Population immunity to non-Covid viruses could be lower owing to lack of exposure, says PHE official

1,300 people take part in music event designed to aid decisions on how to reopen country despite coronavirus

Psychiatrist Bruce Greyson has spent decades talking to people about near-death experiences. His work raises questions about what happens when we die, and how we ought to choose to liveWhen Gregg Nome was 24 years old, he slipped into the churn beneath a waterfall and began to drown, his body pummelled against the sandy riverbed. What he saw there surprised him. Suddenly, his vision filled with crystal-clear scenes from his childhood, events he had mostly forgotten, and then moments from early adulthood. The memories, if that’s what they were, were vivid and crisp. Was he reliving them? Not quite. They came at high speed, almost all at once, in a wave. And yet he could process each one individually. In fact, he was able to perceive everything around him: the rush of the water, the sandy bed, all of it brilliantly distinct. He could “hear and see as never before,” he recalled later. And, despite being trapped underwater, he felt calm and at ease. He remembered thinking that prior to this moment his senses must have been dulled somehow, because only now could he fully understand the world, perhaps even the true meaning of the universe. Eventually, the imagery faded. Next, “There was only darkness,” he said, “and a feeling of a short pause, like something was about to happen.”Nome recounted this story at a support group in Connecticut, in 1985, four years after the experience. He had survived, but now he hoped to understand why, during a moment of extreme mortal crisis, his mind had behaved the way it did. The meeting had been organised by Bruce Greyson, now a professor emeritus in psychiatry at the University of Virginia. (Some of the group’s members had responded to an ad Greyson placed in a local newspaper.) As Nome spoke, Greyson sat in a circle of 30 or so others, as if at an AA meeting, listening intently, nodding along. Continue reading...

A pilot study’s analysis of schools’ wastewater shows its potential as an early warning system for public health teams

There is too much messianic passion and not enough enlightening psychology in Peterson’s follow-up to the bestselling 12 Rules for LifeFew books in recent years have had quite so noisy a cultural impact as Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos. With its odd mixture of Darwinian determinism, Jungian myth-interpretation and Heideggerian ontology (Being written with a capital B!), it was an unlikely self-help manual and an even unlikelier bestseller. But its dozen behavioural rules for leading a meaningful life rode a steep wave of frustration with the shibboleths of postmodernity.Peterson’s radical traditionalism was seen as a bracing corrective to the notion that there was no objective truth, only a matrix of prejudicial power relations. Social hierarchies, he argued, were the product of evolution rather than of capitalist exploitation. Continue reading...

Behind the numbers: The UK’s gene sequencing labs are at the forefront of global efforts to trace and identify every single case

A love of complex smells and flavours gave our ancestors an edge and stopped hangoversHuman evolution and exploration of the world were shaped by a hunger for tasty food – “a quest for deliciousness” – according to two leading academics.Ancient humans who had the ability to smell and desire more complex aromas, and enjoy food and drink with a sour taste, gained evolutionary advantages over their less-discerning rivals, argue the authors of a new book about the part played by flavour in our development. Continue reading...

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She has always maintained her four children died of natural causes. Now 90 scientists argue she may be rightLeading scientific experts are petitioning for the pardon of the woman dubbed Australia’s worst female serial killer, arguing that all four of her children had rare genetic conditions that could explain their deaths.Kathleen Folbigg is in jail for killing her children as infants between 1990 and 1999. Continue reading...

Forty years after the mutant genes that cause the deadliest cancers were discovered, drugs that target them could be approvedIn the early 1980s, Channing Der was just beginning his career as a scientist at Harvard Medical School when he happened upon a discovery that would change the course of cancer research. At the time, the holy grail of cancer biology was discovering so-called oncogenes – genetic switches that can turn a normal cell into a cancer cell – in the genomes of tumours. But while teams of scientists had thrown everything at it for the best part of a decade, their efforts had proved fruitless. One by one, they were beginning to accept that it might be a dead end.Der found himself assigned to test 20 different genes that had been identified as possible oncogene candidates. His question was simple: did any of them actually exist in tumours in a form that was different from normal cells? Continue reading...

A difficult pregnancy meant the only item I dared buy for my unborn child was a book. When she arrived we read it to her every dayNine years ago, I gave birth to a little girl. And now that little girl has grown into a bookworm. It began, as all stories about books should really begin, in a bookshop. I was several months pregnant and I picked up an American picture book I had never come across before: Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown. It featured a poem that my husband and I would end up reading, oh, I don’t know, at least 900 times. The book became such a pillar of my daughter’s nightly routine that by the time she could talk, I realised she knew it by heart.It also marked a turning point for me. I had been finding the pregnancy hard. Various complications meant it was high risk, and there was a good chance I would not manage to carry my baby to term. This knowledge weighed heavily in my heart while, in my womb, Flora was literally doing somersaults for the sonographers, happily oblivious to my concerns. Continue reading...

