Your questions answered on what type of mask to wear to cut the risk of getting Covid-19

University of York researchers trace the source of underarm aromas to a particular enzyme

Our Panorama programme shows how Xi Jinping’s government has tried to hide the truth about the spread of coronavirusChina has been here before. During the Sars crisis in 2002 and 2003 it hid cases, censored doctors and withheld information from the world for four months. Nearly 800 people died.Related: EU says China behind 'huge wave' of Covid-19 disinformation Continue reading...

Two geometrical riddlesUPDATE: Read the solutions hereIt is a truism to say that once you know the answer to a puzzle it becomes trivially easy. Yet this statement is especially true when it comes to geometrical problems, which are often solved with a single insight that, once you know it, seems so forehead-slappingly obvious.Both of today’s two puzzles are unravelled with a joyous ‘aha’. I hope you find them for yourselves. Continue reading...

Scientists say people unlikely to reduce one Covid-19 measure when adopting another

Psilocybin may be safe for treating depression but research is stymied by government controls

At midnight on 2 August, people around globe will be able to see grouping high in the skySet a calendar reminder for this coming weekend when an essentially full moon joins Jupiter and Saturn in the southern sky.When full, the moon rises at sunset and spends the entire night in the sky, so the grouping will be visible during all the hours of darkness. The chart shows the view looking due south from London at midnight on 2 August, which is as Saturday becomes Sunday. Continue reading...

Planetary scientist Sarah Stewart Johnson describes how the latest mission to Mars builds on centuries of discoveries about the red planet – Earth’s nearest neighbourNasa plans to launch its latest mission to Mars this month, which aims to place the Perseverance rover on the surface of the planet in February 2021.It is the latest attempt to explore a planet that has loomed large in the popular imagination for centuries. As the planetary scientist Sarah Stewart Johnson, author of The Sirens of Mars,

Dr Jane Lethbridge of the University of Greenwich, Heather Hancock of the Food Standards Agency and Jim Grozier of University College London on science and coronavirus. Plus Bruce White on Boris Johnson’s reference to asymptomatic transmissionSonia Sodha (Bias in ‘the science’ on coronavirus? Britain has been here before, 23 Juy) provides a welcome reminder of the BSE crisis and government science advisers “confusing a lack of evidence of risk or benefit for a lack of risk or benefit”. However, scientists are not the only people who assess risk. People make risk assessments every day, and the Covid-19 crisis has shown how people do this. Risk assessments are socially constructed and these different assessments need to be considered in public policymaking. For instance, where were any representatives of older people or people with disabilities when the decision was made to send a text asking them to stay indoors for three months?This crisis will be characterised by the absence of public health expertise, but a second defining feature will be the lack of public input into policy decisions affecting millions of people. Scientific experts must not only be able to explain the strengths and weaknesses of evidence, but must also debate the implications of the evidence, with the public coming to a consensus. Democratic expertise is needed, rather than leaving experts to solve these problems alone.

The risk to teachers as they return to school in the autumn concerns Pat Brockbank, while Sue Rogers finds the mask-wearing debate disheartening. Plus Po-yu Sung on why supermarkets should enforce face coveringsMy daughter teaches in a senior school of about 600 pupils. In less than six weeks’ time, all pupils are being forced to return to the classroom, with 30 children to each room. The only concession to the pandemic is that their desks will face towards the front, and that each year of approximately 120 pupils will be considered to be a bubble, even though all 600 children will be within the same building.In their letter (22 July), three doctors state that “the risk of transmission of Covid-19 is directly related to viral overload and exposure time”. Thousands of teachers will be getting more and more anxious as the autumn term approaches. They will be stuck in closed, unventilated, centrally heated rooms with 30 coughing and sneezing children for six to seven hours every day, five days a week. The safety of office staff, shop workers, care home staff, bus drivers, taxi drivers, council workers and hospital medical staff is given careful consideration, but teachers are ignored. Continue reading...

