Science | The Guardian

It is easy to despair as we leave one geological epoch and enter another. Our situation is dire, but we can address itLand temperatures have hit 60Cin Spain, satellite data shows, with tourists warned to stay off beaches throughout the Mediterranean. Across the pond, more than 100 million Americans are still under extreme heat warnings. When the heat dome" squatting over the south sent thermometers soaring to 56C in Death Valley , it was close to the hottest temperature ever recorded on Earth.The sea is little cooler, with Florida ocean temperatures well above 30C. Further north on land, people are being rescued by dinghies and helicopters from suburban streets as heavy rain causes flooding across Pennsylvania and New York and into New England. Vermont has declared a state of emergency. The National Weather Service has issued a tornado watch for parts of the midwest, and a severe thunderstorm watch for other states. Parts of Canada have been on fire for months.Gaia Vince is the author of Nomad Century: How to Survive the Climate Upheaval Continue reading...

The man who led the drive to create a not-for-profit Covid vaccine is now focusing on the deaths caused by global heating and pollutionI speak as a healthcare CEO, but also as a nature lover and as a grandfather," Pascal Soriot, chief executive of Britain's biggest drugmaker, AstraZeneca, told King Charles III and a select audience during London Climate Week at an event in the gothic grandeur of Guildhall.While the Covid-19 pandemic led to the loss of 7 million lives globally, Soriot says that the climate crisis and pollution cost us 7 million to 9 million lives every year". Continue reading...

As the International Seabed Authority gathers in Jamaica to thrash out regulations for mining the deep sea, Chris Michael of the Guardian's Seascape team gives Ian Sample the background to this highly contested decision. Ian also hears from the marine biologist Dr Diva Amon about why some scientists are sounding the alarmClips: CBCRead more Guardian reporting on this story from the Seascape team here. Continue reading...

Exclusive: strep A genome sequencing by Australian scientists will likely have implications for prevention and vaccine development

As results show 35% slowing in cognitive decline, health leaders say swift decisions crucial

While it is not a cure, proof that drugs can alter course of disease is regarded as significant triumph

Object at Green Head, 250km from Perth in Western Australia, could be from an Indian space rocket, experts said, but police say it is not hazardous

In our early romantic relationships, there is often a mismatch between the strength of our feelings and the stark reality. So why do they linger in our memories?Do you remember your first love? Mine had soulful eyes, a shy smile, and I thought he was beautiful. I spent months trying to put myself in Brad's way. He was in the same tutorial class at secondary school as me, so I enjoyed at least one daily encounter, and others could be manufactured if I walked a certain way to the lunch hall or chose my PE options wisely. I would note our meetings in my diary, where I gave Brad (not his real name) the codename Gregory", which I considered uncrackable and lush, probably because my mother admired Gregory Peck. (I later learned, when she asked me if I knew a boy called Gregory, that my mother had found my diary, but that's another story.) Brad was shy and he never went out with girls. I tormented myself with challenging metaphysical questions, such as, How well do I know Brad?" and, Do I really love him or is this an infatuation?" It stumped me how Brad did not see that he and I were perfect life partners. After two years of Brad remaining steadfastly unobtainable, I decided to go off him. My love ended as abruptly as it started.The following week, Brad caught me up on the path to maths. Will you go out with me?" he said. It seemed implausible to my 15-year-old self that the fates would work this way. Besides, being shy, I tended to underinterpret signals. Do you mean it?" I asked. No shit," he said. Continue reading...

Deneb, Vega and Altair, which star in a Chinese folk story, are riding high in the northern hemisphereThe most prominent star patterns are sometimes not constellations at all. Take the summer triangle. It is a prominent pattern of stars that rides high in the sky at this time of year in the northern hemisphere. The shape is composed of Deneb in Cygnus, the swan; Vega in Lyra, the lyre; and Altair in Aquila, the eagle. All three stars give out a blue-white light.It has been called the summer triangle in the west since at least 1913. Before that, the pattern was marked on 19th-century star charts. The term was popularised by the British astronomer Patrick Moore in the latter half of the 20th century. However, the triplet of stars has long been recognised by other cultures, featuring in, for example, a Chinese folk story about a cowherd and a weaver girl. Continue reading...

A vehicle dashcam and doorbell camera captured the moment when what appeared to be a green-hued meteor lined the night sky of the southern US states on Friday. The American Meteor Society, which observes and collects information on meteors, meteoric fireballs, meteoric trains and related meteoric phenomena, said it had received 49 reports of a fireball being seen from Atlanta to Texas Continue reading...

