Category Archives: Science

Queensland Covid hotspots: list of Brisbane and regional Qld coronavirus case locations

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Here are the current coronavirus hotspots and case locations in Queensland and what to do if you’ve visited them

Queensland authorities have released a list of hotspots where Covid-positive people have visited while infectious.

Any individuals who have been in the below locations during the relevant times are considered close contacts and asked to immediately home quarantine (for 14 days), even if you receive a negative result, and complete the contact-tracing self-assessment or call 13HEALTH (13 43 25 84):

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Much-feared asteroid Apophis won’t hit Earth for at least 100 years, Nasa says

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Chunk of space rock was once the ‘poster child for hazardous asteroids’ but it will be a while before humans need to worry about it again

Nasa has given Earth the all clear on the chances of an asteroid called Apophis hitting our planet any time in the next century, having worried space scientists for over 15 years.

The 340-metre (1,100ft) chunk of space rock hit the headlines in 2004 after its discovery led to some worrying forecasts about its orbit. It became a “poster child for hazardous asteroids”, according to one Nasa expert.

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Covid third wave may overrun Africa’s healthcare, warns WHO

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Leap of 50% in cases in three months and just 7m jabs across continent ‘infecting 11 health workers an hour’

Rising cases of coronavirus in Africa threaten to overrun fragile healthcare systems and test the continent’s much-touted resilience to the disease, according to the World Health Organization’s regional office for the continent.

The global health body stated that infections were on the rise in at least 12 countries in Africa including Cameroon, Ethiopia, Kenya and Guinea.

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‘Dimming the sun’: $100m geoengineering research programme proposed

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All options to fight climate crisis must be explored, says national academy, but critics fear side-effects

The US should establish a multimillion-dollar research programme on solar geoengineering, according to the country’s national science academy.

In a report it recommends funding of $100m (£73m) to $200m over five years to better understand the feasibility of interventions to dim the sun, the risk of harmful unintended consequences and how such technology could be governed in an ethical way.

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If you’re ecstatic after a trip to the shops, it’s your brain thanking you for the novelty | Richard A Friedman

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The monotony of lockdown life has starved us of spontaneity and serendipity, which enhance learning and memory

  • Richard A Friedman is a professor of clinical psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College

I hit a wall in late February and felt that life had taken on a quality of stultifying sameness. Was it Wednesday or Sunday? I couldn’t really tell: every day of the week felt identical because there was nothing to distinguish them. Work, read, exercise, eat, repeat. Like nearly everyone I know, I have settled into a state of dreary uniformity.

The pandemic has been a vast uncontrolled experiment – not just in social isolation, which is bad enough, but in the deprivation of novelty. Overnight we were stripped of our ability to roam around our world the way we usually do. Gone were the chance encounters with other people and the experience of new things and places: no travel, no adventures, no restaurants, no theatres, no crowds. We weren’t just quarantined from Covid: we were cut off from the ubiquitous stimulation of the unfamiliar and new.

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Pandemic periods: why women’s menstrual cycles have gone haywire

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A majority of menstruating women have experienced changes to their cycle over the last year, surveys suggest. One of the main culprits? Persistent stress

We will not look back on the past year as a vintage one for the human body. Since March 2020, many of us have experienced physical manifestations of stress that correspond to living through a global pandemic. From low energy and headaches to changes in mood and disrupted sleep, our rhythms are deeply upset. And many women have experienced changes to a fundamental rhythm: the menstrual cycle.

Rachel Burns has always experienced premenstrual syndrome (PMS), but it has been even more difficult to navigate in the past 12 months. “I always have a few days of feeling quite withdrawn before my period, but this has morphed into me feeling unreachable and anxious for over a week,” says the 36-year-old from Kent. “My partner says the change is significant.” Before Christmas, her PMS made her feel as if she were “going mad, like a panic attack I couldn’t come down from”. The effects of her period drag on now. She feels fluey, achy, “completely depleted, physically and emotionally”. As a result, it can feel like she “only has one ‘good’ week” a month. “It’s like being at sea within yourself,” she says.