The companies in line for the biggest gains – and the shareholders who have already made fortunes

Vehicle had no problem going 6.5 metres, turning and backing up, then photographed its own wheel marks on planet’s surfaceNasa’s Mars rover Perseverance has taken a short drive two weeks after touching down, mission managers have said.The six-wheeled, car-sized probe went 6.5 metres (21.3 feet) during a half-hour test within Jezero crater, an ancient lake bed and river delta. Continue reading...

Foreign affairs minister says Europe ‘ravaged’ by coronavirus and Italy is working according to EU regulation

The speed and cooperation of the Covid response has been honed by decades of dealing with ‘the biggest pandemic the world has ever seen’When Dr Anthony Fauci spoke at the 20th International Aids Conference in Melbourne in 2014, his appearance garnered little media attention.Nearly seven years later, the HIV expert and director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases has become a household name throughout the world as the adviser to the White House on the Covid-19 pandemic, appearing in the media daily and speaking plainly about the science and the nature of the virus. Continue reading...

Previously unknown individual who tested positive for variant located in south London after massive search

Health secretary defends proposed 1% pay rise for NHS staff; UK individual who tested positive for Brazil variant found in Croydon. This live blog has now closed – please follow the global Covid live blog for updates

We’ve had a traumatic year and lost patients and colleagues. But all he offers us is a derisory 1% pay offer

As the UK government plans to extend the use of lie detectors to terrorism and domestic abuse, our science editor puts himself in the hot seat“Did you plant the bomb?” It’s not a question I’ve been asked before but I’m comfortable enough denying it. Truth is – I didn’t plant a bomb. I planted a pretend bomb – a shoebox filled with webcams and wires – and I’m relying on my physiology to share the pedantic, but surely relevant, distinction. “No,” I answer. There is no bomb.I’ve been told to look straight ahead at the wall so have no idea what Amanda – not her real name – makes of my response. A trainee polygraph examiner, she is hunched over a laptop monitoring my reaction to her questions via sensors on my hand, arm and around my chest. She tells me to sit still. The seat pad has detected a shuffle – a warning I may be deploying “countermeasures”. One such trick, I learn too late, is to firmly clench the buttocks. Continue reading...

David Morris encounters rare optical illusion known as superior mirage while out on coastal stroll

Image unexpectedly shows light and dark features, including Aphrodite Terra, a highland area near planet’s equatorA newly released image from Nasa’s Parker Solar Probe unexpectedly shows surface features on Venus. It is a surprising result because Venus is permanently covered in clouds that should block out any view of the surface at optical wavelengths.Previous spacecraft have resorted to radar or infrared cameras to map out the terrain. The image was taken in July 2020 when the spacecraft flew by Venus en route to the sun. During the encounter, the spacecraft’s Wide-field Imager for Parker Solar Probe (WISPR) targeted the planet’s night-time hemisphere, while 12,380km (7,693 miles) away. Instead of clouds, it showed light and dark surface features. The largest of these areas has been identified as Aphrodite Terra, a highland region near Venus’s equator. Continue reading...

Prime minister thanks New Zealand for complying with seven-day restrictions on fifth day of no new community casesAuckland’s seven-day lockdown is due to lift on Sunday morning after no new cases of coronavirus were recorded in the community on Friday.The prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, said Auckland would go from alert level three to level two at 6am on Sunday, while the rest of the country would move down to level one. Continue reading...

The space debris was spotted falling to Earth near Bordeaux but astronomer admits to ‘needle in a haystack’ searchFrance’s ranks of amateur astronomers have been urged to help find an apricot-size meteorite that fell to Earth last weekend in the south-west of the country.The rock, estimated to weigh 150 grams (just over five ounces), was captured plunging through the atmosphere by cameras at an astronomy education facility in Mauraux, and landed at exactly 10.43pm on Saturday near Aiguillon, about 100km (62 miles) from Bordeaux. Continue reading...

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World’s largest neuroscience prize goes to researchers whose work has paved way for preventive treatments

Academics write to Robert Jenrick predicting dire consequences for climate crisis if plans go aheadLeading international climate scientists are among more than 200 academics who have written to the government calling on it to halt what they say would be an ecologically destructive expansion of Leeds Bradford airport.Almost 250 professors, academics and researchers from Leeds University, including two of the lead authors of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports, have written to Robert Jenrick, the minister for housing, communities and local government, predicting dire consequences for the climate crisis if the plans go ahead. Continue reading...

