The Geological Society has announced the winners of this year’s competition, which for the first time allowed in images taken from around the world. According to the society, the photographs showcase the rich diversity of environments in which scientists, live, work and travel.

Researchers say tranexamic acid treatment has potential to save tens of thousands of livesA cheap and widely available drug could reduce the risk of death from common head injuries and save tens of thousands of lives each year, researchers say.Tranexamic acid slows down the breakdown of blood clots, and is already used to control heavy bleeding in people who have experienced trauma elsewhere in the body – for example from being shot or stabbed. Continue reading...

A study of more than 6,000 rabbits treated by vets has found that many lead sad lives. Here’s how to make sure they stay healthy and avoid lonelinessThere are thought to be more than 1.5m pet rabbits in the UK, and a large proportion of them could be leading very sad lives. A study of more than 6,000 rabbits treated by vets found alarming health conditions such as overgrown nails and teeth, digestive problems and skin issues.Thanks to generations of stories featuring rabbits, and their sweet, cuddly appearance, they have long been a popular children’s pet but, says Dan O’Neill, senior lecturer in companion animal epidemiology at the Royal Veterinary College, and co-author of the study, “they are not a good child’s pet at all.” They are a prey animal – constantly alert to danger – so being handled by a noisy child can be stressful, especially if they are not used to it (if a child, say, only plays with the rabbit at the weekend). Continue reading...

Scientists tracking 2I/Borisov say some formation processes may be common between starsThe first interstellar comet to be tracked by astronomers as it hurtles through the solar system is unremarkable in every way apart from where it comes from, researchers have said.Scientists reached the conclusion after observing 2I/Borisov with two of the most powerful telescopes on Earth. They decided that it looked like any other comet except that it came from beyond the solar system and would soon leave for good. Continue reading...

From people becoming a proper noun to woke’s use as an insult, we pick our key words of the yearThe year 2019 might still have some surprises in store for us – Donald Trump is yet to ask the Queen if she has any dirt on Joe Biden – but we know the general shape of it: global chaos, lies and Love Island. We also know many of its words. We are approaching the moment when the great dictionaries pick those that sum up our times, following on from last year’s “toxic” (Oxford English Dictionary), “justice” (Merriam Webster) “single use” (Collins) and “me too” (Macquarie). The words might not have been coined in 2019, but will have acquired new meaning, risen to prominence, or somehow distil our preoccupations. In advance of the lexicographers’ big reveal, here are my top 10 candidates. Continue reading...

Culturally, we’re moving away from phone conversations – but they’re often the best part of my dayI’ve taken to switching my phone’s ringer on between 8.30pm and 10.30pm on a week night. It feels like a dangerous act, for someone who used to be part of the “no phone calls allowed” brigade.There are lots of things to panic about with a phone call, chief among them being: what if we run out of things to say, and there’s, God forbid, silence? Continue reading...

How to find the faint stars of the water bearer, identified by the Babylonians with their water god EaAquarius, the water bearer, is one of the northern hemisphere’s autumnal constellations. It is a faint grouping of stars, found between Capricornus and Pisces, and must be viewed from a dark site. The chart shows the view looking south-south-west at midnight BST on 14 October. Fomalhaut (in Piscis Austrinus) is the brightest star in this section of the sky. Find it low down on the horizon and then, looking above it, begin to trace out the body of Aquarius, hopping from one faint star to the other. The constellation is one of the oldest to be identified. It appeared as GU.LA, meaning the great one, in Babylonian star catalogues dating to around 1,000 BC and was identified with their water god Ea. Aquarius took on its currently recognised western form in the classical Greek depiction of the heavens. He was shown up-ending a large jar, out of which water flowed down to form a river, in which Piscis Austrinus, the southern fish was swimming. Continue reading...

On 15 October, the European Investment Bank meets to decide its policy on fossil fuels. The hand of history is on its shoulderMillions of people marched against climate crisis over the past two weeks, in some of the largest demonstrations of the millennium. Most people cheered the students who led the rallies – call them the Greta Generation. But now we’ll start to find out if all their earnest protest actually matters.Related: EIB plans to cut all funding for fossil fuel projects by 2020 Continue reading...

