Survey shows the impact of Covid on frontline workers, with one in 25 NHS staff attempting suicide for first timeOne in 10 health workers in England had suicidal thoughts during the Covid-19 pandemic, according to research that highlights the scale of its mental impact.The risk of infection or death, moral distress, staff shortages, burnout and the emotional toll of battling the biggest public health crisis in a century significantly affected the mental wellbeing of health workers worldwide. Continue reading...
Religious site contains burial mound serving as a solar calendar as well as remains of about 60 peopleDutch archaeologists have unearthed an approximately 4,000-year-old religious site - nicknamed the Stonehenge of the Netherlands" - that includes a burial mound that served as a solar calendar.The mound, which contained the remains of about 60 men, women and children, had several passages through which the sun shone directly on the longest and shortest days of the year. Continue reading...
Excerpt from the Georgics was carved into vessel used for olive oil 1,800 years agoA tiny fragment of a Roman jar that once held olive oil, produced in what is now southern Spain, has left archaeologists delighted, puzzled and saucer-eyed" after they deciphered a quote from the ancient poet Virgil that was cut into its clay by an unknown but erudite hand 1,800 years ago.The highly unusual find, thought to be the first time a literary quotation has been discovered on a Roman amphora, was turned up by researchers from the universities of Cordoba, Seville and Montpellier who were excavating a site in the town of Hornachuelos, in Andalucia's Cordoba province, seven years ago. Continue reading...
Forget your inhibitions this summer. Instead, wear colourful clothes, get enough rest and celebrate every personal bestUnless your body is morgue-ready - in which case, please remain in situ - then your living, breathing human self is beach-ready just the way it is. If you have a pulse, you already have a bikini body. Or indeed a mankini body. We all know this in theory. Yet these sensible thoughts are easily spouted but not so easily, um, embodied. Many of us find it relatively straightforward to be kind (and relatively less judgmental) towards other people. Because all you have to do is remember not to be a cruel git. But when it comes to our view of ourselves, we can be over harsh and critical, submitting ourselves to a level of scrutiny that we wouldn't dream of applying to others.But the 1980s idea that we must all prepare ourselves for the Great Unveiling of the Socially Acceptable Flesh and improve our aesthetic qualities before we venture near a beach or swimming pool ... Well, that has kind of had its day. How often do we have the chance to get the sun on the bits of us that rarely make contact with the outside world? Why would you squander that chance? Here's how to feel confident with your body this summer and all year round. Continue reading...
Findings suggest that becoming pregnant naturally after IVF not as unusual as thought, say scientistsAbout one in five women become pregnant naturally after having a baby using fertility treatment such as IVF, according to research.
Vilified as the scourge of perfect lawns, these tiny plants fight air pollution and keep soils healthyMosses are tiny plants often ignored or treated as the scourge of perfect lawns, and yet they are superheroes of the plant world. They help fight air pollution and the climate crisis, keep soils healthy, colonise bare ground paving the way for other plants to grow, and can survive harsh environments ranging from deserts to polar regions.They lack proper roots and absorb all their nourishment like sponges through their leaves, which makes them particularly good at feeding on pollutants and fine particles of dust in the air. They soak up to 20 times their own weight in water, and when this evaporates it cools the surrounding air by up to 2C. Continue reading...
by Damian Carrington Environment editor on (#6CB56)
Patients exposed to dirty air spent four days longer in hospital, the same impact as if they had been a decade olderPeople exposed to air pollution experienced Covid-19 as if they were 10 years older, according to research. It found people recently exposed to dirtier air before contracting the illness spent four days longer in hospital, the same impact as on those 10 years their senior.The Belgian study also showed that air pollution levels measured in patients' blood were linked to a 36% increase in the risk of needing intensive care treatment. A separate study in Denmark showed air pollution exposure was linked to a 23% increase in the risk of death from Covid-19. In both studies, the level of air pollution was below legal EU standards. Continue reading...