Your questions answered on what type of mask to wear to cut the risk of getting or giving someone Covid-19

Thousands of people like me are suffering ill health months after contracting the virus. We need more helpAs a writer, I spend my days trying to craft believable, satisfying narratives. But as a Covid-19 “long-hauler”, I have given up trying to find an internal logic to the story of my illness. As we now know, thousands of people are suffering a range of bewildering and debilitating post-Covid symptoms that don’t follow any predictable act breaks or intervals.Happily, the recent news about the emergency rescue package for the UK’s cultural industries, including my own, was followed by the NHS announcing an online Covid-19 rehab service, promising a “personalised package of aftercare”. It’s a promising start, but we are still nowhere near understanding the long-term effects of this vicious, capricious virus. Continue reading...

Tiny piece of meteorite from London’s Natural History Museum will be used by rover exploring red planetA small piece of rock will be hurled into space this week on one of the strangest interplanetary voyages ever attempted. A tiny piece of Martian basalt the size of a 10p coin will be launched on board a US robot probe on Thursday and propelled towards the red planet on a seven-month journey to its home world.This extraordinary odyssey, the interplanetary equivalent of sending coals to Newcastle, will form a key part of Nasa’s forthcoming Mars 2020 expedition. Space engineers say the rock – which has been donated by the Natural History Museum in London – will be used to calibrate detectors on board the robot rover Perseverance after it lands and begins its search for signs of past life on the planet. Continue reading...

The Recovery drugs trial is a beacon of excellence among the general coronavirus incompetenceBeing British has been a discomforting experience for the past six months. A nation that had prided itself on the strength and resilience of its healthcare system has been laid low by the Covid-19 pandemic, which has claimed nearly 50,000 lives in the UK. Most other western nations have suffered fewer deaths and endured comparatively little national trauma. Not surprisingly, the UK government’s handling of the crisis has been heavily criticised, mostly for its tardiness and incompetence. Britain was too late in going into lockdown and it abandoned its ability to test for the coronavirus when it should have been ramping up capacity. The prime minister has blustered and vacillated over key policies from the wearing of masks to the timing of the easing of lockdown restrictions.Given this sad background, it has been startling to note recent headlines and comments made across the world about the country’s Covid-19 response. “The Brits are on course to save the world,” claimed the US economist Tyler Cowen in Bloomberg Opinion, while the American journal Science was at pains to quote leading international scientists who have heaped praise on our researchers’ anti-Covid work. “UK megatrial outshines other drug studies,” ran one of its headlines. Continue reading...

‘Provocative test of a weapon-like projectile’ from Russian satellite shows peaceful use of space is under threat, says defence secretaryBritain will boost its ability to handle threats posed by Russia and China in space as part of a foreign, security and defence policy review, the defence secretary, Ben Wallace, has said.“This week we have been reminded of the threat Russia poses to our national security with the provocative test of a weapon-like projectile from a satellite threatening the peaceful use of space,” Wallace wrote in the Sunday Telegraph, adding that China also posed a threat. Continue reading...

This blog is closed. Go here for continuing live coverage of the latest coronavirus developments12.28am BSTWe’ve launched a brand new blog at the link below – head there for the latest:Related: Coronavirus live news: global cases near 16m, Covid-19 ad blitz in Victoria, Australia12.02am BSTHere are the latest coronavirus developments at a glance: Continue reading...

Preparing food helped me reconcile my old and new world. Now my restaurant produces a beautiful mongrel cuisine‘Now you better behave and don’t cry!” was the warning from my mother, shot with a stern look to show she was deadly serious. We disembarked from the aircraft at Heathrow. It was a dark and dank day. Cold rain spat at us as we walked across the tarmac into the immigration hall. In the terminal, the world seemed full of strangers and I swallowed back my tears.The sunless flat above a shop that my father had found for us was full of draughts and damp. At the makeshift kitchen table, I stared at the exposed electrical wires knotted together on the wall and pined for the warmth of the neat, beloved grandmother we had left behind in our haste to leave Kenya. England welcomed immigrants, but its housing did not. Back home, when you opened the door, every room was fragrant with the scent of ripening guavas. Here, there was just a solitary freckled apple in the fruit bowl that, like us, had seen better days. Continue reading...

