Exclusive: Hancock has backed transfer of nearly £500m to Randox during pandemic

An asteroid hidden behind Mars has been found to closely resemble our moon. Is it a fragment that broke off billions of years ago?

Study of Mount Pleasant site suggests it was constructed over decades, not centuriesAn intense burst of building work took place in Britain at the end of the neolithic period, possibly as a “final hurrah” by stone-age man and woman as they sensed the approach of fundamental change, research on a prehistoric monument in Dorset has suggested.A study of the Mount Pleasant “mega henge”, a sprawling site near Dorchester, has found it was not constructed over centuries as had previously been thought but in as little as 35 years. Continue reading...

Prof Andrew Pollard tells MPs of need for careful scrutiny of clinical trial results

The team behind a new documentary full of incredible footage of the secret life of mushrooms explain how fungi could help us stave off future pandemicsWatching the anemone stinkhorn sprout from the soil is a wondrous – and terrifying – thing. Emerging from a pod that looks like a truffle, the mushroom unfurls half a dozen arms, all a throbbing scarlet, like a collection of tongues. Each of these is forked and, across their stems, a series of black sticky lumps pop up like rotting barbecue. It’s supposed to smell something awful too.The uncanny blooming of the Aseroe rubra is one of many transfixing moments in Fantastic Fungi, a crowdfunded US documentary made by Louie Schwartzberg, an affable old hippie and pioneer of time-lapse photography. It stars Paul Stamets, a trailblazer in the popularisation of mycology, the study of fungi, and bursts with footage revealing the secret life of mushrooms. It also seeks to usher the viewer into a seductive world where fungi are the answer to some of mankind’s biggest questions. Continue reading...

Research offers insights into marsupial’s rearguard defences and ‘brutal’ mating ritualsAustralia is known for its strange and deadly wildlife, with plenty of attention given to venomous snakes and bird-eating spiders. But it seems one terrifying aspect of outback fauna has been thoroughly ignored: the wombat’s deadly bum.The rump of the wombat is hard as rock, used for defence, burrowing, bonding, mating and possibly violently crushing the skulls of its enemies against the roof of its burrow. Although the jury is still out on that one. Continue reading...

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Human activities are increasing wind-blown dust, depleting crucial freshwater supplyHimalayan snow and ice is diminishing fast. Global heating is certainly playing a significant role, but now a recent study in Nature Climate Change reveals that wind-blown dust is worsening the melting effect.Winter snowfall and spring snowmelt provide more than half of the annual freshwater needs of around 700 million people in south Asia, but over the last 30 years the overall snow mass on the high mountains of Asia, which include the Himalayas, the Hindu Kush and the Karakoram, has decreased. Continue reading...

Researchers say cortisol sampling technique could transform diagnostics for people with depression

England’s chief medical officer says proposal is dangerously flawed and impractical

Wealthy countries already have agreements for 3.73bn doses, with another 5bn under negotiation, study finds

Chris Whitty says he expects lockdown will bring R below 1 and measures could be eased after 2 December. This liveblog is closed - for updates, follow the global liveblog

Deborah Birx says ‘we are entering the most concerning and most deadly phase’ as Trump claims US is ‘rounding the corner’White House scientific adviser Dr Deborah Birx warned the United States is entering a new “deadly phase” of the coronavirus pandemic, and urged an “aggressive” approach to containing its spread.Birx gave the warning in a written memo delivered to top administration officials Monday. It is a direct contradiction of one of Donald Trump’s central, and false, closing campaign messages – that the US is “rounding the corner” on the pandemic. Continue reading...

Content added to classes will say the state ‘always put the life and safety of its people first’

With any future Covid-19 vaccine requiring its manufacturing process to be signed off as part of its regulatory approval for use on the general population, Madeleine Finlay talks to Dr Stephen Morris from the Future Vaccine Manufacturing Research Hub about how vaccines are made at the volume and speed required for a mass vaccination programme Continue reading...

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Up to 500,000 people in city will be tested in bid to measure feasibility of mass population screening

Government sources say information was already public and wrongly labelled ‘official sensitive’Labour has asked the cabinet secretary to “undertake an urgent and swift investigation” into the vaccines taskforce chief after it was claimed she showed US financiers “official sensitive” government documents at a $200-a-head conference last week.Kate Bingham, the head of Britain’s vaccine taskforce, showed a detailed list of vaccines which the UK government is closely monitoring to a “premier webinar and networking event” for women in private equity hosted by a Massachusetts company, the Sunday Times claimed. Continue reading...

Prime minister tells MPs he makes ‘no apology’ for trying to avoid a nationwide lockdown

The solutions to today’s lexical perplexitiesEarlier today I set you three conundrums taken from my new book, the Language Lover’s Puzzle Book. The first problem was about deciphering hieroglyphics, the second about a coding system for the colour blind, and the third about counting in Danish. Below, I repeat the questions and provide the answers.1. Champers for Champollion Continue reading...

