Science | The Guardian

Vaccine production must be expanded to combat this ancient disease, especially in Africa. But a lack of political will is holding us back

Oxfordshire: One minute you're looking at an old, wet tree stump, the next you're looking at some veiled poisonpie or smoky polyporeMy local nature reserve used to be a Victorian rubbish dump, but now it is full of wildlife. And if you look closely on old logs on a mild, damp day you will probably see some wonders: fungi.I went to visit last week. The brightly coloured leaves were painted across the forest floor and the droplets of water on some of the berries were like diamonds. In the winter and autumn, fungi are very common. At first I didn't see many, but the deeper we went into the woodland the more we saw. They were all hard to identify, but we managed it using a couple of nature books and Shroomify, an app that identifies mushrooms. Continue reading...

Analysis of DNA from teeth of troops buried in mass grave suggests soldiers had paratyphoid fever and relapsing feverWhen Napoleon ordered his army to retreat from Russia in October 1812, disaster ensued. Starving, cold, exhausted and struggling with sickness, an estimated 300,000 soldiers died.Researchers now say they have identified two unexpected diseases among soldiers who died in the retreat - paratyphoid fever and relapsing fever - which provide fresh insights into their plight. Continue reading...

A new wave of socially engaged movies is storming the box office and changing how we think about the genreIt should surprise no one to learn that 2025 is being hailed as a golden year for horror films. All horrormovies are a reflection of their time, and oursare pretty scary.Tech dystopianism means that Frankenstein's monster has become a byword for AI, while Bram Stoker's Dracula has always drawn on a dark strain of English xenophobia. So it is no coincidence that these 19th-century gothic villains, stars of the earliest horror films in the 1920s and 30s, are back in cinemas with new adaptations from directors Guillermo del Toro and Luc Besson. Maggie Gyllenhaal is bringing out another Frankenstein, The Bride!, next year.Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...

Successive governments criticised for doing virtually nothing' to reduce risk in decade since cancer link foundBacon and ham sold in the UK should carry cigarette-style labels warning that chemicals in them cause bowel cancer, scientists say.Their demand comes as they criticise successive British governments for doing virtually nothing" to reduce the risk from nitrites in the decade since they were found to definitely cause cancer. Continue reading...

Scientists warn of insidious risks' of increasingly popular technology that affirms even harmful behaviourTurning to AI chatbots for personal advice poses insidious risks", according to a study showing the technology consistently affirms a user's actions and opinions even when harmful.Scientists said the findings raised urgent concerns over the power of chatbots to distort people's self-perceptions and make them less willing to patch things up after a row. Continue reading...

Bharatiya Janata party launches first test flight as brown haze blankets city after Diwali - but experts decry gimmick'The Delhi regional government is trialling a cloud-seeding experiment to induce artificial rain, in an effort to clean the air in the world's most polluted city.The Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) has been proposing the use of cloud seeding as a way to bring Delhi's air pollution under control since it was elected to lead the regional government this year. Continue reading...

Dating of rock formation in New Mexico casts doubt on theory that species was already in declineDinosaurs would not have become extinct had it not been for a catastrophic asteroid strike, researchers have said, challenging the idea the animals were already in decline.About 66m years ago, during the late Cretaceous period, a huge space rock crashed into Earth, triggering a mass extinction that wiped out all dinosaurs except birds. However, some experts have argued the dinosaurs were already in decline. Continue reading...

Study of the drink beloved by Hollywood reveals chemical difference in beans passed through civets' digestive systemIt is a coffee beloved by Hollywood and influencers - now researchers say they have found an ingredient that could help explain the unique flavour of kopi luwak.Also known as civet coffee, kopi luwak is produced from coffee beans that have passed through the digestive system of the Asian palm civet. The resulting product is not only rare, but very expensive - costing about 130 for 500g. Continue reading...

