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More than a million cases were reported in south-east Asia last year with poorer households most at riskThe global toll of dengue fever is becoming well known, with rising temperatures contributing to severe outbreaks that made 2019 the worst year on record for the disease.In 1970 only nine countries faced severe dengue outbreaks. But the disease, which is spread by mosquitoes that can only...

The solutions to today’s puzzlesEarlier today I set you the following problems:1) How can someone born in 2020 be older than someone born in 2019? Continue reading...

Discoveries by Natural History Museum in 2019 include lichen, snakes and extinct dinosaursMore than 400 new species previously unknown to science have been discovered in the past year by experts at the Natural History Museum.Species described and named for the first time in 2019 include 171 beetles found around the world, one of which was named in honour of the teenage environmental activist Greta...

The new year deconstructed, and a prize challengeIt’s almost the New Year, and – numerically speaking – I’m excited. Not only is twenty-twenty already a bona fide word in the dictionary, but once a month next year there will be a moment in the evening when the time is:20/20/20/20/2020 Continue...

The biophysicist was guilty of illegal practice in trying to alter the genetic makeup of twins Lula and NanaThe scientist who created the world’s first “gene-edited” babies has been sentenced to to three years in prison by a court in China.He Jiankui said in November 2018 that he had used gene-editing technology known as Crispr-Cas9 to change the genes of twin girls, causing a backlash in...