Category Archives: Science

65,000 year-old ‘Swiss Army knife’ proves ancient humans shared knowledge, research says

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The prehistoric artefacts, all made to a similar shape and template, are found in enormous numbers across southern Africa across vast distances

A 65,000-year-old tool – a kind of ancient Swiss Army knife – found across southern Africa has provided scientists with proof that the ancestors of modern homo sapiens were communicating with each other.

In a world first, a team of international scientists have found early humans across the continent made the stone tool in exactly the same shape, using the same template, showing that they shared knowledge with each other.

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Japan to let in foreign tourists, but only if masked and accompanied by chaperone

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Visitors from select countries will be allowed to return to Japan from Friday but will only be allowed to travel under strict conditions

Foreign tourists visiting Japan will be required to wear masks and spend their entire stay chaperoned by local guides, as the country prepares to open up to international travellers after two years of Covid-19 border restrictions.

People who have waited patiently for the chance to visit Japan, which imposed some of the toughest travel restrictions during the pandemic, will also have to take out private medical insurance in case they contract the virus, the government said this week.

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Gel that repairs heart attack damage could improve health of millions

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Injectable, biodegradable technology developed by UK team works as a scaffold to help new tissue grow

British researchers have developed a biodegradable gel to repair damage caused by a heart attack in a breakthrough that could improve the health of millions of survivors worldwide.

There are more than 100,000 hospital admissions every year due to heart attacks in the UK alone – one every five minutes. Medical advances mean more people than ever before survive, with 1.4 million Britons alive today after experiencing a heart attack. But hearts have a very limited ability to regenerate, meaning survivors are left at risk of heart failure and other health problems.

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Briton given 15 years in Iraqi jail for smuggling antiquities to appeal verdict

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Jim Fitton, 66, hoped for short suspended sentence after collecting fragments during archaeology tour

Lawyers for a British geologist handed a 15-year sentence by an Iraqi judge after being convicted of smuggling antiquities will immediately appeal against the shock verdict, which has left his family “stunned”.

Jim Fitton, 66, arrived at court in Baghdad hoping for a short suspended sentence after being charged with collecting fragments from a site in southern Iraq during an organised archaeology tour. Instead, he was found guilty under a Saddam-era law that legal experts should not have applied to the case.

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Three jabs best for preventing Covid infections, global analysis finds

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Number of doses, not vaccine combinations, key to boosting immunity, according to largest study of its kind

Three doses of the same Covid-19 vaccine or a combination of jabs work equally well in preventing infections, according to the largest study of its kind.

While the effectiveness of individual coronavirus vaccines is well known, the evidence around combinations of jabs has been less clear, especially for particular groups such as older people and those who are immunocompromised.

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Shanghai’s full Covid lockdown ends after two months

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City of 25 million people emerges from prolonged isolation under ruthlessly enforced restrictions

Shanghai has lifted a painful two-month lockdown, to the relief of the city’s 25 million residents, with authorities dismantling fences around housing compounds and ripping police tape off public squares and buildings.

Most residents have spent the past two months under a ruthlessly enforced lockdown that has caused income losses, stress and despair for millions struggling to access food or emergency healthcare.

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Medical research stalled as NHS focuses on small number of trials, experts say

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Report outlines ‘research waste’ that occurred during the pandemic, with weakly designed trials exposing millions to unproven treatments

Government efforts to focus NHS resources on a smaller number of well-designed clinical trials could inadvertently be contributing to a backlog of stalled medical research, and result in some important trials being scrapped, researchers say.

Their warning comes as a report outlines the scale of “research waste” that has occurred during the pandemic, with rampant duplication of scientific efforts and weakly designed clinical trials exposing millions of patients to unproven treatments, with little scientific benefit.

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Women in England with breast cancer may qualify for drug that buys ‘precious’ time

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Nice approves Keytruda, which with chemotherapy can lengthen survival of women with triple negative breast cancer

Women with advanced breast cancer in England will be able to benefit from a new type of immunotherapy on the NHS after a U-turn by the medicines watchdog.

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) has overturned its draft rejection of Keytruda (pembrolizumab) and said women in England can take the drug in combination with chemotherapy.

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AstraZeneca reviews diversity in trials to ensure drugs work for all

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Firm aims to apply ‘equity lens’ across clinical tests to ensure diverse population groups take part

The pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca is conducting a major review of diversity across its trials in an attempt to ensure its medicines work for all population groups, although it has admitted that including pregnant women is a particular challenge.

The head of oncology at Britain’s biggest drugmaker, David Fredrickson told the Guardian that the firm was among those leading efforts to improve participation of people of colour and other under-represented groups in clinical trials.

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More monkeypox cases detected in UK ‘on daily basis’, says scientist

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Twenty cases confirmed in UK amid reports of child being admitted to intensive care in London hospital

More monkeypox cases are being detected in Britain “on a daily basis”, a senior doctor has warned, amid reports that a child has been admitted to intensive care with the disease.

Dr Susan Hopkins, a chief medical adviser to the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), said an update on confirmed cases would be released on Monday as efforts continue to contain the outbreak using contact tracing, testing and vaccination.

