Space Rider expected to carry medical and biological experiments on maiden voyageThe European Space Agency (ESA) has signed contracts for its first reusable space transportation system. Known as Space Rider, it is a robotic laboratory about the size of a couple of eight-seater minivans.ESA has signed two contracts. The first is for delivery of the spacecraft by co-prime contractors: Thales Alenia Space Italy and Avio. The second covers delivery of the ground segment (the infrastructure needed to launch and operate the Space Rider) by Italian co-prime contractors: Telespazio and Altec. Designed for launch on an ESA Vega-C rocket from Kourou, French Guiana, the Space Rider will stay in orbit for about two months. It will carry up to 800kg of experiments and technology demonstrations in its 1,200-litre cargo bay. Continue reading...

Other firms better placed to supply antibody tests, argues case against health secretary Matt Hancock

Less than a year since Covid-19 was genetically sequenced, vaccinations against it have begun. Despite being a cause for celebration, the vaccines have been met with some public hesitancy. In the first of a two-part exploration into Covid-19 vaccine scepticism, Nicola Davis speaks to Dr Samantha Vanderslott and Dr Caitjan Gainty about why some people are apprehensive, and how much of a problem vaccine scepticism really is Continue reading...

Here are the current coronavirus hotspots in New South Wales and what to do if you’ve visited them

Jupiter and Saturn have come closer than at any time in 400 years in the event dubbed the great conjunction, prompting people around the world to turn out and try for a glimpse. The orbital paths of the two huge planets ensure great conjunctions every 20 years, but many are impossible to see with the naked eye because they happen during the daytime. Great conjunctions happen when Jupiter, which laps the sun in a shade under 12 years, and Saturn, which orbits every 29.5 years, come into near alignment with the Earth. It will be 2080 before the planets align so closely again Continue reading...

Catholic church says researchers’ use of cell material derived from foetuses does not amount to cooperating with abortion

Two planets appeared closest to each other in the night sky for almost 400 yearsStargazers’ attempts to observe a once-in-a-lifetime sight were hindered in the UK by a far more everyday occurrence – bad weather.Many hoping to see the “great conjunction” of Jupiter and Saturn on Monday evening, where the two planets appeared closer together in the night sky than they have for almost 400 years, were disappointed when their view was obscured by clouds. Continue reading...

EMA’s move paves way for inoculations to begin across Europe within next few days

An NHS doctor writes of their concerns about the decision to vaccinate health workers at a later time, while Martin Lippitt and Tony Green wonder why Rupert Murdoch has been among the first to receive the jab

EU border closures | Festive dining | Bearded men | Brian Sykes obituaryYou report that EU member state France has temporarily closed its border with the UK (Covid chaos disrupts Kent ports as France bans UK freight, 21 December). You also report that its fellow EU member states Germany, the Netherlands, Ireland and others have done likewise. One could almost be forgiven for thinking these were sovereign countries in control of their money, laws and borders. A bit like the UK (except for the borders bit, obviously).

The last time the planets were this close from our viewpoint on Earth was almost 400 years agoThe moment has arrived. Keep your fingers crossed for clear skies tonight and whatever else you are doing, make the attempt to see the extraordinary conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn. Continue reading...

For four years we’ve viewed nearly every EU-related event through the lens of Brexit. To do it this time would be wrongThough a ban on freight from the UK was imposed this weekend, France and some other European Union countries hope to be able to ease the restriction from Wednesday – for lorry drivers, returning citizens and other travellers who can prove they have recently tested negative for coronavirus.Emergency EU talks will be held in Brussels today on how to organise and police a system of checks at airports, Channel ports and the Eurotunnel. And senior EU leaders held a series of crisis talks by phone and videoconference last night. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, spoke privately to Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel, and the pair also spoke to the European council president, Charles Michel, and European commission president, Ursula von der Leyen. Continue reading...