More than 140 teams of researchers are racing to develop a safe and effective coronavirus vaccineResearchers around the world are racing to develop a vaccine against Covid-19, with more than 140 candidate vaccines now tracked by the World Health Organization (WHO). Continue reading...

There has been a lot of talk about the Ophiuchus constellation joining the zodiac, but I won’t be changing my Cancerian waysI am zodiac person. I have five books on the zodiac (and am open to many more). When I meet someone, before they have even opened their mouth I’ll be trying to figure out what their star sign is. I’m not so into this stuff that I’ll dislike or avoid certain signs, but saying this, we all know that Gemini men are terrible.Lots of people aren’t star sign people, so to get around that one of the first questions I ask, as casually as possible, is when their birthday is. If they’re into it, I might ask when they were born so I can do their entire natal chart; it’s good to know what I’m working with. Continue reading...

Every year, amateur telescope makers gather under starry skies

This blog is closed – make sure to follow latest coronavirus developments here12.19am BSTWe are switching this one off but you can keep following developments at our latest live blog.Here is a summary of the latest developments:11.34pm BSTGood morning, Josh Taylor with you reporting from Melbourne for the coronavirus live blog for today.As Australia wakes on Saturday morning, the focus will again be on the southern state of Victoria, which now accounts for the majority of cases of coronavirus and Covid-19 deaths in Australia. Continue reading...

Facts and data are desperately required so that musicians can get back to entertaining the worldWhile the tentative resumption of the performing arts is officially allowed in England, singing, along with the playing of woodwind and brass instruments, is deemed a special case. Some serious early outbreaks of Covid-19 were associated with choirs and the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport has taken a precautionary approach. Concerns have also been raised about possible risks posed by the airflow from wind instruments. The current advice for England – other UK governments have yet to issue specific guidelines – is that while professional musicians can get back to work observing strict regulations, singers and woodwind and brass sections must be subject to particular precautions, such as distancing of 3 metres. For amateurs in England, though, singing or playing wind instruments in a group is forbidden. A vibrant culture of amateur choral societies and wind quintets, gospel choirs and brass bands has been silenced, with no indication of when they can get going again.While the precautions are sensible, facts are thin on the ground. In the case of the outbreaks that caused the anxieties about group singing, it has not been proven how transmission occurred. Was it because of physical proximity – sharing snacks in the tea breaks and hugs – or because of some property of singing itself? It is known that Covid-19 can be spread by droplets produced by talking, singing, coughing and other vocalisations. Some of these droplets are relatively large, and fall to the ground at a distance of 1-2 metres. Some, however, are much smaller. These aerosol particles remain in the air until blown away. There is still scholarly debate about the precise role that these latter particles play, but opinion is tending towards the view that the virus may indeed be transmitted by them. Continue reading...

Director of public health says even after improvements to the system, ‘detective work’ is required

