Category Archives: Science

Britain wins rare praise for leading race to test life-saving Covid drugs

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UK’s high infection rate and centralised NHS have enabled Recovery team to help victims across the world

It has been a startling week for those following Britain’s response to the pandemic. Roundly derided for the lateness of its lockdown and its bungled testing programmes, the UK was the unexpected recipient of a sudden bout of lavish praise for its scientists’ efforts to combat the d isease.

“The Brits are on course to save the world,” wrote leading US economist Tyler Cowen in Bloomberg Opinion, while the journal Science quoted leading international scientists who have heaped praise on British researchers’ anti-Covid work.

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Coronavirus live news: UK to announce tourists returning from Spain must quarantine for two weeks

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Johnny Depp’s in-person court case ‘galling’; Germany may introduce compulsory testing; funeral fees rise in Great Britain

This from my colleague Sam Jones in Madrid:

A spokeswoman for the Spanish government declined to comment on the reported quarantine measures, instead referring the Guardian to comments made on Friday by the foreign minister, Arancha González Laya.

Scotland’s first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, has said that people returning to any part of the UK from Spain will have to quarantine from midnight.

“Spain will be removed from the list of countries exempt from quarantine requirements due to an increased number of cases of coronavirus (Covid-19) in the last few days,” Scotland’s government said in a statement.

Having reviewed the latest data earlier today, @scotgov is also reimposing 14 day quarantine for travellers returning from Spain. This reinforces the point that these matters are subject to change at short notice & so my advice is to be cautious about non essential foreign travel https://t.co/9xSnyFCv77

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Cooking eased my exile and became my homage to the lives of immigrants

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Preparing food helped me reconcile my old and new world. Now my restaurant produces a beautiful mongrel cuisine

‘Now you better behave and don’t cry!” was the warning from my mother, shot with a stern look to show she was deadly serious. We disembarked from the aircraft at Heathrow. It was a dark and dank day. Cold rain spat at us as we walked across the tarmac into the immigration hall. In the terminal, the world seemed full of strangers and I swallowed back my tears.

The sunless flat above a shop that my father had found for us was full of draughts and damp. At the makeshift kitchen table, I stared at the exposed electrical wires knotted together on the wall and pined for the warmth of the neat, beloved grandmother we had left behind in our haste to leave Kenya. England welcomed immigrants, but its housing did not. Back home, when you opened the door, every room was fragrant with the scent of ripening guavas. Here, there was just a solitary freckled apple in the fruit bowl that, like us, had seen better days.

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‘Major’ breakthrough in Covid-19 drug makes UK professors millionaires

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Synairgen’s share price rises 540% on morning of news of successful drugs trial

Three professors at the University of Southampton school of medicine have this week made a “major breakthrough” in the treatment of coronavirus patients and become paper millionaires at the same time.

Almost two decades ago professors Ratko Djukanovic, Stephen Holgate and Donna Davies discovered that people with asthma and chronic lung disease lacked a protein called interferon beta, which helps fight off the common cold. They worked out that patients’ defences against viral infection could be boosted if the missing protein were replaced.

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‘A wicked enemy’: how Australia’s coronavirus success story unravelled

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Weeks ago, Australia was the envy of the world. Now it has more than 3,000 active coronavirus cases and Melbourne is in lockdown. What went wrong?

Less than a month ago, Australia was the envy of much of the world. With daily new coronavirus cases in the single digits, it was feted as part of a group of “first mover” nations - countries like Taiwan, Singapore and New Zealand that acted decisively to quash coronavirus.

In mid-June, after three months of tight restrictions and differing levels of lockdown, life was not quite back to normal, but as politicians liked to stress, it was almost Covid-normal.

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Why smokers and vapers – and those around them – may face higher Covid-19 danger

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New reports cast doubt on early claims smoking offered protection from disease

At the beginning of the pandemic, smokers may have thought they had little to worry about, as there was a sliver of good news for them: a study circulating on social media suggested smoking could be associated with a lower risk of contracting Covid-19. That’s not the full story.

