Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Worldwide health challenges serve as a grave warning to those who would bury their heads in isolationism
The world’s most populous country yesterday celebrated the lunar new year, usually a time of family reunion and joyful celebration. For many Chinese people who have moved away from their place of birth, it is the one time of year they get to visit their familiesThis year the coronavirus outbreak has profoundly muted the celebrations in China, with several cities in lockdown, the imposition of quarantine measures unprecedented in their scale, and many citizens anxious about their own health and that of their families.
The Chinese have borne the brunt of the outbreak so far: coronavirus is known to have killed more than 40 people, and infected another 1,300. But the first cases have already been recorded in the US, Australia, and – on Friday – in Europe.
Jonathan Ashworth, the UK’s shadow health secretary, urged the government to reassure the public it is sufficiently prepared as the NHS is already struggling in the flu season.
He told the Guardian:
The NHS is currently under immense strain this winter with staff already working flat out and hospitals overcrowded. We need urgent reassurance from ministers they have a plan to ensure we have capacity in place to deal with Coronavirus should we need to,
New research warns that ‘blue acceleration’ – a global goldrush to claim the ocean floor – is already impacting on the environment.
The scaly-foot snail is one of Earth’s strangest creatures. It lives more than 2,300 metres below the surface of the sea on a trio of deep-sea hydrothermal vents at the bottom of the Indian Ocean. Here it has evolved a remarkable form of protection against the crushing, grim conditions found at these Stygian depths. It grows a shell made of iron.
Discovered in 1999, the multi-layered iron sulphide armour of Chrysomallon squamiferum – which measures a few centimetres in diameter – has already attracted the interest of the US defence department, whose scientists are now studying its genes in a bid to discover how it grows its own metal armour.
China has expanded an unprecedented lockdown during the country’s most important holiday to 13 cities and at least 36 million people, as efforts to contain the deadly new coronavirus were stepped up around the world and the first cases were reported in Europe.
Restrictions on movement were widened on Friday in China in an effort to stop the spread of the disease. Late on Friday, authorities confirmed a further 15 deaths and 180 new cases of coronavirus, bringing the total number of fatalities to 41 people and more than 1,000 affected.
In hospitals across Wuhan, the city at the centre of the new coronavirus outbreak, there is panic and despair. Patients wearing masks queue for hours, waiting to be called by nurses. Staff who have worked endless shifts are forced to turn many away. Pharmacies are running out of supplies.
A lack of diagnostic tests means many people do not know for sure if their fever is the new strain of coronavirus, which has killed 26 people in China and affected more than 800.
Calls for stricter outlawing of the trafficking and consumption of wild game - which has been linked to the emergence of Coronavirus in Chinese cities - have been reverberating on Chinese social media.
An interesting piece from Jessica Colwell on What’s on Weibo, which reports on social media trends in China, reports that the Wuhan Huanan Wholesale Seafood Market which has been linked to the outbreak has been closed down but criticism of such markets has been fierce.
The hashtag “Support the banning of wild game markets” (#支持禁绝野味市场#) was topping the list of trending topics for much of Thursday and was viewed 270 million times.
Another hashtag, “The source of the new coronavirus is wild animals” (#新型冠状病毒来源是野生动物#), topped the list on Wednesday and has been viewed 990 million times. Online commenters are lambasting the practice of eating illegal wild game such as civet cats, the cause of the 2003 SARS virus, and bats, the suspected cause of the Wuhan coronavirus (snakes have also been suggested as a possible source of the coronavirus outbreak).
Britain’s public health authorities have put out these slides as part of an information campaign about the coronavirus outbreak
No confirmed cases of Wuhan coronavirus have been detected in the UK and the risk to the UK population is low. If you have travelled to the affected area, make sure you know what to do if you experience symptoms: https://t.co/vvIWp72flopic.twitter.com/hzV5A3dy4f
Nuclear and climate threats create ‘profoundly unstable’ world
Robinson: climate inaction is ‘death sentence for humanity’
The risk of civil collapse from nuclear weapons and the climate crisis is at a record high, according to US scientists and former officials, calling the current environment “profoundly unstable”.
