Companies hope to have next generation of vaccines against emerging variants by next yearGlaxoSmithKline and Germany’s CureVac have reached a €150m (£132m) agreement to develop a next generation of Covid-19 vaccines targeting new emerging variants in the pandemic.The two companies said they plan to work jointly to develop a shot next year that can address “multiple emerging variants in one vaccine”. Continue reading...
by Natalie Grover Science correspondent on (#5DNV5)
Traffic noise affected zebra finches’ foraging habits and field crickets’ matingWorking from home during Covid-19 has brought noise pollution close to home, whether it’s your partner making calls within earshot or grinding coffee during your Zoom interview. Now research suggests the animal kingdom is also disturbed by the noise of humans and our gadgets.As humans proliferate, we have penetrated deeper into wildlife habitats, creating a pervasive rise in environmental sound that not only directly affects the ability of animals to hear but indeed communicate. Emerging research suggests noise pollution, caused, for instance, by traffic, interferes with animal behaviour, including cognition and mating. Continue reading...
Danish team predict possible 1.35m rise by 2100 and highlight issues with previous modellingThe rise in the sea level is likely to be faster and greater than previously thought, according to researchers who say recent predictions are inconsistent with historical data.In its most recent assessment, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said the sea level was unlikely to rise beyond 1.1 metre (3.6ft) by 2100. Continue reading...
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 spacecrafts manoeuvre in space? Surely, in a vacuum, reaction force will not work?
The federal government failed to develop a surveillance system that would allow researchers to watch for dangerous mutationsAs researchers around the world scramble to understand the dangers of several newly discovered variants of the deadly coronavirus, the US remains woefully behind in its ability to track the mutations, scientists say. Continue reading...
by Presented by Sarah Boseley and produced by Madelei on (#5DMCB)
The rainforest city of Manaus in Brazil was the first in the country to be struck by the pandemic. The virus rapidly spread, and by October last year it was estimated that 76% of the population had been infected – a number higher than the theoretical threshold for herd immunity. Yet, in January 2021, cases surged and the health system was once again overwhelmed, with hospitals running out of oxygen and doctors and nurses required to carry out manual ventilation. To find out what might be behind this second wave, Sarah Boseley speaks to the Guardian’s Latin America editor, Tom Phillips, and Dr Deepti Gurdasani, asking why Manaus has been hit twice and what it might mean for our understanding of immunity, new viral variants, and the path through the pandemic.
Nine more stars found in Tucana II, revealing galaxy to be larger than previously thoughtThe discovery of a handful of stars at the edge of a fossil galaxy has shed new light on dark matter and provided clues of a possible early instance of galactic cannibalism, researchers say.Tucana II is an ultrafaint dwarf galaxy about 163,000 light years from Earth and is thought to be a remnant from the formation of the earliest galaxies in the universe. It was already known to contain ancient stars, including some with a very low metal content, indicating they formed shortly after the big bang. Continue reading...
My friend Jo Bossanyi, who has died aged 96, was an environmental scientist and lecturer whose approach to teaching was driven by his belief that a well-educated public would be key to addressing the alarming degradation of the natural world.Jo was born in Lübeck, northern Germany, the only child of Ervin Bossanyi, a celebrated Hungarian stained glass artist, and Wilma (nee Maasz). The family fled from Nazi Germany to London in 1934, when Jo was 10, without a word of English. Four years later he won a scholarship to Merchant Taylors’ school in Hertfordshire, and from there went in 1943 to St John’s College, Oxford, also on a scholarship, to read zoology. Continue reading...
Brightest star in the Scorpius constellation, a supergiant 68o times larger than our sun, draws close to waning crescentThose up before dawn should look south for a pretty pairing this week. On 6 February, the waning crescent moon will draw close to the beautiful red jewel of Antares, the brightest star in the constellation of Scorpius, the scorpion. Continue reading...