Related: Biden predicts Trump will try to 'steal the election' by fighting mail-in voting – live

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Coronavirus live news: US cases top 4m as WHO chief chides Pompeo for ‘untrue’ claims

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US Secretary of State’s reported comments ‘untrue, unacceptable and without foundation’ says WHO; Trump cancels Jacksonville RNC; Bolsonaro not distancing despite positive test. Follow the latest updates

US infectious diseases expert Anthony Fauci has thrown out the first pitch at a Nationals-Yankees game, and it didn’t go amazingly well, but it did lead to some okay Covid-19 jokes:

Fauci finally flattened the curve pic.twitter.com/I0zUwbl6OH

The US surpassed 4m coronavirus cases on Thursday, after more than 1,100 new Covid-19-related deaths were reported in a single day on Wednesday for the first time since late May.

As states continue to dial back reopening efforts, nearly every metric for tracking the outbreak has shown a worsening spread. The US politicians volunteering other people’s lives to fight Covid-19Read more

Related: US surpasses 4m Covid-19 cases as states dial back reopening

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Coronavirus live news: record daily rise in global cases with almost 285,000 new infections

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Biggest increases were from the US, Brazil, India and South Africa, according to the World Health Organization

Brazil has registered an additional 1,156 deaths over the last 24 hours and another 55,891 confirmed cases, the health ministry has said. The South American nation has now registered 85,238 deaths and 2,343,366 total confirmed cases.

Footage of Niagara Falls tour boats highlights the stark differences in physical distancing between Canadian and US-managed companies.

The Canadian tour company Hornblower Niagara Cruises’s ships can carry up to 700 people but Ontario’s strict rules have permitted them to carry only six passengers at a time.

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Cost of preventing next pandemic ‘equal to just 2% of Covid-19 economic damage’

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World must act now to protect wildlife in order to stop future virus crises, say scientists

The cost of preventing further pandemics over the next decade by protecting wildlife and forests would equate to just 2% of the estimated financial damage caused by Covid-19, according to a new analysis.

Two new viruses a year had spilled from their wildlife hosts into humans over the last century, the researchers said, with the growing destruction of nature meaning the risk today is higher than ever.

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‘Wave of silence’ spread around world during coronavirus pandemic

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Seismologists said high frequency noise fell as much as 50% as planes were grounded and roads emptied

An unprecedented wave of silence spread around the world in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, according to researchers who found that vibrations from human activity slumped under national lockdowns.

Records from seismic stations all over the planet show that high frequency noise caused by industrial plants, traffic and other activities fell as much as 50% as country after country imposed restrictions that grounded planes, emptied roads and brought down the shutters on shops and businesses.

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Donald Trump’s assault on the WHO is deeply worrying for global health | Peter Beaumont

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A diplomacy shaped around self-serving tittle-tattle now risks lives and undermines America’s standing in the world

The campaign by the Trump administration against the World Health Organization has often seemed faintly preposterous.

Over the months of the coronavirus pandemic its untruths and hyperbole have been dismissed by many as iterations of Trumpspeak, whose main purpose has been to distract from the US’s catastrophic response to Covid-19, which has claimed almost 140,000 lives and devastated the economy.

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Coronavirus live news: California sees record daily cases as global infections top 15m

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California Covid-19 cases pass New York’s after record day; WHO emergencies chief says vaccinations unlikely before 2021; global cases pass 15m. Follow the latest updates

The BBC reports that the coronavirus pandemic has pushed South Korea into a recession, with the country seeing a 2.9% fall in GDP:

South Korea has fallen into recession as the country reels from the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.

Asia’s fourth-largest economy saw gross domestic product (GDP) fall by a worse-than-expected 2.9% in year-on-year terms, the steepest decline since 1998.

China plans to provide a $1bn loan to make its coronavirus vaccine accessible for countries across Latin America and the Caribbean, the Mexican foreign ministry said on Wednesday, Reuters reports.

Mexico’s foreign ministry said in a statement that China had made the pledge in a virtual meeting between ministers from some Latin American and Caribbean countries.

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Newly excavated tools suggest humans lived in North America at least 30,000 years ago

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Artefacts from central Mexico cave are strong evidence humans lived on continent 15,000 years earlier than previously thought

Tools excavated from a cave in central Mexico are strong evidence that humans were living in North America at least 30,000 years ago, some 15,000 years earlier than previously thought, scientists said on Wednesday.

