The brightest star in this ancient constellation is Capella, a yellow giant just 43 light years awayThis week, use one of the most prominent winter constellations to find one of the fainter ones. The constellation we are searching for is Auriga, the charioteer. It is an ancient constellation, having been among the 48 listed by Ptolemy in the second century AD. The easiest way to find Auriga at this time of year from the northern hemisphere is to locate Orion, the hunter. Continue reading...
A retreat for grieving parents provides therapeutic benefits, writes a mother whose daughter was stillborn 22 years agoAfter my daughter Grace died when I was eight months pregnant, my first impulse was to write it all down: the birth, surrounded by candles; the coffin and funeral where there should have been a christening; how her death had been accompanied by snowdrops fighting their way through the frozen ground in the first stirring of spring. I felt I was the only one really to have known her and I wanted her acknowledged. I wrote a diary as a way of making my daughter real, and published it in a magazine. It helped.I’ve since learned that this is a common impulse in the bereaved – especially among bereaved parents, who feel an urgent and deep-seated need to remember and honour their children. Continue reading...
Four-letter words were once rebellious and cool, but the denizens of the finance sector have put paid to thatDoes Prince Charles ever swear at his plants, I wonder. Somehow I doubt it. We all know he talks to them, of course, because he said so in an interview in 1986 when discussing his garden. “I just come and talk to the plants, really,” he said. “Very important to talk to them. They respond.” This much-mocked revelation was supplemented only last year when the panel show QI tweeted that he also shakes hands with trees. At tree-planting ceremonies, he apparently always gives a branch a bit of a waggle to wish it well.This all makes perfect sense to me. It’s no surprise that a man in his position, when presented with an array of silent and quivering organisms, automatically starts chatting and shaking limbs. That’s what almost all royal events must be like. The nervous crowd he’s presented with when he gets out of the Bentley to cut a ribbon isn’t going to be significantly more responsive than your average clump of dahlias. He’s been instinctively filling silences with inane chatter all his life and it’s vital for his self-esteem to believe that, on some level, these mute lifeforms appreciate the effort. Continue reading...
Painting of astrophysicist joins male-dominated collection at organisation’s London HQA British astrophysicist who made one of the most significant scientific discoveries of the 20th century but was overlooked by the Nobel prize committee has joined the male-dominated portrait collection of the Royal Society.Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell was a 24-year-old graduate student when in 1967 she discovered a new type of star later called a pulsar. It was a sensational find, recognised with the Nobel prize for physics in 1974 that went not to her, but to her male PhD supervisor. Continue reading...
by Matilda Boseley (now), Nadeem Badshah, Damien Gayl on (#5AXDT)
Trudeau previously warned country would not get first doses; Italy to ease measures in five regions; singing and playing wind instruments ‘can increase risk of infection’, say Swiss authorities. This blog is now closed
You’d be forgiven for thinking we would exit lockdown into something better, but the prime minister’s harsh tier system was our destiny“Now is not the time,” gibbered the prime minister, “to take our foot off the throat of the beast.” Its throat? A lot of people feel like they’ve been living in the beast’s colon for most of the year. Still, see you guys in tier 4 in January.Incredibly, the above was not even the worst line of Boris Johnson’s Thursday evening press conference. Johnson is unaccountably celebrated as a brilliant prose stylist but frequently spouts the sort of sub-inspirational shit you might see slapped on a photo of a crossroads on Instagram. This outing was a case in point, as the prime minister intoned: “Your tier is not your destiny – every area has the means of escape.” Wow. I want to say “#makesuthink”, but I’m going to go with: “Then tell us what the means of escape is! Why does everything have to be a bleeding ring quest?” Continue reading...
Pioneered by a Turkish-German couple, its significance exceeds its practical valueThe world took note when the German startup BioNTech announced its breakthrough in the development of a new type of vaccine to combat Covid-19. After testing tens of thousands of people, BioNTech’s vaccine has been shown to be 95% effective in providing protection for those who would otherwise have been infected. The company was the first to apply for emergency use authorisation for a coronavirus vaccine in the US and it has announced it will soon take similar steps in Europe.Antiviral vaccines are usually made with devitalised viral materials fabricated outside the body but BioNTech has pursued a new method of injecting genetically modified RNA into the patient. This prompts the patient’s cells to produce a characteristic protein of the relevant Sars-CoV-2 virus themselves, enabling the body’s immune system to build up an effective response before it encounters the real virus. Continue reading...
by Jessica Murray (now); Sarah Marsh, Lucy Campbell, on (#5AW25)
Daily cases continue to fall in France; health campaigners fear Africa will have to wait until mid-2021 for vaccine; weddings banned and cafes closed in Croatia
by Denis Campbell Health policy editor on (#5AXD3)
Researchers hopes Galleri trial will be a ‘gamechanger’ for early diagnosis and save many livesThe NHS is to trial a simple blood test that may help identify more than 50 forms of cancer years before diagnosis, in what it hailed as a potential “gamechanger”.If successful the blood test, known as Galleri, could revolutionise early diagnosis of cancer and save many lives by identifying symptoms quickly enough for prompt treatment to make the difference between life and death. Continue reading...
