinematographer Roger Deakins are among the celebrities knighted, while the architect David Chipperfield gets the Companion of Honour. The actor Toby Jones and Jed Mercurio, creator of the TV series Line of Duty, are given OBEs for services to drama. On being made a dame for services to drama the actor Sheila Hancock said she feared she was “slightly miscast”. Continue reading...
Calf carcass from thawing ground in north-east region of Yakutia found with many internal organs intactA well-preserved ice age woolly rhino with many of its internal organs still intact has been recovered from the permafrost in Russia’s extreme northern region.Russian media reported on Wednesday that the carcass was revealed by thawing permafrost in Yakutia in August. Scientists are waiting for ice roads in the Arctic region to become passable to deliver the animal to a laboratory for studies in January. Continue reading...
Research finds those who couple up after swiping right have stronger long-term intentionsWith the Covid crisis putting paid to New Year’s Eve celebrations and many other opportunities to seek romance in person, dating apps have thrived.But while such tech has long been associated with hookups, a study suggests those who couple up after swiping right have as satisfying a relationship as those who met via traditional encounters – and might even be keener to settle down. Continue reading...
Millions more are in tier 4 and schools face a delayed return – but tougher action is needed to seize the opportunity offered by the new vaccineThe contrast between the good news and the bleak could not have been starker. The UK’s approval of the low-cost, highly efficacious Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine represents a shining moment of hope. Never has it been more needed.The announcement came as ambulances queued for hours outside overwhelmed hospitals in London and Birmingham, and Essex declared a major incident due to the pressure on health services. For a second day, more than 50,000 cases were recorded, along with 981 deaths. The number of hospitalised patients, at 23,771, has surpassed the first-wave peak and is almost certainly still rising; the impact of the reckless Christmas relaxation has yet to be felt. As grim as the picture is, it could soon become much worse: this is, as Professor Jonathan Van-Tam warned, a very dangerous situation. Continue reading...
The exhaustion – and perhaps the sadness – comes from saying goodbye to our old lifeI’m sure everyone after their first plague year feels totally knackered.You can just imagine them in Constantinople at the end of 541AD – the survivors of the Plague of Justinian saying to each other: “Well, that was GRIM!” If you got the disease, your body would be all lumpy and sore, then you would die. In the cities there was no room left to bury the dead, and the food supply was interrupted. Continue reading...
2020 was a year to forget, but here’s why the new one bring reasons to hope. Get the Guardian Weekly delivered at homeFor many people, the back of 2020 can’t come too soon. With a new virus strain upending millions of people’s Christmas plans in the UK, coupled with the threat of a no-deal Brexit, the lead-up to 25 December was … a hairy one. At least the belated announcement of a trade and security deal with the European Union on 24 December gave some clarity. But, as Britain finally detaches from the EU, it remains a country beset by the worst of the pandemic.On that note, we wanted to look at the year ahead with at least some semblance of optimism. On page 40, writers from the Observer look at eight innovations and inventions that offer a bit of hope for the near future, while Mark Rice-Oxley, editor of the Guardian’s Upside series, considers other reasons to be cheerful about the year ahead. Through the prism of 12 world leaders, we also look at how 2021 might pan out politically. Continue reading...
Spectacular discovery of monkey in Myanmar among new species described this year by Natural History Museum scientistsScarab beetles from New Guinea, seaweed from the Falklands and a new species of monkey found on an extinct volcano in Myanmar are among 503 species newly identified by scientists at the Natural History Museum.The museum’s work in 2020 describing species previously unknown to science includes naming new lichens, wasps, barnacles, miniature tarantulas and a lungless worm salamander. Continue reading...
While there have been setbacks, in Australia at least it would be hard to find many people distrusting of scientistsBeing an epidemiologist in 2020 has been a very odd experience. This time last year, when I told people my job title, more than half the time I’d be met with a blank look and then the tentative question: “Is that … like a skin doctor?”Explaining that it was more like a spreadsheet doctor rarely went down that well. Continue reading...
Climate specialists not being listened to despite Covid showing importance of following science, activist saysClimate experts are not being listened to despite the coronavirus pandemic highlighting the importance of following science, the environmental activist Greta Thunberg has said.The Swedish teenager argued that the Covid-19 crisis had “shone a light” on how “we cannot make it without science”, but people were “only listening to one type of scientist”. Continue reading...
by Alina Manolache, Vladimir Potop, Lindsay Poulton a on (#5C6F7)
Astronaut Jessica Meir’s seven-month mission on the International Space Station (expedition 62, from September 2019-April 2020) glides from the euphoria of the first days in zero gravity, to the deep pressure of the first all-female spacewalk in history, and finally to a completely unexpected event: seeing the global pandemic on Earth unfold from orbit. Will the astronaut be returning to a completely different planet? Continue reading...
Film-makers Alina Manolache and Vladimir Potop on how they made the Guardian documentary 2020: A Covid Space OdysseyOur latest Guardian documentary is an evocative meditation on isolation and human fragility. It pieces together glimpses of the astronaut Jessica Meir’s seven-month mission on the International Space Station (Expedition 62, from September 2019-April 2020), from the euphoria of her first spacewalk to the surprise of witnessing the global pandemic unfold on Earth. We spoke with the film-makers Alina Manolache and Vladimir Potop about the film. Continue reading...
