Category Archives: Science

‘There is no perfect crime’: inside the real French CSI

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A new police science unit in France is deploying groundbreaking forensics and believes DNA will soon allow it to put faces on suspects

Imagine a crime scene. The body of a man in a red sweatshirt and jeans lies dead on the living room floor of an apartment, a revolver near his right hand. There is a blood stain on the blue patterned rug and a bullet hole in the ceiling. On a low table sit an almost empty bottle of whisky and two glasses. The television is off.

If this were an episode of the French TV crime drama Engrenages (Spiral) which ran for eight seasons, or the more recent Netflix hit Lupin, the mystery would have been solved and the killer caught before the screen credits rolled.

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Green pass: how are Covid vaccine passports working for Israel?

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As hotels and gyms reopen in Israel, governments elsewhere are considering a similar certificate scheme – raising ethical concerns

As the UK and other governments consider whether to give Covid-vaccinated people certificates that allow entry to bars, hotels, and swimming pools, one country, Israel, has already deployed its “green pass”.

The state of 9 million, which has administered jabs to half its population, released an app a week ago that shows whether people have been fully inoculated against the coronavirus or if they have presumed immunity after contracting the disease.

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Covid vaccine does not affect fertility but misinformation persists

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Scientists emphasise safety but younger women still hesitant

Amy Taylor was chatting to friends over a Zoom drink when the conversation took an unexpected turn. One of the group – all in their early 30s, mostly university-educated and in professional jobs – mentioned that she had concerns about the Covid vaccine because she wanted to try for a baby in the next year or two.

“I was surprised when others said they were also a bit anxious. Then I started thinking maybe I should be worried too – even though I’m pro-vaccinations and I know this is the way out of the pandemic,” said Taylor*. “This really plays into the fertility insecurity that lots of women in their 30s have anyway – have I left it too late, will I need IVF, should I freeze my eggs? We don’t want anything else that could interfere with our chances of motherhood.”

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‘I’ve had my vaccine – how well will it protect me and for how long?’

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The latest answers to the important medical questions about the vaccines and the pandemic

The prospects of vaccines failing to trigger immune responses are dismissed as remote by scientists. “If a vaccine has not been properly refrigerated that might pose problems but doctors take great care to ensure that doesn’t happen,” said Prof Helen Fletcher at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. “Frankly the only other way to get a failed reaction is for the doctor to miss your arm – which isn’t likely.”

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Archaeologists find unique ceremonial vehicle near Pompeii

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Well-preserved iron, bronze and tin carriage discovery is ‘without precedent in Italy’

Archaeologists have unearthed a unique Roman ceremonial carriage from a villa just outside Pompeii, the city buried in a volcanic eruption in 79 AD.

The almost perfectly preserved four-wheeled carriage, made of iron, bronze and tin, was found near the stables of an ancient villa at Civita Giuliana, about 700 metres north of the walls of ancient Pompeii and close to where the remains of three horses were unearthed in 2018, including one still in its harness.

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Coronavirus live news: Captain Tom Moore funeral takes place; Auckland to go into lockdown for seven days

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Rishi Sunak warns of risk to economy; Joe Biden tells US ‘now is not the time to relax - follow all the day’s news as it happens

Attendees have been asked to stand while a verse from the war poem For the Fallen were read at Captain Tom Moore’s funeral.

The bugler is now playing The Last Post.

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Coronavirus live news: Greece extends lockdown to more areas; Johnson & Johnson jab ‘to get EU approval’

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Greece announced tighter measures as pandemic showed no signs of waning in the country; EMA expected to approve vaccine on 11 March

Honduras will begin receiving nearly 430,000 doses of AstraZeneca’s coronavirus vaccine in March through the World Health Organization’s (WHO) global COVAX program for poor and middle-income countries, the Honduran health minister said on Friday.

Reuters reports:

Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernandez had asked the WHO to make the Central American nation a priority for Covid-19 vaccines, citing the devastating effects of two recent hurricanes that pummeled the already weak economy.

Eventually, the vaccines via COVAX are meant to inoculate nearly 2 million of the 9.5 million inhabitants in the small Central American country, where more than 4,000 people have died from COVID-19. The AstraZeneca vaccine requires two shots.