Neurological insights into how the brain processes stress, and how it can develop into depression, have led to new interventionsIt’s a damp, midweek afternoon. Even so, Cardiff’s walk-in stress management course has pulled in more than 50 people. There are teenagers, white-haired older people with walking aids, people from Caucasian, Asian and Middle Eastern backgrounds. There is at least one pair who look like a parent and child – I’m unsure who is there to support whom.The course instructor makes it clear that she is not going to ask people to speak out about their own stress levels in this first class: “We know speaking in public is stressful in itself.” She tells us a bit about previous attendees: a police officer whose inexplicable and constant worrying prevented him from functioning; a retired 71-year-old unable to shake the incomprehensible but constant fatigue and sadness that blighted his life; a single mother unable to attend her daughter’s school concert, despite the disappointment it would cause. Continue reading...

Activists block trade at Billingsgate fish market and target headquarters of energy company Shell to ‘raise awareness’Climate protesters on Saturday intensified efforts to disrupt life in London, and targeted sites including Billingsgate fish market and Shell’s headquarters. They said police took at least 28 of their supporters into custody. That number means that more than 1,200 Extinction Rebellion activists have been arrested in London since their protests, over the government’s “failure” to act over climate change, were launched last Monday.And those detained include Belgian Princess Esméralda who was taken into a police van for questioning and held for about five hours after she joined a sit-in at Trafalgar Square on Thursday. “The more people from all sections of society protest, the greater the impact will be,” the 63-year-old said. Other protests launched on Saturday included one by more than 50 healthcare professionals – wearing scrubs and singing the Extinction Rebellion anthem – who gathered outside Shell’s headquarters before they marched to Parliament Square. “We are meeting outside Shell because they are one of the biggest companies involved in the oil and energy industry, and they have real power to decarbonise that industry,” said Alex Turner, 36, a paediatric and emergency doctor from Bristol. “We are protesting illegal levels of air pollution.” Continue reading...

I burnt out as a GP but in mental health I could take time with patients and, at last, make a difference“If you’re going to reject me, then reject me,” I said. I was deep in the bowels of Leicester University, being interviewed for a place at medical school. I was 35, a fact the learned professor interviewing me returned to again and again. How would I cope with the workload? Would the four hours’ driving each day prove too much? How would I support myself through my studies? Concerns that travelled through my own mind. Unlike the questions I asked myself, though, the queries in that interview room were all prefixed with “at your age”. I didn’t see my age as a problem, and eventually I told him so.“Reject me for the hundreds of reasons you reject people,” I continued, “but don’t reject me because of my date of birth. Your date of birth should be a bit like your National Insurance number. You need it occasionally, to fill in a form, but otherwise why not keep it at the back of a drawer and forget about it?” Continue reading...

Isotope found in seabed sediment points to clash of solar bodies near Mars, study suggestsAstronomers have discovered intriguing evidence that an asteroid break-up blanketed Earth with dust millions of years ago. The event dramatically cooled the planet and triggered an ice age that was followed by major increases in numbers of new animal species.The work, led by Birger Schmitz of Lund University in Sweden, was recently published in Science Advances and provides new insight into the impact of interplanetary events on our planet’s evolution. “We know about the 10km asteroid that crashed on Earth 67 million years ago and killed off the dinosaurs, but this event was very different,” Schmitz told the Observer. “It occurred about 470 million years ago when an asteroid 3,000 times bigger than the dinosaurs-killer was destroyed during a collision with another asteroid beyond the orbit of Mars. It filled the solar system with dust and caused a major dimming of sunlight falling on Earth.” Continue reading...

At rally in Denver, Swedish activist again scolds leaders for ignoring scienceYoung people must be prepared to strike for a long time for action on climate change and not back down, the Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg has told a rally in Denver.Thunberg said she and fellow youth activists would not beg those in power to act because she expected leaders to keep ignoring them. Continue reading...

Three cases of disease have emerged south of its usual catchment area in far-north QueenslandThe spread of a severe tissue-destroying ulcer once rare in Australia to a new geographic area in Queensland has infectious disease experts worried.The Buruli ulcer, also known as the Bairnsdale ulcer or Daintree ulcer, is an infection that eventually leads to an eruption of painful skin ulcers that fail to heal. There have been no reported cases in New South Wales, South Australia or Tasmania, with the disease so far confined to the Douglas Shire in far north Queensland between Mossman and just beyond the Daintree River, and to Victoria’s Bellarine and Mornington peninsulas. Continue reading...

