Six canines, all border collies, have proved some possess a remarkable grasp of human language
Your dog might follow commands such as “sit”, or become uncontrollably excited at the mention of the word “walkies”, but when it comes to remembering the names of toys and other everyday items, most seem pretty absent-minded.
Now a study of six “genius dogs” has advanced our understanding of dogs’ memories, suggesting some of them possess a remarkable grasp of the human language.
Continue reading...Prof Neil Ferguson calls for booster rollout and teenagers’ second jabs to be accelerated to ease NHS pressure
The distribution of Covid boosters for the most vulnerable people and second shots of vaccine for teenagers should be accelerated to help prevent a winter surge of coronavirus overburdening the NHS, a senior scientist has said.
Prof Neil Ferguson, the head of the influential disease modelling group at Imperial College London, said England’s vaccine strategy had been “cautious” in recent months, with many teenagers having only one jab, and boosters for the most vulnerable people given no sooner than six months after their second dose.
Continue reading...Extra help called in for overwhelmed hospitals in California; two doses of Pfizer/BioNTech about 90% effective at preventing hospitalisations for at least six months, research reveals
Senegal has had only a handful of new daily Covid infections so far this week, with only two cases yesterday – the lowest number since the pandemic reached the country.
“Two cases were recorded today, the lowest ever recorded,” said the health ministry spokesperson Ngone Ngom. “They were in the past seven, 10 cases, but from the top of my head I think this is the lowest.”
Continue reading...Sykuro Manabe, Klaus Hasselmann and Giorgio Parisi share award for advancing climate knowledge
Three scientists have won the 2021 Nobel prize in physics for their groundbreaking contributions to our understanding of complex physical systems – including how humanity influences the Earth’s climate.
The winners, Syukuro Manabe, Klaus Hasselmann and Giorgio Parisi, will share the award, announced on Tuesday, presented by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and worth 10m Swedish kronor (£870,000).
Continue reading...Only 31% of pregnant Americans are fully vaccinated. I felt responsible for this bean-like bundle forming in my body. But the conflicting advice made it hard for me to decide
These are the first three things I did when I found out I was pregnant in February. I took about six more tests. Then, I called the doctor’s office to make an appointment. A few days later, I signed up for a Covid-19 vaccine. I stood in line, freezing, at a high school in Coney Island to get my shot.
Deciding to get the vaccine that same month was not easy – even as a former health reporter accustomed to deciphering medical journals. I felt a very visceral and personal responsibility toward this bean-like bundle forming in my body. There were only preliminary studies about vaccine safety – saying the vaccine was likely safe – but based on participants who didn’t know they were pregnant during trials. Gynaecologists and family physicians had not yet achieved full and public consensus on their recommendations as most have now.
Continue reading...Russia’s daily cases at highest levels since January; EMA says people with weakened immune systems should get Pfizer or Moderna booster
The UK chancellor, Rishi Sunak, has not ruled out unemployment rising now the furlough scheme has ended. But he told Sky News this morning that the government is “throwing the kitchen sink” at helping people find new roles and learn new skills.
When it was put to him that there might be “significant rises” in unemployment now the scheme has come to a close, he said: “I said right at the beginning of this crisis it wasn’t going to be possible for me, or quite frankly any chancellor, to save every single person’s job.
Continue reading...‘Stunning’ neuroscientific advance gives hope to those with mental illness not helped with drugs
A woman with severe depression has been successfully treated with an experimental brain implant in a “stunning” advance that offers hope to those with intractable mental illness.
The device works by detecting patterns of brain activity linked to depression and automatically interrupting them using tiny pulses of electrical stimulation delivered deep inside the brain.
Continue reading...European-Japanese probe swoops in to almost 200km above Sun’s nearest planet, photographing its pock-marked features
The European-Japanese BepiColombo spacecraft has sent back its first images of Mercury, as it swung by the solar system’s innermost planet while on a mission to deliver two probes into orbit in 2025.
The mission made the first of six flybys of Mercury at 11.34pm GMT on Friday, using the planet’s gravity to slow the spacecraft down.
Continue reading...The Great British Bake Off is back! Sales of baking utensils skyrocket when the amateur baking show is on. It appears we’re all cake mad. But I’ve always been mad as a box of doughnuts for cake, long before the GBBO started. In fact, it’s one of my loves – not one of my vices.
Cake and I are friends; we go back a long way. At school, we’d bake in home economics class and sell our creations in the tuck shop – 10p a fairy cake. The whole process felt like alchemy to me: the creaming of butter and sugar, then the eggs, all beaten into a frenzy of delight. That feeling of magic at my fingertips has not left – it is why I love to bake. It’s a good lesson in life: humble beginnings can have majestic ends. Like an ode to a lover, I feel emotional when writing about it. I can smell its perfume and the tantalising sensation of it touching my lips.
Continue reading...After positive clinical trials for antiviral drug Molnupiravir, it joins other medicines that have shown promise
The first clinical trial results showing a positive effect for a pill that can be taken at home has been hailed as a potential gamechanger that could provide a new way to protect the most vulnerable people from the worst effects of Covid-19. Molnupiravir joins a growing list of medicines that have shown promise. Here are some of the main developments in treatments so far.