PM was presented with some alarming data – with one model forecasting up to 4,000 Covid deaths a day next month

Cardiologist whose large-scale trials of emergency treatment for heart attack patients changed clinical practiceUntil the late 1980s, doctors had little to offer patients who had suffered from heart attacks. Half of them died within two hours. The remainder faced the risk of heart failure, further heart attacks and strokes, with similarly bleak outlooks. Combining scientific curiosity, intellectual rigour and clinical experience, Peter Sleight teamed up with statisticians and epidemiologists to conduct large-scale trials showing that speedy treatment with aspirin and other readily available drugs could significantly cut this toll of death and disease. Millions of patients worldwide have since gained years of healthy life thanks to those studies.Sleight, who has died aged 91, brought to these international collaborations his clinical credibility as Field-Marshal Alexander professor of cardiology at Oxford University (1973-94) and his openness to learning from the expertise of others. Continue reading...

No wonder track and trace failed. Even before the Covid pandemic, the system was in turmoil and life expectancy had stalled

Country aims to be one of first to test entire population of 5.4 million people for virus

The ISS this week celebrates 20 years of taking on board its first guests – but the accommodation is not exactly five starThis week marks 20 years since the first residents arrived on the International Space Station (ISS). The orbiting habitat has been continuously occupied ever since.Twenty straight years of life in space makes the ISS the ideal “natural laboratory” to understand how societies function beyond Earth. Continue reading...

Study suggests white blood cell levels higher in people who had symptoms

Labour leader says chancellor Rishi Sunak’s ‘name is all over’ decision not to act earlier

Strategies for exiting spring lockdowns did not work, and goodwill leached away, allowing infection rates to riseLast week Europe registered 1.5m new cases of Covid-19 – a record – making it once again the centre of the pandemic. The UK is not exempt, and England will enter a new lockdown from Thursday 5 November. From the outside, it might seem the continent is in the grip of a second wave that is ramping rapidly towards its peak. But it is not one wave, it’s many local waves, and that is crucial in understanding how to rein it in and prevent the same thing happening again.Though there is some tentative evidence that the virus itself has undergone a change since the summer, there is none to suggest that this change has affected either the transmissibility or the severity of the disease. Nor can the change explain the synchronous surges in all parts of the continent. Continue reading...

Scientist says delay in imposing tougher restrictions likely to have cost thousands of lives

Up to the task? Decipher yourself!Today you will be asked to replicate the most famous decipherment in history, deduce the rules of a coding system for colourblind people and count to 100 in Danish. (The puzzles are excerpted from my new book, The Language Lover’s Puzzle Book, which features conundrums involving ancient languages, modern languages, invented languages and scientific languages.)1. Champers for Champollion Continue reading...

PM promised public could get results in ‘10 to 15 minutes’ but tests are designed for lab staff

Dr Margaret Harris said ‘high price’ of lockdowns must buy time to improve test and trace

The constellation, one of the 12 zodiacal patterns, is between Ursa Major and Orion in the northern hemisphereThe waning gibbous moon this week will guide you to the heart of the constellation Gemini, the twins.In the northern hemisphere, Gemini sits between the well-known constellations of Ursa Major, the great bear, to the north and Orion, the hunter, to the south. Sandwiched between these two obvious star patterns, Gemini can be easy to overlook. Continue reading...

Opposition of Sunak melted away during quad meeting and PM sided with Gove and Hancock

Russian physicist whose campaigning for human rights in the Soviet Union led to imprisonment and exile to the USThe outstanding Russian physicist Yuri Orlov, who has died aged 96, became one of the bravest champions of human rights in the final period of the Soviet Union. He suffered years of hardship in prison, labour camps and exile to Siberia before having his citizenship withdrawn in 1986 and being sent to the US as part of a spy swap.Born in Moscow, Yuri came from a working-class family. His father, Fyodor Orlov, was a lorry driver who died when Yuri was eight. His mother, Klavdiya Lebedeva, brought him up in a village near Moscow. In 1944 he joined the Soviet army and served for two years before entering Moscow State University. In 1952 he joined the Institute for Theoretical and Experimental Physics, first as a postgraduate student and then as a researcher into quantum physics, concentrating on particle motion in accelerators. Continue reading...

The prime minister either did not understand what scientists told him about Covid, or he ignored it for political reasons

Scientists are tracking small differences in DNA to explain why the disease has different effects

As the Earth’s ice melts, large numbers of perfectly preserved ancient artefacts are being revealed. But time is running out and ‘glacial archaeologists’ are racing to find these fragile treasuresBack in August 2018, archaeologists William Taylor and Nick Jarman were scrambling around a snowy, scree-strewn slope in the Altai mountains in northwest Mongolia at the end of an exhausting day. A few hundred metres above Jarman, Taylor and his colleagues were surveying the site, a disappearing ice field that local reindeer herders said had not melted in living memory. Now, each summer, it disappears almost completely.Taylor looked down the mountain and saw his methodical colleague dancing and hollering, hopping from rock to rock. Thinking he was injured, Taylor headed down the mountain. Continue reading...