The Soviet cosmonaut almost didn’t make it back into his capsule in 1965, when his suit inflated in the space vacuumAlexei Leonov, the legendary Soviet cosmonaut who became the first human to walk in space 54 years ago, has died in Moscow at 85.The Russian space agency Roscosmos announced the news on its website on Friday, but gave no cause of death. Leonov had health issues for several years, according to Russia media. Continue reading...

Fossil fuel companies have worked for decades to shape attitudes and undermine science. The crisis dictates that they must now be confrontedThe huge differences in the voting records of MPs on climate issues, revealed in the Guardian’s rankings today, should immediately disabuse anyone of the notion that Britain’s elected politicians are united – apart from a handful of contrarians – in their efforts to limit global heating.True, a consensus exists in the UK and most of Europe with regard to the necessity of cutting emissions. That is in stark contrast to countries such as the US and Australia, where leading politicians deny climate science and promote fossil fuel extraction. But acceptance of the evidence that shows the next decade will be crucial for efforts to restrict global temperature rises to 1.5C is the basis for action, not a substitute for it. Politicians should be judged on what they do. And our research shows that the voting record of most Conservative MPs over the past decade, on 16 parliamentary divisions ranging from fracking to renewable energy subsidies and vehicle emissions, is abysmal. They are five times more likely to vote against climate measures than MPs from other parties, with the prime minister, Boris Johnson, among several dozen MPs to get the lowest possible score of zero. Continue reading...

Having a few ‘green policies’ is no longer enough. Ask yourself: what will your next MP do to save the world?The government that wins the next election stands to govern for half of the decade that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says we have left to tackle the climate emergency. It will also oversee next year’s international conference on the climate crisis (COP 26) – the most important since the Paris Accord of 2015. We owe it to ourselves and to the world to make sure that climate is not a marginal issue at the election, whenever it comes.Yet maybe we don’t need to worry. We have largely enjoyed a broad “climate consensus” in this country: we believe in the science, most of us don’t indulge climate change deniers and there is agreement on the need to act. Not for us on this issue – at least so far – the culture wars of the US. Continue reading...

Whether for ancestry or health, millions of us are choosing to have our genetic fingerprints analysed by using direct-to-consumer kits from private companies. But can the results of these tests be trusted in a clinical setting? Senior doctors have called for a crackdown on home genetic-testing kits and this week, Hannah Devlin finds out why Continue reading...

Eysenck’s ‘cancer-prone’ personality theory had come under criticism for decades

The DNA test had found a man who had the same percentage match as me. I got a text: ‘You’re not going to believe this. He lives in Calgary, too’Having your hair cut is such an intimate thing, it’s almost like therapy. So, when I moved from Saskatchewan to Calgary in 2012, finding a good stylist was high on my to-do list. A friend recommended Troy and I liked him right away. After a quick consultation I said: “Just do whatever you like.” I know that’s unusual, but for some reason I trusted him instantly.Every six weeks I was back, and soon we were friends. When you’re talking about hair, ethnicity often comes up. I told Troy about my Jewish and First Nations heritage, but that I couldn’t be sure of the exact details because my dad had been adopted. Troy had questions about his background, too. He had discovered, aged six, that the man he believed to be his birth father wasn’t. Over the next six years it was a subject that we talked about often. Continue reading...

Project to record cultural, geological and environmental treasures at risk from climate crisisA project to produce detailed maps of all the land on Earth through laser scanning has been revealed by researchers who say action is needed now to preserve a record of the world’s cultural, environmental and geological treasures.Prof Chris Fisher, an archaeologist from Colorado State University, said he founded the Earth Archive as a response to the climate crisis. Continue reading...

Allendale, Northumberland: Fungi and leaf mould are all part of the recycling that makes my garden thriveAutumn is a rich, woodsy potpourri of scents as I rake leaves from the garden paths. Seeing them as a harvest rather than a nuisance, I lay the leaves over the shady border to rot down and improve the soil. Bulbs will push up through the leaf mould in spring. One path that I clear by hand has an eruption of hundreds of plump wood puffballs. There’s a strong fungal smell as I pull them up so their fruiting bodies can’t mature. It’s best to avoid breathing in the millions of dust-like spores that they produce, something that could be easily triggered from their ripe globes when trodden on.In the flower border, clusters of shaggy ink-caps burgeon up through the soil, forcing aside clods of mud. Their caps are smooth and creamy, supported by chunky stems, their sides flaking with curled overlapping layers, inspiring the alternative name of lawyer’s wig. Some have turned rusty orange on top and black and slimy underneath as they collapse back into the earth. The fungi and the leaf mould are all part of the recycling that makes my garden thrive. Continue reading...