Labour shadow minister Yasmin Qureshi speaks of slow recovery after hospital admission

On 21 December 2020, the planets will align, appearing closer than they have since the middle ages, in what is being called a ‘Christmas kiss’This year, stargazers will have the chance to see a Christmas “kiss” beneath interplanetary mistletoe when Jupiter and Saturn will appear closer to one another and brighter than they have in 800 years in an event known as a “great conjunction”. Continue reading...

Dr Nicholas Christakis says once pandemics end, often there is a period in which people seek out extensive social interactionsIt is almost exactly one year since the coronavirus Sars-CoV-2 was identified by Chinese scientists as the source of a new, lethal respiratory illness.Since, more than 1.5 million people have died globally, economies worldwide have shut down multiple times and societies have isolated in their homes and watched holidays pass without the closeness of family and friends. Ahead of us is a year undertaking the most logistically challenging public health campaign ever. Continue reading...

Minister Greg Hunt says Australia will not ban flights from UK because it has mandatory 14-day hotel quarantineCases of a Covid-19 strain that has plunged the UK into chaos have been detected in small numbers in Australia, but the federal health minister, Greg Hunt, has said there are no plans to follow other countries in halting flights from the UK.On Sunday the UK prime minister, Boris Johnson, said there was “no evidence” the strain caused more severe illness or higher mortality, but “it does appear to be passed on significantly more easily”. It prompted some European countries, including Ireland, Italy, France, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands, to ban flights from the UK. Continue reading...

This blog is now closed. We’ve launched a new blog at the link below:

A mutant virus cannot wholly explain why the UK is in this mess or distract from the other failures that have led us hereThe lockdown in the south-east of England may be the shape of things to come. Sixteen million people are under new severe tier 4 restrictions and there are suggestions that these tougher new rules could be in place for months. Many more across the country have seen their plans torn up at the 11th hour. The reason for the government’s change of plan is a new strain of the virus, dubbed B117, that appears no more lethal than the original Sars-CoV-2 but is much more transmissible. European nations have banned flights from the UK, fearful that a mutant pathogen, homegrown in Kent, will spread across our borders and seas. If the new virus’s effect on the rate of transmission is as bad as government advisers’ fear then we will need a national shutdown of the kind imposed in March.The prime minister should have acted sooner. He may not have known exactly what was driving the growth in Covid cases but ministers have been aware for a week that something was going wrong. On Tuesday, the British Medical Journal and the Health Service Journal warned that if current trends continued, even without the planned Christmas relaxation, there were likely to be 19,000 Covid patients in English hospitals by New Year’s Eve – the same as at the peak of the first wave in April. Continue reading...

My father was exiled from my emotional life – and it was only when he was dying that I started to understand whyMy father was my first love. It wasn’t a romantic love, of course, but all the ache of love was in it. He was handsome, charming and dangerous. It was more than just a minor crush – it was a fatal, all-consuming yearning for his affection that engulfed me like a slow, devastating bushfire. Heartbreak was inevitable.Dad shared his birthday with Jesus. “Look! Everyone celebrates my birthday,” he’d exclaim, pointing at the houses lit up like Harrods on our street, the joke never getting old. He was a bon vivant – nothing made him happier than a festive table creaking under the weight of calorific delights. On Christmas Day 2010, we turned a blind eye to him scarfing a third helping of birthday cake – and I am glad we did. It was his 70th and his last. Continue reading...

The response to Covid-19 has been momentous but discoveries in AI, diet, conservation, space and beyond, show the power of science to improve the world post-pandemic

Seasonal damage in bone fossils in Spain suggests Neanderthals and their predecessors followed the same strategy as cave bearsBears do it. Bats do it. Even European hedgehogs do it. And now it turns out that early human beings may also have been at it. They hibernated, according to fossil experts.Evidence from bones found at one of the world’s most important fossil sites suggests that our hominid predecessors may have dealt with extreme cold hundreds of thousands of years ago by sleeping through the winter. Continue reading...

