A delicious new puzzle from JapanDouble Choco is a new grid logic puzzle from Japan. Below are three examples, including a toughie which appeared in the 2020 UK puzzle championship last month. Pencil-and-paper puzzles like Double Choco are very absorbing; hopefully they provide a stimulating and escapist activity during these days of quarantine. Continue reading...
by Presented by Rachel Humphreys with Samanth Subrama on (#51RHW)
Scientists in more than 40 labs around the world are working round the clock to develop a Covid-19 vaccine. Despite early success in sequencing the virus’s genome, however, Samanth Subramanian tells Rachel Humphreys we are still some months away from knowing if one can be put into mass production
Fine Gael leader was a junior doctor in Dublin and qualified as a GP in 2010Leo Varadkar is to work one day a week as a doctor to help combat the coronavirus pandemic after reactivating his medical credentials.Ireland’s taoiseach has offered his services to the Health Service Executive (HSE) in areas that are within his competence, a spokesperson for his office said on Sunday. Continue reading...
On Wednesday we can see the brightest of this spring’s three full moon supermoons.This Wednesday’s full moon is the second of six supermoons that take place this year. A supermoon is defined as a full moon or a new moon that occurs when the moon is within 90% of its closest approach to Earth. This makes a full moon appear about 7% larger and 15% brighter than average. As it moves around its orbit, the moon’s distance varies from around 356,400 to 406,700km.This spring there will be three full moon supermoons, and they will be bookended this autumn by three new moon supermoons. The first full moon supermoon took place on 9 March. This week’s will begin around sunset on 8 April, when the full moon will rise in the east. At this time, the moon will be approximately 357,000km away from Earth and will present the largest full moon supermoon of the year. The third and last full moon supermoon will take place on 7 May. The three new moon supermoons this autumn will take place on 17 September, 16 October, and 15 November. Continue reading...
Experts are watching carefully to see if this virus will follow the seasonal pattern of flu, but warn differences may be minorCoronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverageBalmy days are coming, with temperatures forecast to reach 20C in some regions. The warm weather will bring welcome respite to lockdown Britain - and put pressure on authorities trying to control crowds and gatherings.However, scientists also believe warm weather could bring new insights into the virus by showing whether it reacts to the onset of spring. Flu epidemics tend to die out as winter ends; could sunshine, similarly, affect the behaviour of the coronavirus and its spread? It is a key question, and epidemiologists will be watching for changes very closely. Continue reading...
The new ‘Cbils’ scheme is much improved. But many of its shortcomings could have been identified at the startBanks are wicked and Rishi Sunak walks on water. That, at least, was the narrative that prevailed until the end of last week. The dashing new chancellor, the cabinet star of the coronavirus moment, had assembled the Treasury’s armoury to provide lending to British businesses on unprecedented scale. It was only the damn banks that were stopping the cash reaching intended recipients.This storyline now looks wrong. Sunak and the Treasury’s “further actionâ€, announced on Thursday night to support struggling British firms, was not a mere tweak. It was a sweeping redesign of a lending scheme that had glaring flaws. Continue reading...
Coronavirus has changed Britain’s social and political orthodoxies. But not every crisis results in a revolutionAs a classical scholar, our prime minister will be all too aware of some uncanny parallels between the onset of coronavirus and the plague that beset Athens in 430BC.The immortal historian Thucydides wrote: “At the beginning the doctors were quite incapable of treating the disease because of their ignorance of the right methods … In fact, mortality among the doctors was the highest of all since they came more frequently in contact with the sick.†Continue reading...
With more than 250 artworks sourced from cold war-era Russian magazines, Alexandra Sankova’s book Soviet Space Graphics: Cosmic Visions from the USSR (Phaidon £24.95), produced with the Moscow Design Museum, explores “the dream of conquering spaceâ€.One of the most vibrant publications was Tekhnika Molodezhi (Technology for the Youth) its “unearthly palettes of pink-violet and ochre-scarlet coloursâ€, says Sankova, pulling readers into stories of “inventions and innovations, the mysterious and unknownâ€. Continue reading...
