Science | The Guardian

Science is forcing vegans and vegetarians who demand others join them to think againWith the developments in laboratory-cultured meat, vegetarians and vegans need to ask themselves: is it still about animal welfare or is it about stopping people eating meat?Cultured meat, produced in bioreactors from muscle cells taken from live animals, has been approved for the first time by a regulatory authority. “Chicken bites” by San Francisco startup Eat Just have been approved for sale by the Singapore Food Agency. It’s a landmark moment that could lead to a revolution in “kind/clean” meat, significantly cutting down industrial livestock production, potentially doing away with it altogether. Continue reading...

A condition once overlooked by researchers is now in the spotlight as a key symptom of Covid-19

Online stores draw in shoppers but those with mental health issues are particularly susceptibleAs a digital marketer, Emily Ware spends a lot of time online, yet this comes with a risk. Ware has borderline personality disorder, a mental health condition linked with impulsive behaviours. In her case, that’s spending money online.“At the start of 2020 I was £4,250 in debt with nothing to show for it,” she says. “A good 95% of this was due to impulse spending, from clothes to pub trips to gig tickets. One of the worst was spending £300 on tickets to see Cher on a whim.” Continue reading...

Research shows how arachnids’ sense of atmospheric electricity allows it to spin a line and take offWe humans are only aware of the Earth’s electrical field on stormy days, when the positively charged sky makes a circuit with the negatively charged Earth and lightning flashes between them. Spiders have a more nuanced sense of atmospheric electricity, and can harness it to take flight.Research from the University of Bristol sheds light on “ballooning”, in which a spider holds on to a single strand of thread that carries them aloft. This feat was always assumed to be a matter of riding air currents by some unknown mechanism; Darwin was puzzled by “aeronaut spiders” reaching the Beagle on gossamer threads 60 miles off South America. Since 2013 researchers have believed electric fields are involved – now they have observed the effect experimentally. Continue reading...

WHO concerned over perception that vaccine approval means pandemic is over; revelations of distorted case tallies cause controversy in Greece

The six-year round trip to an asteroid named Ryugu will end in the red sands of Woomera, AustraliaThe Japanese space agency’s remarkable Hayabusa2 mission will on Sunday deliver the second-ever artificially collected sample of asteroid material when a return capsule falls to Earth at the Woomera rocket range in South Australia.The Hayabusa2 probe has been on a 6bn km, ¥30bn ($388m) round trip to an asteroid named Ryugu, which started six years ago in December 2014. After landing on Ryugu twice last year, the spacecraft began its return journey to drop a capsule protected by a heat shield to deliver its payload. Continue reading...

The regulatory fast-tracking of the Covid vaccine in Britain by MHRA has led some to question its methods

New ONS figures reveal the impact of stricter lockdown measures

Further 504 coronavirus-related deaths and 16,298 confirmed cases reported; capital’s public health chief says cases are still too high. This live blog is now closed – please follow the global live blog for updates

Two members of the Royal Statistical Society say UK government’s figures rely on spiked lab tests and not real world tests

Former Gloucestershire home of ‘father of immunology’ Edward Jenner too small for safe social distancing measures

Close relatives of Covid-19 virus likely to be circulating in nature beyond China, says Dr Shi Zhengli

From Palaeolithic paintings to astrophysics … a glittering history takes in explorers, aliens and a world vanishing from viewTwenty thousand years ago, in a cave in France, Palaeolithic humans painted a great bull with a collection of seven dots above his shoulder. Scholars are divided over the meaning of such paintings, but at the start of this book Jo Marchant makes a convincing and picturesque argument that the image is a remnant of a fairly sophisticated astronomy, in which the movement of stars informed human hunting: “a star calendar, with the Pleiades marking key moments in the life cycle of the aurochs bull”.It’s the earliest of many stories in which the cosmos is intrinsically bound up with human behaviour, beliefs, art, science, discovery and understanding – a fundamental connection whose recent loss, Marchant argues, is bad news for humans today. The star myths we tell “are not just stories. They’re cultural memories passed through generations for thousands of years.” Continue reading...

