Rising heat and humidity threatening to plunge much of the world’s population into potentially lethal conditions, study finds
The climate crisis is pushing the planet’s tropical regions towards the limits of human livability, with rising heat and humidity threatening to plunge much of the world’s population into potentially lethal conditions, new research has found.
Related: 'It is the question of the century': will tech solve the climate crisis – or make it worse?
Continue reading...Italian PM reiterates pledge to speed up the vaccination programme; fully-vaccinated Americans can meet indoors without social distancing or masks
Here the latest key developments at a glance:
More than half of secondary schools and colleges in England have seen nearly all their students opt in for voluntary on-site coronavirus tests as they returned to class, a survey suggests.
PA reports:
Nearly three in four (73%) secondary school heads said more than 90% of pupils had complied with face covering policies in classrooms, according to the snap poll by the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL).
But some heads reported lower compliance with masks, with 2% saying it was below 70%.
‘Limited’ cardiology research also shows mask wearing likely to reduce spread of coronavirus in indoor gyms
Face masks can be worn safely during intense exercise, and could reduce the risk of Covid-19 spreading at indoor gyms, preliminary findings suggests.
Scientists from the Monzino Cardiology Centre (CCM) in Milan and the University of Milan tested the breathing rate, heart rate, blood pressure and oxygen levels of six women and men on exercise bikes, with and without a mask.
Continue reading...She has always maintained her four children died of natural causes. Now 90 scientists argue she may be right
Leading scientific experts are petitioning for the pardon of the woman dubbed Australia’s worst female serial killer, arguing that all four of her children had rare genetic conditions that could explain their deaths.
Kathleen Folbigg is in jail for killing her children as infants between 1990 and 1999.
Continue reading...Forty years after the mutant genes that cause the deadliest cancers were discovered, drugs that target them could be approved
In the early 1980s, Channing Der was just beginning his career as a scientist at Harvard Medical School when he happened upon a discovery that would change the course of cancer research. At the time, the holy grail of cancer biology was discovering so-called oncogenes – genetic switches that can turn a normal cell into a cancer cell – in the genomes of tumours. But while teams of scientists had thrown everything at it for the best part of a decade, their efforts had proved fruitless. One by one, they were beginning to accept that it might be a dead end.
Der found himself assigned to test 20 different genes that had been identified as possible oncogene candidates. His question was simple: did any of them actually exist in tumours in a form that was different from normal cells?
Continue reading...Contradictory death figures in Russia; WHO warns against relaxing guard due to vaccines
India’s federal government has asked local authorities to prioritise vaccinations in several districts of eight states, including New Delhi, that have seen a spike in coronavirus cases in recent weeks.
Reuters reports:
More than 60 districts across New Delhi, Haryana, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Goa and Chandigarh, “continue to be of concern”, the government said.
“These districts are seeing a decrease in total tests being conducted, low share of (tests), increase in weekly positivity and low number of contact tracing of the COVID positive cases,” it added, citing a risk of transmission to neighbouring regions.
More than 1,000 people in north-east England have been checked for coronavirus in the first day of surge testing after a variant from South Africa was discovered in their area.
The BBC reports that everyone aged over 16 living in Stockton’s TS19 postcode area was being urged to get tested even if asymptomatic. The local council said the variant was “more infectious” and cases needed to be identified “as quickly as possible”. Early studies indicate that this variant could be much more resistant to vaccines than the original strain.
Continue reading...The companies in line for the biggest gains – and the shareholders who have already made fortunes
The arrival of Covid-19 vaccines promises a return to more normal life – and has created a global market worth tens of billions of dollars in annual sales for some pharmaceutical companies.
Among the biggest winners will be Moderna and Pfizer – two very different US pharma firms which are both charging more than $30 per person for the protection of their two-dose vaccines. While Moderna was founded just 11 years ago, has never made a profit and employed just 830 staff pre-pandemic, Pfizer traces its roots back to 1849, made a net profit of $9.6bn last year and employs nearly 80,000 staff.