The artefacts, including 1,900 stone tools, showed human occupation of the high-altitude Chiquihuite cave over a 20,000-year period, they reported in two studies published in the journal Nature.

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Coronavirus live news: WHO reports worrying infection trends in southern Europe and Balkans

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WHO says Americas remain global hotspot but cases accelerating in southern Europe, Balkans and Africa; Trump urges people to wear masks

As the coronavirus spreads around the world, there are concerns that it will mutate into a form that is more transmissible, more dangerous or both, potentially making the global health crisis even worse.

What do we know about the way the virus is evolving?

Related: Will Covid-19 mutate into a more dangerous virus?

The US federal government has signed a contract with Pfizer for 100 million doses of coronavirus vaccine, once it is approved.

The health and human services secretary, Alex Azar, said on Fox News:

We just signed a contract with global pharmaceutical leader Pfizer to produce 100 million doses of vaccine starting in December of this year with an option to buy a half a billion doses.

Now those would of course have to be safe and effective.

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First active leak of sea-bed methane discovered in Antarctica

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Researchers say potent climate-heating gas almost certainly escaping into atmosphere

The first active leak of methane from the sea floor in Antarctica has been revealed by scientists.

The researchers also found microbes that normally consume the potent greenhouse gas before it reaches the atmosphere had only arrived in small numbers after five years, allowing the gas to escape.

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Mike Pompeo attacks WHO in private meeting during UK visit

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US secretary of state said the World Health Organization was responsible for Britons who had died from Covid-19

The US secretary of state Mike Pompeo launched an extraordinary attack on the World Health Organization during a private meeting in the UK, accusing it of being in the pocket of China and responsible for “dead Britons” who passed away during the pandemic.

Pompeo told those present that he believed the WHO was “political not a science-based organisation” and accused its current director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus of being too close to Beijing.

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UK must ramp up coronavirus efforts to avoid second wave, scientists warn

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Senior scientists say it is ‘critical’ Britain improves capacity to spot and contain outbreaks before winter

Britain must ramp up its capacity to spot and contain coronavirus outbreaks if it is to avoid a potentially devastating second wave of infections this winter, senior scientists have warned.

The next two months are “critical” for building a more effective test-and-trace system and ensuring that local outbreak teams are ready to handle the resurgence of infections that is feared as temperatures fall, the experts told the Lords science committee.

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Researchers say blood test can detect cancer years before symptoms

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Team based in China develop test that identifies cancers up to four years before signs appear

A blood test can pick up cancers up to four years before symptoms appear, researchers say, in the latest study to raise hopes of early detection.

A team led by researchers in China say the non-invasive blood test – called PanSeer – detects cancer in 95% of individuals who have no symptoms but later receive a diagnosis.

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Global report: Trump says masks ‘patriotic’ as EU leaders agree to deal

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US president to restart daily briefings; Melbourne records 374 cases; WHO warns South Africa’s crisis could be precursor for more outbreaks in Africa

Donald Trump has announced his daily US coronavirus briefings will resume and that wearing face masks were “patriotic” as European leaders agreed a huge coronavirus rescue plan and Australia announced it was scaling back economic support as one of its states battles a growing Covid-19 outbreak.

Having almost entirely avoided wearing a mask in public during the pandemic, the US president tweeted that “many people say it is Patriotic to wear a face mask when you can’t socially distance”. The post came with a photo of the president in a mask, possibly taken at his visit about 10 days ago to the Walter Reed military hospital outside Washington.

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Likely active volcanoes found on Venus, defying theory of dormant planet

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Researchers identify 37 ring-like structures known as coronae that are believed to be living volcanoes

Scientists have identified 37 volcanic structures on Venus that appear to have been recently active – and probably still are today – painting the picture of a geologically dynamic planet and not a dormant world as long thought.

The research focused on ring-like structures called coronae, caused by an upwelling of hot rock from deep within the planet’s interior, and provided compelling evidence of widespread recent tectonic and magma activity on Venus’s surface, researchers have said.

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