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Latest Science news, comment and analysis from the Guardian, the world’s leading liberal voice

Excitement among patients and researchers as custom-built jabs enter phase 3 trialDoctors have begun trialling in hundreds of patients the world’s first personalised mRNA cancer vaccine for melanoma, as experts hailed its “gamechanging” potential to permanently cure cancer.Melanoma affects about 132,000 people a year globally and is the biggest skin cancer killer. Currently, surgery is the main treatment although radiotherapy, medicines and chemotherapy are also sometimes used. Continue reading…

Global warming and international trade offering increasingly hospitable environment Some are small and jumpy; others are large and intimidating – if you’re a humble housefly. Exotic spiders are flourishing in Britain as international trade offers ample opportunities for spider travel and global heating provides an increasingly hospitable climate.A jumping spider new to science has been identified living on the Penryn campus in Cornwall, home to the University of Exeter and Falmouth University. The nearest known relative of the 3-4mm-long Anasaitis milesae is found in the Caribbean, making it highly likely that this tiny species – alongside 17 other non-native jumping spider species – found its way to Britain from distant climes. Continue reading…

Open letter calls for green policies that empower farmers, after months of protests jeopardise future of flagship biodiversity dealThe EU’s nature restoration law will only work if it is enacted in partnership with farmers, a group of leading scientists has said, after months of protests have pushed the proposals to the brink of collapse.In an open letter, leading biodiversity researchers from across the world said that efforts to restore nature are vital for guaranteeing food supplies – but farmers must be empowered to help make agriculture more environmentally friendly if the measures are to succeed. Continue reading…

Researchers also find zebra finches 20% less likely to hatch from eggs if exposed to noise pollutionNoise pollution from traffic stunts growth in baby birds, even while inside the egg, research has found.Unhatched birds and hatchlings that are exposed to noise from city traffic experience long-term negative effects on their health, growth and reproduction, the study found. Continue reading…

Full and part skeletons found in Mexico reveal body shape and anatomy of Ptychodus as well as its likely dietFossil experts say they have gained unprecedented insights into a type of enormous prehistoric shark, after finding complete skeletons of the creatures.The specimens, discovered in small quarries in north-eastern Mexico within the last decade, belong to Ptychodus – a creature that roamed the seas from around 105m to 75m years ago. Continue reading…

As bird flu is confirmed in 33 cattle herds across eight US states, Ian Sample talks to virologist Dr Ed Hutchinson of Glasgow University about why this development has taken scientists by surprise, and how prepared we are for the possibility it might start spreading among humansRead more Guardian reporting on this topic Continue reading…

Therapy has remarkable medical potential but experts say private clinics making far-reaching claims operate in regulatory grey zoneStem cells have become a favoured miracle treatment among the rich and famous, with Kim Kardashian reportedly a fan of stem cell facials and Cristiano Ronaldo turning to stem cell injections after a hamstring injury.The latest to extol their benefits is the Monty Python actor John Cleese, who suggests that stem cells could hold the secret to eternal youth – or, at least, buy him “a few extra years”. Continue reading…

Plan to break up Noaa claims its research is ‘climate alarmism’ and calls for commercializing forecasts, weakening forecastsClimate experts fear Donald Trump will follow a blueprint created by his allies to gut the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa), disbanding its work on climate science and tailoring its operations to business interests.Joe Biden’s presidency has increased the profile of the science-based federal agency but its future has been put in doubt if Trump wins a second term and at a time when climate impacts continue to worsen. Continue reading…

Many report symptoms lasting two years or longer and about 1.5m say disease affects day-to-day activitiesAbout 2 million people in England and Scotland say they are experiencing long Covid, figures reveal, with many reporting their symptoms have lasted two years or longer.The findings were released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and cover the period from November 2023 to March 2024, revealing of those who reported having long Covid, about 1.5 million people – about three-quarters– felt their day-to-day activities were affected, while 381,000 people – about a fifth – said their ability to undertake such activities had been “limited a lot”. Continue reading…

