Following health secretary’s statement last month, Public Health England confirms it is carrying out ‘targeted testing’ insteadCoronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverageSurge testing is not being carried out in England for coronavirus variants first detected in India, despite the government claiming it would be deployed, the Guardian has learned.The coronavirus variant...

Analysis: the vaccine strategy and staggered easing of restrictions have worked well. The next step is crucialCoronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverageThe handling of the coronavirus crisis in the UK has provided few moments to celebrate, but the day we reach zero deaths from the disease will clearly be one to toast. That day may not be far off. On Tuesday, the UK reported...

Keep checking your smartphone without knowing why? You may be unconsciously copying those around you, according to Italian research into the ‘chameleon effect’Name: The Chameleon Effect.Age: About 22 years old. It was discovered and named by the sociologist John A Bargh and the social psychologist Tanya L Chartrand, who published a paper about it in 1999. Continue...

Chemist who made a breakthrough in developing the anti-cancer drug cisplatin and brought about advances in spectroscopyAndrew Thomson, who has died aged 80 after a stroke, played a crucial role early in his career in the discovery of a widely used anti-cancer drug, cisplatin, before going on to do pioneering work in the field of spectroscopy, enhancing our understanding of the functioning of...

In the runup to Cop26, public knowledge about the crisis is shallow, with few understanding the scale of the threatOne of the key lessons of the Covid-19 pandemic is that strong policies require strong public engagement: people needed to understand the nature of the virus before they would tolerate constraints on their lives or provide the government with a mandate for action.Yet the world faces...

Epidemiologist says he feels optimistic country will feel ‘a lot more normal by summer’Coronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverageRecent data on Covid deaths and rates of infection in the UK are “very encouraging”, and though a third wave of infections was possible in late summer it was unlikely to overwhelm the NHS, the leading epidemiologist Neil Ferguson has said.Prof...

Minna’s pancreatic surgery was cancelled as a result of the pandemic. By the time treatments resumed, her tumour was too big for doctors to operateWhen Minna Heeraman’s friends knew that she was dying, they made a video for her to watch from the hospital bed she had set up in her living room. It was a goodbye video. One after another, her friends spoke to the camera with tears in their eyes....

A study of fossilised insects suggests a correlation between their body size and the temperatureMost of us want to run a mile when the midges arrive, but not so for Viktor Baranov, who whips out his microscope to measure the insects. As well as measuring modern midges, Baranov has been looking at fossilised midges, and found that their size can be used to understand the climate going back hundreds...