The corporate race for cultured protein rests on a view of human beings as greedy and incapable of changeThe stuff of science fiction has landed on our plates. Meat grown in a lab, instead of inside the body of an animal, has been approved for sale for the first time. The Singapore Food Agency has given regulatory approval to Eat Just’s “chicken bites”, grown from the cells of a chicken that’s still flapping its wings. The US startup took a biopsy of cells from a live chicken, bathed them in a nutrient medium and grew them in a bioreactor, where they grew exponentially until the meat was harvested, encased in batter and turned into nuggets. The ruling means that, for the first time, cultured meat can be sold to the public.Eat Just, Inc – and the dozens of other cultured meat startups racing each other to get lab-grown meat on to the menu across the globe – are selling the promise that carnivores will be able to eat meat with a clean conscience. Flesh without the blood, meat without murder and the beginning of the end of the environmental damage caused by intensive animal agriculture. The news was met with a sigh of relief from meat eaters across the world, and with good reason: it will allow us to carry on as before, eating what we like while clever technology sidesteps the problems caused by our appetites. Continue reading...

Minister says MHRA, which approved coronavirus jab, is ‘gold standard of regulation’

Japanese craft collected dust from the asteroid Ryugu that scientists hope could shed light on the origins of life

Chris Hipkins says it is understandable that other countries in much worse situations have fast-tracked approval

Recent finds have not met criteria as they are made from bronze, not precious metalsThe government plans to change the official definition of “treasure” to cover more rare and precious archaeological finds so that such artefacts can be saved for the nation rather than sold to private collectors.Under the 1996 Treasure Act, objects are designated as treasure trove if found to be more than 300 years old and made of gold or silver, or found with artefacts made of precious metals. Continue reading...

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More than 10,000 people have died on average every day in the past week, according to latest figures

Footage released by the National Science Foundation shows the moment a huge radio telescope collapsed in Puerto Rico on Tuesday.

Vaccination saves lives, fear endangers them, says regional director as colleagues stress need for government transparency

It’s safe, it works, and it gives a tantalising glimpse of what else might be achieved given sufficient political will

Images will enable scientists to measure acceleration of solar system and mass of galaxyAstronomers have unveiled the most precise 3D map yet of the Milky Way, an achievement that promises to shed fresh light on the workings of the galaxy and the mysteries of the broader universe.The vast electronic atlas was compiled from data gathered by the European Space Agency’s Gaia observatory which has been scanning the heavens since it blasted off in 2013 from Kourou in French Guiana. Continue reading...

Education secretary lauds vaccine rollout saying scientists in UK better than in France, Belgium or US

Wildlife recordist Chris Watson and sound artist Prof Tony Myatt conclude their three-part odyssey to the west coast of Mexico to record the songs of blue whales in the Sea of Cortez. In the port of Loreto, Chris and Tony visit a local organisation set up to protect local wildlife, and Chris talks to whale communication expert Dr Valeria Vergara. They also turn to spectral analysis to see if they managed to record blue whales in actionIn the final episode of this three-part series, the pioneering nature sound recordist Chris Watson concludes his journey to learn more about the songs of blue whales in Mexico.Chris is joined by the spatial audio sound artist, engineer and academic Tony Myatt, with whom he is collaborating on a special sound installation for Oceans 21, a project about the fascination with, and the endangerment of, the oceans. Continue reading...

Studies will continue online for many over five-week period to minimise risk of Covid transmission

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PM announces start of mass immunisation amid row over claim Brexit helped speed up approval

Brother of former Labour leader spoke at May event in London’s Hyde ParkPiers Corbyn, the brother of the former Labour party leader, has been found guilty of breaching emergency health regulations at an anti-lockdown protest in London’s Hyde Park.During the two-day trial in Westminster magistrates court, the 73-year-old weather forecaster and climate change denier argued that his rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly had been illegally restricted. Continue reading...

There is a job of public reassurance ahead that will be made harder if partisanship and ministerial grandstanding get in the way

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My friend and colleague Liz Hall, who has died aged 71 of cancer, was a psychotherapist whose work with survivors of sexual abuse helped to develop therapeutic practice significantly in that area.Over the years Liz was involved in devising and delivering multidisciplinary training on sexual abuse, starting in 1987 when she co-authored, with me, Surviving Child Sexual Abuse: A Handbook for Helping Women Challenge Their Past, which was the first book in the UK for women who had been abused as children. She was often ahead of her time, both in her thinking and her therapeutic practice. Continue reading...

