Lidia Thorpe says Labor and Coalition back hearings while ‘sports organisations need to be transparent about evidence that informs concussion policies’Follow our Australia news live blog for the latest updatesGet our morning and afternoon news emails, free app or daily news podcastA federal parliamentary committee will examine concussion and repeated head trauma in contact sports, with the...

Kate Bingham raises concerns to committee of MPs as head of UKHSA suggests Covid could be on rise againUK politics live – latest news updatesThe UK is not in a significantly better place to deal with a new pandemic, the former vaccine taskforce chief has said, as a leading public health expert suggested Covid infections may be on the rise again.Dame Kate Bingham, the managing partner at the life...

Dating back more than 65m years, specimen’s mobile palate challenges understanding of avian evolutionFossil experts have cooked the goose of a key tenet in avian evolution after finding a premodern bird from more than 65m years ago that could move its beak like modern fowl.The toothy animal was discovered in the 1990s by an amateur fossil collector at a quarry in Belgium and dates to about 66.7m...

Filing is latest action against Elon Musk’s rocket venture as Twitter and Tesla are also roiled by lawsuitsSpaceX has become the subject of another worker dispute just weeks after unfair labor complaints were filed against the company.A former engineer at SpaceX, the Elon Musk-run rocket company, filed an age discrimination complaint against the firm with the state of Washington, alleging he was...

Patients unlikely to receive lecanemab before 2026 and health service does not yet have necessary infrastructureDrug slows cognitive decline in Alzheimer’s patients, study revealsA reorganisation of NHS dementia care is needed to ensure UK patients can receive a groundbreaking drug that slows the progression of Alzheimer’s disease, doctors say.Detailed results from a clinical trial of...

Recent lecanemab trials are reason for hope. But the NHS and other health services may struggle to deliver these new treatmentsIt is 20 years since the last drug for Alzheimer’s was licensed in the UK. Since then, huge advances have been made in our understanding of the disease’s causes. Better diagnostic tests are available, and we may now be on the cusp of new treatments that could have an...

Living under China’s policy to suppress Covid cases means days are filled with health codes, the constant threat of shutdowns and moments of hopeLife in Beijing these days is spent either in lockdown or preparing for lockdown. Stockpiling food at home, just in case, has become the new norm. Meeting friends is hard because every few weeks one of us is sealed inside their home for days. Carrying...

With digital bioacoustics, scientists can eavesdrop on the natural world – and they’re learning some astonishing thingsScientists have recently made some remarkable discoveries about non-human sounds. With the aid of digital bioacoustics – tiny, portable digital recorders similar to those found in your smartphone – researchers are documenting the universal importance of sound to life on...

A submersible off the coast of Western Australia chanced upon an 45-metre-long deep-sea siphonophore arranged in a feeding spiral, trailing its deadly tentaclesIn 2020, about 600 metres (2,000ft) down in an underwater canyon off the coast of Western Australia, scientists encountered a long gelatinous creature suspended in a giant spiral. “It was like a rope on the horizon. You couldn’t miss...

Antibody therapy lecanemab removes clumps of protein called beta amyloid that builds up in brainResearchers have hailed the dawn of a new era of Alzheimer’s therapies after a clinical trial confirmed that a drug slows cognitive decline in patients with early stages of the disease.The result comes after decades of failure in the field and encouraged experts to say Alzheimer’s – which affects...

Mammals can produce sound from ventricular folds, used by humans only for Tuvan throat singing and ‘death metal grunting’It has long been known Ozzy Osbourne has a taste for bats. But now it seems the mammals are also fans of his.Bats greet each other with death metal growls, scientists have discovered, and possess a vocal range which far surpasses that of most humans. Continue...

The skeleton of ‘Barbara’, a pregnant and injured tyrannosaurus, raises a shocking possibility: that these dinosaurs had a touchy-feely sideName: Barbara.Age: About 66m years old. Continue...