Humans have been selectively breeding animals for millennia. If we can help species survive by tweaking their DNA in a lab, I say bring it onDo you think we should genetically modify wildlife? What if we could make seabirds resistant to the flu that has been exterminating them en masse, just by tweaking their DNA a smidgen? Or make fish that can shrug off pollution, or coral that can survive warming waters? Engineer in the sorts of change that could occur naturally, given enough time, if only the wildlife would stop dying already.Thanks to newly emerging methods, such as Crispr, these feats are within reach. Recently, conservationists met at the International Union for Conservation of Nature's (IUCN) 2025 World Conservation Congress where they debated GM wildlife and voted on a proposed moratorium that would stymie their release into the wild. Ahead of the meeting, a group of more than 90 NGOs issued a press release urging the IUCN to say no to engineered wild species." But humans have been altering the DNA of other species for millennia.Helen Pilcher is a science writer and the author of Bring Back the King: The New Science of De-Extinction Continue reading...

Deal between Airbus, Leonardo and Thales is expected to create company with annual revenue of 5.6bnAirbus, Leonardo and Thales have struck a deal to combine their space businesses to create a single European technology company that could rival Elon Musk's SpaceX.The deal is expected to create a company with annual revenue of about 6.5bn (5.6bn). The French aerospace company Airbus will own 35% of the new business, with Leonardo and Thales each owning stakes of 32.5%. Continue reading...

The NHS warns against using GLP-1s while breastfeeding - for the baby's sake as well as the mother's. But how much does that count when they're so readily available and there's so much pressure to bounce back'?Lydia* first started thinking about weight-loss drugs during pregnancy. Everyone was talking about them and the advertisements were everywhere," she says, as her baby son naps upstairs. I remember thinking: That's how I'll lose weight for my wedding next year.'"When Lydia explains that most of her life before pregnancy was spent in a welter of yo-yo dieting and body dissatisfaction, I say to her that I think most of us can relate. Her pregnancy, however, brought a level of body acceptance and contentment that the 33-year-old from Wales had never had before. Continue reading...

An electronic eye implant half the thickness of a human hair has helped people with incurable sight loss to see again, opening up a potential new era' in tackling blindness. Madeleine Finlay hears from Mahi Muqit, a surgeon from Moorfields eye hospital in London, about what this implant has meant for his patients and what the future could hold for vision-loss therapiesClips: BBC Continue reading...

Semaglutide study suggests such drugs could have wider benefits, though researchers find shrinking waistlines linked to better heart outcomesThe weight-loss drug semaglutide cuts the risk of heart attack or stroke regardless of how many kilograms people lose, the largest study of its kind has found.However, shrinking waist size - a sign of less belly fat - was linked to better heart outcomes, according to the research. Continue reading...

Scientist whose research into transuranic elements revised the understanding of nuclear fissionDarleane Hoffman's research into superheavy radioactive elements at the University of California's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) and, prior to that, at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, enhanced and extensively revised our knowledge of those elements and, consequently, our understanding of nuclear fission. Her success led, in 2002, to Discover magazine declaring her one of the 50 most important women in science.Hoffman, who has died aged 98, explored the chemical and nuclear properties of transuranic elements - those heavier than uranium. All are radioactively unstable. Most have a short half-life: existing for only a brief period before decaying, sometimes mere milliseconds. This makes them difficult to study, but, during the 1950s, Hoffman realised that characterising their properties could help us better comprehend the emerging science of nuclear fission, which involved splitting the atoms of these heavy elements to release the large amounts of energy necessary to power the first generation of commercial nuclear reactors. Continue reading...

Notable variations between different medications were found in weight gain or loss, heart rate and blood pressurePeople taking certain types of antidepressants can gain up to 2kg (4.5lbs) in weight within the first two months of treatment, while patients taking other drugs can lose the equivalent or more, according to a major review of potential side-effects.The research, led by academics at King's College London and the University of Oxford, found that while some antidepressants can cause notable changes in body weight, heart rate and blood pressure, others do not cause such physical changes. Continue reading...