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Coronavirus live news: India pauses AstraZeneca vaccine exports; Belgium, Iceland and France tighten restrictions

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No exports were made on Thursday; Belgium imposes fresh lockdown; Iceland imposes three-week shutdown; France locks down more areas

AstraZeneca has dismissed as “inaccurate” a report in the Italian press that 29m doses of its Covid-19 vaccine found in factory near Rome were destined for the UK.

La Stampa reported on Wednesday that the doses – almost twice the amount the EU has so far received from AstraZeneca – were found “hidden” in the factory following a search by Italian police on Saturday at the request of the European commission, and that they were probably destined for the UK.

Related: AstraZeneca dismisses claim 29m vaccine doses in Italy were bound for UK

Luxembourg has announced a partial reopening of its hospitality industry, with cafés and restaurants able to serve customers again in outdoor areas from 7 April.

The European country’s venues have been closed since the end of November.

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Scientists discover why humans have such big brains

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Molecular switch makes human organ three times larger than great apes’, study finds

It is one of the defining attributes of being human: when compared with our closest primate relatives, we have incredibly large brains.

Now scientists have shed light on the reasons for the difference, by collecting cells from humans, chimps and gorillas and turning them into lumps of brain in the laboratory.

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‘What appointments did these dogs have to keep?’: long lunches and brief liaisons in a radical new dogumentary

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To mark National Puppy Day, Elizabeth Lo’s acclaimed film Stray gives humans rare insight into the canine gaze, courtesy of homeless mutts in Istanbul

From the moment Zeytin makes her first appearance in Elizabeth Lo’s feature Stray, there is no doubt you are in the presence of a unique spirit. As she surveys an Istanbul side street at dawn, her features are alert, her gaze is uncompromising and her deep, dark eyes sparkle with intelligence. There’s something of Katharine Hepburn in The African Queen about her, or maybe Brad Pitt in one of his less kempt moments. But non-dog comparisons don’t do her justice. This is one indomitable bitch.

Lo first encountered Zeytin and her friend Nazar on a 2017 casting trip to Turkey, and knew immediately that she had found the star she was looking for – which is to say, a dog who could carry a human film. “We were wandering through a busy underground tunnel filled with people when suddenly these two giant stray dogs streaked past us,” she says. “They were running with such a sense of purpose and it was so intriguing. What appointments did these dogs have to keep?”

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Cern experiment hints at new force of nature

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Experts reveal ‘cautious excitement’ over unstable particles that fail to decay as standard model suggests

Scientists at the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva have spotted an unusual signal in their data that may be the first hint of a new kind of physics.

The LHCb collaboration, one of four main teams at the LHC, analysed 10 years of data on how unstable particles called B mesons, created momentarily in the vast machine, decayed into more familiar matter such as electrons.

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Covid-19: what happens next? – podcast

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On 23 March 2020, the UK prime minister, Boris Johnson, announced the first lockdown in response to the growing number of cases of Covid-19. At the same time, countries around the world began to close their schools, restaurants, and offices and ask citizens to physically distance from one another. In the 12 months since, more than 2 million people have died, viral variants have emerged, and we have developed safe and effective vaccines.

One year into the pandemic, Science Weekly is asking: what happens next? Ian Sample talks to the professors Martin Landray, Mike Tildesley, and Deborah Dunn-Walters about Covid treatments, vaccines and what the next 12 months may hold

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Can the UK avoid a third wave of Covid?

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Analysis: as lockdown restrictions ease, the country now faces a race between vaccination and infection

Britain’s latest lockdown has dramatically reduced cases of coronavirus, and the number of people being admitted to hospital and dying from the disease. What the country faces now is essentially a race between vaccination and infection: can we protect people faster than the virus spreads as restrictions are eased?

This was always going to be a balancing act. The UK vaccination strategy of prioritising the most vulnerable people and moving down the age groups is intended to save lives first and slow transmission second. This means that as the country unlocks, infections are likely to rise, primarily in younger people who have more social contacts and have not yet been vaccinated. Hospitalisations and deaths are expected to rise too, though not as sharply: even though vaccine coverage has been high in vulnerable groups and older people, not everyone has the vaccine and it will not protect all those who do.