Readers respond to an article by Jonathan Freedland, which suggested that the coronavirus outbreak may quickly fade from collective memoryAs ever, Jonathan Freedland writes more powerfully and movingly than any other commentator (History suggests we may forget the pandemic sooner than we think, 29 January). His appeal for us to find a means of perpetuating some memory of those who died, who were bereaved, and of the heroism of those who strove to save lives, should resonate far beyond this current state of limbo.Why not establish a bank holiday? The final vaccinations should be administered by the autumn, so a date could be found midway between the August bank holiday and Christmas. This would surely be better than a plethora of statues or memorial plaques.
Billions of unwanted male chicks are slaughtered by the farming industry. Now a startup claims to have found a surprising solution to the problemThe eggs we eat have a hidden cost. About 7bn male chicks are killed worldwide every year to produce them. Farmers need to replenish their supply of egg-laying hens but, by nature, half the chicks that hatch are male and growing them for meat is uneconomic – that industry uses faster growing breeds. In many countries they are tossed into shredding machines, although in the UK they are gassed.But what if those male chicks could instead hatch out as functional females, able to grow into egg-laying birds? That’s the vision of Israeli startup Soos Technology. Founded in 2017, the company, which has received $3.3m in investment and prize winnings, wants to make commercial hatcheries kinder and more economic by changing the effective sex of poultry embryos as they develop. Continue reading...
As a hospital consultant working in intensive care, the reality of coronavirus and patients’ fear is brought home to me every dayI’m not ready,” the patient implores me through her CPAP [continuous positive airway pressure] hood. She’s breathing at more than triple her normal rate and I’ve been asked to intubate her as she’s deteriorating, despite three days in intensive care. She is 42 years old.There’s terror in her eyes. A tear runs down her cheek. She’s looking at the patient opposite who is in an induced coma, intubated and ventilated, and isn’t doing well. Continue reading...
When Harvard professor Avi Loeb discovered possible signs of extraterrestrial activity, it caused a scandal in the research community. Is fear and conservatism stopping science from considering plausible evidence that there are aliens out there?By the time humanity noticed the object, it was already leaving the solar system. 19 October 2017. Astronomers at the University of Hawaii notice an odd shape tumbling away from Earth, a bright speck hurtling through the deep dark. Informally, they name it ‘Oumuamua, from the Hawaiian for “scout”, and classify it an interstellar asteroid, the first known to visit our solar system. Really, nobody could be sure what it was. Asteroids are rocky and dull and commonly round, but ‘Oumuamua was shiny and elongated. Astronomers had first thought it a comet, but comets have bright gassy tails, and here there wasn’t one. The more data was collected, the more mysterious the object seemed. “Time after time it looked unusual,” says the astrophysicist Avi Loeb, over Zoom. “At some point it crossed a threshold for me. And at that point you say, ‘OK, come on!’”Loeb is the Frank B Baird Jr Professor of Science at Harvard and, until recently, the longest-serving chair of Harvard’s department of astronomy. When we speak, he is in his home office – big old fireplace, books about the cosmos, a remarkable quantity of dark wood – preparing to discuss his new book, Extraterrestrial, in which he argues an exotic hypothesis: that ‘Oumuamua was “designed, built and launched by an extraterrestrial intelligence”. Loeb is 59, but energised like a child. “I should tell you,” he warns, gently teasing, a few days after the US Capitol is stormed. “Today I’m supposed to be interviewed by Fox News. Some people said, ‘Avi, don’t do it. How could you do that?’ And I said, ‘Look, science doesn’t have a political agenda – we should speak to everyone!’” Continue reading...