Scientists discover vitrified remains caused by immense 520C heat of disaster in AD79
When Mount Vesuvius erupted in AD79, the damage wreaked in nearby towns was catastrophic. Now it appears the heat was so immense it turned one victim’s brain to glass – thought to be the first time this has been seen.
Experts say they have discovered that splatters of a shiny, solid black material found inside the skull of a victim at Herculaneum appear to be the remains of human brain tissue transformed by heat.
Chinese authorities have suspended all outbound transport from Wuhan, the city at the centre of an outbreak of the mysterious Sars-like coronavirus, which has so far killed 17 people.
Bus, subway, ferry and long-distance passenger transportation networks from the city were suspended from 10am local time on Thursday, state media reported. The city’s airport and train stations were also closed to outgoing passengers.
Telling lies is stressful. That’s the basic logic of a polygraph test: that the stress of deceiving others will manifest itself through fleeting physical responses that may be imperceptible to another person but can be measured by a machine. Typically, a polygraph records blood pressure, galvanic skin response (a proxy for sweat), breathing and pulse rate.
There is a fairly standard protocol for the lie detector examination. The examiner will mix specific questions relevant to a case – “Did you commit a robbery on 29 March?” – with a series of control questions. Crucially, the control questions are also designed to be anxiety-inducing – for instance: “Have you ever stolen from a friend?” Along the way, the subject will be reminded that the machine can distinguish truth from lies and that they must respond truthfully.
Three of the new cases are severe, with experts worried about the disease’s spread ahead of lunar new year
China reported 17 new cases of the mysterious Sars-like virus on Sunday, including three in a severe condition, heightening fears ahead of China’s lunar new year holiday, when hundreds of millions of people move around the country.
The new coronavirus strain has caused alarm because of its connection to severe acute respiratory syndrome, which killed nearly 650 people across mainland China and Hong Kong in 2002-03.
Last decade was also hottest yet in 150 years of measurements, say scientists
The year 2019 was the second hottest on record for the planet’s surface, according to latest research. The analyses reveal the scale of the climate crisis: both the past five years and the past decade are the hottest in 150 years.
The succession of records being broken year after year is “the drumbeat of the Anthropocene”, said one scientist, and is bringing increasingly severe storms, floods, droughts and wildfires.
Study of nearly 3,000 women suggests body may ‘choose’ not to invest in ovulation
Women who have sex more often are less likely to have an early menopause, according to research that raises the intriguing possibility that lifestyle factors could play a more significant role than previously thought in determining when the menopause occurs.
The study, based on data collected from nearly 3,000 women who were followed for 10 years, found that those who reported engaging in sexual activity weekly were 28% less likely to have experienced menopause at any given age than women who engaged in sexual activity less than monthly.
A 111cm-wide Rafflesia was recently discovered but these giants are in danger
The largest single flower ever recorded was found recently in Sumatra, Indonesia, measuring a reported 111cm (3.64ft) across. This was a specimen of Rafflesia tuan-mudae and beat the previous largest flower record of 107cm for Rafflesia arnoldii, also in Sumatra.
Rafflesia is not only a giant flower, but it has no leaves, stems or proper roots. It cannot photosynthesise and instead sucks the food and water out of a particular vine using long thin filaments that look like fungal cells. It gorges itself on the vine for a few years before bursting out into a flower bud, swells for several months before blooming into a flower that looks like a bright red bucket with big thick lobes. It gives off a whiff of rotting meat that, together with its gigantic size, helps attract pollinating flies. Rafflesia also steals some of the DNA from the vine it lives on, using it for its own genetic code for reasons that are not clear.
Apocalyptic scenes give glimpse of what would be normal conditions in 3C world
The bushfires ravaging Australia are a clear sign of what is to come around the world if temperatures are allowed to rise to dangerous levels, according to scientists.
“This is what you can expect to happen … at an average of 3C [above pre-industrial levels],” said Richard Betts, professor of geography at Exeter University. “We are seeing a sign of what would be normal conditions in a 3C world. It tells us what the future world might look like. This really brings home what climate change means.”
Week-long storage boosts time organs are usable and distances over which they can be moved
Human livers from organ donors can now be preserved for a week, researchers have revealed, a dramatic improvement on previous techniques, which could only keep the organs usable for a matter of hours.
The technology could boost the number of livers available for transplantation and offer new approaches to treating diseases such as liver cancer.