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Covid: why has the fall in UK infection rate stalled despite vaccinations?

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Hospital admissions and deaths are declining as priority groups vaccinated but number of new diagnoses has stabilised

The UK’s Covid-19 statistics remain encouraging despite continuing rows over vaccine deliveries in Europe. Admissions to hospital and daily deaths from the disease continue to decline with numbers in the latter category now down to double digits while the former have dropped to around a 10th of their total two months ago.

However, one other category – numbers of new diagnoses a day – has reached a plateau with cases, having plunged from 60,000, stabilising at around 5,000 to 6,000. So why has this figure apparently stalled while deaths and hospitalisations continue to decline?

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Canadian Conservative party votes not to recognize climate crisis as real

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  • Delegates vote 54%-46% against policy change request
  • Leader O’Toole has sought ambitious climate change agenda

Canada’s main opposition Conservative Party members have voted down a proposal to recognize the climate crisis as real, in a blow to their new leader’s efforts to embrace environmentally friendly policies before a likely federal election this year.

Related: 'Climate facts are back': EPA brings science back to website after Trump purge

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Tardigrades: nature’s great survivors

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The microscopic animals can withstand extreme conditions that would kill humans, and may one day help in the development of Covid vaccines. How do they do it?

On 11 April 2019, a spacecraft crashed on to the Moon. The Israeli Beresheet probe was supposed to land gently in the Mare Serenitatis, a huge plain of basalt rock formed in a volcanic eruption billions of years ago. It would have been the first privately funded mission to land on the Moon. But owing to a last-minute instrument failure Beresheet did not slow down enough and slammed into the surface at 500 kilometres per hour.

From the Moon’s point of view, this was a failed alien invasion. Beresheet was carrying animals called tardigrades, which look like stunted, microscopic caterpillars. They may not seem like an obvious candidate for interplanetary travel, but tardigrades are famed among biologists for their ability to survive conditions that would kill almost any other animal. It is possible that some of them survived the crash.

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Specialist Covid infection control scientist faces threat of deportation from UK

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Charles Oti should be in his NHS job fighting the virus. Instead, the Home Office wants to send him to Nigeria

An infection control specialist who has been offered a job as a senior NHS biomedical scientist to help tackle the pandemic is facing deportation by the Home Office, prompting fresh calls for a more “humane” approach to skilled migrants.

The government has refused Charles Oti, 46, from Nigeria the right to remain in the UK even though the job he was offered is among the government’s most sought-after skilled positions.

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‘Our biggest challenge? Lack of imagination’: the scientists turning the desert green

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In China, scientists have turned vast swathes of arid land into a lush oasis. Now a team of maverick engineers want to do the same to the Sinai

Flying into Egypt in early February to make the most important presentation of his life, Ties van der Hoeven prepared by listening to the podcast 13 Minutes To The Moon – the story of how Nasa accomplished the lunar landings. The mission he was discussing with the Egyptian government was more earthbound in nature, but every bit as ambitious. It could even represent a giant leap for mankind.

Van der Hoeven is a co-founder of the Weather Makers, a Dutch firm of “holistic engineers” with a plan to regreen the Sinai peninsula – the small triangle of land that connects Egypt to Asia. Within a couple of decades, the Weather Makers believe, the Sinai could be transformed from a hot, dry, barren desert into a green haven teeming with life: forests, wetlands, farming land, wild flora and fauna. A regreened Sinai would alter local weather patterns and even change the direction of the winds, bringing more rain, the Weather Makers believe – hence their name.

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Doctors suggest Covid-19 could cause diabetes

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More than 350 clinicians report suspicions of Covid-induced diabetes, both type 1 and type 2

A cohort of scientists from across the world believe that there is a growing body of evidence that Covid-19 can cause diabetes in some patients.

Prof Francesco Rubino, from King’s College London, is leading the call for a full investigation into a possible link between the two diseases. Having seen a rise in both type 1 and type 2 diabetes in people who have caught coronavirus, some doctors are even considering the possibility that the virus ‒ by disrupting sugar metabolism ‒ could be inducing an entirely new form of diabetes.

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