Our political correspondent on the bombshell briefing that changed the mood across the countryI was in the midst of the usual reporter’s juggle, trying to write on a notepad balanced on one thigh while resting a dictation machine on the other, when the prime minister’s tone suddenly changed, prompting me to look up. Standing in front of me at the lectern in Downing Street, Boris Johnson said: “I must level with you...â€. What was coming next could only be bad news: these aren’t words typically used by a prime minister who trades in bluster, bluff and optimism.He continued: “More families, many more families, are going to lose loved ones before their time.†It was a chilling remark and that was the moment everything changed in terms of reporters’ understanding of the crisis’s severity and unprecedented scale. You could hear a pin drop as we listened to the rest of Johnson’s address. Just inside Downing Street’s side door, where we retrieved belongings such as phones and laptopsthat are not allowed in the main building, we hurriedly rang newsdesks to double-check they had heard Johnson’s startling words for themselves. The next day I travelled to Northumberland to see my parents, who are in their 60s, and asked them to take the advice very seriously. We washed our hands so much that weekend we ended up with cracked skin. Continue reading...
Lack of testing and failure to report on cases means scale of outbreak could be far greater than thought, doctors warnCoronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverageBrazil is bracing for a surge in coronavirus cases as doctors and researchers warn that underreporting and a lack of testing mean nobody knows the real scale of Covid-19’s spread.“What’s happening is enormous underreporting,†said Isabella Rêllo, a doctor working in emergency and intensive care in Rio de Janeiro hospitals, in a widely shared Facebook post challenging official numbers. “There are MANY more,†she wrote. Continue reading...
High court to hand down George Pell verdict, water flows into the Menindee Lakes and Victoria renews loggingAs Australia’s coronavirus outbreak continues – but with the cautious optimism of a slowing rate of infection – a lot of important news has slipped under the radar.Here are the stories you may have missed over the past week. Continue reading...
The British public are being patient over the coronavirus crisis, but they will not forgive governmental confusion for everBoris Johnson and his government are on probation, watched by a public whose mood could turn rapidly and brutally. For now, and on paper, Johnson has the people with him: his poll ratings have surged north of 50%, a feat last managed by a Tory government at the height of the Falklands war nearly 40 years ago. But the wisest heads in Downing Street will not be turned by those numbers. They know that there’s always a “rally around the flag†effect at moments of extreme crisis: when citizens are frightened, they want to believe their leaders have got things under control. That’s why incumbents around the world, even useless and immoral ones such as Donald Trump, have enjoyed an initial corona bounce in their ratings, almost regardless of their actions. At the start of the Iran hostage crisis in 1979 Jimmy Carter saw his approval numbers leap from 32% to 61% – only for him to crash to defeat a year later. Johnson will know that one day, and perhaps quite soon, he, too, will be judged.He can point to some concrete achievements. The opening today of what is a giant field hospital in east London’s ExCeL centre, constructed within nine days, is the prime example. Those who drooled with totalitarian envy at China’s ability to throw up a hospital in Wuhan within a week were adamant that a western democracy like Britain could never match that accomplishment, and they have been proved wrong. Rishi Sunak’s promise that the state will pay 80% of workers’ wages has won plaudits around the world, even if the chancellor has had to return repeatedly to his economic rescue package, tweaking it to catch those groups he left behind first time around. And the government has imposed a national lockdown that has been largely observed, one that might even see a flattening of the infection curve in the next week or so. Continue reading...
‘Grandfather of allergy’ survived three years in Japanese POW camp before pioneering medical careerDr William Frankland, a pioneering British immunologist who transformed the world’s understanding of allergies, has died aged 108.Frankland improved the lives of millions of hay fever sufferers by developing the idea of a pollen count. Until his death the oldest survivor of the Japanese prisoner of war camps, he published a scientific paper in September 2017 aged 105. Continue reading...
Face masks are effective and vital in hospitals, but this doesn’t mean they’re useful for the general publicWe all want to protect ourselves from coronavirus – but we need to make sure the things we’re doing are effective. There are several measures we can all take to reduce the spread of Covid-19, including physical distancing, thorough handwashing, keeping surfaces clean, protecting the most vulnerable by staying home, and isolating ourselves if we have symptoms. We know from scientific evidence, as well as what we have learned from other countries further ahead in their epidemics, that these things work.But what does the evidence say about how well face masks work, and who should wear them? Continue reading...
Science | The Guardian