Negative mental chatter and anxious fantasies may not be all bad - they could bring benefits such as greater creativity and better healthI cannot remember a time when some large worry has not cast a shadow over my day. As a young child, I would lie awake fearing everything from the impending embarrassment of gym class, to the death of my parents, to the prospect of a nuclear holocaust. The form of my fears may have changed as I age, but the tendency to see disaster on the horizon has remained.I am far from alone in this: negative mental chatter and doom-laden fantasies are common characteristics of the personality trait neuroticism". Like other personality traits, this can measured using simple questions such as:Do you suffer from nerves"?Do you worry too long after an embarrassing experience?Are your feelings easily hurt?Are you often troubled by feelings of guilt?Are you an irritable person? Continue reading...

As advanced remedies emerge, the chief executive of Alzheimer's Research UK warns sufferers could miss out as the health service struggles to copeGroundbreaking new dementia drugs are likely to be the preserve of the rich while NHS patients will be subject to a massive postcode lottery" when they become available for the first time in the UK, according to the co-chair of the government's national mission to tackle the condition.Amid multiple scientific and pharmaceutical breakthroughs - the latest of which, donanemab, is to have its full clinical trial results published at a conference in the Netherlands on Monday - more research funding and the establishment of a dedicated government taskforce, it should be a promising time for tackling the disease that affects more than 850,000 people in Britain. Continue reading...

Coincidences are more likely to happen than we think - so we should expect the unexpected and avoid magical thinkingWhen the mathematician Dr Kit Yates sees a weather forecast predicting a 25% chance of rain, he packs an umbrella. When he meets someone who shares his birthday in a crowded room, he is not in the least surprised. And if he comes across an unfamiliar phrase, such as the Baader-Meinhof effect", he knows he is likely to encounter it again, very soon.One of the biggest things I learned from writing my book was that surprisingly unlikely things can and do happen, given enough opportunities," Yates says, referring to his new book, How to Expect the Unexpected. Continue reading...

Light from ancient galaxies took more than 13bn years to reach Nasa's 6.8bn James Webb probe and have provided scientists with stunning imagesIt took a remarkably long time for the light emitted by a group of ancient galaxies to reach the James Webb space telescope last year. Astronomers have calculated that the photons were in transit for more than 13bn years - almost the entire history of the cosmos - before they reached the orbiting observatory.The results are scientifically dramatic and have revealed that the universe was already deep into the process of star formation only a short time after its big bang birth - although the photographs themselves are scarcely stunning in appearance: a handful of smudges, a couple of glowing spheres and an image that has been described as a glowing dog bone. Continue reading...

Natural aquatic supplement could be used to make up for lack of key vitamin B12 in plant-based dietsVitamins for vegans made from algae could soon prove to be the most effective solution to replacing an important nutrient missing from plant-based diets, thanks to recent research by scientists at Cambridge University.The popularity of meat- and dairy-free foods in western diets is leaving many people potentially exposed to vitamin deficiency. In particular, they can suffer from a lack of the vitamin B12, a key nutrient involved in blood and nerve cell manufacture. Continue reading...

More and more youngsters are experiencing serious reactions to everyday foods - and even our pets are suffering. We meet one family who lost a son to anaphylaxis and ask what can be doneWhen five-year-old Benedict Blythe woke up on the morning of 1 December 2021, he was excited that Christmas was coming. He came downstairs to open the first box in his Advent calendar containing a plastic springy frog and a dairy-free white chocolate (Benedict was allergic to milk, along with many other foods including soy, sesame, eggs and nuts). It was Benedict's first term at school - Barnack primary in Stamford - and he loved it so much that back in September, he had cried when he learned that there were no classes at the weekend. That morning, he went off cheerfully to school with a small packet of dairy-free McVitie's Gingerbread Men for snack time. He seemed happy and healthy when he arrived but by the afternoon, he was dead, having collapsed with anaphylaxis.I meet Benedict's mother, Helen Blythe, for coffee one spring morning in a country hotel not far from Stamford where she lives. We sit in a quiet back room and talk for two hours. To start with, there's another person in the room, but when he hears what we will be talking about, he offers awkward condolences and leaves. The random pity of strangers is just one of the many things Helen has had to endure since the death of her son. She tells me that when she meets someone new she has to decide whether to say that she has one child or two (Benedict's younger sister, Etta, also has multiple allergies). When our coffee arrives, it comes with a piece of buttery shortbread but Helen says I should take hers. She went vegan in 2020 when she realised she effectively was already as a vegetarian cooking for two children with milk and egg allergies. Continue reading...