Focus on agro-business rather than ecology has split groups invited to planned UN conference on hunger

MHRA says it will not insist that vaccines altered for new variants are ‘non-inferior’ to original

What we believe is influenced by an array of factors, from our past experience to who our friends are. But a recent paper has now looked at what role how we think plays in sculpting our world-views. Natalie Grover speaks to lead author Dr Leor Zmigrod about the research evaluating the link between cognitive disposition – differences in how information is perceived and processed – and ideologies Continue reading...

Embracing difference is vital for our success as a species, but it places extra demands on the brain. Here’s how to get better at itMost people enjoy variety. We like to eat different foods from meal to meal. We wear different clothes. We like to try new activities and visit new places, which may be hard to remember right now in our tiny, socially isolated rooms, but it’s true. Likewise, with too little variety we become bored. Your favourite food might be duck à l’orange, but you wouldn’t want to eat it for three meals a day, every day.Nevertheless, there’s one place we tend to dislike variety, and that’s in each other. We often have a hard time with people who look different from us, practise different rituals, wear unfamiliar clothes, or hold beliefs or values that we do not share. Continue reading...

Elon Musk’s last two prototypes reached similarly high altitude, but crash-landed in fireballsSpaceX’s futuristic Starship looked like it aced a touchdown Wednesday, but then exploded on the landing pad with so much force that it was hurled into the air.The failure occurred just minutes after SpaceX declared success. Two previous test flights crash-landed in fireballs. Continue reading...

Elon Musks's Starship rocket has made its first test launch, flight and intact landing – before suddenly exploding minutes later. After a delay to the initial flight, SN10 lifted off from Boca Chica, Texas, reaching an altitude of 10 kilometres, before descending and landing upright, albeit apparently on fire at its base. Three minutes after touchdown and soon after the SpaceX live stream was turned off, the rocket exploded. The landing was at least better than the last two times, where the prototypes crashed down and exploded Continue reading...

Australian DJ and neuroscientist Rebecca Poulsen – AKA BeXta – is studying what happens to a zebrafish larvae brains when they hear certain sounds. Then she played one MC Hammer's 1990 hit … 'You can see when the vocal goes ‘ohhh-oh’, specific neurons light up and you can see it pulses to the beat,' she says. 'To me it looks like neurons responding to different parts of the music' Continue reading...

Governments urged to prioritise obese people for vaccinations over greater risk of death from coronavirus

The chancellor would like Britain’s relief response to be seen like Joe Biden’s in the US. But President Biden believes in the power of government, Mr Sunak does notRishi Sunak, the chancellor, has emerged in recent months with the plausible aura of a future Tory leader. This budget was a crucial one for two reasons. First, it was the biggest fiscal event since the UK left the orbit of the European Union. Second, it is dawning on Britons that they can see beyond the shadow of coronavirus. Both beg the question: what sort of country could we expect to live in post-pandemic? Mr Sunak did not have an answer, which exposes him as a man of style, not substance.In doing less than he had promised, the chancellor revealed more about the government than he perhaps wanted. Brexit’s dividend is barely visible in an age of coronavirus. The climate emergency was noticeable by its absence. It is good news that part of the Treasury and a national infrastructure bank will be in the north. Britain is far too centralised a state. But there was a wider, troubling pattern of pork-barrel spending that saw Mr Sunak shower “red wall” seats that voted Tory with free ports and town deals, as well as thinly disguised bids to buy off independence demands in Scotland. The most tangible result of Brexit seems to be an elevated trade deficit. Continue reading...

Government reportedly considering making jab mandatory for health and care workers in England

There are all sorts of different vaccines but many of them share specific types of ingredients. Josh Toussaint-Strauss talks to Prof Adam Finn to find out what is in most conventional vaccines, as well as what's going on in our bodies when we take them – and why the Covid jabs work differently Continue reading...

Confining rivers creates valuable agricultural land but can lead to greater flood risk downstreamFor many of us across the UK it has felt like another wet winter; yet again homes have flooded and politicians are under pressure to improve flood protection. Engineering our rivers and building defences might bring reassurance, but recent research shows that doing nothing is often more effective at reducing flooding.George Heritage and Neil Entwistle from the University of Salford studied the River Caldew in Cumbria; responsible for three major floods in Carlisle since 2010. Their results, published in the journal Water, show that the straightening, deepening and widening of the river has increased the rate at which sediment whooshes downstream, dumping its load in Carlisle and increasing the chances of overflow there. But where this upstream river maintenance has been relaxed they found the river has reverted to wandering, depositing more sediment upstream and reducing the clogging up in Carlisle. Continue reading...