Insect bites can be significantly cut using a cunning disguise, researchers findPainting a cow to look something like a zebra has been found to reduce fly bites by 50%.Researchers believe painting stripes on to cattle is a world-first and could become an environmentally friendly alternative to pesticides. Continue reading...

Institute of Economic Affairs has links to 14 members of Boris Johnson’s cabinet

Choreographer Jennifer Lacey explains why there is more modern art than movement in her new life-coaching pieceIn the basement of Nottingham Contemporary art gallery, Jennifer Lacey fans out a set of large homemade tarot cards. I pick a pink one, turn it over, and find an image of a baby chick beneath a pair of boob-like fried eggs. The artist Sarah Lucas immediately springs to mind but Lacey’s picture is actually a homage to Leigh Bowery, the outre superstar who was his own art object. Several portraits of Bowery hang a couple of floors above us, along with a video of him strolling through Manhattan’s Meatpacking District in a peanut bodysuit and one-shoulder floral dress. They are part of the exhibition Still Undead: Britain Beyond the Bauhaus, which explores the far-reaching influence of the Weimar art school. Lacey has drawn upon several of the artworks for her one-to-one performance, Extended Hermeneutics, which I’m experiencing over a cup of tea in the cafe.Lacey is an American choreographer who has been based in France since the start of the century. Presented by Nottingham’s biennial dance festival, Nottdance, Extended Hermeneutics is, well, not dance. She may end each 30-minute session with a short solo but for the main part she will act as life coach, psychologist and fortune-teller. The tarot cards are part of “a performance we’re doing together,” she tells me. “We’re asking the art.” The idea is to use artworks suggested by the cards to wrestle with a problem offered by the participant. Continue reading...

Research links human ability to regrow cartilage to molecules that help amphibians sprout new limbsContrary to popular opinion, humans can regrow cartilage in their joints, researchers have found. Experts hope the research could lead to new treatments for a common type of arthritis.Osteoarthritis, in which joints become painful and stiff, is the most common form of arthritis and is thought to cause pain in about 8.5 million people in the UK alone. It is caused by a breakdown in the cartilage that protects the ends of the bones, as well as the growth of new bone around the joint as the body tries to repair the damage. Continue reading...

A man’s worry seems to be hardwired – as if being fertile constitutes a meaningful measure of masculinityI read that tomatoes might be good for a fella’s sperm count. Sperm’s always been a worry for me, ever since the day of the 1978 FA Cup final. I’ll spare you the goriest of the details, but the long and, er, short of it is that I fell off my bike going to my nan and grandad’s house to watch the match and sustained serious injuries to my pudenda. Fifteen stitches were required to sew my boyhood up, but I made it home in time for kick off, which is all I cared about. I was only 11, after all.My parents had other worries. I don’t know whether some doctor at casualty at Corbett hospital in Stourbridge had said anything, but they were concerned about how my fertility might be affected. Mercifully, having begat two children 20 years later, all seemed to be in fair working order. And almost 20 years after that, I found myself doing a radio item about the National Sperm Bank. This involved having my own stuff analysed. Having breezily agreed to do this, I found myself in a small room in a fertility clinic in London trying to conjure up a sample, with a colleague called Steve standing outside holding a microphone. Continue reading...

John B Goodenough, M Stanley Whittingham and Akira Yoshino honoured for sparking a portable technology revolutionThe Nobel prize in chemistry has been awarded to three scientists for their work in developing lithium-ion batteries.John B Goodenough of the University of Texas at Austin, M Stanley Whittingham of Binghamton University and Akira Yoshino of Meijo University will receive equal shares of the 9m Swedish kronor (£74o,000) prize, which was announced by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm on Wednesday. Continue reading...

Fossil fuel giants have known the harm they do for decades. But they created a system that absolves them of responsibilityLet’s stop calling this the Sixth Great Extinction. Let’s start calling it what it is: the “first great extermination”. A recent essay by the environmental historian Justin McBrien argues that describing the current eradication of living systems (including human societies) as an extinction event makes this catastrophe sound like a passive accident.While we are all participants in the first great extermination, our responsibility is not evenly shared. The impacts of most of the world’s people are minimal. Even middle-class people in the rich world, whose effects are significant, are guided by a system of thought and action that is shaped in large part by corporations. Continue reading...