Former CMO for England was previously told coronavirus won't come here' after asking for preparedness reviewThe former chief medical officer (CMO) for England has issued an emotional apology to the Covid bereaved as it emerged she had asked for a preparedness review following an earlier coronavirus outbreak in Hong Kong but was told it won't come here".Prof Dame Sally Davies, who described her role as CMO from 2010 to 2019 as the nation's doctor", was being cross-examined at the UK Covid-19 public inquiry about shortcomings in the nation's preparedness when she said maybe this is the moment to say how sorry I am to the relatives who lost their families". Continue reading...
Bernard Kay says leading scientists have many questions to answer, while Mary Evans is astonished those who attended lockdown parties were not worried about getting CovidYes, Devi Sridhar, scientists advise and ministers decide (Don't blame scientists for what went wrong with Covid - ministers were the ones calling the shots, 13 June). But there is still much for the Covid inquiry to inquire about. Did we have the best mechanism for obtaining the best advice? Did the scientists give the right advice?What were we to conclude from the appearance of the chief medical officer, Chris Whitty, the chief scientific adviser, Patrick Vallance, and the then prime minister, Boris Johnson, at the 12 March 2020 press conference? When they told us we might need to lock down but not yet, was that the scientific advice or government policy? When the epidemiologist John Edmunds gave the same message to Channel 4 on 13 March, was he telling us scientific facts or straying into policy? Continue reading...
The immunologist who runs Scancell is trialling novel treatments to attack tumours, as well as needle-free Covid jabsCancer is my game," says Prof Lindy Durrant, an immunologist, founder and chief executive of Scancell, which is developing vaccines that could offer a needle-free protection against Covid as well as novel treatments against cancer. Founded in 1997 on the back of her Nottingham University research, the Oxford-based company's work on treatments that stimulate the body's immune system to fight cancer and infectious disease has put it in a cluster of promising British biotechnology firms.While most vaccines are taken preventively, there is no jab to avoid cancer (apart from the HPV one for the virus that triggers most cervical cancer). Probably 50% to 60% of people will get cancer and die of it," says Durrant. There are probably 200 different types of cancer. Each of them has a very different signature. So to design a vaccine that covers them all is really hard." Continue reading...
Experts say restrictions on socialising during Covid crisis may have led more women to seek to preserve fertilityThere has been a dramatic rise in the number of women freezing their eggs in the UK, while more single people are opting for IVF, figures show.A report from the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HEFA) found that more people than ever are undergoing procedures, with egg- and embryo-freezing the fastest-growing fertility treatments in Britain. Continue reading...
Brief doze may delay brain shrinkage, which occurs faster in people with neurodegenerative diseasesTaking a short nap during the day may help to protect the brain's health as it ages, researchers have suggested after finding that the practice appears to be associated with larger brain volume.While previous research has suggested long naps could be an early symptom of Alzheimer's disease, other work has revealed that a brief doze can improve people's ability to learn. Continue reading...
Evidence suggests slender necks of some ancient marine creatures were a deadly weaknessFor nearly two centuries, fossil hunters have mused that the improbably long necks of some ancient marine reptiles made them tempting targets for hungry predators.Now, researchers have uncovered grisly evidence that sticking one's neck out really was a deadly weakness: the remains of two creatures whose heads were snapped off in acts of Triassic violence. Continue reading...
Last week New York and Detroit were listed among the five most polluted cities in the world because of smoke from Canada. What does that mean?Last week, smoke from more than 100 wildfires burning across Canada rolled into North American cities far from the flames. New York City and Detroit were listed among the five most polluted cities in the world because of the fires on 7 June. The smoke has triggered air quality alerts in several states in recent weeks.We asked Chris Migliaccio, a toxicologist at the University of Montana who studies the effect of wildfire smoke on human health, about the health risks people can face when smoke blows in from distant wildfires.Christopher T Migliaccio is a research associate professor of toxicology at the University of MontanaThis article is republished from the Conversation, a non-profit news organization dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts Continue reading...