Gene-edited animals remained healthy when exposed to highly contagious deadly diseasePigs that are resistant to a deadly viral disease have been created by scientists at Edinburgh's Roslin Institute.The gene-edited animals remained healthy when exposed to classical swine fever (CSF), a highly contagious and often fatal disease. The virus was eradicated in the UK in 1966, but there have been several outbreaks since and it continues to pose a major threat to pig farming worldwide. Continue reading...

In writing about my mother, Jenny Cox, I mentioned that she was refused permission to do her botany PhD research on the island of South Georgia purely because she was a woman. Though she saw this as an injustice for the rest of her life, she never revealed any details of what happened.The efficient archive service at the British Antarctic Survey have now made available a letter from Sir Vivian Fuchs dated 7 October 1959. He still wanted my mother to do UK-based lab work on existing specimens. However, he refused her or any other women access to the island, citing accommodation and severe conditions in the field. Continue reading...

Scientists are using DNA from sediments to learn more about Earth's past, including new revelations about the woolly mammothFossilisation is rare. Most living things disappear without trace, recycled back into planet Earth.But in some environments the DNA from living things binds to the soil and rock, leaving a marker of their existence for hundreds of thousands or even millions of years. Continue reading...

Researchers say the target significantly reduces risk of dying and lowers likelihood of cardiovascular diseaseOlder people who only walk 4,000 daily steps once a week still reduce their risk of dying early by a quarter, a study suggests.Staying active is known to bring a wide range of health benefits. But many people in their 60s, 70s and beyond may struggle for a variety of reasons to maintain the step count they used to reach. Until now it has been unclear how much people need to do as they age to reap the rewards. Continue reading...

SpaceX owner said Sean Duffy was trying to kill Nasa' after acting head said agency would reopen contracts for Artemis missionElon Musk attacked Sean Duffy, the US secretary of transportation, on Tuesday in a series of posts on X, accusing him of trying to kill NASA", suggesting he should be fired and calling him Sean Dummy". The posts intensified a long-running feud between Duffy, who is also the acting head of Nasa, and Musk, whose company SpaceX is central to the US space program.Musk's tirade against Duffy followed a statement from the transportation secretary on Tuesday that Nasa would reopen contracts for the agency's Artemis mission to land humans on the moon, which SpaceX had previously secured. Duffy said that SpaceX had fallen behind on its timelines. Duffy suggested the contract might go to another billionaire's rocket company, Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin. Continue reading...

Theoretical physicist who won the Nobel prize for his work on the forces acting on fundamental subatomic particlesChen-Ning Yang, the Chinese American theoretical physicist, who has died aged 103, won the Nobel prize in physics in 1957.It was during a period at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, New Jersey, in 1950 that Yang (also known as CN Yang, or Frank Yang) befriended another young Chinese emigre, Tsung-Dao Lee. They shared the Nobel prize for work that overthrew the widely accepted parity laws" - that the forces acting on fundamental subatomic particles are symmetric between left and right. In the popular description, they overthrew the concept of mirror symmetry". Although the Nobel was for this work, performed in 1956, the most far-reaching of Yang's many contributions to theoretical physics had come earlier. Continue reading...

After overdoses left them with brain injuries and lasting complications, Americans are struggling to get proper care. Experts call it another epidemic

Iida Turpeinen's novel has been a sensation in her native Finland. On the eve of its UK publication, she talks about her compulsion to tell of the sociable giant's plightIida Turpeinen is the author of Beasts of the Sea, a Finnish novel tracing the fate of a now-extinct species: the sea cow. Similar to dugongs and manatees, the sea cow was only discovered in 1741 by the shipwrecked German-born naturalist Georg Wilhelm Steller but by 1768 it had already become the first marine species to be eradicated by humans.Translated into 28 languages and shortlisted for the country's most prestigious literary award, the Finlandia Prize, Beasts of the Sea was described by the Helsinki Literacy Agency as the most internationally successful Finnish debut novel ever. Turpeinen, 38, a PhD student of comparative literature, is now a resident novelist at Finland's Natural History Museum. Her book will be published in the UK on 23 October. Continue reading...

