16 articles from SUNDAY 11.9.2022

Massive California fire eases with rains

California firefighters were able to beat back a massive wildfire outside Los Angeles after a tropical storm brought rains and cooler temperatures, US authorities said on Saturday.

Study: Four major climate tipping points close to triggering

Even if the world somehow manages to limit future warming to the strictest international temperature goal, four Earth-changing climate "tipping points" are still likely to be triggered with a lot more looming as the planet heats more after that, a new study said.

Blood test spots multiple cancers without clear symptoms, study finds

Doctors hail new era for cancer screening as major research shows effectiveness of Galleri testDoctors have told health services to prepare for a new era of cancer screening after a study found a simple blood test could spot multiple cancer types in patients before they develop clear symptoms.The Pathfinder study offered the blood test to more than 6,600 adults aged 50 and over, and detected...

Researchers find source of gamma rays in small neighboring galaxy

Through giant lobes of gamma radiation, an international team of researchers have found a small satellite galaxy of the Milky Way filled with dark matter, but whose emissions are more likely the result of millisecond pulsars blasting out cosmic particles, reports a new study in Nature Astronomy.

If every person in the world isolated for a month, would all transmissible diseases disappear?

The long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific and philosophical conceptsIf every person in the world isolated from each other for a certain period of time, say a month, would all transmissible diseases disappear? Lily PaulsPost your answers (and new questions) below or send them to...

Mourning rituals help people cope with grief, say scientists

Experts agree on importance of traditions seen after Queen’s death in enabling bereaved to process lossThe death of Queen Elizabeth II has plunged the royal household and much of the country into a period of mourning, with black armbands and flags at half-mast.While such traditions may seem far removed from everyday experiences of bereavement, experts say rituals can help us cope with death....

Cloud labs and remote research aren’t the future of science – they’re here

At high-end labs in the US and UK, anybody, anywhere, can conduct experiments by remote control cheaply and efficiently. Is the rise of the robot researcher now inevitable?It’s 1am on the west coast of America, but the Emerald Cloud Lab, just south of San Francisco, is still busy. Here, more than 100 items of high-end bioscience equipment whirr away on workbenches largely unmanned, 24 hours a...

Experiencing the perimenopause has many alarming downsides. But it can be sexy, too…

When Christie Watson put on an HRT patch she found herself thinking about sex, all the time. What was going on?I began using HRT patches at 42, after a seemingly catastrophic breakdown that resulted in my climbing into a Sainsbury’s fish-finger freezer. My mental health was horrendous. I felt totally outside my own skin, dissociated, and that I’d lost my sense of self. I told a therapist that...