It could have been a gift from a runaway enslaved person. Maybe it wasn'tThe oral history of Aunt Lou's Underground Railroad tomato could easily fit on an index card, with room to spare. As the story goes, a Black man entered Ohio from bordering Kentucky. No details about when he made this journey are available, but it may have been during slavery or well after emancipation. His travels took him to Ripley, a town that slavery's proponents characterized as infested with that most odious species: abolitionists. While there, he gave tomato seeds he'd been carrying to a white woman. Years later, her great-nephew, Francis Parker, began sharing the seeds for what had become Aunt Lou's tomato" with fellow gardening enthusiasts. Passed from person to person, the seed spread in the small corner of Kentucky and south-west Ohio connected by the Ohio River, a region known for Underground Railroad stops from which runaway enslaved people were secretly ferried to free states.At some point, the Kentucky tomato guru Gary Millwood proposed a revision of the plant's name to fellow seed keepers who knew of the variety. Millwood, who was white, suggested adding the Underground Railroad" part to reflect the anti-slavery activity in the plant's apparent home ground, and to acknowledge how enslaved people helped build the nation's agricultural wealth in captivity. Despite centuries of forced farming that transitioned into sharecropping and other exploitative labor systems, few plants bear the names of the Black Americans who stewarded flora and fauna in fields and provisioning grounds. Black workers tilled the land, but white Americans have typically gotten credit for importing, breeding and cultivating crops that became critical to the US diet and economy. Millwood's move cemented the pinkish beefsteak tomato's place in history as one of the few vegetable varieties whose name references, however obliquely, slavery or Black contributions to what we grow and eat. Continue reading...
New clues from an ancient plague are pushing us to rethink where Britons were really' from - and the answer is complicatedTwo weeks ago, Pooja Swali from the Crick Institute announced the discovery of Yersinia pestis, the bacterium that causes plague, in the dental pulp of three people who died about 4,000 years ago - two in Somerset and the other in Cumbria. This finding is astonishing in its own right because it pushes back the earliest evidence of plague in England by several millennia. But the discovery may also help to solve one of our greatest prehistoric mysteries: why did the people who introduced farming to the British Isles suddenly vanish shortly after they built Stonehenge some five millennia ago?Before last month's announcement, the oldest evidence of plague in Britain came from a 1,500-year-old skeleton interred at an Anglo-Saxon burial site near Cambridge. That victim died during the plague of Justinian, which spread throughout the eastern Roman empire and beyond in the middle of the sixth century. While scientists have identified plague DNA in human remains across Europe and Asia dating to between 5,000 and 2,500 years ago, until last week, we couldn't be sure that this prehistoric pandemic reached these isles. It's now clear that it did. Continue reading...
Look west to see distinctive trio in twilight of the northern hemisphere's longest dayIt is the solstice this week. On Wednesday 21 June, the sun will be at its highest position in the northern skies, giving the northern hemisphere its longest day of the year.What better way to celebrate than to look for the beautiful thin crescent moon meeting the bright jewel of Venus - with the added bonus of Mars. The chart shows the view looking west at 10pm BST on 21 June. Few stars will be visible in the twilight but Venus will be absolutely unmistakable. Next to it will be a thin crescent moon with just 12% of its visible surface illuminated by the sun. The rest of the disc will be faintly visible as a result of sunlight reflected off Earth and on to the moon's surface. Continue reading...
New technology raises hopes and ethical dilemmas. Society will have to work out what it thinksScience often moves faster than moral thought progresses, leaving the public disoriented and exposing the limits of legislators' imagination. Many people will be struggling to make sense of the astonishing breakthroughs presented at this week's International Society for Stem Cell Research's (ISSCR) annual meeting in Boston. The work by Prof Magdalena ernicka-Goetz, of Cambridge University and the California Institute of Technology, creating human embryo-like models from stem cells, without the need for eggs or sperm, raises questions about life itself. There seems an element of playing God in growing a tiny human-ish beating heart in a lab, however scientifically desirable is Jitesh Neupane's work at Cambridge's Gurdon Institute.Persuading stem cells to develop until clumps of them resemble an embryo or an embryonic organ in conditions that mimic the womb is currently an unregulated process in the UK, though transferring these into a woman's womb is prohibited. However, given the similarities that these stem cell models have with human embryos, they offer enormous potential to unlock the secrets of early pregnancy and give an insight into what leads to miscarriages or birth defects. Without clear guidelines to promote responsible research and maintain public confidence in it, though, scientists only have their conscience - and the fear of losing their reputation - to guide them. Continue reading...
