25 articles from SUNDAY 5.3.2023

My search for women gardeners’ life stories helped me combat loneliness – and make great friends

I was lonely after lockdown and wanted to know why women gardened so wrote to those I admired. Now I have a host of new friends from different generations and backgroundsThis year, I dedicated the drizzly, flat little days between Christmas and New Year to having a clearout. I felt an intangible lightness with each book, old birthday card or defunct gadget that passed out of the door and into a...

NASA captures sequestered carbon of 9.9 billion trees with deep-learning and satellite images

A NASA-led research team used satellite imagery and artificial intelligence methods to map billions of discrete tree crowns down to a 50-cm scale. The images encompassed a large swath of arid northern Africa, from the Atlantic to the Red Sea. Allometric equations based on previous tree sampling allowed the researchers to convert imagery into estimates of tree wood, foliage, root size, and carbon...

‘It’s like finding needles in a haystack’: the mission to discover if Jupiter’s moons support life

The European Space Agency’s Juice probe launches next month, flying closer to icy moons – including Ganymede, the solar system’s largest – than ever beforeFor most of the past 200 years, were you to ask an astronomer where the most likely place in the solar system is to find life, the answer will have been Mars. The red planet and its potential inhabitants have captured our collective...

New analysis of ancient human protein could unlock secrets of evolution

The technique – known as proteomics – could bring new insights into the past two million years of humanity’s historyTiny traces of protein lingering in the bones and teeth of ancient humans could soon transform scientists’ efforts to unravel the secrets of the evolution of our species.Researchers believe a new technique – known as proteomics – could allow them to identify the proteins...

Anti-lockdowners are out in force, filling a Covid inquiry gap with bogus ideology | Sonia Sodha

Matt Hancock’s leaked messages are not the evidence we are waiting for. A government report into its own pandemic response is overdueA war of words played out over the first two years of the pandemic. On one side were commentators and scientists opposed to any form of social restriction as a way of keeping infection rates down. On the other, those who argued the government should be pursuing a...

The Observer view on the coming revolution in the prevention of disease and how Britain can’t afford to ignore it | Observer editorial

A national debate on the controversial issue is essential, but the research could immeasurably improve the lives of millions of people and their descendantsHundreds of researchers, lawyers and ethicists from across the world will tomorrow gather at the Third International Summit on Human Genome Editing at the Francis Crick Institute in London. For three days, they will debate developments in a...