Climate breakdown and crop losses threaten our survival, but the ultra-rich find ever more creative ways to maintain the status quoAccording to Google's news search, the media has run more than 10,000 stories this year about Phillip Schofield, the British television presenter who resigned over an affair with a younger colleague. Google also records a global total of five news stories about a scientific paper published last week, showing that the chances of simultaneous crop losses in the world's major growing regions, caused by climate breakdown, appear to have been dangerously underestimated. In mediaworld, a place that should never be confused with the real world, celebrity gossip is thousands of times more important than existential risk.The new paper explores the impacts on crop production when meanders in the jet stream (Rossby waves) become stuck. Stuck patterns cause extreme weather. To put it crudely, if you live in the northern hemisphere and a kink in the jet stream (the band of strong winds a few miles above the Earth's surface at mid-latitudes) is stuck to the south of you, your weather is likely to be cold and wet. If it's stuck to the north of you, you're likely to suffer escalating heat and drought. Continue reading...

The UK's former chief scientific adviser, a familiar face during Covid, talks about his new role as chair of the London museum and putting its collection at the heart of our climate responseSir Patrick Vallance is sitting in a back office at the Natural History Museum talking about his childhood love of dinosaurs. I was obsessed," says the UK's former chief scientific adviser from behind his trademark tortoiseshell glasses. When I was young, I wanted to be a palaeontologist. I failed at that so I did something else," he says.His favourite exhibit as a boy? Dippy the diplodocus in the hall was definitely one that inspired me. The whale, too. When I walk around now, I think about the meteorites and what that's telling us about outer space." Continue reading...

Nottingham University researchers are simulating black holes with a tiny vortex inside a bell jar of superfluid heliumAt the end of a nondescript corridor at the University of Nottingham is a door labelled simply: Black Hole Laboratory. Within, an experiment is under way in a large, hi-tech bathtub that could offer a unique glimpse of the laws of physics that govern the real thing.The lab is run by Prof Silke Weinfurtner, a pioneer in the field of analogue gravity, whose work has demonstrated uncanny parallels between the mathematics describing fluid systems on Earth and some of the most extreme and inaccessible environments in the universe. Continue reading...

Results reveal activities such as using computer or writing journal associated with 11% drop in risk over 10-year periodTaking part in activities such as chess, writing a journal, or educational classes in older age may help to reduce the risk of dementia, a study has suggested.According to the World Health Organization, more than 55 million people have the disease worldwide, most of them older people. Continue reading...

We would like to hear from anyone who has experienced significant delays after a referral for suspected cancer or during treatmentThe latest cancer waiting time figures in England show that four key waiting time targets have been missed.

Discovery that some species build nests from anti-bird spikes highlights growing awareness in UK that deterrents don't workIt seems like the ultimate revenge: birds have been found constructing nests from the very spikes meant to deter them from perching on buildings. But while humans have no shortage of tactics to wage against unwanted birds, experts say it's time to abandon the war.Though there are myriad ways to deter or remove birds from city roofs, train stations and other settings - from spikes to fire gel, professional falconers and even plastic owls - it seems many lead to only a temporary reprieve. Continue reading...

India's space agency launched a rocket on Friday that will attempt to land a spacecraft at the lunar south pole, an unprecedented feat that would advance the country's position as a significant space power. Television footage showed the Indian Space Research Organisation's launch rocket blast off from the country's main spaceport in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, leaving behind a plume of smoke and fire. The Chandrayaan-3 mission is designed to deploy a lander and rover near the moon's south pole around 23 August

Chandrayaan-3 launches from island in southern India in follow-up to failed effort four years agoAn Indian spacecraft has blazed its way towards the far side of the moon in a follow-up mission to its failed effort nearly four years ago to land a rover softly on the lunar surface, India's space agency said.Chandrayaan-3, the word for moon craft" in Sanskrit, took off from a launch pad in Sriharikota, an island in southern India, with an orbiter, a lander and a rover, in a demonstration of India's emerging space technology. The spacecraft will embark on a journey lasting slightly over a month before landing on the moon's surface later in August. Continue reading...

