31 articles from SUNDAY 30.5.2021

Egypt bets on ancient finds to pull tourism out of pandemic

Workers dig and ferry wheelbarrows laden with sand to open a new shaft at a bustling archaeological site outside of Cairo, while a handful of Egyptian archaeologists supervise from garden chairs. The dig is at the foot of the Step Pyramid of Djoser, arguably the world's oldest pyramid, and is one of many recent excavations that are yielding troves of ancient artifacts from the country's largest...

John Latham obituary

Climate physicist and expert on thunderstorm electrification who was also a published poetHow thunderstorms are generated in clouds is still not fully understood. But John Latham, who has died aged 83, did much to explain the physical processes of cloud electrification, cloud lightning and precipitation – how water falls from clouds in various forms. Later he proposed a way in which clouds could...

Einstein’s theories play their part in our time | Letters

All scientific observations are likely to be superseded by later scientists, writes Ian Flintoff, while Tony Maynard-Smith says that new discoveries do not prove Einstein ‘wrong’A word of caution on the latest observations of the universe and earlier theories such as those of Albert Einstein (Astronomers create largest map of the universe’s dark matter, 27 May). All such observations and...

John Hodge obituary

British aeronautical engineer who played a key role in Nasa and America’s space raceAt 11am on 20 February 1959, the Canadian prime minister John Diefenbaker announced the axing of the revolutionary Avro Arrow aircraft project. The fighter was enormously expensive, but had sustained 25,000 hi-tech Canadian jobs. By 3pm on that day Avro was telling employees (via its PA system) that they were...

Some long Covid sufferers in England waiting months for treatment

MPs call on Matt Hancock to explain ‘postcode lottery’ despite assertion that clinic network is operationalCoronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coveragePeople who remain chronically ill after Covid infections in England have had to wait months for appointments and treatment at specialist clinics set up to handle the surge in patients with long Covid.MPs called on Matt Hancock...

Bees give me a sense of calm: discovering nature in my back garden

Their busy buzzing supplies the soundtrack to our summer – and by spotting them I’ve found a fresh sense of inner peaceLockdown started, or reignited, a love of nature in many people. The RSPB reported a 70% increase in visitors to its website during the first lockdown. This came as no surprise to me; stuck at home, without the usual distraction of social engagement, my interest in nature...

Covid investigators must interview Wuhan stall owners, says virologist

Efforts to find origin of coronavirus ‘must look at what animals were in the market in late 2019’Coronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverageA leading scientist has called for stallholders at the Huanan seafood market in Wuhan to be interviewed in any further investigation of the Covid-19 epidemic.Dr Eddie Holmes has joined a growing chorus of voices calling for further...

Help our profession or UK’s shared history will be lost, say archaeologists

Brexit and university cutbacks are fuelling a crisis in recruitment of skilled workersBrexit has led to a serious shortage of senior archaeologists, sparking fears that controls on developments could be lifted and undiscovered treasures and untold stories about our past will be lost for ever.“There’s a hiring crisis in archaeology,” Lisa Westcott Wilkins of DigVentures, an archaeology social...

China forces pace of vaccinations with persuasion … and some cash

Two months ago, few had been inoculated. Now hundreds of millions have, after health warnings – and giftsCoronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverageEarly in March, when the Covid vaccination rate in the UK had reached 30% of the population, China’s top respiratory expert Zhong Nanshan revealed in a webinar that the figure in China was barely 3.56%.The low vaccination rate...

Why is the new Covid variant spreading? | David Spiegelhalter and Anthony Masters

The virus is now in a race with the vaccines and the victor is increasingly uncertainThe UK’s fine performance in sequencing Sars-CoV-2 genomes allows Public Health England to publish detailed analyses on the progress of variants and the latest report represents the changing of the guard. The B.1.1.7 lineage, first identified in Kent, had been dominant in the UK, but the B.1.617.2 lineage, first...

A fiery past sheds new light on the future of global climate change

Centuries-old smoke particles preserved in the ice reveal a fiery past in the Southern Hemisphere and shed new light on the future impacts of global climate change, according to a research led by Harvard University and a group of international researchers from the Desert Research Institute in Nevada and the University of Hong Kong, etc. recently published in Science Advances.

Right off the bat: Navigation in extra-large spaces

How we and other mammals manage to navigate large-scale environments even though the brain's spatial perception circuits are seemingly suited to representing much smaller areas? A team of researchers from the Weizmann Institute of Science, led by Professor Nachum Ulanovsky of the Neurobiology Department, tackled this riddle by thinking outside the experimental box. By combining an unusual research...

Chinese cargo craft docks with future space station in orbit

Mission comes after China was rebuked for uncontrolled crash of rocket that launched the station itselfA Chinese cargo spacecraft carrying equipment and supplies has successfully docked with the core module of the country’s future space station, according to state media.A Long March 7 rocket carrying the Tianzhou-2 cargo craft – loaded with essentials such as food, equipment and fuel –...

Walden review – Gemma Arterton’s sister act reaches for the stars

Harold Pinter theatre, LondonArterton plays a former Nasa employee whose astronaut twin descends on her wilderness retreat in Amy Berryman’s intelligent, soulful dramaTwin sisters with a fractious history are planning a reunion at the start of Amy Berryman’s play. “We have to act happy,” says Stella to her fiance before her twin has arrived, and the anxious statement prepares us for the...