Astronomers estimate 29 habitable planets are positioned to see Earth transit and intercept human broadcasts
For centuries, Earthlings have gazed at the heavens and wondered about life among the stars. But as humans hunted for little green men, the extraterrestrials might have been watching us back.
In new research, astronomers have drawn up a shortlist of nearby star systems where any inquisitive inhabitants on orbiting planets would be well placed to spot life on Earth.
Continue reading...Around the world, dozens of ingenious projects are trying to ‘trick’ the ocean into absorbing more CO2. But critics warn of unforeseen consequences
Tom Green has a plan to tackle climate change. The British biologist and director of the charity Project Vesta wants to turn a trillion tonnes of CO2 into rock, and sink it to the bottom of the sea.
Green admits the idea is “audacious”. It would involve locking away atmospheric carbon by dropping pea-coloured sand into the ocean. The sand is made of ground olivine – an abundant volcanic rock, known to jewellers as peridot – and, if Green’s calculations are correct, depositing it offshore on 2% of the world’s coastlines would capture 100% of total global annual carbon emissions.
Continue reading...The country’s infections, the worst in south-east Asia, have passed two million
Indonesian health authorities are battling a new surge in coronavirus infections, as the National Agency for Disaster Management (BNPB) reported the highest one-day total, with 14,535 cases confirmed in the 24 hours to Monday.
Daily case totals are reaching levels last seen in January, the peak of Indonesia’s fight against the virus.
Continue reading...UK analysis shows people who drank coffee had 49% reduced risk of dying from the condition
From espresso to instant, coffee is part of the daily routine for millions. Now research suggests the brew could be linked to a lower chance of developing or dying from chronic liver disease.
Chronic liver disease is a major health problem around the world. According to the British Liver Trust, liver disease is the third leading cause of premature death in the UK, with deaths having risen 400% since 1970.
Continue reading...State hospitals are barely functioning as humanitarian crisis unfolds across the country
Myanmar has reported what is believed to be its highest daily increase in Covid cases since the February coup, as concerns grow over the country’s collapsed health system and the junta’s continued crackdown on medics.
Myanmar’s Covid response was plunged into chaos when the military seized power on 1 February, detaining the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi.
Continue reading...Successful International Space Station installation followed an attempt on Wednesday that ran into several problems
French and American astronauts have completed a six-hour spacewalk as they installed new solar panels to boost power supplies to the International Space Station (ISS), Nasa said.
“It is a huge team effort each time and couldn’t be happier to return with @astro_kimbrough,” Frenchman Thomas Pesquet tweeted on Sunday, referring to his American colleague Shane Kimbrough. Pesquet is with the European Space Agency, Kimbrough with Nasa.
Continue reading...Condition also known as takotsubo cardiomyopathy is brought on by an acute emotional shock
Two molecules associated with high stress levels have been implicated in the development of broken heart syndrome, a condition that mainly affects post-menopausal women and is usually brought on by severe stress, such as the loss of a loved one.
The syndrome, formally known as takotsubo cardiomyopathy, is characterised by weakening of the heart’s main pumping chamber and was first identified in 1990 in Japan. It looks and sounds like a heart attack and is consequently often confused for one.
Continue reading...Biden’s 70% vaccination target by Fourth of July likely to fall short as efforts to entice people to get shots have lost their initial impact
With Covid vaccination penetration in the US likely to fall short of Joe Biden’s 70% by Fourth of July target, pandemic analysts are warning that vaccine incentives are losing traction and that “two Americas” may emerge as the aggressive Delta variant becomes the dominant US strain.
Efforts to boost vaccination rates have come through a variety of incentives, from free hamburgers to free beer, college scholarships and even million-dollar lottery prizes. But of the efforts to entice people to get their shots have lost their initial impact, or failed to land effectively at all.
Continue reading...Unvaccinated children have potential to drive third wave of highly transmissible Delta variant, says virologist
The drive to vaccinate all adults over the age of 18 in the UK could lead to the concentration of Covid-19 cases in schoolchildren, a leading British virologist has warned.
Under-18s would then become reservoirs in which new variants of the virus could arise, said Julian Tang, of Leicester University.
Continue reading...The scientist and broadcaster discusses the drawbacks of calorie-counting and BMI in measuring obesity, and how our growing understanding of genetics is leading to new treatments
Since the dawn of the 20th century, almost all weight loss guidelines have used calories as a simple measure of how much energy we’re consuming from our food. But according to Giles Yeo, a Cambridge University research scientist who studies the genetics of obesity, there’s one problem: not all calories are created equal. In his new book, Why Calories Don’t Count, Yeo explains that what really matters is not how many calories a particular food contains, but how that food is digested and absorbed by your body.
Can you explain why you feel calorie-counting is a flawed approach to weight loss?
There was an American chemist in the 19th century called Wilbur Olin Atwater who calculated the calorie numbers for different foods, by working out the total energy intake you get from them. But his calculations never took into account the energy it takes our cells to metabolise food in order to use it. This is important. It’s why for example a calorie of protein makes you feel fuller than a calorie of fat, because protein is more complex to metabolise. For every 100 calories of protein you eat, you only ever absorb 70.
