They’re loyal, diligent – and have unbeatable noses. Could dogs play a key part in the fight against the pandemic?A single-storey building in a lonely rural business park, a few miles from Milton Keynes on a grey autumn day. It looks like a location for a bleak thriller: where a kidnap victim is held, perhaps, or the scene of a final shootout. Inside, though, something kind of cool is happening.In a brightly lit room, four inverted metal cups have been placed on the red carpet, each containing a small glass jar. One of these contains a smell: a “training odour”. Into the room bursts Billy, followed by Jess. Billy is a labrador, and Jess his human trainer. Billy bounces about the place, clearly super excited. He sniffs at everything – furniture, people, the cups – wagging ferociously. When he sniffs at the cup that contains the smell, another trainer, Jayde, indicates success with a clicking noise. Billy is rewarded with his favourite toy, a well-chewed rubber ball, and a chorus of “good boy”. Continue reading...

A dangerous trip almost ended in disaster but the project was saved with some ingenuityWhat is the weather like up on Mount Everest today? Last year a bunch of daredevil scientists and Sherpas laboured in the “death zone” and installed the world’s highest weather station, perched at 8,430 metres, just 400 metres short of Everest’s summit. But it nearly didn’t happen.Having been stuck behind a queue of climbers heading for the summit, the 2019 National Geographic and Rolex expedition team were dangerously cold when they reached the location where the station was to be installed. “We paced back and forth, attempting to stave off frostbite as wind-chill temperatures hovered close to -30°C and our drill batteries became too cold to work,” said Loughborough University’s Tom Matthews on the Conversation. Luckily team member Phutasi Sherpa had enough body heat to warm up the batteries and get the drill going again, enabling the team to bolt their weather station to the side of the mountain. Continue reading...

Portugal registers highest daily deaths since pandemic start; London police blame rule breakers for high case numbers; Switzerland imposes 7pm curfew. This liveblog is now closed

Breakthrough comes via Edinburgh study that spotted five genes linked to serious illness

UK and Russian scientists to explore whether vaccines given together improves efficacy

Trials reveal vaccine failed to produce a strong immune response in older people

The pandemic has made the necessity of relying on experts evident to all ... this is a rich exploration of lifelong learningBefore the Brexit referendum in 2016, Michael Gove announced that Britain had had enough of experts, depicting them as out of touch and elitist. This anti-intellectualism became commonplace in the UK and the US, despite some notable Tory U-turns. With the unprecedented public health crisis of Covid-19, the expert is back in fashion. Virologists, epidemiologists, statisticians, politicians and members of the public share a language of information about the coronavirus, ranging from social distancing, self-isolation and lockdown to covidiot, covexit and Barnard Castle. But whose knowledge and expertise counts?This question has a long and complex history that encompasses the meanings of “truth” as well as the evolution of the scientific method. The term “expert” comes from the mid-19th century, with its focus on objective truth, and the rise of the professions, especially as a white, male, scientific enterprise (and in contrast to feminised and “morally useful” art subjects). This hierarchy of science over humanities persists, though in the era of fake news, scientific expertise is apparently up for grabs since access to data is democratised. Continue reading...

The challenge of delivering vaccines on this scale are hard, but are firmly within the world of logistics, engineering, and politics

New airlock and scientific experiments among cargo delivered to International Space StationThe latest SpaceX Dragon resupply spacecraft has delivered a new airlock, new scientific experiments and other cargo to the International Space Station (ISS).Launched on a Falcon 9 rocket at 11:17 EST (16:17 GMT) on Sunday 6 December from Nasa’s Kennedy space centre in Florida, the capsule docked with the ISS a day later. It is scheduled to remain at the space station for about a month. Continue reading...

An order for 51m doses has been cancelled with researchers ‘devastated’ after a trial returned false positive HIV results

Research shows people who have a dog with type 2 diabetes are 38% more at risk of having disease themselvesIt’s said that dogs resemble their owners, but the similarities may also extend to their risk of diabetes, research suggests. The same cannot be said of cat owners and their companions, however.Previous studies had hinted that overweight owners tend to have porkier pets, possibly because of shared health behaviours such as overeating or not taking regular exercise. To investigate whether this extended to a shared risk of type 2 diabetes, Beatrice Kennedy, of Uppsala University in Sweden, and colleagues turned to insurance data from Sweden’s largest pet insurance company, using owners’ 10-digit national identification numbers to pull their anonymised health records. Continue reading...

Recommendation signals formal FDA approval for Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine in the US could be imminentAn advisory panel to the US Food and Drug Administration has recommended the emergency approval of a Covid-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech.The recommendation is expected to signal that the first approval of a Covid-19 vaccine for use in the US is imminent. That would mark a major milestone in a pandemic that has killed more than 285,000 Americans and 1.5 million people globally. Continue reading...