A rocket engine exploded during a test in Japan on Friday, the latest in a series of failures that have deflated Tokyo's space ambitions. The explosion took place about a minute into the test of the second-stage engine at a Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency testing site in Noshiro city, in Akita prefecture, officials said. Footage showed flames shooting out the side of the test facility, before the small building was engulfed in flames and the roof blew off. No injuries were reported

Up to 14 cans of diet drink a day considered safe for 70kg person, as WHO says sweetener is possibly' carcinogenic in larger amountsA widely used artificial sweetener deemed a possible" cause of cancer is safe in limited quantities, such as consuming fewer than nine to 14 cans of soft drink a day, experts have said.The sugar substitute aspartame, used in thousands of products including diet fizzy drinks, ice-cream and chewing gum, was classified as possibly carcinogenic to humans" in a report released on Thursday by the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). Continue reading...

The notion of boundaries' is a seductive metaphor for how our relationships should work - but where did it come from?

The Chandrayaan-3 is set to blast off from a spaceport in the southern state of Andhra PradeshIndia's space agency has made final preparations for the launch of a rocket that will attempt to land a rover on the moon and mark the country's arrival as a power in space exploration.Only the United States, the former Soviet Union and China have made successful lunar landings. An attempt by a Japanese start-up earlier this year ended with the lander crashing. Continue reading...

Polissoir', discovered in Valley of Stones nature reserve, was used about 5,000 years ago to hone tools such as axesAt first glance it looked like nothing more than a rugged boulder jumbled among many others on the floor of a valley in the West Country.But a smooth, glossy dip in the stone indicated that it was something very special - a vanishingly rare polissoir", or polishing stone, used 5,000 years ago by Neolithic people to hone tools such as axes. Continue reading...

My friend and colleague Alan Bull, who has died aged 87, was an internationally renowned microbiologist and pioneer of biotechnology, developing procedures that opened up new approaches to studying microbial ecology and pathogenicity. Such developments led to Alan chairing an Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development working party on the potential of biotechnology for industrial sustainability (1996-98).Collaboration was central to Alan's work. Together with Ian Swingland, a conservation biology professor at the University of Kent, where Alan spent most of his career, he was a founding trustee in 1989 of the Durrell Trust for Conservation Biology, and in 1992 launched a new journal, Biodiversity and Conservation, which is still going strong. Continue reading...

As research focuses on richer parts of world, people in less developed countries suffer from lack of awareness and supportIn the Hospital del Norte of El Alto, a working-class city in Bolivia, visibly sick patients queue for a consultation with a surgeon. At their feet, two stray dogs sleep on a floor strewn with coca leaves.Dr Silverio Condori, 49, was here when the coronavirus pandemic arrived in Bolivia. He fell sick in June 2020 and spent two months in one of the country's few intensive care units. I came back from another world," he said. Continue reading...

Words such as boundaries' have become common parlance both online and in person - but at what cost to our relationships?What sort of words do you think of when I mention the phrase therapy speak"? Gaslighting? Trauma-dumping? Triggered? Even words like toxic, perhaps. Or, and this is a personal favourite: self-care. In recent years, these terms have started cropping up everywhere: on TikTok, Instagram and sometimes even in our personal lives, especially within romantic scenarios, where we have to balance another person's needs" against our own.These shiny, businesslike phrases have become catch-all ways to describe the way others treat us, and how we ought to treat ourselves, ostensibly from the mouths of therapists. Words like boundaries" have dominated headlines this month after alleged messages between the actor Jonah Hill and his ex-partner Sarah Brady were published online, in which he says she should not post pictures of herself in a bathing suit, go surfing with men, or have friendships that he doesn't approve of, among other things, if they are to continue to have a relationship (demands that, to me, seem far-removed from anything a therapist might endorse as reasonable boundaries").Daisy Jones is a writer and author of All the Things She SaidDo 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...

Twenty-five years ago in a German bar, neuroscientist Christof Koch bet philosopher David Chalmers that we'd understand the neural basis for consciousness by 2023. Last month, the winner of the bet received a case of wine. Ian Sample talks to Christof and David about why they made the bet, who won, and where we are now in our understanding of this most fundamental aspect of existence.Learn more about the science of consciousness by joining leading neuroscientist professor Anil Seth for a Guardian masterclass. Book here Continue reading...

Scientists studied jewelry made from now extinct creatures and theorize that humans arrived in Americas 27,000 years agoNew research suggests humans lived in South America at the same time as now extinct giant sloths, bolstering evidence that people arrived in the Americas earlier than once thought.Scientists analyzed triangular and teardrop-shaped pendants made of bony material from the sloths. They concluded that the carved and polished shapes and drilled holes were the work of deliberate craftsmanship. Continue reading...

