Car-sized vehicle designed to seek signs of life is pronounced ‘healthy’ after dramatic descent to surface of the red planet
Nasa scientists have said the Perseverance Mars rover is “healthy” and is beaming back many stunning new images from the surface of the planet, promising significant scientific discoveries ahead.
Related: Perseverance’s mission to Mars – in pictures
Continue reading...Nasa’s rover, the most advanced astrobiology laboratory ever sent to another world, landed safely on the floor of a vast crater on Thursday, the first stop on its search for life on the red planet
Continue reading...Mobile app inoculation certificate aims to help reopen economy, but privileges are untested and raise ethical questions
Israel is preparing itself to be split in half from next week, with the government creating a new privileged tier in society: the vaccinated.
Nearly 50% of the population who have chosen to be inoculated against Covid will be provided with a “green pass” a week after their second shot, as will those with presumed immunity after contracting the disease.
Continue reading...Curiosity and sociability among traits found, despite dolphins having evolved separately for millions of years
Dolphins have developed a number of similar personality traits to humans, despite having evolved in vastly different environments, researchers have found.
A study, published in the Journal of Comparative Psychology, looked at 134 male and female bottlenose dolphins from eight facilities across the world, with each dolphin’s personality being assessed by staff at the facilities. The results of the study found a convergence of certain personality traits, especially curiosity and sociability.
Continue reading...Radio signals confirmed that the six-wheeled rover had survived its perilous descent and arrived within its target zone
Nasa’s science rover Perseverance, the most advanced astrobiology laboratory ever sent to another world, streaked through the Martian atmosphere on Thursday and landed safely on the floor of a vast crater, its first stop on a search for traces of ancient microbial life on the Red Planet.
Mission managers at Nasa’s jet propulsion laboratory near Los Angeles burst into applause and cheers as radio signals confirmed that the six-wheeled rover had survived its perilous descent and arrived within its target zone inside Jezero crater, site of a long-vanished Martian lake bed.
Continue reading...Spacecraft will descend on red planet carrying helicopter and instruments to look for biosignatures
A rover and a tiny helicopter are preparing to land on Mars, aiming to offer an opportunity to answer an enduring question: has life ever emerged on another planet?
Nasa’s ninth mission to descend on the cold, dry, red planet will be steered by a $2.7bn (£2.1bn), car-sized, six-wheeled rover christened Perseverance, which is expected to touch down on Thursday following a seven-month journey.
Continue reading...University of Cambridge researchers identify potentially effective interventions to help people
Robotic dogs, laughter therapy and mindfulness could help people cope with loneliness and social isolation during the Covid-19 pandemic, researchers at the University of Cambridge have found.
The team at the university’s School of Medicine, led by Dr Christopher Williams, reviewed 58 existing studies on loneliness and identified interventions that could be adapted for people living in lockdown or under pandemic-related social distancing measures.
Continue reading...DNA from teeth found in Siberia permafrost the oldest yet sequenced, pushing science into ‘deep time’
Teeth from mammoths buried in the Siberian permafrost for more than a million years have led to the world’s oldest known DNA being sequenced, according to a study that shines a genetic searchlight on the deep past.
Researchers said the three teeth specimens, one roughly 800,000 years old and two more than a million years old, provided important insights into the giant ice age mammals, including into the ancient heritage of, specifically, the woolly mammoth.
Continue reading...Healthy adult volunteers aged 18 to 30 will be exposed to virus in controlled environment
Human challenge trials for coronavirus are to begin in the UK, a world first in the global fight against Covid-19.
Healthy adult volunteers aged between 18 and 30 will be exposed to coronavirus in a controlled environment, to learn more about how their body reacts to the virus, how it is transmitted and how much of the virus is needed to cause infection.
Continue reading...European Space Agency aims to take on 26 people for missions to the Moon and eventually to Mars
European space chiefs have launched their first recruitment drive for new astronauts in 11 years, with particular emphasis on encouraging women and people with disabilities to join missions to the Moon and, eventually, Mars.