Cambridge study finds those from poorest areas have 35% higher risk of second non-breast cancerFemale survivors of breast cancer living in the most deprived areas have a 35% higher risk of developing second, unrelated cancers, compared with those from the most affluent areas, research shows.Breast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer in the UK, with about 56,000 people being told they have it each year. Improved diagnosis and treatments mean that five-year survival rates are now 86% in England. Continue reading…

Only private jabs are available to most, but annual shots could reduce healthcare costs and prevent deathsCheaper private Covid jabs may end up as costly as pricier ones, say expertsPrivate Covid boosters are available for people who do not qualify to receive these vaccines on the NHS. But is it worth paying for a shot?With most people now having been exposed to Sars-CoV-2 through previous vaccination and/or infection, our immune systems are generally well equipped to recognise and kill the virus if we become infected. Continue reading…

Exclusive: Multi-dose vials could push up charge per patient, with experts warning cost could widen inequalitiesCheaper private Covid jabs could end up being just as expensive as their pricier alternative because the vaccine must be given in groups of five, experts have warned.Boots and pharmacies that partner with the company Pharmadoctor are offering Pfizer/BioNTech jabs to those not eligible for a free vaccination through the NHS, with the former charging almost £100 a shot. The latter is also offering the latest Novavax jab, a protein-based vaccine, at a cost of about £50. Continue reading…

Pharmacy to offer Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine to those not eligible for NHS booster shot from next weekBoots is to offer Covid vaccinations for almost £100 a shot, making it the latest provider to sell the jabs to those not eligible for a booster through the NHS.The company has confirmed it will offer the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine to healthy customers in England aged 12 and over from next week, at a cost of £98.95 a jab. Continue reading…

The 100-day challenge, to be able to contain a virus while a vaccine is approved, manufactured and delivered, looks ever more remoteFour years on from the first Covid lockdown, life feels to be largely back to normal, although legacies of the pandemic remain. Collective amnesia seems to have set in. Politicians seem eager to move forward and not relive the decisions, delays and deaths that characterised public policy and press briefings. Yet we can’t forget such a brutal event, when Covid is estimated to have killed nearly 16 million people worldwide in 2020 and 2021, and caused life expectancy to decline in 84% of countries, including Britain. Pandemics aren’t a one-off event. There’s still a risk of another happening within our lifetimes.Fortunately, what to do about the next pandemic is still very much at the top of the global health agenda. In 2021, I was asked to co-chair the US National Academy of Sciences’ committee on advancing pandemic and seasonal influenza vaccine preparedness and response. This group was sponsored by the US government to provide recommendations on how to improve preparedness for influenza, which is seen as one of the most likely candidates for the next pandemic. I was also involved with the Lancet Covid-19 taskforce, which brought together global experts to look at how to improve on the Covid response, and what challenges there were going forward. These groups represent some of the world’s best thinkers on global health and pandemic preparedness. Here’s what I learned.Prof Devi Sridhar is chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh Continue reading…

According to an automated missive, I have the perfect set of skills to help write the first draft of AI history. It’s not a job for life, thoughSay what you like about the Germans, you can always count on them to find just the right word for anything. Take “weltschmerz”, for example, which roughly translates to “world pain”. It signifies despair at the suffering in the world – and a deep anguish that stems from knowing that a better world is possible. Is there a more apt encapsulation of the current moment?For the past six months I, like many others, have been suffering from an acute case of weltschmerz. As someone of Palestinian heritage I have been weighed down by survivor’s guilt as I’ve watched the unfolding genocide in Gaza. For a while, I didn’t have the emotional energy to write. The only way I could get out of bed and make it through the day was by avoiding the news completely. Which … isn’t an ideal scenario when you largely write about the news for a living. So, at one point, I decided on a career pivot and applied for various non-writing jobs, including one at a dog food manufacturer. Reader, I was rejected. In fact, I didn’t even make it to the first round of interviews; I was humbled by a dog’s dinner. Continue reading…

