The closest full moon to the equinox is known as the Harvest Moon as its extra light allowed farmers to work late into the evening to gather the cropsFor those of us in the northern hemisphere, it is the week of the Harvest Moon. This is defined as the full moon nearest to the autumnal equinox, which took place last week on 22 September. In the southern hemisphere, the Harvest Moon takes place in...

Lack of clear rules about certification standards may be allowing manufacturers to sell tests based on poor or dodgy dataCoronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverageInadequate tests for Covid-19, based on poor or dodgy data, are proliferating in the UK because there are no clear rules on what companies have to prove before they can sell them, experts believe.The Royal Statistical...

My former colleague Robert (Bob) Audley, who has died aged 91, was a leading psychologist at University College London (UCL) for more than 30 years and a major contributor to mathematical psychology in the 1950s and 60s. His research involved creating models to explain how people make choices. The work looked at how people take a sequence of samples of their experience until they have sufficient...

Despite now having evidence that test and trace is the only way to fight the virus, the UK has lost control at the crucial moment• Dr William Hanage is professor of the evolution and epidemiology of infectious disease at HarvardBritain is in the grip of an extraordinarily dangerous outbreak of forgetfulness. During the spring, more than 50,000 people died – far more than the yearly total for...

What is it about islands which so fascinates, and soothes after time spent in cities?The love of islands is a widespread affliction – why else are we still reading Robinson Crusoe after 300 years? Why Treasure Island? Why after 75 years and over 2,000 episodes are we still listening to Desert Island Discs? From the blessed isles of Tír na nÓg and Thomas More’s Utopia to the island-dramas of...

More than 170 teams of researchers are racing to develop a safe and effective vaccine. Here is their progress Researchers around the world are racing to develop a vaccine against Covid-19, with more than 170 candidate vaccines now tracked by the World Health Organization (WHO). Continue...