Synairgen’s share price rises 540% on morning of news of successful drugs trial

Next time you have the urge to check your phone, or have a second cocktail, remember you might not enjoy it as much as you thinkAs anyone who counts a three-year-old among their acquaintances will know, there’s a fiery purity to the will of a small child that’s difficult to oppose. Once my son has figured out that there’s ice-cream in the freezer, and decided he wants some for dessert, my role is equivalent to that of the ineffectual UN diplomat attempting to persuade a major nation-state to stockpile fewer weapons: good luck with that. Yet frequently, on receiving the ice‑cream, he’ll decide to let it melt before consuming it – then forget about it completely. He wants ice cream, monomaniacally, with a force his little frame almost can’t contain. But he doesn’t like it so very much that some other absorbing activity can’t banish it from his mind.I only clearly grasped this distinction – and realised how it applies to me, too – when I encountered the findings of a study of coffee drinkers reported on the Research Digest blog. Using various psychological tests, researchers showed that “heavy” drinkers (those consuming three or more cups per day) had a much greater desire for coffee than those who consumed less of it, or none. But they took roughly the same, far lower level of pleasure as light drinkers when it actually came to drinking it. More serious addictions – to alcohol, or hard drugs – are characterised by a similar split between wanting and liking: you want the substance more and more, but like it less and less. And it’s been demonstrated that if you deprive people of a prize they want, they’ll desire it more; yet if they do then eventually acquire it, they’ll value it less. Continue reading...

New reports cast doubt on early claims smoking offered protection from diseaseAt the beginning of the pandemic, smokers may have thought they had little to worry about, as there was a sliver of good news for them: a study circulating on social media suggested smoking could be associated with a lower risk of contracting Covid-19. That’s not the full story.Related: Biden predicts Trump will try to 'steal the election' by fighting mail-in voting – live Continue reading...

Investigation shows rigorous testing at hospital trust led to rise in cases in ‘pariah town’

More than 140 teams of researchers are racing to develop a safe and effective coronavirus vaccineResearchers around the world are racing to develop a vaccine against Covid-19, with more than 140 candidate vaccines now tracked by the World Health Organization (WHO). Continue reading...

While it seems a likely culprit Tasmania’s infamous curried scallop pie is not to blame for the disappearance of the smooth handfish

Country has world’s highest total, followed by Brazil with 2.23m cases, as the global death toll passes 625,000. This blog is now closed

China launched an unmanned probe on 23 July to Mars in its first independent mission to visit another planet.

Delay is result of coronavirus pandemic and technical challenges as troubled project is set to cost £6.8bnNasa has announced that the often delayed James Webb space telescope (JWST) is to be delayed once more. Instead of a launch on 30 March 2021, the mission has now slipped to 31 October 2021.The seven-month delay is the result of impacts from the coronavirus pandemic, as well as technical challenges. The spacecraft is currently being tested at Northrop Grumman, Nasa’s main industrial partner on the mission, in Redondo Beach, California. Continue reading...

Seismologists said high frequency noise fell as much as 50% as planes were grounded and roads emptied

World must act now to protect wildlife in order to stop future virus crises, say scientists

Variola virus DNA found in bones of people from Denmark to Russia around Viking era

New sites in Essex and Oxfordshire will open in 2021, with a rapid deployment facility due this summer

Study of mosquitoes’ biting preferences reveals that urbanisation is shaping behaviourMore species of mosquito may evolve to bite humans instead of other animals and spread disease because of urbanisation, according to a scientific study.While the vast majority of the 3,500 species of mosquito do not bite humans, scientists studied Aedes aegypti, an invasive species which has evolved a taste for humans, and become the primary spreader of infectious diseases including dengue and yellow fever. Continue reading...

Researchers identify Vitis riparia vine as phylloxera’s original host and say it came to Europe from US

Lessons about scientific transparency from the BSE scandal have been forgotten as the government grapples this crisis

AstraZeneca and others should not own a lucrative patent on a medicine that is needed by poor as well as rich nations

Tianwen-1 mission attempts to put China in ‘elite’ club of countries conquering red planetChina has launched its most ambitious Mars mission yet in a bold attempt to join the US in successfully landing a spacecraft on the red planet.With engines blazing orange, a Long March 5 carrier rocket took off on Thursday at about 12.40 pm local time (0540 BST) from Hainan Island, south of the Chinese mainland. Hundreds of space enthusiasts watched from a beach across the bay. Continue reading...