Lockdown saw a surge in artefacts dug up by gardeners. How should such finds be handled?

Greta Thunberg has warned the world is failing to tackle the climate emergency and is in a ‘state of complete denial’ nearly five years after the Paris agreement.Thunberg, 17, whose solo school strike in 2018 snowballed into a global youth movement, spoke out ahead of a UN event at which national leaders have been asked to increase their pledges on emissions cuts.In a video shared exclusively with the Guardian, she calls on leaders to account for failing to reverse rising carbon emissions, but concluded: ‘There is hope … we are the hope – we, the people’

Eminent physiologist who escaped the Nazis and demonstrated how the heartbeat is controlledIn 1955 the physiologist Otto Hutter, who has died aged 96, was studying the pacemaker cells to be found in the heart. These produce the electrical impulses that fire the muscle’s contractions. At the time it was not clear why these electrical impulses should fluctuate, but in a set of extraordinary photographs Hutter and his colleague Wolfgang Trautwein captured the trace from the pacemaker cells showing what happened when different nerves in the body were stimulated.The photographs, which became a standard feature in medical textbooks, showed that when the vagus nerve, running from the brain stem to the colon, was stimulated, the waves of electrical activity in the pacemaker cells died down, and when the sympathetic nerves, responding to stress, were activated, they increased. Continue reading...

Project hopes to influence policymakers at Cop26 UN climate change conference in GlasgowPeople around the world will have a chance to discuss responses to the climate crisis in a planned global citizens’ assembly to inform UN talks in Glasgow in 2021, organisers said on Thursday.The project aims to build on similar initiatives in individual countries such as Ireland, France and Canada, where citizens’ assemblies have given politicians a steer by generating ambitious proposals on divisive issues. Continue reading...

Vaccine development has gotten the lion’s share of funding - leaving important therapeutic trials ignored and underfundedIn the midst of a Covid-19 pandemic that has already taken the lives of more than 283,000 Americans, talks of a Covid-19 vaccine dominate the pandemic news cycle. Particularly with new announcements of multiple vaccine candidates with promising clinical trial success, there is a growing sense of hope. But as we face rising case counts and a likely second wave, it is important to remember that there are therapeutic drugs which – unlike the vaccines – can help Covid patients now.The current vaccine-centric mindset is not without its benefits. The rush to expedite a Covid-19 vaccine has brought about unprecedented support from public and private industries alike. The federal government has pledged billions of dollars in pharmaceutical development aid along with provisional holds on current regulatory measures to fast-track prospective vaccines. Private and publicly-owned entities have come together in a massive demonstration of the scientific process to quickly evaluate multiple vaccine candidates. Continue reading...

Deals struck by wealthy nations to secure treatments could leave the world’s poorest people unvaccinated without urgent action

Exclusive: Life expectancy has regressed to 2010 levels, say scientists, with poor hardest hit

Former lawyer Zhang Zhan was on hunger strike after her arrest for ‘picking quarrels’A citizen journalist detained for more than six months after reporting on the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak has had a feeding tube forcibly inserted and her arms restrained to stop her pulling it out, her lawyer has claimed.Zhang Zhan, a 37-year-old former lawyer, has been on a hunger strike at a detention facility near Shanghai. Zhang was arrested in May and accused of “picking quarrels and stirring up trouble”, an accusation frequently used against critics and activists inside China, after reporting on social media and streaming accounts. Last month she was formally indicted on charges of spreading false information. Continue reading...

As we head into the pandemic’s winter months, Natalie Grover speaks to Prof Kavita Vedhara about the continued impact of Covid-19-related stress on long-term mental health and how this might affect our ability to fight off infection Continue reading...

SpaceX’s Starship SN8 rocket has exploded during touchdown after a six-and-a-half-minute test flight. The flight was the highest yet for the rocket ship Elon Musk hopes will ferry humans to Mars, with the prototype shooting for an altitude of eight miles. The fiery landing occurred when low fuel tank pressure caused the ship to descend too quickly in the final stages

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Fifth-century discovery suggests break with Rome did not cause steep decline in living standards for all

Newly discovered strategy in Asian bees repels killer hornets that can massacre whole hivesAsian honey bees paste pellets of animal poo on to their nests to repel attacks by giant killer hornets, scientists have revealed.The attacks can involve dozens of the heavily armoured hornets and lead to the “mass slaughter” of thousands of bees, the researchers said, after which the hornets carry off the bee larvae to feed their own offspring. But in a continuing evolutionary arms race, the bees have developed defence mechanisms such as hissing at them or mobbing the hornets to suffocate them. Continue reading...