As biodiversity declines, locating and conserving the planet's plant life is becoming more important. The Millennium seed bank in Wakehurst, West Sussex, has been doing just that for 25 years, collecting and storing seeds and keeping them in trust for countries all over the world should they ever be needed. To mark the anniversary, Patrick Greenfield took a tour of the site. He tells Madeleine Finlay about the journey a seed takes from arrival to cold storage, and how some are already helping to return endangered plant species to the wildSupport the Guardian: theguardian.com/sciencepod Continue reading...

Expected reduction in contributions by wealthy countries likely to cost millions of lives and billions in lost growthSlashed contributions from wealthy countries to an anti-malaria fund could allow a resurgence of the disease, costing millions of lives and billions of pounds by the end of the decade, according to a new analysis.The fight against malaria faces new threats, including extreme weather and humanitarian crises increasing the number of people exposed, and growing biological resistance to insecticides and drugs, the report warns. Continue reading...

Unrelated cases mark first time clade I of disease formerly known as monkeypox has spread within US, officials sayThree California residents have been infected with clade I mpox, a more severe strain of the virus formerly known as monkeypox - marking the first time this type of mpox has spread within the US, health officials said on Friday.The unrelated cases, identified in Long Beach and Los Angeles county, involve patients who had not recently traveled abroad. All three were hospitalized and are now recovering, according to the California department of public health. Continue reading...

Nasa head said agency is opening up contracts for crewed lunar program Artemis after SpaceX had to delay timelinesNasa is looking to contract with other companies for its crewed lunar program as Elon Musk's SpaceX is behind" on its timeline, the space agency said on Monday.In an interview with CNBC, Sean Duffy, transportation secretary and interim head of Nasa, said the agency was not going to wait for one company" as it pushes forward with its Artemis program to get astronauts on to the moon. Continue reading...

Sight of 84% of people with form of age-related macular degeneration restored after being fitted with deviceAn electronic eye implant half the thickness of a human hair has helped people with incurable sight loss to see again, opening up a potential new era" in tackling blindness.Doctors who implanted the sim card-shaped prosthetic devices say they have helped many of the 38 elderly patients in the trial regain their ability to read letters, numbers and words. Continue reading...

Exclusive: Data shows gen Z could miss out on new treatments because so few sign up for trials and studies in England

Early birds on the east coast will have the best chance of seeing this annual astral light show

The speed of the shower creates swift, bright streaks across the night sky, at a typical rate of 20 meteors an hourAs seasoned meteor spotters will tell you, each meteor shower has its own peculiar characteristics. Earlier in the month, the Draconids were characterised by their slow-moving meteors. The Orionids, on the other hand, are zippy.Barrelling into the atmosphere at about 66 km/s, they create swift, bright streaks that linger for a few moments after the meteor has passed. The chart shows the view looking east from London at 00.30 BST in the early hours of 22 October. Continue reading...

Why are the online far right so successful in shaping our political language? With Dr Robert TopinkaAt a press conference in September, Reform UK announced a seismic policy proposal - the end of indefinite leave to remain for immigrants. This change, which would drastically transform the UK immigration system, was justified by a supposed need to tackle the Boriswave".At first glance, the Boriswave portmanteau might be understood as merely a description of the post-Brexit pattern of heightened migration but, as the reactionary digital politics expert Dr Robert Topinka explains to Helen Pidd, the term was generated by the extremely online far right" and originally used as a racial epithet. Topinka describes how it carries a right-leaning framing, whether its users are aware of it or not. Continue reading...

Triple-action therapy drug amivantamab could be given as an injection to help treat recurrent or metastatic cancersDoctors have hailed incredibly encouraging" trial results that show a triple-action smart jab can shrink tumours in head and neck cancer patients within six weeks.Head and neck cancer is the world's sixth most common form of the disease. If it spreads or comes back after standard treatment, patients may be offered immunotherapy and platinum chemotherapy. But if this fails, there is often little else doctors can do. Continue reading...