by Hannah Devlin Science correspondent on (#6C904)
Exclusive: Scientists used stem cells to create the structures, which were unable to develop into a foetusScientists have created a model human embryo with a heartbeat and traces of blood in an advance that offers an extraordinary window into the first weeks of life.The synthetic structure, created from human stem cells without the need for eggs, sperm or fertilisation, replicated some of the cells and structures that would typically appear in the third and fourth week of pregnancy. But it was specifically designed to lack the tissues that go on to form the placenta and yolk sac in a natural embryo, meaning that it did not have the theoretical potential of developing into a foetus. Continue reading...
by Hannah Devlin Science correspondent on (#6C8ZM)
Early results show promise in trial involving injection of lab-grown inhibitory neurons into brainThe first two epilepsy patients to receive an experimental stem cell therapy experienced an almost complete reduction in seizures a year after treatment, early trial results show.The therapy involves a single brain injection of lab-grown neurons that are designed to dampen electrical activity with the aim of stopping seizures. It is too early to confirm whether the approach is effective but the initial results, presented at the International Society for Stem Cell Research’s annual meeting in Boston last week, are viewed as extremely encouraging. Continue reading...
A profoundly poignant novel about family ties and grief, a collection of topical and urgent essays celebrating all things arboreal – and a compelling study of consciousnessUna Mannion
Many of us feel the anxiety of living in a time of ‘polycrisis’, but taking a long view will help you copeOne February night in a London hospital, my perception of time shrunk to the span of a moment. Around 24 hours after my wife went into labour, we were rushed into emergency surgery. Our baby had acquired an infection. As I held my wife’s hand in the sterile silence of the operating theatre, it felt like nothing else in the world existed. Our recent past of slow, stable expectation faded away and the future became impossible to see with any fidelity – all that was left was now.We were lucky; the threat receded, and after five nights of recovery and antibiotics, we stepped out of the timeless maternity ward and back into the world, carrying our daughter, Grace. Gradually, our future as a new family settled into view. Continue reading...
European space probe will capture images that will provide insights about what the universe is made ofIn just a few weeks, a remarkable European probe will be blasted into space in a bid to explore the dark side of the cosmos.The €1bn (£850m) Euclid mission will investigate the universe’s two most baffling components: dark energy and dark matter. The former is the name given to a mysterious force that was shown – in 1998 – to be accelerating the expansion of the universe, while the latter is a form of matter thought to pervade the cosmos, provide the universe with 80% of its mass, and act as a cosmic glue that holds galaxies together. Continue reading...
To get to the heart of what drives Russia’s leader, look not to Freud but theories of dehumanisation and violencePeter Pomerantsev courageously draws attention to the relevance of psychoanalysis if we wish to understand what might be called the “Putin phenomenon”, but Freud’s “death instinct” explains little (“What lies behind Russia’s acts of extreme violence? Freudian analysis offers an answer”, Comment).The Putin phenomenon is an example of what David Astor, former editor of the Observer, called “the scourge”, that is, a perverse morality that imposes on those who subscribe to it the moral or religious duty to clean up society and liquidate those who pollute it. In Nazi Germany, the Jews and others were singled out as the chief agents of corruption, while for Putin they are “neo-nazis” and those who espouse the decadent values of the west. He and his supporters see themselves as embarked on a moral crusade. Continue reading...
Recent claims by an ex-US intelligence agency whistleblower about alien spacecraft landings have been met with scepticism by scientists – not least over the galactic visitors’ driving skillsAnother day, another story about the US government hiding the fact that it has retrieved alien spacecraft. You can hear similar claims all the time from conspiracy theorists in certain corners of the internet. Yet what made this particular account international news was that the person talking had apparently been in a position to know.American David Grusch served 14 years in the US air force. He is a decorated veteran from the Afghanistan conflict, who went on to serve in the US National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and the National Reconnaissance Office. In these positions, he sat on the US Department of Defense’s unidentified aerial phenomena taskforce from 2020 to 2022. Continue reading...
