18 articles from SUNDAY 10.10.2021

William Shatner’s Blue Origin launch into space delayed due to weather

Shatner, best known for playing Captain Kirk in Star Trek, will be part of a four-person crew aboard the suborbital NS-18 missionThe Star Trek actor William Shatner must wait another day to boldly go into space for real, after the Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin company pushed this week’s launch target of its New Shepard vehicle to Wednesday.“Due to forecasted winds on Tuesday 12...

Capsule of 1765 air reveals ancient histories hidden under Antarctic ice

Polar Zero exhibition in Glasgow features sculpture encasing air extracted from start of Industrial RevolutionAn ampoule of Antarctic air from the year 1765 forms the centrepiece of a new exhibition that reveals the hidden histories contained in polar ice to visitors attending the Cop26 climate conference in Glasgow.Artist Wayne Binitie has spent the past five years undertaking an extraordinary...

Teen leaving the nest? Give them a taste of home with these recipes

Ease your child’s start at university with tasty low-budget recipes that are easy to makeLast week, I experienced something I’d been dreading since my daughters came into the world: my first-born leaving home for the first time. I’ve experienced such a mix of emotions. Of course, I’m incredibly proud of Reet for doing so well in her exams and getting into the university of her choice, but...

Epigenetics, the misunderstood science that could shed new light on ageing

The study of the epigenome came with claims that trauma could be inherited, but now researchers are more excited about its potential to measure the risk of diseaseA little over a decade ago, a clutch of scientific studies was published that seemed to show that survivors of atrocities or disasters such as the Holocaust and the Dutch famine of 1944-45 had passed on the biological scars of those...

‘Galactic Britain’: how Cornwall is winning the European space race

Following the publication of the National Space Strategy last week, photojournalist Jonny Weeks explores how the south-west is primed for Britain’s first sovereign rocket launch“When we first started, people would laugh at us,” says Melissa Thorpe as she guides a group of visitors around an exhibition in a vast hangar at Newquay airport. “But now look, we’re only a matter of months from...

Getting flu with Covid doubles risk of death, says UK health chief

Both flu and Covid-19 will circulate this winter, warns head of UK Health Security AgencyCoronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coveragePeople who catch flu and Covid at the same time this winter are twice as likely to die than those who only have coronavirus, according to the UK Health Security Agency chief executive, Dr Jenny Harries.The former deputy chief medical officer for...

More people are dying at home than in the past | David Spiegelhalter and Anthony Masters

Did they receive care and compassion from loved ones or did they die alone, fearful of getting infected in hospital?From the start of the pandemic to 24 September 2021, deaths at home in England and Wales have been 37% higher than the 2015-2019 average, according to the Office for National Statistics.For every three people who used to die at home, four now do. That’s more than 71,000...

Nearly half of Britain’s biodiversity has gone since industrial revolution

Study shows UK has lost more biodiversity than any G7 country, and is in worst global 10%Almost half of Britain’s natural biodiversity has disappeared over the centuries, with farming and urban spread triggered by the industrial and agricultural revolutions being blamed as major factors for this loss.That is the shock finding of a study by scientists at London’s Natural History Museum, which...

Covid by numbers: 10 key lessons separating fact from fiction

To make sense of coronavirus data, the Observer asked David Spiegelhalter and Anthony Masters of the Royal Statistical Society Covid taskforce to write a column. That column has now inspired a book. Here are some of its insightsCoronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverageGenomic sequencing has identified more than 1,000 different seeds of Sars-CoV-2 introduced in early 2020....