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The highly infectious new variant of coronavirus that emerged in Kent now accounts for 61 per cent of all new Covid cases in England, a mass testing study has found, and 70,000 people are getting infected every day. The team behind the ZOE Covid Symptom Study app, carried out with King’s College London, say the … Read more
More than half of all coronavirus transmission comes from patients who are asymptomatic, a new report reveals. Researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) looked at a model in which people with COVID-19 were at their most infectious on day five of their illness. They found that a total of 59 percent … Read more
Not all fat is created equal and some can actually help us combat several health conditions, a new study suggests. Scientists from Rockefeller University in New York City have discovered exactly how so-called brown fat benefits our health. Also known as brown adipose tissue, brown fat’s main role is to turn the food we eat … Read more
Charles Darwin (1809-1882) Charles Robert Darwin was born in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, the fifth of six children of wealthy and well-connected parents. One of his grandfathers was Erasmus Darwin, a doctor whose book ‘Zoonomia’ had set out a radical and highly controversial idea, that one species could ‘transmute’ into another. Transmutation is what evolution was then … Read more
Babies’ language skills develop faster if their parents ‘engage in conversation’ with them rather than just talking over them, study finds Experts monitored the language 5-8 month old babies were exposed to at home They then looked at the activity in the language centres of the infant brains They found engaging in conversation led to … Read more
Saudi Arabia could develop nuclear weapons if Iran becomes a nuclear power, the country’s foreign minister has warned. Adel al-Jubeir said it is ‘definitely an option’ for the Middle-Eastern state to develop nuclear capabilities if its rival Iran could not be stopped from making one, according to reports. He reportedly told DPA news agency that … Read more
Children develop weaker antibodies to coronavirus than adults do, new research suggests. Scientists at Columbia University believe that children actually recover so quickly that they typically don’t get seriously ill, or develop a particularly significant reservoir of antibodies for COVID-19. But that may not mean that kids are any more vulnerable to reinfection than adults … Read more
The director for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says the US must immediately develop a testing strategy to find and isolate symptom-free coronavirus cases. In a tweet on Wednesday, Dr Robert Redfield described a meeting he and Dr Deborah Birx, another member of the White House coronavirus task force, had with Utah … Read more
Fresh solution for smelly feet: Scientists develop a coating for socks that kills bacteria and neutralises unpleasant odours Cadets in Thailand have successfully tested the anti-bacterial coatings for socks They’re made from zinc oxide nanoparticles – known to inhibit bacterial growth The coating is harmless to skin and can reduce pitted keratolysis, a skin infection By … Read more
Immune cells that coronavirus survivors develop in an attempt to fight the infection may turn on some of them, attacking healthy tissues, new research suggest. The off-target assaults of these rogue immune cells may be the culprit of COVID-19 ‘long-haulers’ lingering symptoms, the Emory University scientists suspect. So-called ‘autoantibodies’ are similar to the autoimmune responses … Read more