Ministers may prefer cheap rhetoric to the reality of hard decisions – but these hearings show the cost of the choices they makeWas the Johnson government unprepared for Covid because it was distracted by Brexit? Was the virus itself caused by a lab leak? Did lockdowns do more harm than good? Are face masks a conspiracy? If the 2020s are indivisible from the pandemic, Covid offers endlessly fertile territory for the decade’s culture wars. They look irrational written down – what does remoaning have to do with face masks? – yet somehow we understand the faultlines, and how they connect, at a gut level.Yet the public inquiry into the government’s handling of Covid, which opened on Tuesday in a neutral-looking building near Paddington, west London, with only the most sober-minded spectators still attending by Thursday – and without even a desultory anti-vax protest outside to liven anything up – kept insisting on one inconvenient, unarguable point. Governing isn’t about binary arguments in primary colours. The discourse may drown out reality but it can’t make it go away, and there bad decisions still cost lives and good ones still need homework.Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnistOn Wednesday 5 July, join Zoe Williams and a panel of leading thinkers for a livestreamed discussion on the ideas that can make our economies fairer. Book tickets here Continue reading...
by Hosted by Savannah Ayoade-Greaves, written by Char on (#6C89T)
England footballer turned BBC pundit (22m20s); sad, confused, deluded: Marina Hyde spares a thought for the friends of Boris Johnson at this difficult time (1m20s); and science writer David Robson on why delayed gratification may not be worth waiting for (9m45s) Continue reading...
Resulting varieties could find commercial success as an alternative to current decaf requiring artificial processesA Brazilian coffee research institute has started a decisive stage in a two-decade project to develop arabica coffee varieties that are naturally decaffeinated, a development the researchers think could have significant commercial potential.If successful, the resulting varieties could find a market niche in large consuming regions such as Europe and the US among consumers who would prefer them to current decaffeinated brands that are the result of chemical or industrial processes. Continue reading...
Object from mid-bronze age, in ‘extraordinary’ state of preservation, was found in grave in BavariaA bronze sword more than 3,000 years old , which is so well-preserved that it “almost still shines”, has been unearthed in southern Germany, officials say.The Bavarian state office for the preservation of historical monuments (BLfD) said the sword, which is believed to date back to the end of the 14th century BC — the middle of the bronze age — was found during excavations last week in Nördlingen, between Nuremberg and Stuttgart. Continue reading...
Biologist and environmentalist whose research into whale song brought about a new awareness of the animals’ plightRoger Payne, who has died of cancer aged 88, was a vital force in the struggle to “save the whale”. During the 20th century, an estimated 3 million great whales were hunted to furnish humans with oil, meat and rose fertiliser. Payne gave a voice to an animal that had hitherto been regarded as dumb – one with a deep register that was, as he described it, a sound as big as the ocean itself.When Payne released whale sounds in 1970 as a vinyl LP, Songs of the Humpback Whale, the album sold 125,000 copies and eventually reached multi-platinum sales. It was followed in 1979 by a flexi-disc of the sounds that was included with 10.5m copies of National Geographic magazine. The effect was akin to Rachel Carson’s groundbreaking book of 1962, Silent Spring. The sounds were strange and otherworldly: they seemed like a lament, a threnody for the animals’ plight. In fact they were a demonstration of another species’ culture: a voice, not a noise. Continue reading...
Jabs available beyond vaccine programme cutoff date after new cases, mostly among unvaccinated people, detectedHealth officials are extending vaccinations for mpox in London after recording a fresh spike in cases in the capital in recent weeks, mostly among unvaccinated people.The national mpox outbreak vaccination programme run by the UK Health Security Agency is due to close at the end of July, but shots will be made available in the capital beyond this date after the detection of 11 new cases, officials said. Continue reading...
by Hannah Devlin Science correspondent on (#6C7KV)
A London sushi restaurant has asked customers not to wear fragrances – can smell spoil our enjoyment of food?Dress codes are not unusual in high-end eateries, but London’s Sushi Kanesaka restaurant has taken things one step further, asking guests to refrain from wearing perfume so as not to interfere with the sensory experience of other diners.Heavy fragrances, the restaurant suggests, could mask the “refreshing” ambient scent of vinegar, and of the fish itself. So should the approach of the £420-per-person restaurant be adopted more widely? Is perfume on a dinner date, while making you smell better, likely to make your food and drink taste worse? Continue reading...
