Science | The Guardian

LSE finds country’s sex-segregated distancing rules may have reproduced inequalities and injustices for trans peopleEach day when Pau González wakes and looks at his phone, he feels as if he is running a call centre. As the founder of the activist group Hombres Trans Panama, he has been inundated by members of the transgender community seeking advice on how to navigate Panama’s sex-segregated social distancing laws. Some callers have been cautioned or abused by police. Others report feeling suicidal and scared to go out.In April, Panama announced one of the most aggressive Covid-19 policies in Latin America – dictated which days its citizens could go out according to their sex as stated on their national identification cards. Continue reading...

Adalimumab could counter hyper-inflammation seen in severe coronavirus cases

Bill passes to Lords after MPs vote 340-256 in favour; UK hits record daily number of new Covid cases

Initiative aims to ensure low-income countries are not frozen out by rich nations

Only one in five Americans with right-wing outlook said they had a lot of trust in scientistsPeople in the US are more sharply divided along political lines when it comes to science and environmental issues than in other parts of the world, new research shows.Globally, people who see themselves on the left side of politics are more likely to be concerned about the environment than those who see themselves as being on the right or in the centre ground. Continue reading...

My friend Paul McDonald, who has died aged 74, was a physicist and expert in cryogenics whose work advanced a variety of technologies, including satellite tracking, superconducting magnets and cryostat thermometers. He was also a keen supporter of Cruisewatch, the protest group that tracked cruise missile convoys at Greenham Common, Berkshire, in the 1980s.Born in Salford, Paul was the eldest son of Frank McDonald, a PoW survivor of the Burma Railway, and Elsie (nee Rosser), who had nursed Frank back to life in the Tropical Medicine hospital, Liverpool. Continue reading...

Many nations lack access to affordable testing. Now 120m antigen tests will help tackle this dangerous inequality

PM says young people need new skills to compete as Covid-19 has accelerated changes in economy

Stricter measures will come into force in areas of the region from midnight on Wednesday

From Rosie the Robot in the 1960s animated sitcom The Jetsons to Siri and Alexa today, technologies that perform the roles of housekeeper and secretary are often presented as female. What does the gendering of these machines say about our expectations of who should be doing this kind of work? In the first of two episodes exploring the world of fembots and female AI assistants, the Guardian’s UK technology editor, Alex Hern, examines whether smart assistants are reinforcing harmful gender stereotypes Continue reading...

Wages should rise to make jobs more attractive to UK staff, say government advisersThe end of freedom of movement after Brexit will increase pressure on the social care sector in the midst of a pandemic unless ministers make jobs more attractive to UK workers by increasing salaries, government advisers have said.The migration advisory committee (Mac) warned of the “stark consequences” of low wages in social care with most frontline roles ineligible for the post-Brexit skilled worker immigration route or on the official list for job shortages in the UK. Continue reading...

More than 170 teams of researchers are racing to develop a safe and effective vaccine. Here is their progressResearchers around the world are racing to develop a vaccine against Covid-19, with more than 170 candidate vaccines now tracked by the World Health Organization (WHO). Continue reading...

Rival scientists divided over lockdowns may make a good story – but is it accurate?

We don’t know yet how many of the ongoing symptoms could translate to chronic ill health in the future, and that’s worryingAs Covid-19 infection numbers show a welcome downward trend in Melbourne and the city’s residents look forward to some easing of restrictions, it’s time to consider the longer-term health consequences of the pandemic.More than 27,000 Australians – including some 20,000 Victorians – have been infected with the virus, with almost 900 deaths to date. Many countries are now in the grip of a second wave as the pandemic continues to take a toll on millions of lives around the globe – not only in terms of death, but also in the lingering, debilitating symptoms arising from severe, damaging inflammation. Continue reading...

Italian scientists provide further evidence of underground lake and smaller bodies of water in studyA network of salty ponds may be gurgling beneath Mars’ south pole alongside a large underground lake, raising the prospect of tiny, swimming Martian life.Italian scientists reported their findings Monday, two years after identifying what they believed to be a large buried lake. They widened their coverage area by a couple hundred miles, using even more data from a radar sounder on the European Space Agency’s Mars Express orbiter. Continue reading...