The long-running series in which readers answer other readers' questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific and philosophical conceptsWhy aren't more animals hermaphrodites? Snails and worms seem to have been successful using that method for sharing genes between any two individuals, but vertebrates evolved away from it. Why? Janet Lesley, Kent, UKPost your answers (and new questions) below or send them to nq@theguardian.com. A selection will be published next Sunday. Continue reading...

Once dismissed as a sign of low intelligence, researchers now argue the power' of taboo words has been overlookedWhen researchers asked people around the world to list every taboo word they could think of, the differences that emerged were revealing. The length of each list, for example, varied widely.While native English speakers in the UK and Spanish speakers in Spain rattled off an average of 16 words, Germans more than tripled this with an average of 53 words ranging from intelligenzallergiker, a person allergic to intelligence, to hodenkobold, or testicle goblin", someone who is being annoying. Continue reading...

AmfAR, set up by Elizabeth Taylor, is known for hosting lavish parties and raising huge sums for HIV and Aids researchIt's recognised for its pomp, the celebrity supporters and the fabulously glamorous locations, but for the man behind the amfAR gala, an A-list charity roadshow that rolled into London for the first time this weekend, the event is deeply personal.AmfAR - the American Foundation for Aids Research - is a nonprofit group that emerged in the 1980s to support research into HIV and Aids. Continue reading...

Renowned 1957 Nobel prize winner worked on statistical mechanics and symmetry principles in elementary particle physicsChen Ning Yang, one of the world's most renowned physicists and a Nobel prize winner, died on Saturday in Beijing at the age of 103 after an illness, state media outlet Xinhua has reported.Born in eastern China's Hefei in Anhui province in 1922, Yang was a Chinese-American physicist who worked on statistical mechanics and symmetry principles in elementary particle physics. Continue reading...

BPA, a synthetic chemical used in production of plastics, found in baby products made by three big European brandsA chemical linked to impaired sexual development, obesity and cancer has been found in baby dummies manufactured by three big European brands.Dummies made by the Dutch multinational Philips, the Swiss oral health specialists Curaprox and the French toy brand Sophie la Girafe were found to contain bisphenol A (BPA), according to laboratory testing by dTest, a Czech consumer organisation. Philips said they had carried out subsequent testing and found no BPA, while Sophie la Girafe said the amount found was insignificant. Continue reading...

Long-acting injection offers an alternative to daily pills taken to protect against the virusA gamechanging" injection to prevent HIV is to be approved for use in England and Wales.The long-acting jab, administered every two months, will offer an alternative to the daily pills used to protect against the virus. Continue reading...

High court claim says company knowingly sold product containing asbestos and concealed' risk to public

Luxembourg - one of the world's smallest nations - has positioned itself at the forefront of asteroid mining. But extracting minerals and precious metals from space throws up all sorts of ethical and legal questions, such as who can lay claim to an asteroid and all of its extractive wealth, and should space benefit all of humankind", as the international treaties signed in the 60s intended? Nevertheless, Luxembourg has lured a multinational cast of space entrepreneurs with the potential to invest in the promise of an untapped trillion dollar industry. Josh Toussaint-Strauss finds out how Luxembourg became a global hub for space mining, and whether it's promised gold rush' will ever materialize Continue reading...

Exclusive: 20% reduction in contribution to Aids, TB and malaria funding expected to be announced next monthThe UK is expected to slash its contribution to a leading aid fund combating preventable diseases, with charities warning this could lead to more than 300,000 otherwise preventable deaths.If confirmed, the anticipated 20% cut in the UK contribution to the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria, would be announced on the sidelines of next month's G20 summit in South Africa, which Keir Starmer is due to attend. Continue reading...