The European Space Agency (ESA) said on Tuesday that it was looking to boost the diversity of its crews as it cavassed for up to 26 permanent and reserve astronauts.
Continue reading...Project aims to identify paleoviruses and study virus evolution using the remains, Siberian lab says
A Russian state laboratory has announced that it is launching research into prehistoric viruses by analysing the remains of animals recovered from melted permafrost.
The Siberia-based Vektor lab said in a statement on Tuesday that the aim of the project was to identify paleoviruses and conduct advanced research into virus evolution.
Continue reading...Scientists surprised by marine organisms on boulder on sea floor beneath 900 metres of ice shelf
The accidental discovery of marine organisms on a boulder on the sea floor beneath 900 metres (3,000ft) of Antarctic ice shelf has led scientists to rethink the limits of life on Earth.
Researchers stumbled on the life-bearing rock after sinking a borehole through nearly a kilometre of the Filchner-Ronne ice shelf on the south-eastern Weddell Sea to obtain a sediment core from the seabed.
Continue reading...After putting $100m into Covid research, the billionaire is taking on the climate crisis. And first he has some bones to pick with his fellow campaigners...
Bill Gates appears via video conference – Microsoft Teams, not Zoom, obviously – from his office in Seattle, a large space with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Lake Washington. It’s a gloomy day outside and Gates is, somewhat eccentrically, positioned a long way from the camera, behind a large, kidney-shaped desk; his communications manager sits off to one side. If one had to stage, for the purposes of symbolism, a tableau of a man for whom a distance of 3,000 miles between callers still constitutes too intimate a setting, it might be this. “As a way to start,” says Gates’ aide, “would it be helpful for Bill to make a couple of comments about why he wrote his new book?” It is helpful, and I’m not ungrateful, but this is not how interviews typically commence.
There is an urge towards deference, when speaking to Gates, which attends few other people of commensurate fame. Celebrity is one thing, but wealth – true, former-richest-man-in-the-world wealth – is something else entirely; one has a sense of being granted an audience with the Great Man, a fact made more surreal by his famously muted persona. The 65-year-old has the lofty, mildly longsuffering air of a man accustomed to being the smartest guy in the room, leavened by wry amusement and interrupted, on the evidence of past interviews, by the occasional peevish outburst – most memorably in 2014, when Jeremy Paxman questioned him about Microsoft’s alleged tax avoidance. (“I think that’s about as incorrect a characterisation of anything I’ve ever heard,” he said, practically squirming in his seat with annoyance.)
Continue reading...There will continue to be plenty more data gaps because the Covid-19 strain simply behaves like all influenzas and mutates continuously
By the time you read this it will be out of date.
Why? Because every day we receive new data that causes us to rethink and rewrite our response to Covid-19, notably vaccine programs. This is good. I will explain.
Continue reading...A year ago, two scientists began work on the response to a new virus. Now, as their vaccine is being given to millions, they tell of their incredible 12 months
Exactly a year ago, Oxford University scientists launched a joint enterprise that is set to have a profound impact on the health of our planet. On 11 February, research teams led by Professor Andy Pollard and Professor Sarah Gilbert – both based at the Oxford Vaccine Centre – decided to combine their talents to develop and manufacture a vaccine that could protect people from the deadly new coronavirus that was beginning to spread across the world.
A year later that vaccine is being administered to millions across Britain and other nations and was last week given resounding backing by the World Health Organization. The head of the WHO’s department of immunisation, vaccines and biologicals, Professor Kate O’Brien, described the jab as “efficacious” and “an important vaccine for the world”.
Continue reading...Two eminent voices on the climate crisis present clear strategies for tackling emissions, deniers and doomsayers
President Joe Biden has promised a new era of American leadership on global climate action, after four years of unscientific denial and misinformation under Donald Trump. Two important new books by prominent American authors, both written before the result of the presidential election was known, should help to capitalise on the new spirit of cautious optimism by laying out bold but well-argued plans for accelerating action against climate change.
