24 articles from SUNDAY 4.4.2021

UK's Covid traffic light travel plan too simplistic, say scientists

Idea raises concerns among some scientists who say it could fail to stop new variants entering countryCoronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coveragePotential plans to introduce a traffic light scheme for travel abroad have prompted concerns among scientists that the approach is too simplistic and could fail to prevent new variants from entering the UK.At present, it is illegal to...

Scientists create online games to show risks of AI emotion recognition

Public can try pulling faces to trick the technology, while critics highlight human rights concernsIt is a technology that has been frowned upon by ethicists: now researchers are hoping to unmask the reality of emotion recognition systems in an effort to boost public debate.Technology designed to identify human emotions using machine learning algorithms is a huge industry, with claims it could...

'A life-changer': NHS England rolls out five-minute breast cancer treatment

New ‘quicker and kinder’ treatment combining drugs cuts length of time some patients have to spend in hospitalA new breast cancer treatment will cut the amount of time some patients have to spend in hospital from two and a half hours to five minutes.The treatment, called Phesgo, is being rolled out across England by the NHS and will be offered to breast cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy....

My rock’n’roll friendship with Lindy Morrison

She was in the Go-Betweens, Tracey Thorn was in the Marine Girls, their 30-year friendship enhanced both their livesOn 31 March 1983, she burst into my dressing room, asking at the top of her voice, “Has anyone here got a lipstick I can borrow?” I looked up to see a tall woman in a Lurex dress, with a mass of blonde hair. Our two bands, Marine Girls and the Go-Betweens, were on the same bill...

UK restaurants and pubs see spike in bookings for planned reopening

Venues prepare to be busy from 12 April if coronavirus data allows outdoor hospitality to reopenCoronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverageRestaurants and bars with outdoor seating say bookings are at unprecedentedly high levels before a possible reopening next Monday, with people eager not to miss their first chance to eat out since lockdown was imposed.Some venues have...

The 'elite controllers' who can naturally suppress HIV

Research into how some HIV-positive people keep the virus at bay promises to yield new treatment possibilities, from vaccines to gene therapiesThe year was 1998 when Joel Blankson encountered a patient he would never forget. Blankson was working in the HIV clinic at John Hopkins School of Medicine, Baltimore, when an HIV-positive woman in her mid-40s arrived for some routine tests.Blankson gave...

Lack of Covid help puts medical research at risk, UK charities warn

Institutions dismayed at ministers’ failure to protect research worth hundreds of millions of poundsCoronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverageMedical charities have expressed dismay at the UK government’s failure to act over hundreds of millions of pounds of research that is at risk because of the catastrophic impact of Covid on fundraising.With charity shops closed and...

The Brexit elite cannot hope to fool us for much longer | William Keegan

Exiting the EU was not good for Britain. Greed did not bring us the vaccine. Johnson’s narratives will not stand the light of dayThere can be few people who have not at some stage in their lives felt that they had been “taken for a ride” or conned. Yet that, I think, will be the dawning realisation of a fair proportion of the 37% of the electorate who – without, in most cases, having the...

Two new vaccines on the way – with more to follow this year

Half of UK adults have had a first jab, and future supplies of millions of doses look assuredCoronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverageTwo very different jabs have been responsible for inoculating Britain’s strikingly high number of vaccine recipients – with more than half of the country’s adult population having now received a first dose and several million people having...

Streamlining the process of materials discovery

The M3I3 Initiative at KAIST has led to new insights into advancing materials development by implementing breakthroughs in materials imaging that have created a paradigm shift in the discovery of materials. The Initiative features the multiscale modeling and imaging of structure and property relationships and materials hierarchies combined with the latest material-processing data.