As psychotherapist and author Philippa Perry becomes our new agony aunt, she reveals why helping you with your worries will help us all. Plus, a special welcome from Jay Rayner
John Dunton founded the Athenian Mercury in the 1690s. A paper that consisted of readers’ questions and the answers. His idea was that readers could send in dilemmas to be answered by a panel of experts, the Athenian Society. But his great innovation was that they could do so anonymously and this has remained a feature of problem pages ever since. Poor old Dunton could have done with some advice himself, because he ended his days in poverty as he was a better innovator than he was a business person. He blamed his woes on other people rather than taking responsibility for his own failings. I think an agony aunt today might have spotted that for him and possibly saved him from destitution.
His panel of experts, depicted as 12 learned men with him in the centre in an engraving at the top of the pages, were largely fictitious. It was just Dunton and a couple of mates who went through all the letters in a coffee shop.
Continue reading...Sir David King hopes to emulate success of British Covid advisory body by issuing monthly reports on environmental crisis
Several of the world’s leading scientists plan to launch an independent expert group this week to advise, warn and criticise global policymakers about the climate and nature crises.
The new body has been inspired by Independent Sage – the cluster of British scientists who have held UK ministers and civil servants to account for their lack of transparency and mishandling of the Covid pandemic.
Continue reading...At the age of just 22, the very last thing you want to hear is that you have stage 4 cancer, but for some people the only response is to tackle it head on – which is just what Ellie Edna Rose-Davies did
I barely noticed it at first. A bump on the right side of my neck, small but definite. I was 22 and had no health issues (I’d never even broken a bone), so I didn’t think much of the lump. But my boyfriend was concerned, so I made an appointment to go to the GP.
For the next few months, I would see and feel more lumps spreading up my neck, and even larger ones under my armpits. I went to the doctor three times, where I was told: “It’s not cancer” and that I had “nothing to worry about”.
Continue reading...The moss scientist and bestselling author reveals the secrets of these primitive plants – and what they might teach us about surviving the climate crisis
Robin Wall Kimmerer can recall almost to the day when she first fell under the unlikely spell of moss. “It’s kind of embarrassing,” she says. “I’ve always been engaged with plants, because I grew up in the countryside. That was my world. But mosses I’d set aside in my mind as not worthy of attention. I was studying to be a forest ecologist. That little green scum on the rocks: how interesting could it really be? Only then there came a point when I’d taken every botany class our university had to offer, except one: the ecology of mosses. I thought I’d do it, just so I could say that I’d taken them all. It was love at first sight. I remember looking with a lens at these big glacial erratic boulders that were covered in moss, and thinking: there’s a whole world here to be discovered.” Ever since, she has rarely left her house for a walk without such a lens on a string around her neck.
Kimmerer, a professor of environmental biology and the director of the Centre for Native Peoples and the Environment at the State University of New York in Syracuse, is probably the most well-known bryologist at work in the world today. She may be, in fact, the only well-known bryologist at work today (bryology is the study of mosses and liverworts), at least among the general public. But her unlikely success – her fans include the writer Robert Macfarlane and the Pulitzer prize-winning novelist Richard Powers, who gives daily thanks for what he calls her “endless knowledge” – hardly arrived overnight. In 2013, Kimmerer, a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation of Oklahoma, quietly published a book called Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teaching of Plants – a (seemingly) niche read from a small US press.
Continue reading...We look at the drug firms – led by Pfizer and Moderna – that are set to profit most in an unprecedented global vaccination drive
Drugmakers led by US firms Pfizer and Moderna stand to make tens of billions of dollars from their Covid-19 vaccines this year and next, given G7 governments’ pledge to vaccinate the entire world by the end of 2022, but sales are likely to drop sharply thereafter, according to analysts.
Acclaimed for allowing a return to more normal life, Covid vaccines will also substantially benefit some pharmaceutical companies. The global market for the vaccines is worth $70bn (£50bn) this year, says Karen Andersen of Morningstar.
Continue reading...One firm’s attempt to regain control of illegal cultivation shows Wellington’s lack of leverage over its largest trade partner
It is the story of a global superpower, a smuggling operation, pestilence and a small hairy fruit.
Ubiquitous on supermarket shelves and in lunchboxes, the humble kiwi is New Zealand’s most valuable horticultural export. Recent battles for control of the fruit, however, have shone a light on tensions in New Zealand’s relationship with China.
Continue reading...Sipping water through an L-shaped ‘suction and swallow tool’ cured 92% of attacks, according to study
From holding your breath to having a friend shout “boo!”, there are no shortage of alleged cures for hiccups. Now scientists say they have found a better solution: a drinking straw device.
When you get hiccups – or singultus as it is known in medicine – the diaphragm and intercostal muscles suddenly contract. The subsequent abrupt intake of air causes the opening between the vocal folds – known as the glottis – to shut, resulting in a “hic” sound – often to the embarrassment of the afflicted and the amusement of others.
Continue reading...Amid the heavily politicised debate, a lot of evidence now points to a natural spillover event – but other causes cannot be ruled out
The coronavirus pandemic has raised so many questions as it has continued its inexorable spread across the planet, but perhaps the first of them remains the most contentious: where did Sars-CoV-2 come from?
In recent weeks there has been renewed focus on whether it could have escaped from a Chinese laboratory. However, new findings strengthen the case for a natural origin, in what has become a heavily politicised debate.
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Scientists from agency and Noaa say Earth’s ‘energy imbalance’ roughly doubled from 2005 to 2019 in ‘alarming’ way
The Earth is trapping nearly twice as much heat as it did in 2005, according to new research, described as an “unprecedented” increase amid the climate crisis.
Scientists from Nasa, the US space agency, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa), reported in a new study that Earth’s “energy imbalance approximately doubled” from 2005 to 2019. The increase was described as “alarming”.
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