A CSIRO team at Murriyang has been tracking millisecond pulsars for 18 years and say they have evidence supporting the existence of gravitational waves

Study finds MRI scans led to different diagnosis or change in care in 6% of casesPatients experiencing psychosis for the first time should be routinely given brain scans to rule out underlying physical illnesses, according to psychiatrists.A review involving more than 1,600 patients with a first episode of psychosis who underwent an MRI brain scan found that about 6% had a scan abnormality that led to a different diagnosis or a change to their clinical care. Continue reading...

Volume of debris in the unexplored twilight zone is an emerging threat' to reefs already stressed by climate crisis, say scientistsNo part of the planet is free of plastic waste, and coral reefs are no exception, but scientists have now made the discovery that the deeper the reef, the more plastic debris it is likely to have.A study published in Nature found that not only is every coral reef encumbered with plastic, but almost three-quarters of the larger items were from ghost gear" - fishing paraphernalia such as ropes, lines and nets. Food wrappers and plastic bottles were also common. The plastic constitutes an emerging threat" to reefs already stressed by the climate crisis and overfishing, the researchers said. Continue reading...

Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex image released to celebrate first year of operation of James Webb telescopeAn unprecedented" closeup image of the nearest star-forming region to Earth was released by Nasa on Wednesday to mark the first year of operation of the James Webb space telescope.The vivid view of sun-like" stars in the Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex 390 light years away is the first time researchers have been able to see the area in fine detail, minus the distraction of foreground stars. Continue reading...

Dutch study identifies several examples of corvids' amazing' ability to adapt to the urban environmentBirds have never shied away from turning human rubbish into nesting materials, but even experts in the field have raised an eyebrow at the latest handiwork to emerge from urban crows and magpies.Nests recovered from trees in Rotterdam in the Netherlands and Antwerp in Belgium were found to be constructed almost entirely from strips of long metal spikes that are often attached to buildings to deter birds from setting up home on the structures. Continue reading...

What do you get if a code reads a list of existing swearwords and spits out its new favourite? Arguably, an anticlimaxName: The ultimate swearword.Age: Ber! Mind your own business. Continue reading...

A pod in the strait of Gibraltar has sunk three boats and damaged dozens of others, and their story has captivated the world. What explains this unprecedented behaviour?What's going on with the #orcauprising? You've probably gathered the basics: orcas are attacking" yachts. To be strictly factual, since 2020, a small pod of orcas in the strait of Gibraltar has been interacting with sailing boats in a new way: ramming vessels, pressing their bodies and heads into the hulls and biting, even snapping off, the rudders. Over three years, more than 500 interactions have been recorded, three boats sunk and dozens of others damaged. Last month, the first instance of this behaviour was recorded in another place, when an orca rammed a boat near Shetland. What I felt [was] most frightening was the very loud breathing of the animal," said the Dutch yachtsman targeted, Dr Wim Rutten, who had been fishing for mackerel. Maybe he just wanted to play. Or look me in the eyes. Or to get rid of the fishing line."There are two fascinating things about this. First, of course, what are the orcas doing? But the second is about another species entirely: us. Why do we like this story so much? Because we do: people - including me - love the idea of orcas attacking boats. Browsing through orca memes, there's an orca as the sickle in the hammer and sickle, with the headline eat the rich", and a Soviet-style graphic of a heroic orca emerging under a superyacht. What if we kissed while watching the orcas take back the ocean," reads one tweet with 1m views, while a much-used image of an arm holding a microphone up to a captive orca has been repurposed endlessly to highly entertaining effect - I like one where it's singing" a bespoke version of the Meredith Brooks classic: I'm a bitch / I'm an orca / Sinking yachts /Just off Majorca [sic] / I'm a sinner I'm a whale / Imma hit you with my tail." We're taking great pleasure in projecting extremely human narratives and motivations on orcas. But how wrong is that, and why does it appeal? Continue reading...

Madeleine Finlay speaks to science correspondent Nicola Davis about why octopuses are more similar to us humans than we might believe. She also hears from Prof David Scheel about our increasing understanding of the sophistication of these cephalopods, and how that should influence our treatment of themClips: Netflix, Voice of AmericaRead more of Nicola Davis' reporting on octopuses here Continue reading...