England’s deputy chief medical officer has told people “don’t wreck this now” as he warned there were “some worrying signs that people are relaxing” in the batlle against coronavirus at “exactly the wrong time”.

PA reports:

Professor Jonathan Van-Tam alerted people who have already been vaccinated to the dangers of “taking their foot off the brake” and being tempted to break Covid-19 rules.

He told a Downing Street briefing on Friday: “All the patients that I vaccinate [...] I say to them, ‘Remember, all the rules still apply to you and all of us until we’re in a much safer place’. It doesn’t change because you’ve had your first dose of vaccine.

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Words matter: how New Zealand’s clear messaging helped beat Covid

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One year on from the nation’s first case of coronavirus, Aotearoa has largely eliminated the virus - communications played a key part in its success

“Stay at home. Protect the NHS. Save lives.” The catch cry of pandemic Britain under Boris Johnson, revived last month, might sound familiar to New Zealanders now enjoying their “unstoppable summer”.

Johnson’s three-part slogan reportedly derived last March from a suggestion by Ben Guerin, a 25-year-old Kiwi who advised on the Conservatives’ social media strategy. His attention had been caught by a phrase that was increasingly prevalent in Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s messaging back home: “Stay at home, save lives.”

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Atlantic Ocean circulation at weakest in a millennium, say scientists

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Decline in system underpinning Gulf Stream could lead to more extreme weather in Europe and higher sea levels on US east coast

The Atlantic Ocean circulation that underpins the Gulf Stream, the weather system that brings warm and mild weather to Europe, is at its weakest in more than a millennium, and climate breakdown is the probable cause, according to new data.

Further weakening of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) could result in more storms battering the UK, more intense winters and an increase in damaging heatwaves and droughts across Europe.

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Not a sprint: endurance experts on how to make it through lockdown

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Marathon runner Eddie Izzard, solo sailor Pip Hare and explorer Levison Wood explain what they have learned about enduring the seemingly unendurable

It just goes on and on, doesn’t it? Despite the millions of vaccinations, and Boris Johnson’s “roadmap” for easing the lockdown, this pandemic is feeling increasingly like an endurance test – a marathon, followed by another marathon, followed by another. Or trudging for miles and miles across the desert for day after day. Or sailing alone around the world, battling storms and loneliness. How do you keep going? There are people who know a thing or two about that – keeping going, endurance, deserts and storms. Perhaps they might even have some advice.

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‘Unique’ petrified tree up to 20m years old found intact in Lesbos

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Discovery of 19.5-metre tree with roots, branches and leaves is unprecedented, say experts

First came the tree, all 19.5 metres of it, with roots and branches and leaves. Then, weeks later, the discovery of 150 fossilised logs, one on top of the other, a short distance away.

Nikolas Zouros, a professor of geology at the University of the Aegean, couldn’t believe his luck. In 25 years of excavating the petrified forest of Lesbos, he had unearthed nothing like it.

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Covax delivers first Covid vaccines in ‘momentous occasion’

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Doses land in Accra as part of scheme seeking to offset ‘vaccine nationalism’

Covax has delivered its first Covid-19 vaccine doses in a milestone for the ambitious programme that seeks to offset “vaccine nationalism” by wealthy countries and ensure poor ones do not wait years to start inoculating people.

An aircraft carrying 600,000 doses of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine landed in Accra, the capital of Ghana, on Wednesday, where jabs will be administered to frontline health workers on Tuesday. Vaccine doses will arrive on Friday in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, and will be given from Monday.

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Mount Etna: footage captures volcano erupting at night, illuminating sky – video

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Spectacular eruptions of red lava from Mount Etna, on the Italian island of Sicily, continued overnight from Monday into Tuesday, illuminating the night sky. The volcano’s lava fountains soared to 1,500 metres, according to the Etna Observatory at Italy's National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology

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Prototype Covid test delivers results three times faster than lateral flow

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Test developed in France is as accurate as PCR test and does not require lab processing

French researchers have developed a coronavirus test that they say delivers results three times faster than rapid lateral flow antigen tests with – according to initial trial data – almost the same accuracy as more reliable, but slower, PCR tests.