Mistake at Immensa Health Clinic Ltd lab in Wolverhampton led to 39,000 tests wrongly labelled negativeAt least 23 deaths might have been caused by a blunder at a privately run laboratory after thousands of positive Covid cases were reported as negative, public health experts have estimated.The error, at the Immensa Health Clinic Ltd lab in Wolverhampton, led to about 39,000 PCR tests returning...

Canadian scientists hail ‘phenomenal’ finds from iron-based meteorite elaliite and elkinstantoniteA team of researchers in Canada say they have discovered two new minerals – and potentially a third – after analysing a slice of a 15-tonne meteorite that landed in east Africa.The meteorite, the ninth largest recorded at over 2 metres wide, was unearthed in Somalia in 2020, although local...

Plan to accelerate vaccine rates among people over 80 comes as police crack down on protests against country’s zero-Covid policyChinese health officials have announced a drive to accelerate vaccinations of older people against Covid-19, as police patrolled major cities to stamp out protests against the country’s strict zero-Covid policy.The low vaccination rate among older people is one of the...

Rampant and sudden lockdowns have sparked anger as pressure piles on officials to curb outbreaksChina’s Covid lockdown protests: complete guide in videos, maps and chartsSince the Covid pandemic began, China’s government has operated a zero-tolerance policy on outbreaks. The resource-intensive system of targeted lockdowns, mass testing and quarantine successfully kept the virus at bay and the...

Jon Ferry sells old bones used in the teaching of medicine. But the medical bone trade has a murky history of exploitationIn a small, light-filled Bushwick studio space, a brown box rests on a wooden coffee table. Inside is a human head. “Wanna start?” asks Jon Pichaya Ferry, pulling a box cutter out of the pocket of his black skinny jeans.Inside is a lumpy form wrapped in thin aqua foam,...

Researchers find no such link for women, suggesting connection between diet and bowel cancer is clearer for menEating a plant-based diet rich in vegetables, whole grains, nuts and legumes can reduce the risk of bowel cancer in men by more than a fifth, according to research.A large study that involved 79,952 US-based men found that those who ate the largest amounts of healthy plant-based foods had...

At a recent conference in France, scientists and government representatives voted to scrap the leap second by 2035. Leap seconds are added periodically to synchronise atomic time and astronomical time, which get out of sync because of variations in the Earth’s rotation.Madeleine Finlay speaks to JT Janssen, the chief scientist at NPL, the National Physical Laboratory, about the differences...

Strict measures that continue almost three years into pandemic are prompting widespread protests. Here are the factorsChina’s strategy of controlling Covid-19 with lockdowns, mass testing and quarantines has provoked the greatest show of public dissent against the ruling Communist party in decades.Initially, China succeeded in suppressing the virus, but then more transmissible variants emerged,...

Researchers say despite the lack of symptom relief, more trials are needed to focus on the targeted use of medicinal cannabis Get our morning and afternoon news emails, free app or daily news podcastThe first high quality study looking at the impact of cannabidiol oil on palliative care patients with advanced cancer found it did not improve their pain, depression, anxiety, or quality of...

Prof A David Smith highlights an effective approach to the diseaseYour otherwise excellent survey on the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease (‘This looks like the real deal’: are we inching closer to a treatment for Alzheimer’s?, 22 November) hardly mentions the most promising approach, which is disease prevention. Alzheimer’s has multiple causes, and identifying those causes that can be...

The app Visible is also geared towards people living with conditions such as chronic fatigue syndromeWhen Harry Leeming developed symptoms of long Covid, he found the lack of understanding of the condition alarming. “They became so severe that I went to A&E and I was turned away, being told that I had anxiety or that it was deconditioning,” he said. “It’s been very frustrating to not...

Were you a Clevor Trever? The solutions to today’s puzzlesEarlier today I set you these five puzzles from Mathigon’s advent calendar. Here they are again, with solutions. Sorry if you came here to read about Ian Dury, but in recompense you get to get your head around these blocks:1. Hit me with your four cube stick Continue...