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Exclusive: Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd joins senior legal figures in calling for MPs to examine emergency legislation

Global initiative will supply 120m rapid antigen tests to low- and middle-income countries

Substance has had promising results in ferrets, with hopes it may reduce transmission

Only two out of 400 Covid images on British Association of Dermatologists’ website feature black or brown skin

Fever, runny nose, headache? Lost your sense of taste or smell? Your guide to differentiating between the three illnesses

Green campaigners call for clarity on tree-planting and on interim subsidy system

A new treatment could help children with achondroplasia, the most common form of dwarfism, grow taller and avoid health problems in later life. But there are concerns about whether this is ethical

This blog is now closed. Follow the latest below:Coronavirus updates – live12.16am BSTWe’ve launched a new blog at the link below – head there for the latest:Related: Coronavirus live news: global deaths near 1m as India poised to pass 6m cases11.50pm BSTHello, Helen Sullivan joining you now. I’ll be bringing you the latest from around the world for the next few hours.Get in touch on Twitter @helenrsullivan. Continue reading...

The closest full moon to the equinox is known as the Harvest Moon as its extra light allowed farmers to work late into the evening to gather the cropsFor those of us in the northern hemisphere, it is the week of the Harvest Moon. This is defined as the full moon nearest to the autumnal equinox, which took place last week on 22 September. In the southern hemisphere, the Harvest Moon takes place in March or April, close to the March equinox.This week the full moon takes place on 1 October 22:05 BST, but because the moon rises soon after sunset on several days close to the equinox, it often seems as if a full moon appears on a number of consecutive days. According to tradition, this extra illumination made it easier for farmers to gather in their crops. Continue reading...

Lack of clear rules about certification standards may be allowing manufacturers to sell tests based on poor or dodgy data

Despite now having evidence that test and trace is the only way to fight the virus, the UK has lost control at the crucial moment

What is it about islands which so fascinates, and soothes after time spent in cities?The love of islands is a widespread affliction – why else are we still reading Robinson Crusoe after 300 years? Why Treasure Island? Why after 75 years and over 2,000 episodes are we still listening to Desert Island Discs? From the blessed isles of Tír na nÓg and Thomas More’s Utopia to the island-dramas of CS Lewis and Enid Blyton, it seems we can’t get enough of them.As a boy in my local library in Fife, I'd sit on scratchy carpet tiles and open an immense atlas Continue reading...

More than 170 teams of researchers are racing to develop a safe and effective vaccine. Here is their progressResearchers around the world are racing to develop a vaccine against Covid-19, with more than 170 candidate vaccines now tracked by the World Health Organization (WHO). Continue reading...

The right fails to recognise that the Swedes’ real virtue in this pandemic is their social cohesionSweden is to the 21st-century right what the Soviet Union was to the 20th-century left. Conservatives have transformed it into a Tory Disneyland where every dream comes true. On the shores of the Baltic lies a country that has no need to curtail civil liberties and wreck the economy to curb Covid-19. “I have a dream, a fantasy,” sang Abba. “To help me through reality.” For much of the right, that fantasy is called Sweden.Let the leader of the Conservative backbenchers stand for the Tory press and innumerable ideologues inside and outside Westminster. Sir Graham Brady ruined a perfectly good argument that parliament must have the power to scrutinise Johnson’s emergency decrees by announcing that there was no emergency. We could look to a country that merely had a ban on gatherings of more than 50, restrictions on visiting care homes, a shift to table-only service in bars and see that “Sweden today is in a better place than the United Kingdom”. Or as the Sun explained on Thursday as Boris Johnson met Anders Tegnell, the Swedish public health “mastermind”, a do-little strategy has spared Sweden a second wave of Covid-19 infections. Continue reading...

Studies show people living in the Arctic Circle are armed with a mindset that helps combat the long ‘polar night’. It might come in handy for us all…

Scientists estimate we will face a health emergency at least once every five years. Our new initiative seeks a better response

Proposed centre with up to 250 jobs is linked to EU Copernicus satellite programmeThe UK is at risk of losing the contract for the expansion of a flagship European weather research centre based in Reading because of Brexit.The European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) has been based in Berkshire for the last 45 years but its future EU-funded activities are now the subject of an international battle. Continue reading...

Jenny Mikakos quits in wake of inquiry into hotel quarantine; Madrid braces for lockdown as Spain reaches 716,481 total infections; surge in cases in Athens

Lessons from other parts of the world show we should lock down early, rely on evidence – and get used to wearing masks

Coronavirus cases in France jump to record high as Spanish government calls for Madrid lockdown