My grandmother Joan Krakover Hall, who has died aged 94, was a passionate teacher and linguist, who worked for a time at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge. She was married for more than 50 years to the atomic physicist Theodore Hall, whom she met as a teenager in Chicago after the second world war.As a young scientist working on the Manhattan Project, Ted had passed secrets of the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union, believing that a US nuclear monopoly would be highly dangerous. Identified as an agent in 1949, he was never prosecuted by the US authorities and his role remained unknown to the public until the mid-1990s. Continue reading...

Arexvy could help NHS deal with virus that causes about 8,000 deaths among older people in UK each yearThe UK's medicines regulator has approved the first vaccine against respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) in older adults.The virus typically causes cold-like symptoms, but is a leading cause of pneumonia in infants and elderly people, with infections in older adults accounting for about 8,000 deaths, 14,000 hospitalisations and 175,000 GP appointments in the UK each year - more than influenza during a typical winter season. Continue reading...

Over half of essays written by people were wrongly flagged as AI-made, with implications for students and job applicantsComputer programs that are used to detect essays, job applications and other work generated by artificial intelligence can discriminate against people who are non-native English speakers, researchers say.Tests on seven popular AI text detectors found that articles written by people who did not speak English as a first language were often wrongly flagged as AI-generated, a bias that could have a serious impact on students, academics and job applicants. Continue reading...

No corner of the planet is free from minuscule fragments of plastic packaging, textiles or utensils. We ask scientists what this means for our health - and what we should do to protect itInvisible specks of eroded plastic from long-forgotten toothbrushes, sweet wrappers and stocking-filler toys are everywhere. They live in our laundry bins, the Mariana trench and the human bloodstream. Microplastic particles can be small enough to infiltrate biological barriers such as the gut, skin and placental tissue. We are all now partially plastic - but how worried should we be, and is there any way to minimise our exposure?At the moment, says Stephanie Wright, an environmental toxicologist at Imperial College, London, a lack of epidemiological and in-human data means we don't yet know the harmful effects of microplastics, but I would say reducing particle exposure in general (including microplastic) is likely to be beneficial". But avoiding the stuff is a tall order, considering it's in the air, drinking water, dust and food". Continue reading...

The solutions to today's puzzlesHere are the questions I set today, repeated with the solutions, and a discussion at the bottom.Both puzzles are about binary codes, which are a way of encoding information using only the binary digits 0 and 1, called bits". Continue reading...

The world is split into 10 types of people, those that can solve this puzzle, and those that can'tLast month an example of binary code was cleverly displayed on the door of 10 Downing Street, to promote London Tech Week.A binary code is a way of encoding information (in this case, letters) in the binary digits 0 and 1, called bits". In the standard encoding used on the PM's door, every letter is represented by eight bits. The first line spells L, the second T and the third W. Continue reading...

The Mori new year festivities can begin when the Pleiades star cluster is seen and the moon reaches its next last quarter phaseThe moon moves into its last quarter phase this week, heralding a new moon on 17 July next week. In New Zealand, this means it is time for the celebration of Matariki. In Mori culture, this marks the new year and is a time of reflection for the previous 12 months and a chance to look ahead. The timing of the celebration is determined by the interplay of both stars and moon.Matariki itself is the Mori name for the Pleiades star cluster. It disappears from the skies of New Zealand in May for around a month. When it is spotted again, rising in the dawn sky just before the sun, the festival of Matariki can begin once the moon reaches its next last quarter phase. Continue reading...

Often dismissed by the medical establishment, people with complex illnesses such as ME and long Covid are taking the hunt for treatments into their own handsIn 2019, years after developing the myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME/CFS) that had kept her bedridden in a state of chronic pain and exhaustion, Tamara Romanuk experienced something miraculous". After taking antibiotics prescribed to treat a separate infection, she experienced a short-term remission in symptoms. I went from being bedbound to twirling outside," Romanuk says. I had no idea that life could be so different from what I'd become adjusted to."Sharing her experience online, Romanuk, a former biology professor, discovered that she wasn't the only person who had had this experience. Both she and Tess Falor, an engineer with a PhD, had developed ME/CFS years before and had picked up a bacterial infection that required antibiotic treatment. Doctors had advised them to take probiotic supplements to help the microbiome recover. Afterwards, both experienced a dramatic remission in ME/CFS symptoms. They called it a remission event". Romanuk and Falor have named their project to investigate the experience the RemissionBiome. Continue reading...