30 articles from SATURDAY 23.1.2021

Vaccine experts defend UK decision to delay second Pfizer Covid jab

Medics told they risk undermining public confidence by querying policy of three-month gap between doses Coronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverageLeading vaccine experts have backed the government’s decision to delay the second dose for up to three months, after doctors warned that the strategy was proving “ever-more difficult to justify”.The British Medical Association...

The new mutants: the Covid variants worrying health officials worldwide

Researchers at a high-security Sydney lab are learning more about concerning Covid variants from the swabs of international travellersIn December, the UK reported a Covid-19 variant of concern, commonly referred to as the B117 variant, which appeared to be more transmissible. Since then, scientists have established that B117 is somewhere between 50% to 70% more transmissible than other variants....

Mourn Gary Matthews and recognise that Covid conspiracies endanger life | Nick Cohen

One man’s tragic tale reveals much about the reach and harm of anti-science propagandaGary Matthews fell headlong into a subterranean world haunted by vicious fantasies. But he wasn’t vicious himself. “I knew him since he was 19,” his friend Peter Roscoe told me. “He was a gentle guy. He wanted a better world. I am so sorry in recent times he became convinced that Covid was some kind of...

Analgesic culture: can reframing pain make it go away?

The way we think about pain could change how much we actually sufferWe’ve all got a story about pain. Maybe it’s that time you broke your arm skating, or the time you finished the game on a twisted ankle, or the 10 hours of labour without an epidural. Maybe your story of pain is a story of violence, the injury and trauma of an assault. Maybe it’s a story of terror. Or it’s heartbreak, the...

‘Don’t blame public for overloaded hospitals,’ Covid ICU medics tell NHS staff

Leading doctors have divided opinion among an exhausted workforce by pointing to socioeconomic factors behind coronavirus death tollComment: Let’s stop the blame game over ICU Covid beds shortageSee all our coronavirus coverageLeading intensive care doctors have told NHS staff not to blame people breaching lockdown rules for hospitals coming close to breaking point and for the death toll from...

No more needles for diagnostic tests?

Medical researchers have developed a biosensing microneedle patch that can be applied to the skin, capture a biomarker of interest and, thanks to its unprecedented sensitivity, allow clinicians to detect its presence.

Regulating the ribosomal RNA production line

The enzyme that makes RNA from a DNA template is altered to slow the production of ribosomal RNA (rRNA), the most abundant type of RNA within cells, when resources are scarce and the bacteria Escherichia coli needs to slow its growth.

New technique builds super-hard metals from nanoparticles

Metallurgists have all kinds of ways to make a chunk of metal harder. They can bend it, twist it, run it between two rollers or pound it with a hammer. These methods work by breaking up the metal's grain structure—the microscopic crystalline domains that form a bulk piece of metal. Smaller grains make for harder metals.

We could know soon whether vaccines work against a scary new coronavirus variant

Salim Abdool Karim was at a cricket match on December 26, Boxing Day, when he made the mistake of looking at his email. He had received a new report and the news wasn’t good. A heavily mutated coronavirus spotted in South Africa appeared to allow the virus to bind more tightly, and more easily, to human cells. Karim, an epidemiologist and lead covid-19 adviser to the South African government,...

Icelandic man receives world's first double-arm-and-shoulder transplant

Patient lost both arms in work accident 23 years ago and it took years to find suitable donors for the complex operationAn Icelandic man who got the world’s first double-shoulder-and-arm transplant is recovering well after the operation, two decades after the accident that cost him both limbs, doctors have said.They said it was still uncertain how much mobility Felix Gretarsson, 48, will recover...