Your questions answered on what type of mask to wear to cut the risk of getting Covid-19

A diplomacy shaped around self-serving tittle-tattle now risks lives and undermines America’s standing in the worldThe campaign by the Trump administration against the World Health Organization has often seemed faintly preposterous.Over the months of the coronavirus pandemic its untruths and hyperbole have been dismissed by many as iterations of Trumpspeak, whose main purpose has been to distract from the US’s catastrophic response to Covid-19, which has claimed almost 140,000 lives and devastated the economy. Continue reading...

Shop-owner’s son had apparently come across ancient artefacts while out fishingPolice conducting a routine inspection of a frozen seafood shop in eastern Spain have netted 13 Roman amphoras and an 18th-century metal anchor, all of which were apparently found by the owner’s son on fishing trips and used to decorate the premises.After stopping in at the shop in the coastal town of Santa Pola, in Alicante province, officers from the Guardia Civil’s environmental department noticed rather more than squid, hake and cod on display. Continue reading...

From Elon Musk’s SpaceX, to Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic and Jeff Bezos’s Blue Horizon – there is a growing interest in space exploration by some of the world’s least publicity-shy billionaires. But does the 2020 launch of the SpaceX Dragon 2 spacecraft really mark the beginning of a new privately financed space race? And what do recent international launches, such as the UAE’s Hope probe to Mars, say about changing geopolitical ambitions for space exploration? Ian Sample speaks to space policy veteran Prof John Logsdon about the past, present and future of global space policy. Continue reading...

US has highest number of cases, followed by Brazil and India; Trump urges people to wear masks; number of confirmed cases worldwide passes 15 million. This blog is now closed – follow our live coverage below

OneWeb went bankrupt this year while trying to develop space network to deliver broadbandThe business secretary, Alok Sharma, overrode the concerns of his senior official when the government took a £400m stake in the failed satellite company OneWeb.The UK is part of a consortium with India’s Bharti Global which won a bidding war for the company, which went bankrupt earlier this year while trying to develop a space network to deliver broadband. Continue reading...

Rishi Sunak is preparing an autumn of spending cuts – an economic folly and a political gambleThis is the week that Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak began softening up doctors, teachers and other public sector workers for a squeeze to their pay and cuts to their departmental budgets. They have done their best to muffle that particular bit of bad news. Instead, aides to the publicity-conscious Mr Sunak briefed journalists on an inflation-busting pay rise for public servants – and on Tuesday got the desired morning headlines. Later that same day, the chancellor admitted it was a one-off for this financial year, and that over the longer run “we must exercise restraint in future public sector pay awards”. Meaning cuts are coming. It had been a crass and short-lived publicity trick: flash the cash in a big show now, then admit it would all be taken back in time. Not only that but, as the Trades Union Congress pointed out, in all the government’s trumpeting of its apparent largesse, little acknowledgement was given that there would be no such increment for jobcentre advisers, local government employees or care workers.Spin is a hardly a novelty on Downing Street, but the prime minister has developed a new, yet increasingly tiresome, strategy: blurt a falsehood, confess the truth, then hope the furore around the initial fib fixes it all the more firmly in voters’ minds. So Mr Johnson postures as the new Roosevelt, then announces a small spending commitment – but evidently hopes busy and only half-attentive voters will be left with the magic words “new deal”. Continue reading...

Wearing masks in Melbourne is now mandatory with $200 fines for those not wearing them outside the home. This is a first for Australia, but the enforced wearing of masks has been legislated in numerous countries around the world, particularly in the past few weeks. So why are the rules changing?You can read Graham Readfearn’s article on the changing health advice on wearing masks here. Continue reading...

Australian Institute of Health and Welfare report shows Covid-19 not just dangerous for chronically ill and elderlyAustralians who have died from Covid-19 have lost more years of their expected lifespan, on average, than those dying from the country’s three leading causes of death, a new study suggests.The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) report, released on Thursday, makes it clear that coronavirus is not just dangerous for the chronically ill and elderly. Continue reading...