Continue reading...Robots on coral reefs, vast barriers to hold back the glaciers, simulated volcanic eruptions to offset global heating ... Can technology repair the mess we have made? Elizabeth Kolbert is not convinced
Elizabeth Kolbert’s favourite movie is the end-of-the-world comedy Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. For those who need a quick recap, this cold war film features a deranged US air force general who orders a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union using weapons developed by a mad Nazi scientist played by Peter Sellers. A last-minute glitch almost forestalls an apocalyptic war, but a gung-ho B-52 pilot has other ideas. He opens the bomb doors and mounts the H-bomb as if it were a horse, waving his hat and whooping as he rides the missile towards the world’s oblivion. No heroism could be more misguided. No movie could end with a blunter message: how on Earth can we humans trust ourselves with planet-altering technology?
The same absurdly serious question lies at the heart of Kolbert’s new book, Under a White Sky. The Sixth Extinction, her previous book, won a Pulitzer prize for its investigation into how mankind has devastated the natural world. Now she has widened her gaze to whether we can remedy this with ingenious technological fixes – or make things worse. “There was definitely a question left hanging: now we have become such a dominant force on planet Earth, and created so many problems through our intervention, what happens next?”, she says.
Continue reading...Vehicle had no problem going 6.5 metres, turning and backing up, then photographed its own wheel marks on planet’s surface
Nasa’s Mars rover Perseverance has taken a short drive two weeks after touching down, mission managers have said.
The six-wheeled, car-sized probe went 6.5 metres (21.3 feet) during a half-hour test within Jezero crater, an ancient lake bed and river delta.
Continue reading...David Morris encounters rare optical illusion known as superior mirage while out on coastal stroll
There are only so many polite words that come to mind when one spots a ship apparently hovering above the ocean during a stroll along the English coastline.
David Morris, who captured the extraordinary sight on camera, declared himself “stunned” when he noticed a giant tanker floating above the water as he looked out to sea from a hamlet near Falmouth in Cornwall.
Continue reading...The space debris was spotted falling to Earth near Bordeaux but astronomer admits to ‘needle in a haystack’ search
France’s ranks of amateur astronomers have been urged to help find an apricot-size meteorite that fell to Earth last weekend in the south-west of the country.
The rock, estimated to weigh 150 grams (just over five ounces), was captured plunging through the atmosphere by cameras at an astronomy education facility in Mauraux, and landed at exactly 10.43pm on Saturday near Aiguillon, about 100km (62 miles) from Bordeaux.
Continue reading...Focus on agro-business rather than ecology has split groups invited to planned UN conference on hunger
An international food summit to address growing hunger and diet-related disease is in disarray as hundreds of farmers’ and human rights groups are planning a boycott.
Related: 'A shame for the world': Uganda's fragile forest ecosystem destroyed for sugar
Continue reading...Agencies in Canada, Singapore and Switzerland will also back plan for modified vaccines to be rolled out without new approval
Authorised vaccines that are modified to protect against new variants will not need to start a new approval process or undergo in-depth clinical studies, regulators in the UK, Australia, Canada, Singapore and Switzerland have said.
Manufacturers will need to provide “robust evidence that the modified vaccine produces an immune response, but time-consuming clinical studies that do not add to the regulatory understanding of a vaccine’s safety, quality or effectiveness would not be needed”, bringing the process into line with that already used for updated flu jabs.
Alongside data on the immune response, the vaccine manufacturer would also be expected to provide evidence showing the modified vaccine is safe and is of the expected quality. In addition, data from the original robust clinical trials and the ongoing studies on real-world use in millions of people could be used to support any decision by the regulators.
This approach is based on the tried and tested regulatory process used for seasonal flu vaccines, for which annual modifications are needed to match the strains circulating each year.