How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need by Bill Gates presents a compelling explanation of how the world can stop global warming by reducing greenhouse gas emissions effectively to zero. Gates and his wife, Melinda, are well known for their foundation’s tremendous work on improving health and tackling disease around the world, particularly in poor countries. It is this concern for the most vulnerable people on the planet that has meant Gates has occasionally appeared equivocal about climate and energy policies that he thought could undermine the fight against poverty and illness. However, this book lays out forcefully his understanding that the impact of climate change poses a far bigger threat to lives and livelihoods in developing countries – it is thwarting efforts to raise living standards because poor people, in every country, are the most at risk from droughts, floods and heatwaves.
Continue reading...Health minister says officials ‘really concerned’ after three deaths from the infectious disease
Guinea has entered an Ebola “epidemic situation” with seven cases confirmed, including three deaths, a leading health official in the west African nation has said.
“Very early this morning, the Conakry laboratory confirmed the presence of the Ebola virus,” Sakoba Keita said after an emergency meeting in the capital.
Continue reading...Falling head over heels in love is one thing, but if it becomes all-consuming you may be in ‘limerance’
A few years ago I was at my university’s library, frantically refreshing a dating app. Under my crush’s photo there was a location setting that told me how far she was from me. “One mile away!” I felt a surge of adrenaline and my mind started racing.
I was a promoter for a gay nightclub in London’s Soho, which was where I met Lucy. I’d drop my flyers on purpose and she’d help me pick them up. We had been on a few dates and were making plans to meet again. Then we came across each other on a dating app – “Fancy seeing you here!” – and matched as a joke. Even though dating apps were probably unreliable in their geolocation abilities, suddenly I could gauge her distance from me.
Continue reading...The Descent of Man, 150 years old this month, is a work of humanist brilliance – yet its errors, particularly on gender, now make for uncomfortable reading
“Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history.” That sentence is the sole reference to human evolution in Charles Darwin’s masterwork On the Origin of Species, which in 1859 set down the theory that explains how life on Earth has evolved. Darwin had entirely excluded humans from his scheme. That tease comes in the final chapter, almost like a post-credit scene in a superhero movie, as if to simply say: “To be continued…”
The sequel did come, in the form of The Descent of Man, published in February 1871. All of Darwin’s canon is worth reading (though the one about worms and vegetable mould is perhaps a bit niche), but The Descent of Man is my favourite, because it is the one where he holds humans up to the light. Darwin was a great writer, and the prose is typically grand:
Continue reading...Coronavirus R number falls below 1 in UK; Cuomo faces calls to resign amid allegations of hiding nursing home deaths; High-risk groups missed off UK’s vaccine priority list. Follow the latest updates live
The UK government has been accused of repeatedly ignoring concerns that the quarantine rules for incoming passengers will fail to halt the spread of new coronavirus variants in the country, unions revealed two days before the measures become law.
The GMB Union has said its members and airport staff had been telling the Home Office for the past fortnight that they were concerned that passengers from 33 designated high-risk countries were still being allowed to mix with other travellers and staff before entering hotel quarantine for 10 days at a cost of £1,750.
Related: Long-awaited quarantine hotels have 'failed at first hurdle', say unions
More than 800,00 people have died from coronavirus across Europe since the pandemic began in December 2019, according to an AFP tally Saturday based on official sources.
AFP reports:
As of Saturday, 1630 GMT, there were 800,361 deaths recorded in the 52 countries and territories that make up the continent - including Russia and Turkey - for 35,395,270 declared cases.
That puts the continent’s death toll ahead of Latin America and the Caribbean, which has 635,834 dead for 20,021,361 cases; of the United States and Canada’s 502,064 deaths for 28,312,719 cases; and Asia’s 247,730 deaths for 15,641,940 cases.
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