The electrochemical test, which uses nanobodies taken from the camelid group of animals, returns a result within 10 minutes and, in an early test of 300 samples, proved 90% as accurate as a PCR test for both positive and negative results. It is being developed by scientists at Lille and Marseille universities and from the French national scientific research centre CNRS.

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‘The clouds cleared’: what terminal lucidity teaches us about life, death and dementia

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Just before Alex Godfrey’s grandmother died from dementia, she snapped back to lucidity and regaled him with stories of her youth. Could moments like this teach us more about the workings of the brain?

It was the red jelly that did it. It was Christmas 1999 in Rapid City, South Dakota, and Ward Porterfield, 83, was in a nursing home. He had been diagnosed with dementia three years earlier; he was confused and disoriented and eventually he no longer recognised his daughter, Kay. “When I went in,” she says of her later visits, “he didn’t know me at all.” That Christmas, he refused to eat. “Finally I just told them: ‘Bring him jello, he likes jello. Red jello.’ And he looked at me, really deeply, and said: ‘So. I suppose the jello’s gonna be my last meal. You’re gonna try to starve me, eh?’ That was like: ‘What’s going on here?’”

Her surprise wasn’t just at his coherence, but that the tone of this reply was undeniably her father’s dry humour. Later that night, nurses told Kay, when children visited to sing carols, tears streamed down Ward’s face. Kay becomes emotional recounting it. “Don’t cry,” a nurse told him. Ward looked at her. “If you were in my position, you’d cry too,” he said. “These are the last Christmas carols I’ll ever hear.”

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Nasa releases video of Perseverance rover landing on Mars

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Space agency also reveals audio recorded by Perseverance on surface of red planet

Nasa has unveiled a first-of-its-kind video of its car-sized rover Perseverance making its sensational landing on Mars, and released the first audio recorded on the surface of the red planet.

The American space agency shared the footage on Monday, days after the spacecraft made its dramatic descent to the Martian surface.

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People with extremist views less able to do complex mental tasks, research suggests

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Cambridge University team say their findings could be used to spot people at risk from radicalisation

Our brains hold clues for the ideologies we choose to live by, according to research, which has suggested that people who espouse extremist attitudes tend to perform poorly on complex mental tasks.

Researchers from the University of Cambridge sought to evaluate whether cognitive disposition – differences in how information is perceived and processed – sculpt ideological world-views such as political, nationalistic and dogmatic beliefs, beyond the impact of traditional demographic factors like age, race and gender.

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Cautious Johnson faces battle with own MPs over lockdown exit

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Analysis: many on the Tory backbenches want Covid restrictions over by end of April

When Boris Johnson stands at the dispatch box on Monday to deliver his roadmap for easing Covid restrictions for what he hopes will be the final time, there is likely to be a sigh of relief from his scientific advisers who will have won the most recent battle.

Johnson is now gearing up for the next tussle, which will be with his MPs. There is a truce with the cabinet.

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Scientists say clinical trials for ‘variant-proof’ vaccines could start very soon

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From immunity to blocking transmission of the virus, labs across the UK are hunting for second-generation jabs


Scientists are developing a range of second-generation Covid vaccines aimed at expanding protection against the disease.

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Coronavirus: UK should donate vaccines to poorer nations now, says new WTO chief; French cities facing tougher lockdowns

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  • Russia registers third Covid vaccine
  • Argentina’s health minister resigns over vaccine allocations
  • France reports increase in daily Covid death toll
  • Ireland reports three cases of Brazilian variant
  • See all our coronavirus coverage

Greece reported 1,424 new coronavirus cases on Saturday, as well as 23 further deaths.

This compares with 1,222 cases and 26 deaths last Saturday.

There have been more than 3.8 million confirmed Covid-19 cases on the African continent, and more than 100,000 fatalities.

The number is understood to be an underestimation, with the director of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) saying last week that it was “definitely not counting all the deaths, especially in the second wave”.

Over 3.8 million confirmed #COVID19 cases on the African continent - with more than 3.3 million recoveries & 100,000 deaths cumulatively.

View country figures & more with the WHO African Region COVID-19 Dashboard: https://t.co/FKav40Cbdd pic.twitter.com/QaygLU6nic

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