Vaccine developed in Oxford criticised by FDA with efficacy rates and trials delaying official take-up

Exclusive: UK regulators give go-ahead for drug to be trialled ahead of possible treatment alongside psychotherapyUK regulators have given the go-ahead for the first clinical trial of the use of the psychedelic drug dimethyltriptamine (DMT) to treat depression.The trial will initially give the drug – known as the “spirit molecule” for the powerful hallucinogenic trips it induces – to healthy individuals, but it is expected to be followed by a second trial in patients with depression, where DMT will be given alongside psychotherapy. Continue reading...

Hoard of 64 coins, worth equivalent of £14,000 today, found by family weeding at New Forest homeAn important hoard of Tudor coins – some of which shine light on the marriage history of Henry VIII – has been found by a somewhat startled family weeding their garden.The British Museum revealed details on Wednesday of discoveries registered to its Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS), the majority of which are made by the nation’s army of metal-detecting enthusiasts. Continue reading...

First results released from trial of Sinopharm shot involving 31,000 people

Scientist’s occult investigations into the Great Pyramid of Egypt, dating from the 1680s, are believed to have been burned when his dog Diamond upset a candleA collection of unpublished, burnt notes by Isaac Newton, in which the scientist attempts to unlock secret codes he believed were hidden in the measurements of the Great Pyramid of Egypt, have sold at auction for £378,000.The “exceptionally rare” set of papers, which date to the 1680s, were almost destroyed by Newton’s dog Diamond, who, legend has it, jumped on a table and upset a candle, setting them on fire. Scorched as they are, they reveal Newton’s fascination for alchemy, showing the scientist comparing the external dimensions of the pyramid, the lengths of its tunnels, heights of its chambers and sizes of its bricks, as he attempts to prove they had all been calculated from a common unit of measurement: the royal cubit. Continue reading...

The director is returning to TV after 50 years, with a drama about two androids raising humans on a far planet. He talks about working through lockdown, doing big adverts for China – and living on £75 a weekThe lead character in Raised By Wolves is Mother, an android tasked with bringing up a young human family on a faraway planet. But things soon go wrong. Mother starts wildly overreacting to the tiniest provocation, then murders her partner. Before long, she’s screaming at visitors with such fury that their heads actually explode. Which raises the question: has its writer’s mum seen it yet?“Yeah, she has,” says Aaron Guzikowski hesitantly. Does she like it? “She was rendered speechless by it. I still don’t know. She hasn’t given me a satisfactory review yet.” What Guzikowski does have, though, is a young family, which is how he came up with the idea for the series. “I was thinking a lot about my children and technology,” he says. “And I started thinking about raising kids with artificial intelligence – and what that might be like. I have three young sons.” Continue reading...

Billions unlikely to get jabs as rich countries secure 53% of most promising vaccines

Billionaire, 49, confirms move to Wall Street Journal and says he plans to focus on new Tesla plant and SpaceX ventureElon Musk said on Tuesday he had relocated to Texas from California, where he plans to focus more on the new Tesla plant and his SpaceX venture.Related: Joe Biden pledges to distribute 100m vaccine shots in first 100 days of presidency – live Continue reading...

Protecting patients from Covid-19 is a wonderful step forward. But we cannot yet afford to relax our guard

Dr Richard Lawson argues for the need to prioritise frontline workers, Dr Hugh Adler praises clinical trial volunteers, and Heidi Chow says patents must be suspended so all countries can access the Covid vaccine“NHS staff no longer top priority to receive coronavirus vaccine” (Report, 3 December). This is because the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) advises that the first priority should be prevention of mortality, and to do this they have opted for immediate protection of very vulnerable, elderly people in care homes, rather than general prevention of mortality by using the vaccine to reduce the reproduction rate (R-number) of the virus.JCVI did model the use of the vaccine to interrupt transmission of the virus in society, but decided this would only take place when a majority of the general population had been vaccinated, which would take many months to come about. It appears that they did not model giving the vaccine to potential super-spreaders, to people who encounter scores or even hundreds of other people during the course of their working day – people like doctors, nurses and other healthcare workers, teachers, police officers, shop workers, delivery drivers and many other groups who keep the real economy running. The key point is that these workers are at increased risk both of contracting and transmitting the disease. Continue reading...

American pilot who was the first person to fly faster than the speed of soundChuck Yeager, who has died aged 97, stands alongside the Wright Brothers and Charles Lindbergh in the history of American aviation. In 1947 Yeager was the first person to break the sound barrier; and, in hitting Mach 1, he set the US on a path that was to lead to Neil Armstrong’s 1969 moon landing.On the evening of Sunday 12 October 1947, Yeager, a 24-year-old US air force test pilot based at Muroc army air field in California, dined with his wife, Glennis, at Pancho’s bar and restaurant in the Mojave desert. Then the couple went horse-riding, but it was a moonless night and, racing against his wife, Yeager hit a gate, knocked himself out, and cracked two ribs. The pain took his breath away. Continue reading...