John B Goodenough, M Stanley Whittingham and Akira Yoshino made laureates for development that sparked portable technology revolution• Report: chemistry Nobel given to lithium-ion battery researchers12.26pm BSTAnd there we leave the chemistry prize for another year. Huge congratulations go to John Goodenough, Stanley Whittingham and Akira Yoshino for the development of lithium-ion batteries.Here is my colleague Nicola Davis’s news story on the prize:Related: Nobel prize in chemistry awarded for work on lithium-ion batteries12.19pm BSTMore reaction from Royal Society President Venki Ramakrishnan:“Professor Goodenough’s contributions in the field of materials science have fundamentally shaped the technology we take for granted today. From powering the smartphone in your pocket, to his defining work on the properties of magnetism, these contributions have opened new avenues for scientific investigation and engineering. Continue reading...

New data shows how fossil fuel companies have driven climate crisis despite industry knowing dangers

James Peebles, Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz honoured for ‘improving our understanding of evolution of universe and Earth’s place in the cosmos’

Model from Eindhoven University will surround baby with fluid and deliver oxygen and nutrients via umbilical cordAttempts to create an artificial womb for premature babies have been given a boost by the award of a €2.9m (£2.6m) grant to develop a working prototype for use in clinics.The model, which is being developed by researchers at the Eindhoven University of Technology, would provide babies with artificial respiration. However, unlike current incubators the artificial womb would be similar to biological conditions, with the baby surrounded by fluids and receiving oxygen and nutrients through an artificial placenta that will connect to their umbilical cord. Continue reading...

James Peebles laid foundation for modern cosmology while Swiss pair found first exoplanetThree scientists have been awarded the 2019 Nobel prize in physics for groundbreaking discoveries about the evolution of the universe and the Earth’s place within it.James Peebles, from Canada, has been awarded half of the 9m Swedish kronor (£740,000) prize for his theoretical discoveries about the evolution of the universe. The Swiss astronomers Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz share the other half of the prize for their discovery of the first planet beyond our solar system. Continue reading...

Top scientists accuse Boris Johnson of sacrificing the UK’s research reputation – and billions of pounds in EU grantsTwo Nobel laureates and other top scientists are accusing Boris Johnson of destroying Britain’s global reputation by behaving “like a clown” and pursuing a no-deal Brexit that would leave UK science “dead” for years.The government has assured anxious academics it still has a clear ambition to join the European commission’s new €100bn (£89bn) research funding programme, Horizon Europe, after Brexit. But Robert-Jan Smits, the commission’s former director-general of research, says the UK has “zero chance” of negotiating associate membership after a no-deal divorce. Continue reading...

The gas giant has 82 moons, surpassing the 79 known to orbit its larger neighbourSaturn has taken over from Jupiter as host to the most moons in the solar system after astronomers spotted 20 more lumps of rock orbiting the ringed planet.It brings the number of Saturnian moons to 82, surpassing the 79 that are known to orbit Jupiter, its larger, inner neighbour. Continue reading...

New Attenborough series aims to be as influential as Blue Planet II was on plastic wasteA new BBC natural history series narrated by Sir David Attenborough airing later this month will have a conservationist message about the impact of the climate crisis at its heart.Seven Worlds, One Planet will show “where humankind is negatively and positively impacting the health of the planet”, the corporation said on Monday as Attenborough launched the new series at a premiere in London. Continue reading...

The answer to today’s money problemEarlier today I set you the following problem. It was a tricky one, and judging from the BTL comments the solution is eagerly awaited. Let me restate the problem before we get there. It concerns a game on a grid with an infinite number of rows and columns, and starts with three coins in the top left corner of the grid, as illustrated here. Continue reading...

William Kaelin, Sir Peter Ratcliffe and Gregg Semenza worked out how cells adapt to oxygen availabilityThree scientists have shared this year’s Nobel prize in physiology or medicine for discovering how the body responds to changes in oxygen levels, one of the most essential processes for life.William Kaelin Jr at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard University in Massachusetts, Sir Peter Ratcliffe at Oxford University and the Francis Crick Institute in London, and Gregg Semenza at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, worked out how cells sense falling oxygen levels and respond by making new blood cells and vessels. Continue reading...

Israeli company successfully cultures bovine cells on International Space StationLab-grown meat has been successfully cultured in space for the first time.The Israeli food technology startup Aleph Farms grew the meat on the International Space Station, 248 miles (399 km) away from any natural resources. Continue reading...