What can science tell us about our urge to celebrate with loved ones this festive season despitethe dangers?

Rules will shut pubs, cafes and non-vital shops, while local reviews will take place after a four-week periodBoris Johnson performed an extraordinary U-turn on Saturday as he unveiled new month-long national lockdown measures across England, amid accusations that government indecision and delay will cost lives and livelihoods across the country.With immediate warnings of the grave economic fallout and a mounting backlash among Tory MPs, the prime minister announced that a series of measures would come into force on Thursday to combat growing Covid infections. They will remain in place until 2 December. Continue reading...

PM says unless action is taken now, capacity will be exceeded in hospitals and there will be thousands of deaths a day11.14pm GMTThis from the BBC’s Nick Robinson:

England lockdown expected early next week; US passes 9m infections; Melbourne records no new cases or deaths. Follow the latest:

Restrictions in place from Thursday are needed to tackle coronavirus spread, PM says

The bushfires and the plague are symptoms of something momentous unfolding on Earth – an acceleration of our impact on nature

Medical textbooks are full of anatomical pictures of the penis, but the clitoris barely rates a mention. Many medical professionals are uncomfortable even talking about itProfessor Caroline de Costa is awaiting feedback. Several months ago the editor of the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology requested an editorial from a world-renowned Melbourne urologist to address what she saw as a lack of research and, more concerningly, a persistent lack of knowledge about an essential part of the female reproductive system. Continue reading...

Widespread deficiency shows that current government guidance on supplements is failing

The research scientist and Democratic candidate on the Green New Deal, the importance of facts and why Trump’s stance on masks is ‘unconscionable’Nancy Goroff will be the first female research scientist to serve in the US Congress if she is elected this November. The Democratic candidate is running for one of Long Island’s seats in the House of Representatives against incumbent Republican, Lee Zeldin, an ardent President Trump supporter who has described her as a “radical professor”. Facing a tight race with issues such as the coronavirus pandemic and climate change looming large, Goroff, a professor of chemistry at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, is stressing her science credentials.You’ve worked at Stony Brook University for more than two decades developing new organic molecules for solar cells and eco-friendly lighting in your lab. What made you decide to run for Congress?

Blue moons – the second full moon in a month – occur only every few years, and the name is misleadingOn Saturday night, Democrats yearning for a blue wave on election day may choose to look to the skies for an omen: a blue moon.Blue moons, typically defined as the second full moon in one month, are rare, arriving every two to three years. According to Earthsky.org, the last was on 31 March 2018. Continue reading...

A pilgrimage is healing because it encourages you to savour the momentCome autumn, as a way of defying the back-to-school doldrums brought on by a rapid shortening of the days, and to mark what feels like the true start of a year, I go on a pilgrimage. This year, more than ever, I crave the slow and steady rhythm of a walking pace, big skies, and cleansing wind and rain to shake off the cobwebs of a long confinement and to break the domestic routines of daily life. I want to connect to my own pumping heart and the natural world around me, re-oxygenate stale lungs and feel the muscles in my legs stretch and work.Since I’m looking for uplift, there is nowhere for me that’s more rejuvenating and exhilarating than the uplands of Golden Cap in Dorset, the highest point on the south coast of England. In the rinsed light of early autumn, it glows, as if just-hatched, new-born. I have earmarked the little church of St Candida and the Holy Cross, behind these soaring coastal cliffs, tucked into the valleys of Marshwood Vale, a landscape that folds gently in on itself like ribbons of thickened cream. It is part of a medieval pilgrimage trail that connected Bridport to Axminster, containing one of only two shrines with relics of a saint still existing in England (the other being Edward the Confessor’s shrine at Westminster Abbey), somehow miraculously surviving the Reformation and the civil war. St Wite, martyred by marauding Viking hordes, attracts the hopeless and hopeful sick who journey to her quaint limestone shrine. Continue reading...

The form that archaeology has taken in Europe doesn’t apply everywhere. Better knowledge of local cultures is vitalCultural heritage is a basic human need. Yes – humans don’t only need food and shelter, culture is required for them to survive and thrive. Our cultural values glue us to one another and help us create security and a community. I believe that cultural and archaeological sites can be part of that basic human need, too. Cemeteries and sacred places form part of our identity. Often these places are even more critical in times of crises as people search for solace and answers.History keeps us in touch with this identity and sense of community, yet in Africa it has been the preserve of the white investigators. In colonial Africa, archaeology evolved in a different manner to the archaeology of Britain and France, the colonial powers. In Britain, it started as a grassroots project in the 18th century, run by regional societies in the shires, which formed clubs and built collections and libraries. It went from focusing on religious art and ruined monasteries to the Roman era and antiquities, before later becoming more democratic and common in the 20th century. Continue reading...