Creature has been named Vectipelta barretti after Prof Paul Barrett of London’s Natural History MuseumFossilised remains from the Isle of Wight have been identified as a new dinosaur species that has been named after a palaeontologist at the London’s Natural History Museum.It belongs to a group of plant-eating dinosaurs known as ankylosaurs that was found in the 1980s on the island’s Wessex formation – a geological feature dating to between 145m and 66m years ago. Continue reading...
Addressing the problem will mean taking on some of the most powerful voices in the countryWould you believe that a fifth of the adult population of Britain have either taken part in anti-vax protests, or are prepared to do so? Or that about 4 million people have attended protests against the introduction of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs)? What about the idea that The Light, an anti-vaccine, anti-lockdown newspaper, has about 3 million subscribers, and has at some point been distributed by nearly 4 million people?You’d be right to be sceptical. It’s unlikely that there are 4 million people with in-depth knowledge about CBDCs. The Light only has 13,000 followers on Facebook. And it seems obvious that millions of people have not taken part in Covid-denial demonstrations, especially as only 6.4% of the population have not received any vaccines. But new polling research released by King’s College London for a BBC series on conspiracy theories suggests otherwise. The findings are based on an online survey of more than 2,000 British adults, conducted by Savanta, a reputable polling company – although a full breakdown of the polling methods hasn’t been published.Owen Jones is a Guardian columnistDo 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...
by Presented by Ian Sample with Andrew Gregory and Dr on (#6C6Y4)
Ian Sample speaks to the Guardian’s health editor, Andrew Gregory, and Dr Roy Herbst about the world’s biggest annual gathering of oncology professionals. Each year’s event features a mass of new research, and 2023 was no exception. What were the standout advances, and could they lead to permanent changes in the way we treat, think about and live with cancer?Read more of Andrew Gregory’s reporting here. Continue reading...
Advice that light activity in first 24-48 hours after injury can help recovery contradicts recent UK guidanceAthletes who have experienced a mild concussion should avoid total rest and resume light physical and mental activities to aid their recovery, according to a consensus statement issued by more than 100 international researchers and clinicians.The statement, which took more than five years to complete and was informed by 10 systematic reviews of concussion-related evidence, updates previous guidance to avoid all physical activity until symptoms are completely resolved. It contradicts recent UK guidance to avoid contact sport for 21 days after sustaining a concussion and avoid any form of training for 14 days. Continue reading...
Analysis: As the science outpaces the law, scientists should proceed cautiously and clear boundaries must be setSynthetic embryos sit at a unique juxtaposition: scientifically fascinating, ethically challenging and, for the most part, entirely unregulated by current legislation. The latest work by Prof Magdalena Żernicka-Goetz’s team brings these issues into stark relief and show that developments in this field are happening so quickly that the science is rapidly outpacing the law.The motivation for creating embryo models in the lab is relatively uncontroversial. For the avoidance of doubt, there are no plans to create lab-grown babies. The aim is to obtain unprecedented insights into a window of human development that until now has largely remained a “black box” because it falls beyond the legal limit up to which scientists can cultivate embryos in the lab, and before a pregnancy’s progress can be detected on a scan. Continue reading...
Make people laugh, keep a praise file, deal with your inner critic – and avoid comparison-itis. Here is how to connect with colleagues and feel more positiveShould you expect to feel confident at work? Or is it normal to feel disillusioned and fed up at least some of the time? I mean, it is work. It is not your life. Amid all the noise and drama about quiet quitting, generational differences, hybrid working patterns, flexible hours, “the Great Resignation” and whatever latest workplace trend is in the headlines, there’s a temptation to believe that you need to love your work and feel very confident in it to be a fully functioning member of society. We tend to forget that most people neither love their work nor hate it. They just do it reasonably uneventfully, get paid and then go home. Sometimes that is the definition of professional confidence: getting the job done. But what if that’s not enough?According to the UK’s Jobs Confidence Index, “job search and progression confidence” rose slightly towards the end of last year, indicating that workers are broadly optimistic about (a) being able to get a job somewhere else if they want to, and (b) being promoted or achieving progression where they are. But the picture is mixed: we may supposedly have relative job stability but earnings are stagnant. In the last quarter of 2022, the UK saw the worst contraction in real earnings since the first quarter of 2009. No wonder a lot of people are not confident in their, er, confidence. How, then, to be just confident enough at work, without getting caught up in unrealistic expectations? Continue reading...
