22 articles from SUNDAY 12.9.2021

Nearly 70,000 may die waiting for adult social care before Johnson plan kicks in

Exclusive: Labour says analysis exposes ‘gaping flaw’ in PM’s plan to resolve social care crisisNearly 70,000 people in England are likely to die waiting for access to adult social care before the changes revealed this week by Boris Johnson come into force, reveals analysis that Labour says “exposes a gaping flaw” in the plan.Criticism has continued to mount after the prime minister...

Sydney’s ‘haves and have-nots’: poor access to green space in LGAs of concern

The Covid-induced lockdown is amplifying disadvantage in areas already struggling from poor long-term health outcomesFollow our Covid live blog for the latest updatesNSW Covid vaccination rate by postcode – check your suburbNSW restrictions; border restrictionsVaccine rollout tracker; get our free news app; get our morning email briefingThe Sydney lockdown has exacerbated inequity in the areas...

Algebra: the maths working to solve the UK’s supply chain crisis

The calculations behind filling supermarket shelves are dizzyingly complex – but it all starts with the x and y you know from schoolNando’s put it succinctly on its Twitter feed last month: “The UK supply chain is having a bit of a mare right now.” Getting things on to supermarket shelves, through your letterbox or into a restaurant kitchen has certainly become problematic of late. It’s...

Post-illness symptoms like long Covid are probably more common than we think | Megan Hosey

Clinicians tend to pay less attention to how patients with severe illness do once they are out of mortal danger, or once symptoms extend beyond an arbitrary time frameIn recent months, long Covid has received a great deal of media and public attention. Research has found that as many as one in four of those infected with Covid – perhaps millions of people in the US alone – suffer from chronic...

How the cruel death of a little stray dog led to riots in 1900s Britain

Novelist campaigns for statue of terrier experimented on by scientists to regain its place in a London park An animal in peril can inflame British public opinion like nothing else. Nearly 120 years ago, the fate of one small brown dog caused rioting in the streets of London, to say nothing of the protest marches to Trafalgar Square and questions asked in parliament.Now the astonishing,...

‘What I saw that night was real’: is it time to take aliens more seriously?

The Pentagon has been quietly investigating unidentified flying objects since 2007. The fact that they think they might exist is good news to those who claim to have seen themIn June, the US government published a long-awaited report into UFOs. Although the report did not, as many had hoped, admit to the existence of little green men, it did reveal that not only were objects appearing in our skies...

Give staff shares and their moods will rise and fall in synch | Torsten Bell

Stock schemes are a nice perk but they inevitably link workers’ happiness with the fluctuating priceInvestor types like to pretend that trading shares is an emotion-free science. Apparently, it’s a serious business and definitely not a socially acceptable form of gambling for the upper-middle class. Back in the real world, it’s called playing the stock market for a reason, and lots of...

Early CT scans deliver huge fall in lung cancer deaths, study shows

Experts say screening smokers and ex-smokers would significantly reduce mortality rate from diseaseScreening smokers and ex-smokers could dramatically reduce deaths from lung cancer – Britain’s biggest cancer killer – a major new study has found.Low-dose computerised tomography (CT) scans can detect tumours in people’s lungs early and cut deaths by 16%, according to the UK Lung Cancer...

UK vaccine volunteers to help prepare for next virus at new Pandemic Institute

The Liverpool site will work with other international centres to research the threat of emerging disruptive diseasesA new scientific institute which aims to prevent future pandemics may have been able to save thousands of lives by accelerating vaccine development had it existed before December 2019, its researchers believe.Liverpool’s new Pandemic Institute will include a new human challenge...

Kathryn Paige Harden: ‘Studies have found genetic variants that correlate with going further in school’

The behaviour geneticist explains how biology could have an influence on academic attainment – and why she takes an anti-eugenics approachKathryn Paige Harden argues how far we go in formal education – and the huge knock-on effects that has on our income, employment and health – is in part down to our genes. Harden is a professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, where she...