25 articles from SATURDAY 13.8.2022

Angela Rasmussen on Covid-19: ‘This origins discussion is the worst thing about Twitter’

Did Sars-CoV-2 emerge from a Huanan market stall or a lab? For the American virologist, who has been abused online for defending a ‘natural’ origin, the evidence is clearAngela Rasmussen studies the interactions between hosts and pathogens and how they shape disease. Before the pandemic, she worked on the emerging viruses that cause Middle East respiratory syndrome (Mers), Ebola, dengue and...

Altruism is supposed to be a selfless act. So why did helping a stranger leave me feeling so foolish? | Martin Love

Helping a hitchhiker should have given me a warm glow of generosity, but ended with me feeling like a gullible shmuckWhat’s the most money you’ve ever given a complete stranger? £20, £30, £50… maybe more? I’ve always been free and easy when it comes to handing out small change on the street, but a couple of months ago I found myself in a different league altogether. I gave a man I had...

How brain surgeon Henry Marsh went from doctor to patient: ‘I blurted out the question we all ask – how long have I got?’

For years, the author and neurosurgeon dismissed symptoms of prostate cancer. Then he finally got the diagnosis he’d been avoiding …It seemed a bit of a joke at the time – that I should have my own brain scanned. I should have known better. I had always advised patients and friends to avoid having brain scans unless they had significant problems. You might not like what you see, I told...

Thawing Arctic hillsides are major climate change contributors

Thawing Arctic hillsides release a significant amount of organic carbon that has been locked in frozen ground for thousands of years but which now can contribute to an already warming climate, according to new research. The finding comes from the study of hillsides in a far north region of Russia, where the researchers also found a significant and rapid increase of collapsed hillsides. The...