Vietnam’s 2003 Sars epidemic and Senegal’s 2014 Ebola outbreak informed their fast and effective responsesIn October 2019, in those halcyon pre-Covid-19 days, a chart was published that ranked 195 countries according to their capacity to deal with outbreaks of infectious disease. Drawn up by the Washington DC-based Nuclear Threat Initiative and the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in Baltimore, Maryland, the 2019 Global Health Security Index (GHSI) placed the US and UK first and second, respectively. South Korea came ninth, New Zealand 35th and China 51st, while a number of African countries brought up the rear.Well, that was droll. Either the authors of the chart got their colour key inside out or our definition of health security needs an overhaul – and given all the fancy data visualisation software available these days it’s unlikely to be the former. Of course, the pandemic is not over. But back in March, when the index was already looking about as accurate as a 2016 US election poll, Johns Hopkins health policy analyst Sarah Dalglish wrote in the Lancet: “The pandemic has given the lie to the notion that expertise is concentrated in, or at least best channelled by, legacy powers and historically rich states.” And she hasn’t changed her view. Continue reading...
by Presented by Madeleine Finlay, Sarah Boseley and I on (#5C608)
There have been a number of incredible science stories in 2020, from AI deciphering the facial expressions of mice to the discovery of a black hole just 1,000 light-years from Earth. Yet, it was the Sars-CoV-2 virus that came to dominate both the headlines and our lives. In the first of two episodes, health editor Sarah Boseley, science editor Ian Sample and producer Madeleine Finlay give their thoughts on what has happened over the past year, alongside professors Eleanor Riley, John Drury and Christina Pagel. Continue reading...
The answers to today’s puzzlesEarlier today I set you three puzzles concerning the number 2021, which is the concatenation of two consecutive integers, 20 and 21. Before we get to the problems (and the answers), thanks to reader ConradKnightSocks for alerting me to the brilliant fact that 2021 is also the product of two consecutive prime numbers: 43 x 47.The last time this was the case was 1763, which is 41 x 43. Continue reading...
Next year in numbersUPDATE: For the solutions and further discussion click here.Count von Count will be fizzing with excitement. For the first time since 1920, the coming year, 2021, consists of two ascending, consecutive numbers. Enjoy this ‘counting date’ while it lasts, people! It ain’t going to happen again for another hundred and one years.Today’s puzzles reveal more arithmetical patterns concerning 2021. Continue reading...
Search out the brightest star in the night sky and its parent constellationThe winter sky in the northern hemisphere is filled with delights. This week search out the brightest star in the night sky, and from there explore that star’s parent constellation of Canis Major, the greater dog. Continue reading...
Nine months on from the virus, I am seriously debilitated. This is how the new NHS clinics need to help thousands of usWith the excitement of the Covid vaccine’s arrival, it may be easy to forget and ignore those of us with “long Covid”, who are struggling to reclaim our previous, pre-viral lives and continue to live with debilitating symptoms. Even when the NHS has managed the herculean task of vaccinating the nation, Covid-19 and the new mutant variants of the virus will continue to circulate, leaving more people at risk of long Covid. Data from a King’s College London study in September suggested as many as 60,000 people in the UK could be affected, but the latest statistics from the Office for National Statistics suggest it could be much higher.I was acutely ill in March, though – like many people with long Covid – mine was defined as a “mild” case not requiring admission to hospital. Nine months on, I am seriously debilitated, with crashing post-exertional fatigue, often associated with chest pains. On bad days, my brain feels like it doesn’t want to function, even a conversation can be too much. I have no risk factors, I’m in my 50s, and have always been fit, but remain too unwell to work – ironically as a consultant in infectious diseases. Watching the pandemic unfold from the sidelines when I should have been working in the thick of it has only added to the frustration of my protracted illness. Continue reading...
Pascal Soirot says firm has ‘winning formula’ to improve Oxford jab’s efficacy, as countries across Europe roll out vaccination programsSee all our coronavirus coverageThe head of the firm behind the Oxford Covid vaccine has said researchers believe the jab will be effective against the variant strain of the virus that was first found in the UK.AstraZeneca chief executive, Pascal Soriot, told the Sunday Times more tests were needed to be sure, but hailed the discovery of what he called a “winning formula” to improve the vaccine’s efficacy. Continue reading...
The frescoed thermopolium, a Roman-era fast-food stall, is the first to be fully excavatedResearchers said on Saturday they had discovered a frescoed thermopolium or fast-food counter in an exceptional state of preservation in Pompeii.Related: Researchers win £1m grant to unlock secrets of Viking-era treasure trove Continue reading...
The Yale professor has some good news for us: once the pandemic is over, people will party like there’s no tomorrowAs a Christmas present to myself, I had a long, luxurious binge-listen to the wonderful podcast Transmissions: the Definitive Story of Joy Division and New Order. It earns that “definitive” in the title.Narrated by Maxine Peake, and featuring interviews with pretty much everyone you could want to hear from, plus a few surprises, it is in-depth, affectionate and frank. When the story gets to the shambolic opening of infamous Manchester nightclub The Haçienda, with its awful sound, cavernous space and organisational “issues”, I had terrible pangs for a proper night out, even one in a newly opened club where the paint was yet to dry on the dancefloor. Continue reading...
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