Spacecraft known as Hope carries instruments designed to study the tenuous Martian atmosphereThe Emirates Mars Mission (EMM) is on course to arrive at the Red Planet on 9 February. A third and final major trajectory correction manoeuvre (TCM) was completed on 10 November. An additional minor TCM in December will tee it up for a Mars orbit insertion manoeuvre next year. Without the need for further major course corrections, the mission team can begin early science observations of Mars and interplanetary space.The EMM spacecraft, also known as Hope, carries three instruments primarily designed to study the tenuous Martian atmosphere. With its arrival, the United Arab Emirates will become the fifth region, after the US, Russia, Europe and India, to reach Mars. Launched in July 2020, it is one of three spacecraft currently en route to the red planet. China’s Tianwen orbiter and rover, and the US rover Perseverance were also launched at the same time. Continue reading...
by Damian Carrington Environment editor on (#5AX49)
Report suggests tree growth will not store nearly as much carbon as scientists hopedGlobal heating appears to be making trees drop their leaves earlier, according to new research, confounding the idea that warmer temperatures delay the onset of autumn.The finding is important because trees draw huge amounts of carbon dioxide from the air and therefore play a key role in managing the climate. Continue reading...
As millions of people will hopefully be inoculated in the next six months, this will be the ideal time for clinical trials to compare the vaccines head to head, writes Dr Andrew Hill. Plus letters from Dr Niamh Martin and Roy GrimwoodWe now have three vaccines against Covid-19, giving between 70% and 95% protection (Vaccine results bring us a step closer to ending Covid, says Oxford scientist, 23 November). However, there are many unanswered questions. Which vaccine will protect people from Covid-19 infection for the longest time? Is one vaccine more protective for frontline healthcare workers, who could be exposed to high levels of virus? Are there any differences in safety? So far, each vaccine has been compared with a placebo in separate trials. The trials differ in designs and populations enrolled, so it is hard to compare the effectiveness and safety of these vaccines reliably.In the next six months, millions of people in the UK will be vaccinated with vaccines from Moderna, Pfizer/BioNTech or Oxford/AstraZeneca. This is an ideal opportunity to conduct new randomised clinical trials, comparing these vaccines head to head. The NHS has discovered the survival benefits of dexamethasone in the Recovery trial. The World Health Organization has shown remdesivir to be of no benefit in its Solidarity trial. At this stage, we need to continue running large independent trials to further our understanding of the vaccines. Otherwise, if there are unexpected breakthrough infections on one vaccine or new safety issues, the results could be very hard to interpret.
Statistics show how ‘world-beating’ tracing scheme fails to follow up on Covid-19 cases at every stepIt was in May that Boris Johnson promised the UK would have a “world-beating” test-and-trace operation in place within weeks.“Our test-and-trace system is as good as, or better than, any other system anywhere in the world,” he doubled down in July. Continue reading...
Jake Haendel spent months trapped in his body, silent and unmoving but fully conscious. Most people never emerge from ‘locked-in syndrome’, but as a doctor told him, everything about his case is bizarre
by Presented by Nicola Davis and produced by David Wa on (#5AW92)
With a number of Covid-19 vaccines seemingly on the way, Nicola Davis talks to Prof Eleanor Riley about how they might help the body’s defence mechanisms fight the virus Continue reading...
by Presented by Anushka Asthana with Sarah Boseley an on (#5ATQM)
Results from clinical trials have shown that the world has three apparently highly effective vaccines for Covid-19. With the race now on for regulatory approval, production and distribution, is the end of the pandemic within reach?After a gruelling year of successive waves of Covid-19 infections and national lockdowns there has been a burst of good news this month, with three separate vaccine candidates performing extremely well in clinical trials.First, Pfizer and Moderna announced that their vaccines were testing at an efficacy of around 95%. Then came the news that the AstraZeneca vaccine (the one pre-ordered in bulk by the UK government) was hitting 90%. It marks not just a new phase in the Covid-19 pandemic but potentially a revolution in vaccine technology itself. Continue reading...
My academic mentor and friend Marcus Banks, who has died aged 60 of epilepsy, was a social anthropologist. He played a leading role in promoting the sub-discipline of visual anthropology, which is concerned with studying cultures through photography, film and other media.Spending his entire career at Oxford University, from the late 1980s onwards Marcus showed how visual artefacts should be thought of as a central – perhaps the central – means through which all people, everywhere, forge their identities, and through which they order and transform the worlds around them. Continue reading...
Anticov study with international research institutions aims to stop disease progression and protect fragile health systemsA network of 13 African countries has joined forces with global researchers to launch the largest clinical trial of potential Covid-19 treatments on the continent.The Anticov study, involving Antwerp’s Institute of Tropical Medicine and international research institutions, aims to identify treatments that can be used to treat mild and moderate cases of Covid-19 early and prevent spikes in hospitalisation that could overwhelm fragile and already overburdened health systems in Africa. Continue reading...
China has launched a robotic spacecraft to bring back rocks from the moon – the first such attempt by any country since the 1970s.The Long March-5, China’s largest carrier rocket, blasted off at 4.30am Beijing time on Tuesday from Wenchang space launch centre on the island of Hainan carrying the Chang’e-5 spacecraft.The Chang'e-5 mission will test China’s ability to remotely acquire samples from space before more complex missions.If successful, the mission would make China only the third country to have retrieved lunar samples, joining the US and the Soviet Union
During the pandemic it has become a buzzword for successfully steering through adversity. But what exactly is resilience - and can you cultivate more of it?
by Presented by Alex Hern and produced by David Water on (#5AS6K)
The Guardian’s UK technology editor Alex Hern speaks to Prof Andy Przybylski from the Oxford Internet Institute about his new approach of looking at the impact of computer games on mental health. According to Prof Przybylski, this new approach is more objective – but it also depends on gaming companies being more transparent Continue reading...
Lunar landing is due in about eight days and entire mission is scheduled to last 23 daysChina has launched a robotic spacecraft to bring back rocks from the moon – the first such attempt by any country since the 1970s.The Long March-5, China’s largest carrier rocket, blasted off at 4.30am Beijing time on Tuesday from Wenchang space launch centre on the island of Hainan carrying the Chang’e-5 spacecraft. Continue reading...
Science | The Guardian