Continue reading...If approved, Merck’s drug would be first simple oral medication shown to be effective against coronavirus
An antiviral pill was found to reduce hospitalisations and deaths by half in patients newly diagnosed with Covid-19, according to results announced on Friday.
If approved, the drug made by the US firm Merck and Ridgeback Biotherapeutics would be the first simple oral medication shown to be effective against Covid-19, which would mark a crucial advance in the fight against the pandemic. Other drugs, such as remdesivir, have been shown to be effective if given early, but all currently approved treatments need to be given as injections or IV infusions.
Continue reading...Open letter by current and ex-staffers alleges ‘consistently inappropriate’ behaviour by Blue Origin leaders
A group of current and former employees at Blue Origin, the space flight company owned by the Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos, has accused the business of operating a work environment that is “rife with sexism” and prefers “breakneck speed” to safety.
An open letter written by Alexandra Abrams, the former head of employee communications at Blue Origin and 20 other current and former workers, says the company’s culture “reflects the worst of the world we live in now” and must change.
Continue reading...Clinical trial on joint flu, Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccinations reported only mild to moderate side-effects
Flu jabs are safe to give at the same time as the Pfizer or AstraZeneca Covid vaccines, according to the first clinical trial to investigate co-administering the shots in a single appointment.
While some people experienced more side-effects with certain combinations of flu and Covid shots, the ailments were mainly mild to moderate, the study found. The most common side effects included pain at the injection site and temporary fatigue, headache or muscle pain.
Continue reading...SpaceX founder, who in April won a contract from Nasa, took a jab at Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin for suing when it lost out on deal
Elon Musk intensified the feud over lawsuits and rocket sizes with space rival Jeff Bezos this week, kicking off the latest round in the billionaire battle over humanity’s return to the moon.
The SpaceX founder, who in April won a contract from Nasa to build the next-generation spacecraft to take astronauts to the moon’s surface for the first time since 1972, took a jab at Bezos for suing the US government when his company lost out on the deal.
Continue reading...Discovery of DNA modifications raises hope of treatment for disorders that particularly afflict twins
The medical mystery of what causes some twins to be born identical may have been solved by scientists in the Netherlands, raising hopes for treatment of congenital disorders that disproportionately afflict them.
Identical twins form after a fertilised egg, called a zygote, splits into two embryos sharing exactly the same genes. The reason for the split is unknown.
Continue reading...Results of two studies may explain why some people develop diabetes after catching the virus
Covid-19 can infect insulin-producing cells in the pancreas and change their function, potentially explaining why some previously healthy people develop diabetes after catching the virus.
Doctors are increasingly concerned about the growing number of patients who have developed diabetes either while infected with coronavirus, or shortly after recovering from it.
Continue reading...How the Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker became one of the world’s most contentious thinkers
On a recent afternoon, Steven Pinker, the cognitive psychologist and bestselling author of upbeat books about human progress, was sitting in his summer home on Cape Cod, thinking about Bill Gates. Pinker was gearing up to record a radio series on critical thinking for the BBC, and he wanted the world’s fourth richest man to join him for an episode on the climate emergency. “People tend to approach challenges in one of two ways – as problem-solving or as conflict,” Pinker, who appreciates the force of a tidy dichotomy, said. “You can think of it as Bill versus Greta. And I’m very much in Bill’s camp.”
A few weeks earlier, Gates had been photographed in Manhattan carrying a copy of Pinker’s soon to be published 12th book, Rationality, which inspired the BBC series. “We sent it to his people,” Pinker said. Pinker is an avid promoter of his own work, and for the past 25 years he has had a great deal to promote. Since the 1990s, he has written a string of popular books on language, the mind and human behaviour, but in the past decade, he has become best known for his counterintuitive take on the state of the world. In the shadow of the financial crisis, while other authors were writing books about how society was profoundly broken, Pinker took the opposite tack, arguing that things were, in fact, better than ever.
Continue reading...Researchers find space in Gorham’s Cave complex that has been closed off for at least 40,000 years
Researchers excavating a cave network on the Rock of Gibraltar have discovered a new chamber, sealed off from the world for at least 40,000 years, that could shed light on the culture and customs of the Neanderthals who occupied the area for a thousand centuries.
In 2012, experts began examining Vanguard Cave, part of the Gorham’s Cave complex, to determine its true dimensions and to see whether it contained passages and chambers that had been plugged by sand.
Continue reading...The 25m-year-old fossil reveals ancient eagle had features unlike any seen among modern hawks and eagles
A 25m-year-old eagle fossil discovered on a remote outback cattle station in South Australia has been identified as one of the oldest raptor species in the world.
Palaeontologists discovered the eagle fossil on the shore of a dry lake known as Lake Pinpa in 2016, and have since identified it as a new species, Archaehierax sylvestris, in a study published in the journal Historical Biology.
Continue reading...Naomi Kori Pomat, the first female doctor in her province, died in country’s first government-confirmed death of a health worker from virus
Tributes have poured in for a doctor in Papua New Guinea’s Western Province who died last week, in the country’s first death of a healthcare worker from Covid-19 confirmed by the government.
Dr Naomi Kori Pomat, 60, the director for curative health services at the Western Provincial Health Authority (WPHA), was medevaced to Port Moresby after contracting the virus and died on 19 September.
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