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?
- ScienceDaily
- 21/1/23 15:10
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.
Wet and wild: There's lots of water in the world's most explosive volcano
- ScienceDaily
- 21/1/23 15:10
Conditions inside the Shiveluch volcano include roughly 10%-14% water by weight (wt%), according to new research. Most volcanoes have less than 1% water. For subduction zone volcanoes, the average is usually 4%, rarely exceeding 8 wt%, which is considered superhydrous.
New technique builds super-hard metals from nanoparticles
- ScienceDaily
- 21/1/23 15:10
Researchers have shown a way to make bulk metals by smashing tiny metal nanoparticles together, which allows for customized grain structures and improved mechanical and other properties.
Regulating the ribosomal RNA production line
- ScienceDaily
- 21/1/23 15:10
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.
Endangered Siamese crocodile in rare sighting at Thai national park
The critically endangered Siamese crocodile has been spotted for only the second time in a decade at Thailand's largest national park, according to photos released on Saturday.
U of Louisiana-Lafayette mini-satellite zipping around Earth
A cubical satellite small enough to sit on the palm of your hand is zipping around the world and sending data about radiation to the Louisiana students who designed and built it.
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,...
N.S. video game industry on the hunt for workers as pandemic drives up sales
As industries across the province shed jobs in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the video game industry in Nova Scotia is in the middle of a recruitment...
Pandemic inspires science students to create homemade lab devices
A Dalhousie University science student has created a homemade spectrometer that lets her lab-from-home during the coronavirus...
Wet and wild: There's lots of water in the world's most explosive volcano
There isn't much in Kamchatka, a remote peninsula in northeastern Russia just across the Bering Sea from Alaska, besides an impressive population of brown bears and the most explosive volcano in the world.
Canada is on the hunt for coronavirus variants — but may not be able to keep up with outbreaks
Canada is on the hunt for highly contagious strains of the coronavirus, but experts say they could already be spreading across the country and we may not be able to keep up with surveillance as more outbreaks...
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...