Celebrities including Bella Hadid, Justin Bieber and Miranda Hart have talked about their years-long struggles with the effects of Lyme disease, but despite rising rates and better awareness, the illness remains poorly understood. To understand more about how the illness can impact people over the long term, Madeleine Finlay hears from the Guardian's Patrick Barkham about his daughter Milly's experience, and from Prof John Aucott, director of the Johns Hopkins Lyme Disease Research Center, and associate professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins UniversityAs my daughter got sicker and sicker, our quest for answers dragged on. How did we all miss the bacteria taking over her body?Support the Guardian Continue reading...

Richard Bilodeau, 63, charged with two counts of murder in 1984 death of Theresa Fusco, 16, of Long IslandFour decades after prosecutors sent the wrong men to prison for the rape and murder of a 16-year-old girl from Long Island, New York, DNA obtained from a discarded straw has led to the indictment of a new suspect.A Nassau county grand jury on Tuesday indicted Richard Bilodeau, 63, of Center Moriches, on two counts of murder in the death of 16-year-old Theresa Fusco, who disappeared after leaving her part-time job at a Lynbrook roller-skating rink in November 1984. Her nude body was found weeks after the assault, buried under leaves in a wooded area near the rink. Continue reading...

Only two female northern white rhinos are left - but neither can carry a pregnancy. So a surrogate was used. Tragically, the foetus didn't reach full termThis photograph captures a moment of fragile hope: the world's first IVF rhino pregnancy, a tiny foetus that reignited optimism among scientists fighting to save the northern white rhino from extinction. There are only two female northern white rhinos left on the planet - Najin and her daughter Fatu. Neither can carry a pregnancy due to health complications. The last male died in 2018 and that makes the species functionally extinct.

Weevils, spores, slime mold and cells are in extreme closeup for the 51st anniversary of the Nikon Small World competition. For more than five decades, the award has brought scientific wonders under the microscope, with scientists, artists and enthusiasts from 77 countries contributing 1,925 photo entries this year alone. Judges have arrived at this stunning top 20 Continue reading...

ITVX's perpetual real-time broadcast from the International Space Station is awe-inspiring ... until it gets boring. But even though it's hard to watch for long, it's a humbling reminder of who we areI realise that, at this point, there are already far too many shows. Every channel, every streaming service is teeming with content demanding your attention, and there are simply too few hours in the day to watch them all. However, with that in mind, may I recommend a new show called Space Live? There's only one episode. The only potential downside is that the episode literally lasts for ever.Actually, that's inaccurate. Space Live isn't a show, it's a channel. It launched on Wednesday morning, tucked away on ITVX, and consists only of live footage of Earth broadcast from the International Space Station. It's beguiling to watch, especially for anyone who didn't realise that a person can be awestruck and bored simultaneously. Continue reading...

Astrophysicist proposes a radically mundane' theory for why humans have yet to encounter extraterrestrialsFor centuries, great thinkers have pondered why, given the hundreds of billions of planets in the galaxy, we have seen no compelling signs of intelligent life beyond Earth.Now, scientists are mulling an intriguing possibility: if aliens exist, their technology may be only marginally better than ours. And having explored their cosmic neighbourhood for a while, they simply got bored and stopped bothering, making it difficult to detect them. Continue reading...

Botanist trying to conserve highly vulnerable rhizanthella that survives by feeding on nutrients from a fungusRhizanthella is an extraordinary orchid that lives its entire life underground. It flowers below ground, has no leaves and survives by feeding on nutrients from a fungus that gets its food from the soil and by connecting with roots of the broom bush, Melaleuca uncinata.Rhizanthella was an international sensation when it was first discovered by a farmer ploughing a field in Western Australia in 1928. It still remains incredibly difficult to find, usually by searching areas with the right habitat and carefully scraping away soil searching for the blooms buried underneath - tiny reddish flowers wrapped in creamy-pink bracts. The blooms also have a heady scent of vanilla, and may be pollinated by termites or tiny flies. Continue reading...