Our ozone is pennies thick – and soon we’ll put at least an Eiffel Tower’s worth of metallic ash into the ionosphere every yearA dead spacecraft the size of a truck ignites with plasma and pulverizes into dust and litter as it rips through the ionosphere and atmosphere. This is what happens to internet service satellites during re-entry. When the full mega-constellation of satellites is deployed in the 2030s, companies will do this every hour because satellite internet requires thousands of satellites to constantly be replaced. And it could compromise our atmosphere or even our magnetosphere.Space entrepreneurs are betting on disposable satellites as key to a new means of wealth. There are currently nearly 10,000 active satellites and companies are working as fast as possible to get tens of thousands more into orbit – for a projected 1m in the next three to four decades.Sierra Solter is a plasma physicist, engineer, and inventor who studies the intersection of heliophysics and aerospace Continue reading…

I’d love to feel the beautiful mysteries of the universe. But I have other interestsThe total solar eclipse, visible in parts of Mexico, the US and Canada yesterday, was experienced in the UK only as a “small grazing” (that’s what the astronomers call it), and then only in the north and west of the country. Happily, I went to Lewis in the Outer Hebrides for the eclipse of 2015, where coverage was 98% and people (not just me) had travelled for it from all over the country.It was news to me that people even existed who were that into eclipses. In further news: it doesn’t even have to get that dark to fill “eclipse-heads” with wonder, and it duly didn’t – it just looked like a sad, wintry day. People talk of eclipse winds, whipping up at no notice and going in weird directions; it was quite windy, but that turned out to be normal for March. I’d heard tell that animals take on an expression of intense concentration – some call it wonder – and this I couldn’t verify, as there were only dogs there and not enough of them (two). But fair play, there are never enough dogs for me anywhere. Continue reading…

The survival of ancient dialects matters not just for scholarship, but because of the wisdom they convey about how to live with natureThe launch of a “last chance” crowdsourcing tool to record a vanishing Greek dialect drew attention back this week to one of the great extinctions of the modern world: nine languages are believed to be disappearing every year. Romeyka, which is spoken by an ageing population of a few thousand people in the mountain villages near Turkey’s Black Sea coast, diverged from modern Greek thousands of years ago. It has no written form.For linguists, it is a “living bridge” to the ancient Hellenic world, the loss of which would clearly be a blow. But some languages are in even bigger trouble, with 350 that have fewer than 50 native speakers and 46 that have just one. A collaboration between Australian and British institutions paints the situation in stark colours, with a language stripes chart, devised to illustrate the accelerating decline in each decade between 1700 and today. Its authors predict that between 50% and 90% of the world’s 7,000 languages will be extinct by 2150. Even now, half of the people on the planet speak just 24 of them. Continue reading…

Billed as a rival to the Olympic Games, the Enhanced Games, set to take place in 2025, is a sporting event with a difference; athletes will be allowed to dope. Ian Sample talks to chief sports writer Barney Ronay about where the idea came from and how it’s being sold as an anti-establishment underdog, and to Dr Peter Angell about what these usually banned substances are, and what they could do to athletes’ bodiesClips: Talk TV, News Nation, Inside with Brett Hawke, ESPNRead Barney Ronay’s opinion piece on the Enhanced Games Continue reading…

What can sound tell us about nature loss? Guardian biodiversity reporter Phoebe Weston tells Madeleine Finlay about her visit to Monks Wood in Cambridgeshire, where ecologist Richard Broughton has witnessed the decline of the marsh tit population over 22 years, and has heard the impact on the wood’s soundscape. As species lose their habitats across the world, pioneering soundscape ecologist Bernie Krause has argued that if we listen closely, nature can tell us everything we need to know about our impact on the planetFind more reporting from the Soundscapes project hereBernie Krause audio by Bernie Krause, courtesy of Wild Sanctuary. © 2024 Wild Sanctuary. All rights reserved Continue reading…

This week, in a landmark case, the European court of human rights ruled that Switzerland’s weak climate policy had violated the rights of a group of older Swiss women to family life. Ian Sample talks to Europe environment correspondent Ajit Niranjan about why the women brought the case and what the ruling could mean for future climate policy.Read Ajit Niranjan’s article about the court case Continue reading…