Art gives way to science in yet another sport. But won’t we all lose out when the magic is gone?Bryson DeChambeau sounds like a character from a novel, one perhaps set on the Côte d’Azur in the 1930s, a raffish figure with a taste for the high life. He is, in fact, a 27-year-old golfer from California, and the only high life that interests him is the flight of a golf ball, which when hit by Mr DeChambeau goes an outrageous distance. Nicknamed “the scientist” for his single-minded application of new ideas about golf club design and swing mechanics – his aim is to do for golf what his hero Einstein did for relativity. He has married theory with sheer power, adding 40lb in muscle weight in the past six months to maximise the length of his driving and overwhelm golf courses, even one as fearsome as Winged Foot in New York, where he was the runaway winner of the US Open.Every so often someone comes along who revolutionises a sport. Donald Bradman did it in cricket in the 1930s with batting so perfect the English bowlers had to resort to bodyline – bouncers directed at his head – to curb him. Mr DeChambeau may have an even bigger impact on golf than “the Don” had on cricket, with pundits saying it will never be the same again – the authorities are already discussing changing the composition of the ball to reduce the distance he can hit it. His bomb and gouge approach is rendering great old courses impotent, offending golfing purists who dislike his power game, his ugly, all-action swing, the fact he doesn’t much care whether he hits the fairway or not – distance, not accuracy, is the key – and his brash persona. He annoyed fellow pros at a tournament in July when he tried to have his ball moved under the “dangerous animal” rule because he’d seen a red ant and thought he was close to an anthill. They also criticise his slow, deliberate way of playing. “I’m definitely changing the way people think about the game,” says Mr DeChambeau. Continue reading...

Researchers around the world are training canines to sniff out the virus – could they be deployed for mass testing?

Researchers will test length of time virus stays infectious in different climatic conditions

Analysis suggests too little attention is paid to gender disparities in medical trials

Side-effects of bexarotene rule out use but trial suggests other drugs may halt multiple sclerosisDoctors believe they are closer to a treatment for multiple sclerosis after discovering a drug that repairs the coatings around nerves that are damaged by the disease.A clinical trial of the cancer drug bexarotene showed that it repaired the protective myelin sheaths that MS destroys. The loss of myelin causes a range of neurological problems including balance, vision and muscle disorders, and ultimately, disability. Continue reading...

More than 170 teams of researchers are racing to develop a safe and effective vaccine. Here is their progressResearchers around the world are racing to develop a vaccine against Covid-19, with more than 170 candidate vaccines now tracked by the World Health Organization (WHO). Continue reading...

The prime minister’s inadequate new measures are a product of his reckless nature. They endanger businesses – and lives

Exclusive: significant proportion of severely ill people have inborn errors, study finds

Boris Johnson’s Churchillian language does not impress Richard Teverson, while Katherine Arnott dismisses the prime minister’s appeal to people’s common sense. Plus letters from Patrick Cosgrove and David Boyd HaycockI, like so many others, am slack-jawed at the incompetence of this government’s response to Covid. Our death rate is terrible and the continued mixed messages from “go to work as you are less likely to be sacked if you are in the office/don’t go to work” and “eat out to help out/don’t eat out, certainly not after 10pm” have exhausted the public and make compliance more unlikely.And now Boris Johnson insinuates that we have a worse death rate than many countries in Europe because we are “freedom loving” (Follow new Covid restrictions, or risk a second lockdown, Johnson warns, 22 September). I would be so grateful if he could stop this faux Churchillian tub-thumping with pernicious Brexit undertones, hinting that we are better than all of Europe because we love freedom more (the inference being that that is why we have voted to leave all those rule adherents behind). Let’s see how “freedom loving” the prime minister thinks we all are when there are queues of 7,000 trucks in Kent in January as Michael Gove now warns. Continue reading...

Experts believe virus is probably becoming more contagious but US study did not find mutations made it more lethalThe Covid-19 virus is continuing to mutate throughout the course of the pandemic, with experts believing it is probably becoming more contagious, as coronavirus cases in the US have started to rise once again, according to new research.The new US study analyzed 5,000 genetic sequences of the virus, which has continued to mutate as it has spread through the population. The study did not find that mutations of the virus have made it more lethal or changed its effects, even as it may be becoming easier to catch, according to a report in the Washington Post, which noted that public health experts acknowledge all viruses have mutations, most of which are insignificant. Continue reading...

Researchers running Helsinki pilot scheme say dogs can identify virus in seconds

Nine months in, and with over 30 million people having been infected with Covid-19, we now know some of the main factors that put people at higher risk of a severe case of the disease, such as age and having other health problems. But there is still a lot to learn about why some people, and not others, become very ill from catching Sars-CoV-2. Nicola Davis takes a look at the researchers attempting to rapidly work out how to predict who is going to get very sick Continue reading...

Researchers hope to begin world’s first human challenge trials at east London quarantine facility in January

Survey of 70,000 people finds only 49% are ‘very likely’ to get vaccine once one is available