As countries begin an age of Martian exploration, planetary protection advocates insist we must be careful of interplanetary contaminationNext month, three new spacecraft arrive at Mars. Two represent firsts for their countries of origin, while the third opens a new era of Mars exploration. The first is the UAE’s Emirates Mars Mission, also known as Hope, which enters orbit on 9 February. Shortly after, China’s Tianwen-1 settles into the red planet’s gravitational grip and in April will deploy a lander carrying a rover to the surface.Both of these missions are groundbreaking for their countries. If they are successful, their makers will join the US, Russia, Europe and India in having successfully sent spacecraft to Mars. However, it is the third mission that is destined to capture the most headlines. Continue reading...
Graves found under demolished student halls are providing valuable insight into life in a post-Roman settlementAn early medieval graveyard unearthed beneath student accommodation at Cambridge University has been described as “one of the most exciting finds of Anglo-Saxon archaeology since the 19th century”.King’s College discovered the “extensive” cemetery, containing more than 60 graves, after demolishing a group of 1930s buildings which had recently housed graduates and staff in the west of the city, to make way for more modern halls. Continue reading...
You have to look – and sometimes very closely – but discovering small patches of woodland or flowers bursting through concrete makes me appreciate nature all the moreOne Friday morning last October, when we still could, I drove down from Brixton in south London to Somerset. It was one of those autumn days people anticipate in the midst of a sticky summer, with pillowy mist and low-lying sun trying to get through it. Even hurtling down the M3 was gorgeous; trees filling in the shade card between chartreuse and maroon, buzzards circling overhead.I spent the rest of that weekend mentally checking off an autumnal bingo card. Woodsmoke from chimneys in chocolate-box villages; hedgerows on the cusp of change; woodpeckers flying over trees; that perfect nip in the air. It was delightful, and it was bittersweet. For the first time, I realised why people gave up the rat race to live more rurally. After a soggy few weeks in the greyest of Londons, autumn just seemed better out here. Continue reading...
Flash of light detected on planet, about 10 times more energetic than lightning on Earth, reopens debateDoes lightning strike on Venus? It’s a question that has perplexed planetary scientists for decades. Given that lightning has been detected in the clouds of Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus, you’d expect lightning to occur on Venus, too, but the planet’s dense clouds ensure that any lightning remains well hidden. Now a tantalising flash has reopened the debate.On 1 March 2020 a camera on the Japanese Akatsuki spacecraft, which is orbiting Venus, detected a flash of light which, if it was lightning, was about 10 times more energetic than lightning on Earth. But bizarrely there was only one flash: lightning normally occurs in clusters. It’s possible the bright flash was caused by a large meteor exploding in the planet’s atmosphere, but this is seen as an unlikely explanation; such events are very rare. Continue reading...
Researchers walk through three negative-pressure chambers before entering the submarine-like structureIn a high security laboratory in Sydney, where a select group of researchers go to extreme lengths to work with samples of blood and swabs containing Covid-19, virologist Stuart Turville found a unicorn.“A beautiful, immunological unicorn,” Turville, an associate professor with the Kirby Institute at the University of New South Wales, said. Continue reading...
Developmental biologist and science communicator with an enduring fascination for the beginnings of lifeHow does a single fertilised egg divide and morph into an embryo with head, tail, limbs and organs? That question was an inexhaustible source of fascination to the biologist Lewis Wolpert, who has died aged 91. With a twinkle in his eye, he told audiences it was not birth, marriage or death, but gastrulation – the stage in which a uniform ball of cells folds to become differentiated layers with the beginnings of a gut – that was “truly the most important time in your life”.Wolpert combined his interest in fundamental problems of development with a parallel career as a science communicator. He enjoyed performing in public, and brooked no compromise in his quest to persuade people that “science is the best way to understand the world”. He broadcast frequently on BBC radio and TV, and wrote a number of popular books. The best known of these, Malignant Sadness (1999), was a fiercely objective attempt to understand his own experience of a severe depression that he suffered at the age of 65. He gave the Royal Institution Christmas lectures in 1986, chaired the Committee on the Public Understanding of Science from 1994 until 1998, and won the Royal Society’s Michael Faraday prize (for science communication) in 2000. Continue reading...