Coronavirus clusters in Alpine resorts played key role in early spread of virus in Europe

Speedy approval for Pfizer/BioNTech jab was possible under existing European law

China has successfully landed a probe on the moon's surface, according to state media. The Chang'e-5 spacecraft drilled into the surface of the moon to collect soil early on Wednesday, the first probe to collect lunar samples in four decades.If the return journey is successful, China will be only the third country to have retrieved samples from the moon, following the US and the Soviet Union in the 60s and 70s

In our age of emerging pathogens, funding for global research into zoonotic diseases such as Covid-19, Ebola and Sars is vital

Head of MHRA, June Raine, has ‘devoted whole life to public health’, says former colleague

Vaccination committee head says rollout should be structured to mitigate against health inequalities

‘Historic moment’ allows mass immunisation, with 800,000 doses expected to be available next week

Detailed analysis of a buried extinct volcano in the Faroe-Shetland Basin reveals some surprisesIf you were to slice a volcano in half, what would it look like inside? For most volcanoes it’s assumed that there is a large magma chamber which is connected to the surface by a narrow conduit: a structure referred to as the “balloon and straw” model. But detailed analysis of a buried extinct volcano in the Faroe-Shetland Basin reveals that volcano plumbing isn’t as straightforward as first thought.Erlend last erupted 55m years ago and today lies buried under more than a kilometre of sediment. Using 3D seismic images and data from oil exploration wells, Faye Walker, from the University of Aberdeen, and colleagues have pieced together the plumbing system inside the fossilised volcano. Their images, published in the journal Geology, reveal a “Christmas tree” structure inside, suggesting that the magma chamber grew like a tree, with each fresh batch of magma adding a new set of gently downward sloping branches. Continue reading...

Wildlife recordist Chris Watson and spatial audio sound artist Prof Tony Myatt continue on their three-part journey to the Sea of Cortez fishing for the song of the blue whale. Chris speaks to blue whale expert Dr Diane Gendron, and artists Diana Schniedermeier and Ina Krüger, who produce ocean sound installationsIn episode two of this three-part series, the pioneering nature sound recordist Chris Watson continues his journey in Mexico to learn more about the songs of blue whales.Chris is joined on his journey by the spatial audio sound artist, engineer and academic Tony Myatt with whom he is collaborating on a special sound installation for Oceans 21, a project series on the fascination and endangerment of the oceans. Their installation, Seaphony, will premiere in Berlin in May 2021 to mark the beginning of United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development. Continue reading...

Unlike the ‘dime a dozen’ T-Rex, there are only a handful of near-complete triceratops skeletons in the world – and one is coming to AustraliaMelbourne Museum will become permanent home to the world’s most complete triceratops skeleton, with the “immense and unprecedented” $3m acquisition of a 67m-year-old dinosaur fossil.After two years of negotiation and due diligence, the Victorian government and Museums Victoria have brokered a deal to bring the triceratops horridus – which was discovered on private land in the United States in 2014 – to Melbourne next year where it will go on display for the first time. Continue reading...

The unmanned Chang’e-5 spacecraft has landed on the moon to pick up lunar rock samples, something not attempted since the 1970sChina has successfully landed a probe on the moon. There, the unmanned Chang’e-5 will prepare to collect the first lunar samples gathered since the Soviet Union’s Luna 24 mission in 1976. Here is everything you need to know: Continue reading...

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Chang’e-5 spacecraft completes 112-hour journey from Earth, according to Beijing’s space agencyA Chinese probe sent to the moon to bring back the first lunar samples in four decades has successfully landed, according to Beijing’s space agency.China has poured billions into its military-run space programme, with hopes of having a crewed space station by 2022 and eventually sending humans to the moon. Continue reading...

Early diagnosis is essential if survival rates are to improve, and the announcement of a trial starting next year is a promising signSubstantial improvement in the early detection of cancers was among the key aims set out last year in NHS England’s long-term plan. Although survival rates have been improving, it has long been recognised that too often they lag behind the best performing countries in Europe. Late diagnosis is widely recognised as being among the causes, since cancers found early are far more susceptible to treatment. Against this backdrop, last week’s announcement that a new blood test is to be trialled on 165,000 people from next year, in the hope that it will help identify early-stage cancers, is an exciting development.The test, known as Galleri, looks for abnormal DNA, and is most likely to have an impact on those cancers – including lung, ovarian and pancreatic – that are typically diagnosed late, and for which there is currently no screening programme. Another UK study using blood tests created by the same US healthcare company, Grail, to detect lung cancer (Britain’s biggest cancer killer), is already under way. As ever with research, there are no guarantees, and NHS England has a mountain to climb: currently just 55% of cancers are diagnosed at stages 1 or 2. The aim is to reach 75% by 2028. But at the end of a year that has placed the NHS under huge strain, it is encouraging that some of the pledges in the long-term plan may be on the way to being met. Continue reading...

Royal couple will skip celebrations in Sandringham for first time in 32 years due to Covid pandemic