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Human skull found by Minnesota kayakers 8,000 years old, experts say

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Skull discovered in drought-depleted Minnesota River last summer to be returned to Native American officials

Native American officials will be given a partial skull discovered last summer by two kayakers in Minnesota after investigations determined it was about 8,000 years old.

The kayakers found the skull in the drought-depleted Minnesota River about 110 miles (180km) west of Minneapolis, Renville county sheriff Scott Hable said.

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Cambridge University astrophysicist loses space project role amid Brexit row

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Nicholas Walton gives up leadership of €2.8m pan-European research after dispute over Northern Ireland protocol

A Cambridge University astrophysicist studying the Milky Way and hoping to play a major part in the European Space Agency’s (Esa) next big project has been forced to hand over his coordinating role on the scheme after the row over Northern Ireland’s Brexit arrangements put science in the firing line.

Nicholas Walton, a research fellow at the Institute of Astronomy, reluctantly passed his leadership role in the €2.8m pan-European Marie Curie Network research project to a colleague in the Netherlands on Friday.

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Statue of fossil-hunting pioneer Mary Anning to be unveiled in Dorset

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A nine-year-old pointed out what was missing in Lyme Regis. Her long campaign has now borne fruit

It all began with a curious nine-year-old and a question that she asked her mother. Where in their hometown of Lyme Regis was the statue of Mary Anning, the pioneering Victorian fossil hunter who, she had recently discovered, had lived and worked there?

There wasn’t one, Anya Pearson was forced to tell her indignant daughter. Anning’s lifetime of discoveries – including finding the first ichthyosaur skeleton at the age of just 12 – may have profoundly shaped the emerging science of palaeontology, but in her own Dorset town and farther afield, she had been largely forgotten.

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Child’s 130,000-year-old tooth could offer clues to extinct human relative

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Researchers believe the discovery in a Laos cave proves that Denisovans lived in the warm tropics of southeast Asia

A child’s tooth at least 130,000 years old found in a Laos cave could help scientists uncover more information about an early human cousin, according to a new study.

Researchers believe the discovery proves that Denisovans – a now-extinct branch of humanity – lived in the warm tropics of southeast Asia.

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E-cigarettes ‘as safe as nicotine patches’ for pregnant smokers trying to quit

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Pregnant smokers were more likely to quit when using e-cigarettes than patches after four weeks, study shows

E-cigarettes are as safe to use as nicotine patches for pregnant smokers trying to quit, and may be a more effective tool, researchers have revealed.

Smoking in pregnancy can increase the risk of outcomes including premature birth, miscarriage and the baby having a low birth weight. But stubbing out the habit can be a struggle.

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South Africa’s April floods made twice as likely by climate crisis, scientists say

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Brutal heatwave in India and Pakistan also certain to have been exacerbated by global heating, scientists say

The massive and deadly floods that struck South Africa in April were made twice as likely and more intense by global heating, scientists have calculated. The research demonstrates that the climate emergency is resulting in devastation.

Catastrophic floods and landslides hit the South African provinces of KwaZulu-Natal and Eastern Cape on 11 April following exceptionally heavy rainfall.

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‘Holy cow’: scientists successfully grow plants in moon soil for the first time

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Researchers at the University of Florida planted thale cress in harsh lunar dirt returned by Apollo 11 astronauts

For the first time, scientists have grown plants in soil from the moon collected by Nasa’s Apollo astronauts.

Researchers had no idea if anything would sprout in the harsh moon dirt and wanted to see if it could be used to grow food by a new generation of lunar explorers. The results stunned them.

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Migrating turtles don’t really know where they’re going, study shows

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Hawksbill turtles often travel circuitous routes for short distances – one swam 1,306km to reach an island just 176km away

How migrating animals like sea turtles navigate hundreds to thousands of kilometres across the open ocean has intrigued biologists since Charles Darwin. But some sea turtles might not really know where they’re going, new research suggests.

Analysis by an international team of scientists has mapped the movements of hawksbill turtles as they swam from their nesting grounds in the Chagos Archipelago to foraging sites also in the Indian Ocean.

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‘No end in sight’: Shanghai residents chafe at harsh Covid measures

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Tensions rise again as lockdowns grind on and the city’s population tire of strict zero-Covid policy

Tensions between Shanghai residents and China’s Covid enforcers are on the rise again, amid a new push to end infections outside quarantine zones to meet President Xi Jinping’s demand for achieving “dynamic zero-Covid”.

Videos shared on China’s social media platforms showed suspected Covid-positive patients forcibly quarantined in central facilities. In some neighbourhoods a single positive case could lead to residents in the entire apartment building be sent for quarantine.

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British scientist says US anti-abortion lawyers misused his work to attack Roe v Wade

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Giandomenico Iannetti, a pain expert at UCL, angrily denies that his research suggests foetuses can feel pain before 24 weeks

A University College London scientist has accused lawyers in the US of misusing his groundbreaking work on the brain to justify the dismantling of Roe v Wade, the landmark ruling that legalised abortion nationally in America.

Giandomenico Iannetti said his research, which used imaging to understand the adult brain’s response to pain, had been wrongly interpreted to make an anti-abortion argument.

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