William G Kaelin, Sir Peter Ratcliffe and Gregg L Semenza share award for work on how cells adapt to oxygen availability

A pecuniary puzzleUPDATE: The solution is now up here.Today, we are going to play a game. It takes place on a grid with an infinite number of rows and columns, and it starts with three coins in the top left corner of the grid, as illustrated here. Continue reading...

The ceaseless banter we engage in unthinkingly often goes so much deeper than exchanging shallow pleasantries

Rorie Fulton on combating unwitting support for populists, and Richard Bryden on civic spaces that facilitate ‘reasoned conversation’George Monbiot makes a telling link between individuals’ affective state and the unwitting support we lend to demagogues (Journal, 3 October). In their fascinating book The Boy who was Raised as a Dog, Bruce Perry and Maia Szalavitz develop this notion of state-dependent functioning and apply it to organisations. In what feels like an increasingly apt commentary on events unfolding in the institutions of democracy both at home and abroad, Perry and Szalavitz write that “the more out of control the external situation is, the more controlling, reactive and oppressive the internally focused actions of [the] group will become”.Seeking to offer a path forward that will break this spiral, Monbiot rightly calls for us to restore the mental state that allows us to think. For each of us as individuals, what might this involve? In the language of Stephen Porges’s polyvagal theory, such a restoration entails moving from a state of dysregulation to one of regulation. This means making time in the day for activities of self-care that provide regulating sensory input. For some, this will include listening to their favourite music, doing half an hour’s yoga or going for a run, while for others it will be a cup of coffee and a piece of crunchy toast for breakfast, time spent outside, or a hot bath when the children have gone to bed. Continue reading...

Give up wanting to be liked, live with imposter syndrome and love what you do. Suzanne Moore advises aspiring female writersHow does a woman write? This woman is writing on her laptop in bed wearing her lipstick. She looks quite ridiculous. She is wishing the teenagers downstairs would make less noise and will go down periodically to shout at them and to get some biscuits, maybe some cheese, a small snack that she needs to sustain herself every other paragraph or so.This woman wishes she was like the young people she sees writing in cafés or on the bus, who seem to be able to write anywhere. She wishes she wasn’t so precious about peace and quiet and remembers she didn’t used to be. In fact, she used to sit next to a man in a newspaper office who was covered in nicotine patches, chewing nicotine gum and drinking double espressos until he vibrated. Still, she always met the deadline. He didn’t, so was in a constant state of torture. Continue reading...

Young people in the global south have been tackling the climate crisis for years. They should be celebrated tooRidhima Pandey was just nine years old in 2017 when she filed a lawsuit against the Indian government for failing to take action against climate change. Pandey’s fierce, astounding passion for the environment is not accidental. Her mother is a forestry guard and her father an environmental activist; and the whole family was displaced by the Uttarakhand floods of 2013, which claimed hundreds of lives.In Kenya Kaluki Paul Mutuku has been actively involved in conservation since college, where he was a member of an environmental awareness club, and has been a member of the African Youth Initiative on Climate Change since 2015. Raised in rural Kenya by a single mother, Mutuku’s vigorous activism, like Pandey’s, was inspired by the direct challenges his family (and wider community) faced from the effects of climate change: “Growing up, I witnessed mothers cover kilometres to fetch water,” he says. Continue reading...

An estimated 7 million people die every year from exposure to polluted air. Nicola Davis looks at the science behind air pollution and at the policies to tackle it Continue reading...

French patient’s breakthrough could lead to brain-controlled wheelchairs, say expertsA French man paralysed in a nightclub accident has walked again thanks to a brain-controlled exoskeleton, providing hope to tetraplegics seeking to regain movement.The patient trained for months, harnessing his brain signals to control a computer-simulated avatar to perform basic movements before using the robot device to walk. Scientists described the trial results as a breakthrough. Continue reading...

Health professionals to give 600,000 children aged 10-11 free vaccine against winter fluEvery primary school child in England is to be offered vaccination against winter flu in an attempt to safeguard them and their family from the virus, the health service has announced, promising no shortage of vaccines regardless of the Brexit outcome.This year’s flu vaccination campaign will be the biggest ever, with 25 million people offered vaccines free, including 600,000 school children aged 10-11. Children are considered “super-spreaders”, liable to infect others in their family and a danger to the elderly. All children aged two to 11 will be offered the nasal spray vaccine in the coming weeks. Continue reading...