Are the robots going to kills us? Film-maker Tonje Hessen Schei speaks to a range of interviewees including Elon Musk’s computer scientist in an eye-opening, anxiety-inducing filmWhat will happen when robots become smarter than humans – will they want to kill us? No, according to the computer scientist in charge of Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence research company OpenAI. His name is Ilya Sutskever and he believes that super intelligent machines won’t hate us, but they will prioritise their own survival. Think about the way we treat animals. We’re fond of them but we don’t ask their permission to build a road; it’ll be like that. His analogy is an extraordinary moment in this doom-laden documentary about the future of AI from Norwegian film-maker Tonje Hessen Schei – an eye-opening film if your anxiety levels are up to it.Another interviewee jokes that AI is being developed by a few companies and a handful of governments for three purposes – “killing, spying and brainwashing” and the film then briskly rattles through the worst-case scenarios facing human civilisation. I suspect nothing here will be a bombshell to anyone who is up to speed on surveillance society in China, autonomous weapons, bias in policing algorithms, the effects of living in online echo chambers, big data and the Cambridge Analytica scandal. But iHuman helpfully gathers all the strands together into one apocalyptic package, detailing the many ways in which technology is a risk to life as we know it. Continue reading...

Comments raise hopes that the vaccine could soon be available to Americans aged 16 and aboveUS Food and Drug Administration (FDA) staff said on Tuesday that data on Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine was in line with its guidance on emergency use authorization, raising hopes it could soon be available to Americans aged 16 and above.Related: Biden picks defense secretary as Trump hosts vaccine summit – live Continue reading...

North Yorkshire’s two national parks, the Yorkshire Dales and North York Moors, have been named international dark sky reserves after a five-year campaign for designation, forming the largest dark sky area in the UK Continue reading...

More than a million of you read our article calling for volunteers to take part in research into why some gamers invert their controls. The response was incredibleIt is fair to say that no one was anticipating this. When the Guardian ran my article on the Visual Perception and Attention Lab at Brunel University London and how it planned to investigate why some gamers invert their controls, I expected a modicum of interest among seasoned readers of the Games section. When I placed an appeal at the end of the article asking for volunteers to take part in a series of virtual research experiments, I thought we’d maybe get a few dozen responses. That’s not what happened. At the time of writing this, more than 1,250,000 have read the article.“The moment the article went live, our phone notifications went crazy,” says Dr Jennifer Corbett who is leading the study with her colleague Dr Jaap Munneke. “In less than a few hours, we had more than 100 participants, and by the end of the day, more than 500. We have more than 1,000 volunteers now and we’re so grateful.” According to Corbett, the lab currently has the resources to test around 100 participants in the first exploratory study, but they are working on ways to support follow-up studies so that every eligible volunteer can be tested. “There are so many questions we can pursue – we just need to find the time and money to keep going!” Continue reading...

Analysis: Funding and high public interest contributed to slashing of research and approval time

From black holes to consciousness, Nobel-winner Roger Penrose shows the beauty of theory. But it needs more support• Dr Thomas Fink is the director of the London Institute for Mathematical Sciences

The US aviation legend was a fighter ace in the second world war, before becoming the first man to break the sound barrier, training test pilots, fighting in the Vietnam war and becoming immortalised in The Right Stuff

The alarming pattern of second waves of Covid-19 infection across the world, and the promise of vaccines on the horizon, has once again brought public health messaging into focus. So what has the pandemic taught us about what makes a successful programme? The Guardian’s health editor, Sarah Boseley, speaks to Prof Linda Bauld about how best to encourage people to change their behaviour in order to mitigate the spread of disease Continue reading...

Lead author of controversial paper making the claims says it has been ‘through rigorous peer review’A study that found US school closures during the Covid-19 pandemic cut the life expectancy of each child in primary school by an average of three months contains “critically flawed assumptions” and “clear mistakes in study design”, according to a rebuttal led by an Australian epidemiologist.The study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association on 12 November, was widely shared on social media including by scientists, doctors and policymakers and was covered in dozens of news stories. Continue reading...

Pilot planned for January will give subjects a shot of both Oxford/AstraZeneca and Pfizer/BioNTech versions

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Two compounds in fresh faeces inhibit cold sensation, Chinese researchers sayGiant pandas have been seen smearing themselves with horse manure in the wild, and the sweet smell of scat isn’t the only reason – it appears the manure helps them tolerate low temperatures, according to a study.Unlike insects that make a beeline for faeces, digging for olfactory cues to locate food, attraction to excrement across mammal species is rare. But researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences observed that a giant panda subspecies in China’s Qinling Mountains tended to seek out and sniff fresh horse manure and then roll over it. Continue reading...

UK study finds rapid tests coupled with tough quarantine rules helped bring rate down

Protein analysis provides digital picture of immune response and mortality risk, say scientists