Christmas Island forest skink and 12 mammals on list, which also includes the desert bettong, broad-cheeked hopping mouse and Nullarbor barred bandicootThe Australian government has officially acknowledged the extinction of 13 endemic species, including 12 mammals and the first reptile known to have been lost since European colonisation.The addition of the dozen mammal species confirms Australia’s unenviable position as the world’s capital for mammal extinction, lifting the total number of mammals known to have died out to 34. Continue reading...

Yusaku Maezawa, an online fashion tycoon, needs to fill eight spare seats on the lunar spaceship being developed by SpaceXIt’s the sort of chance that comes along just once in a blue moon: a Japanese billionaire is throwing open a private lunar expedition to eight people from around the world.Yusaku Maezawa, an online fashion tycoon, was announced in 2018 as the first man to book a spot aboard the lunar spaceship being developed by SpaceX. Continue reading...

Delaying gratification may have evolved in the squid-like creature to maximise efficiencyHumans, chimps, parrots and crows have evolved to exert self-control, a trait linked to higher intelligence. Now, researchers say cuttlefish – chunky squid-like creatures with eight arms – also have the ability to delay gratification for a better reward.Researchers used an adapted version of the Stanford marshmallow test, in which children were given the choice of scoffing an immediate reward (one marshmallow) or waiting to earn a delayed, but better, reward (two marshmallows), on six cuttlefish in an aquarium environment. Continue reading...

Advanced Research & Innovation Agency will be exempt from existing procurement rules for ‘maximum flexibility’, says governmentA new £800m government science and defence research agency will be exempt from existing procurement rules, prompting warnings from Labour that it could be used as “cover for cronyism”.Originally the brainchild of Dominic Cummings, the Advanced Research & Innovation Agency (Aria) will be more lightly regulated than a normal government body. Continue reading...

The hunt is on for the Brazilian variant, and tracking mutations will be necessary for some time to come

Imperial College London researchers conducted largest placebo-controlled trial of psychedelics

Not one Covid jab had been administered in 130 of the world’s poorer countries by mid-FebruaryAfter the news in November of the successful trials of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid vaccine, a curious photo spread online. It showed a Turkish immigrant family of six in Germany in the 1970s. The father stood in the middle, arms stretched around his head-scarfed wife and children. A shoeless boy hung off to the side, his yellow T-shirt tucked into impossibly high and baggy black trousers. Users of every conceivable social media platform shared this image with an addendum: that scrawny, barefoot boy would one day grow up to be Uğur Şahin, a co-founder of the German pharmaceutical firm, BioNTech, that pioneered the vaccine. This humble, hopeful family would help save the world.The photograph proved to be of another family altogether (it depicted neither Şahin nor his relatives), but it remained happily viral, buoyed up by the feelgood story of the vaccine’s development. The husband-and-wife founders of BioNTech – Şahin and Özlem Türeci – came from Turkish families that moved to Germany. Media outlets championed the couple’s background as if their achievement was not just scientific but also moral, a vindication of the immigrant experience. An article in the Guardian insisted that “BioNTech’s Covid vaccine is a triumph of innovation and immigration”. “Here’s to the immigrant heroes behind the BioNTech vaccine,” cheered Bloomberg. “Like Covid-19 vaccines?” asked the libertarian Reason magazine. “Thank globalisation!” Continue reading...

Austrian chancellor says two nations ‘will no longer rely on EU’ as he unveils manufacturing deal to tackle new variants

‘Virtual unfolding’ is hailed a breakthrough in the study of historic documents as unopened letter from 1697 is read for the first time using X-ray technologyIn a world first for the study of historic documents, an unopened letter written in 1697 has been read by researchers without breaking the seal.The letter, dated 31 July 1697 and sent from French merchant Jacques Sennacques in Lille to his cousin Pierre Le Pers in The Hague, had been closed using “letterlocking”, a process in which the letter is folded to become its own envelope, in effect locking it to keep it private. It is part of a collection of some 2,600 undelivered letters sent from all over Europe to The Hague between 1689 and 1706, 600 of which have never been opened. Continue reading...

Scientists call for more genetic sequencing of emerging variants like P1 to bring pandemic under control

Both countries urged to take action to avoid pile-up of unused AstraZeneca vaccine doses

I can’t rely on the grey sponge in my head any more. But my digital footprint shows how I have been idling away my timeOur memories are shot: I know this, having read, and instantly forgotten, the science. It is the combination of isolation, anxiety and nothing happening, I think, undermining our episodic memory. Repeating myself, forgetting shopping and rereading a simple recipe 10 times, I fear my brain has been smoothed to idiocy by days that pass without contours or relief.What do I remember from last year? A final trip to disaster-movie-eerie London, during which I was so freaked out that I left my handbag (remember those?) on a bench. A Mother’s Day painting that made me cry. The unlikely delight of playing the piano with my son, but we have forgotten the easy piece we fumbled through in April. Continue reading...