The virus is likely to have spread more widely than the south-east of England, so the lockdown is likely to expand

The prime minister made the right decision in the face of rising infections, but he left it far too late‘We don’t want to cancel Christmas… I think that would be inhuman,” the prime minister said just last Wednesday in response to calls from scientific experts to reduce the relaxation of social restrictions allowing households to mix over Christmas.Four days later, he was forced to abruptly change course in light of alarming data indicating a steep increase in infection rates in London and parts of the south-east and east of England, thought to be linked to a new and more easily transmitted variant of Covid-19. The government was right to immediately impose tougher tier 4 restrictions on these parts of the country and elsewhere to restrict indoors household mixing to Christmas Day only. Continue reading...

Italy and Australia announce new lockdowns; France death toll surpasses 60,000; Sweden introduces tough new measures

Scientists from around the world submitted art grown in petri dishes for the American Society of Microbiology’s annual contest, which has announced the winners. Restricted access to labs broadened the remit, with traditional art on the beauty of microbes accepted for the first time Continue reading...

Testing of the prevalence and effects of the new variant will take weeks, but scientists don’t expect it to cause more severe disease or be resistant to the vaccine

Vice-president’s announcement marks first birthday of signature Trump program but social media mockery followsMembers of the new US space force will be known as “guardians”, Vice-President Mike Pence announced on Friday, at a ceremony to mark the first birthday of the newest branch of the US armed forces, one of Donald Trump’s signature policy initiatives.Related: Trump unveils logo for Starfleet ... er, Space Force ... and Trekkers take to Twitter Continue reading...

Jab could be given green light by 28 December, triggering immediate NHS distribution

While variant seems to spread more quickly, it does not appear to be more dangerous

NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian says ‘don’t panic buy’ and asks greater Sydney to abandon non-essential activity

The discovery that bilbies, bandicoots, Tasmanian devils and echidnas emit bio-fluorescence under UV light has sparked the burning question. Why?Dr Kenny Travouillon turned off the lights and headed straight for the shelf holding the stuffed platypus, armed with an ultraviolet torch to test something out. Would the monotreme glow?“All the platypuses were glowing,” says Travouillon, the mammals curator at the Western Australian Museum in Perth. “We went through with other mammals and we found they were glowing too.” Continue reading...

Human geneticist who proposed that every European could trace their ancestry to one of seven women living thousands of years agoThe human geneticist Bryan Sykes, who has died aged 73, pushed forward the analysis of inherited conditions such as brittle bone disease and double-jointedness, and was one of the first to extract DNA from ancient bone.The same Bryan Sykes, holder of a personal chair at Oxford University, analysed hair supposedly taken from mythical hominids such as the Bigfoot and Yeti, and announced the results in a three-part television series. His delight in science and enthusiasm for communicating it to popular audiences were both aspects of an expansive personality that alternately inspired and exasperated his colleagues. Continue reading...

As the vaccination’s famous recipients get younger, one thing’s for sure: the thumbs-up social media photo will get very tiresome very quicklyIt must be tough as a celebrity in the age of Covid. With all the traditional avenues of release and promotion closed, the famous have spent the last nine months desperately trying to channel their desire for attention into all manner of extracurricular ventures.But a new path is finally beginning to form. Celebrities can’t promote films, because they haven’t been making any. They can’t make all their friends join them on an excruciating singalong video because – as Gal Gadot has been finding out this week – they will get asked about that much more than their actual work. But what they can do is get vaccinated. And they can pose for a photo while they’re doing it. Continue reading...

Multiple studies have been looking into how the body responds to coronavirus infection

While two vaccines are likely to be cleared soon for adult use in the US, testing is only now starting with children – and only with adolescentsThe first US Covid-19 vaccines are expected in clinics in mid-December, and states are drawing up plans for who should get vaccinated first.But one important group is absent: children. Continue reading...