Last week, the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health said disposable vapes should be banned because of their popularity among children – with many parents now feeling they are fighting a losing battle
University of Michigan researchers suggest findings may in future yield benefits for soldiers and healthcare workersThe sight of their dead comrades is enough to drive fruit flies to an early grave, according to researchers, who suspect the creatures keel over after developing the fly equivalent of depression.For a species that spends much of its life feasting on decayed matter, the insects appear to be particularly sensitive to their own dead. Witnessing an abundance of fruit fly carcasses speeds up the insects’ ageing process, scientists found, cutting their lives short by nearly 30%. Continue reading...
For some patients the risk of death within five years is as low as 0.2%, according to large-scale researchWomen diagnosed with early breast cancer are 66% less likely to die from the disease than they were 20 years ago, and most can expect to become “long-term survivors”, according to the largest study of its kind.Research from the University of Oxford reveals that the risk of death within five years of diagnosis was 14.4% for women diagnosed between 1993 and 1999. Continue reading...
A plastics treaty is on the cards – and it could join the rescue of the ozone layer as a landmark success in environmental diplomacyPlastic production has soared some 30-fold since it came into widespread use in the 1960s. We now churn out about 430m tonnes a year, easily outweighing the combined mass of all 8 billion people alive. Left unabated, it continues to accelerate: plastic consumption is due to nearly double by 2050.Now there is a chance that this huge growth will stop, even go into reverse. This month in Paris, the world’s governments agreed to draft a new treaty to control plastics. The UN says it could cut production by a massive 80% by 2040.Geoffrey Lean is a specialist environment correspondent and author Continue reading...
As the long-awaited UK inquiry kicks off, it’s the people in power who should be under the spotlight, not the experts who did their best to advise themAs the Covid inquiry kicks off oral hearings today, we will once again debate what exactly happened in 2020 and 2021, and who is ultimately responsible for the decisions made. The government has already started to close in on scientists and point the finger at them for the poor response in the early stages of the pandemic. The prime minister, Rishi Sunak, has said it was a mistake to “empower scientists” and the BMJ pointed to the former health secretary Matt Hancock making “science the fall guy” in the blame game over what went wrong.But it’s vital that the inquiry separates out what were scientific questions, that independent advisers and academics could provide data and input on, and what were leadership decisions. Policy measures such as closing gyms or schools or play parks, or the introduction of mandatory face coverings, were conveyed as “scientific” decisions, but they weren’t. Scientists could present the probable risks and benefits of certain policy options, but the final decision didn’t lie with them. Continue reading...
by Robert Booth Social affairs correspondent on (#6C5VV)
Survey also finds one in seven say violence is fair response to alleged conspiracies such as ‘15-minute cities’The UK is home to millions more conspiracy theorists than most people realise, with almost a quarter of the population believing Covid-19 was probably or definitely a hoax, polling has revealed.About a third of the population are convinced that the cost of living crisis is a government plot to control the public, and similar numbers think “15-minute cities” – an attempt to increase walking in neighbourhoods – are a government surveillance ruse, and that the “great replacement theory” – the idea that white people are being replaced by non-white immigrants – is happening. Continue reading...
Kairan Quazi, the youngest graduate Santa Clara University’s history, will start at Starlink division in JulyKairan Quazi is years away from legally being able to watch an R-rated movie at the theater by himself or buy a drink at the bar, but he’s about to get a college degree and start a job at SpaceX.Other than that, the 14-year-old insists he’s had a fairly normal academic journey. Continue reading...
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