My grandfather, Brian Haywood, who has died aged 91, spent his career working as a nuclear physicist, mainly at the UK Atomic Energy Authority at Harwell in Oxfordshire.He was born in Birmingham to Vi and Hal, who ran a haberdashery shop. An only child, Brian lived through much of the blitz and spent the evenings in an air-raid shelter. He attended Bearwood Road school, then obtained a scholarship to King Edward VI Five Ways grammar school, and in his first year was evacuated to Monmouth with his classmates. He stayed here for a year. Continue reading…

Labradors are known for being greedy dogs, and now scientists have come up with a theory about the genetic factors that might be behind their behaviour. Science correspondent and flat-coated retriever owner Nicola Davis visits Cambridge University to meet Dr Eleanor Raffan and Prof Giles Yeo to find out how understanding this pathway could help us treat the obesity crisis in humans Continue reading…

DeBose’s brilliant rookie astronaut navigates this moderately tense thriller about US and Russian crew fighting as Earth blazes belowAt first, the crew on board the International Space Station (ISS) mistake the tiny dot of fire on Earth for a volcano. But look: there’s another, and another. In fact, these astronauts have got a bird’s eye view of a nuclear tit-for-tat between the Russian and American governments that by the end of the movie turns the planet into a great glowing ball of fire. But for the six-person crew – three Americans and three Russians – nuclear Armageddon is only the start of their problems.A lowish-budget, slightly muted survival thriller – moderately tense, with too few ideas to qualify as actively cerebral – what the movie does have is a brilliant performance by West Side Story’s Ariana DeBose as biologist and rookie astronaut Kira. Like all the characters here, she’s a bit too thinly sketched, but DeBose brings real warmth and likability to the part, making Kira easy to root for. And there are some interesting moments as she adjusts to zero gravity. Continue reading…

There can be a big gap between self-perception and how our loved ones see us. Is it ever a good idea to seek the truth?Sign up for Well Actually, a free weekly newsletter about health and wellnessName: Personality audit.Age: People have worried about what other people think about them since the beginning of time. Continue reading…

The answers to today’s problemsEarlier today I set you these puzzles, set by the author of Much Ado About Numbers, a new book about mathematics in Shakespeare’s day. Continue reading…

Don’t make this a comedy of errorsUPDATE: Read the answers hereToday’s puzzles come from the quill of Rob Eastaway, the bard of brainteasers, whose latest book Much Ado About Numbers is a journey into Shakespeare’s mathematical life and times. Continue reading…

The answers to today’s questionsEarlier today I set you the following mini-pub quiz, based on wordplay puzzles from The Cryptic Pub Quiz Book by Frank Paul. Here they are again with answers. Continue reading…

Get a few rounds inUPDATE: Swap papers. Answers up hereIn the world of pub quizzes, Frank Paul is a legend. Today’s puzzles are taken from the fabulously fiendish quiz he has run at The Mill in Cambridge, and which appear in his latest book.I’ve chosen questions that involve wordplay rather than general knowledge. Like all great pub quiz conundrums, you will be able to work them out if you think hard enough (and maybe ask a friend for help.) Continue reading…

People in 15 US states, Mexico and Canada witnessed the awe-inspiring spectacle of a a total solar eclipse on Monday. Cities were plunged into sudden darkness and their inhabitants experienced a sharp drop in temperatures. The first such eclipse to cross the US in seven years swept ashore at the Mexican beach resort Mazatlán before crossing the Texas border at Eagle Pass and heading north-east towards CanadaMillions across US, Mexico and Canada witness rare total solar eclipseTotal solar eclipse over Mexico, US and Canada – in pictures Continue reading…

The moon blocks the sun along a path that cuts across several countriesIf you missed the total solar eclipse just wait … until 2044 Continue reading…

Observers in Mazatlan were the first to witness a rare solar eclipse as the moon obscured the sun over Mexico. People in the US and Canada were also able to enjoy the spectacle. The most recent total solar eclipse in the US was in 2017, but an interval of only seven years is unusual. The previous one before that took place in 1979, and the next one visible in the US will not be until August 2044Solar eclipse 2024: latest updates Continue reading…