Nice issues first guidelines but ME campaigners say they lack symptom management advice

Astronomers gear up to watch solar system’s two largest planets side by side in night sky

Preventable diseases still plague those missing out on vaccines. Efforts to halt coronavirus could help crack this issue

African-led study expected to involve 1,600 people over next three years in Uganda, Tanzania, Mozambique and South Africa

Hospitals in England had to divert patients 44 times last week – the highest number for four years

Boris Johnson is privatising responsibility for the problems caused by his Christmas plan to lift restrictions while cases are risingFrom Saturday, two-thirds of England will be in tier 3, the most severe category of the UK government’s Covid restrictions. This change, announced by the health secretary, Matt Hancock, on Thursday, is the product of two contradictory things. The first is that coronavirus cases are rising fast in the south-east and east of England, while case numbers also remain high in much of the urban north. The second is that the government has also committed to a temporary UK-wide Christmas lifting of restrictions in less than a week’s time, after which the new tighter tier restrictions will resume.These are contradictory approaches, and they cannot be reconciled on a scientific basis. If the virus is surging, there is no public health logic in lifting the restrictions over Christmas. The reason why the lifting of restrictions will go ahead is largely political. It is because Boris Johnson promised a nearly normal Christmas long ago and does not want the embarrassment of an unpopular U-turn. Many households took him at his word and have made preparations that would be difficult, expensive and distressing to abandon – though there is evidence that plenty are now doing just that. Continue reading...

Latest updates: ‘vast majority’ of areas currently in tier 3 remain there; government furlough scheme to run until at least end of April 2021. This live blog is now closed – please follow the global live blog for updates

Pfizer and Moderna will need special supply chains to ensure vaccines get to patients fast and without spoiling. Here’s howThe two major US developers of the early Covid-19 vaccines are Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna. They both developed mRNA vaccines, a relatively new type of vaccine. A major supply chain issue is the temperature requirement for these vaccines. The Pfizer vaccine needs to be stored at between minus 112F (minus 80C) and minus 94F (minus 70C), and the Moderna vaccine needs temperatures around minus 4F (minus 20C), which is close to the temperature of commercial-grade freezers. A third company developing vaccines, AstraZeneca, says it needs regular refrigeration temperature of 36F to 46F, or 2 to 8C. Continue reading...

Botanists list plants newly discovered or named by scientists in 2020

Kew Gardens botanists also named a new toadstool found at Heathrow airport and a bizarre scaly shrub from NamibiaThe “ugliest orchid in the world”, a toadstool discovered at Heathrow airport, and a bizarre scaly shrub have topped a list of new species named by scientists at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew and their collaborators in 2020.The researchers said the 156 new plants and fungi highlighted the amazing diversity of species that remain to be found, with the potential to provide new crops, medicines and gardener’s favourites. One is a morning glory plant, whose sweet purple tubers are already eaten by local people in the high Andes of Peru. Continue reading...

Unmanned Chang’e-5 probe returns to Earth after first mission in four decades to collect lunar samplesAn unmanned Chinese spacecraft carrying rocks and soil from the moon returned safely to Earth early on Thursday (local time) in the first mission in four decades to collect lunar samples, the Xinhua news agency said.The capsule carrying the samples collected by the Chang’e-5 space probe landed in northern China’s Inner Mongolia region, Xinhua said, quoting the China National Space Administration (CNSA). The director of CNSA, Zhang Kejian, declared the mission a success, Xinhua added. Continue reading...

The prime minister’s obvious dislike of prescriptive social regulations dilutes his authority when asking people to complyThere is a fine line between optimism and complacency that Boris Johnson has often crossed during the coronavirus pandemic. In July, when lifting the first national lockdown, the prime minister held out the prospect of “a significant return to normality” in time for Christmas. He restated that ambition in November, when setting out the terms of a second lockdown. “I have no doubt that people will be able to have as normal a Christmas as possible,” he said.What marks that forecast as typically Johnsonian is the gratuitous certainty. The prime minister believes that asserting something with confidence makes it more likely to become true. That method can be effective as campaign rhetoric, but in government it risks making an enemy of reality. Continue reading...

UK politicians concerned that cancelling current plans could lead to reduced compliance in the future

Official UK data suggests nearly 10% still have symptoms 12 weeks after infection

Treatment grown on tobacco plants gets US backing for clinical study