Our priority is to get effective vaccines to the public in as short a time as possible, without compromising on safety. Should any modifications to authorised Covid-19 vaccines be necessary, this regulatory approach should help to do just that.
The announcement today also demonstrates the strength of our international partnerships with other regulators and how our global work can help ensure faster access to life-saving vaccines in the UK and around the world.
While worrisome coronavirus variants identified in Brazil, South Africa, and California have mutations that might help them resist antibody treatments and vaccines, the immune system’s T cell responses to the variants are unaffected in recovered patients and in people who have received the Moderna Inc or Pfizer Inc/BioNTech vaccines, new data show.
Reuters: The T cells induced by vaccines can recognise pieces of the virus spike protein, while T cells induced by previous infection recognise multiple parts of the virus, including the spike and other proteins, said Alessandro Sette of the La Jolla Institute for Immunology.
“These pieces are largely not changed/mutated in the variants,” he explained. “This means that the T cell responses recognise the ‘ancestral’ sequence and the variants equally well.”
Continue reading...Approach will be similar to how flu vaccine is modified each year to deal with new strains without fresh approval
Coronavirus vaccines tweaked to deal with variants will be fast-tracked without compromising on safety or effectiveness, the UK’s regulator has said.
The approach will be similar to the regulatory process for the modified flu vaccine, to deal with new strains each year, with a brand new approval not required.
Continue reading...Governments urged to prioritise obese people for vaccinations over greater risk of death from coronavirus
Countries with high levels of overweight people, such as the UK and the US, have the highest death rates from Covid-19, a landmark report reveals, prompting calls for governments to urgently tackle obesity, as well as prioritising overweight people for vaccinations.
About 2.2 million of the 2.5 million deaths from Covid were in countries with high levels of overweight people, says the report from the World Obesity Federation. Countries such as the UK, US and Italy, where more than 50% of adults are overweight, have the biggest proportions of deaths linked to coronavirus.
Continue reading...There are all sorts of different vaccines but many of them share specific types of ingredients. Josh Toussaint-Strauss talks to Prof Adam Finn to find out what is in most conventional vaccines, as well as what's going on in our bodies when we take them – and why the Covid jabs work differently
Continue reading...Plan for moving from lockdown to relaxation of restrictions will be guided by data
Northern Ireland’s deputy first minister, Michelle O’Neill, has unveiled a cautious five-step plan to ease the region’s Covid-19 lockdown. The plan has no hard dates and will be led by data, notably the reproductive rate of the virus, O’Neill told the Stormont assembly on Tuesday.
The 28-page plan, titled Moving Forward: the Executive’s Pathway out of Restrictions, envisages a five-stage process moving from lockdown to relaxation of restrictions for nine different sectors.
Continue reading...Scientists call for more genetic sequencing of emerging variants like P1 to bring pandemic under control
The coronavirus variant originally found in Manaus in Brazil and detected in six cases in the UK was able to infect 25% to 61% of the people in the Amazonian city who might have expected to be immune after a first bout of Covid, researchers say.
The extent to which P1 can evade the immune system, and potentially vaccines, emerged as the UK health secretary said the hunt for one person who tested positive for P1 – but did not leave contact details – had narrowed to 379 households in the south-east of England.
Continue reading...Both countries urged to take action to avoid pile-up of unused AstraZeneca vaccine doses
Authorities in Germany and France are under pressure to come up with creative solutions to shift the AstraZeneca vaccine at higher speed in order to avoid a pile-up of unused doses over the coming weeks.
On Monday, France’s medical regulator reversed its advice not to use the AstraZeneca jab on over-65s, and Germany’s vaccination committee is coming under increasing pressure to follow suit or even scrap prioritisation altogether.
Continue reading...Whether talking to family, friends or strangers, calls hardly ever end when both parties are ready
So you just called to say “I love you” – but how long should you stay on the phone?
New research suggests no matter who we’re talking to, or what we’re talking about, conversations rarely conclude when the two individuals want them to end.
Continue reading...