My father, John Mitchell, who has died aged 75, was the founder of Carbohydrate Polymers, a scientific journal which grew from humble roots to become one of the publisher Elsevier’s lead journals. John recognised the need for this much-needed outlet for research into polysaccharide science – the branch of food technology focused on the carbohydrates found most often in plants, algae and micro-organisms
Stress due to racism can wear and tear on the body – literally ‘getting under the skin’ to affect African Americans’ healthI’m part of a research team that has been following more than 800 Black American families for almost 25 years. We found that people who had reported experiencing high levels of racial discrimination when they were young teenagers had significantly higher levels of depression in their 20s than those who hadn’t. This elevated depression, in turn, showed up in their blood samples, which revealed accelerated ageing on a cellular level.Related: 'To be black or brown is to see your body suffer' | Angela Saini Continue reading...
A slender, waning crescent moon will slide past the brilliant jewel of Venus in the pre-dawn skyGetting up before dawn brings a reward this week. Between 11 and 13 December, a slender, waning crescent moon will slide past the brilliant jewel of Venus in the pre-dawn sky. The chart shows the view looking south-east from London on 12 December at 07:00 GMT. Continue reading...
No one would argue that running isn’t good for you, but do we really have to pretend to like it, too?For the 126th time this year, I turn the corner by the rowing club and begin the climb towards Stamford Hill. I have half a kilometre to go. Mist has settled on the river to my left, where waterfowls, Egyptian geese and a single, stately heron have gathered by some rushes in a dazzlingly pretty scene for Haringey in late November. They likely make some pleasant noises, but only the fortunes of HMS Royal Oak reach my ears, as my earphones sizzle with its battle against four French frigates near the Bight of Benin in the War of 1812. I am trying to enjoy myself.Last November, with the cooperation of this magazine (ie they paid me), I defied my natural inclinations and did a radical diet and exercise overhaul. The experience produced not just an eminently readable lifestyle piece, but a substantial improvement in my general fitness. And then, shortly before Christmas, it ended, as did my adherence to its stipulations. I jettisoned the protein shakes and the thrice-weekly workouts, and gamely resumed my close personal relationship with butter, sugar, alcohol and grease. I discarded all the measures that had given me these results bar one – running. Continue reading...
Director of Wellcome Trust, speaking on Desert Island Discs, says he believes everyone should get a second chance in educationThe director of the Wellcome Trust has spent the last nine months under intense pressure, advising government ministers on Covid-19 as a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage). Yet Sir Jeremy Farrar has revealed that his most frequent nightmare has been about sitting his A-levels more than 40 years ago.“I used to wake up thinking, ‘Have I got to do my bloody A-levels again?’ For years, and it’s only in the last year or two I’ve got over that actually. It’s amazing, the scars.” Continue reading...
When Covid-19 struck, immunologists hit the ground running, and haven’t stopped since. But the effort paid off, writes a scientist who worked on the Oxford clinical trials
Successful docking will be followed by orbiter separating and returning lunar material to EarthA Chinese probe carrying samples from the lunar surface has successfully docked with a spacecraft orbiting the moon, in another space first for the nation, state media reported.The manoeuvre on Sunday was part of the ambitious Chang’e-5 mission – named after a mythical Chinese Moon goddess – to bring back the first lunar samples in four decades. Continue reading...
A capsule released by Japan’s Hayabusa2 spacecraft containing pristine asteroid fragments briefly turned into a fireball as it returned to the Earth’s atmosphere, before landing in the South Australian outback In the early hours of Sunday. For the past six years, Japan’s Hayabusa2 spacecraft has conducted a remarkable 5.2bn km mission to extract the first subsurface samples from the asteroid Ryugu, which scientists hope will shed light on the origins of life Continue reading...
by Rebecca Ratcliffe (now), Jedidajah Otte ,Aamna Moh on (#5B8FP)
WHO says virus spreading fast despite vaccine progress; French infections rise to 2.29m; Brazil reports 627 new deaths. This blog is now closed. Follow our new global coronavirus blog here
Released capsule entered atmosphere at 5.30pm GMT on Saturday before landing safelyA capsule containing pristine asteroid fragments that may unlock secrets about the formation of the universe has been recovered in the South Australian outback after landing safely back to Earth on Sunday.For the past six years, Japan’s Hayabusa2 spacecraft has conducted a remarkable 5.2bn km mission to extract the first-ever sub-surface samples from the asteroid Ryugu, which scientists hope will shed light on the origins of life. Continue reading...
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...
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...
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...
by Jessica Murray (now) and Aamna Mohdin (earlier) on (#5B7FD)
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
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...
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...
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...
by Presented by Chris Watson and produced by David Wa on (#5B5ME)
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...
by Owen Bowcott Legal affairs correspondent on (#5B4ZB)
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...