Coronavirus rarely spreads through surfaces; so why are we still deep cleaning?
When Emanuel Goldman went to his local New Jersey supermarket last March, he didn’t take any chances. Reports of Covid-19 cases were popping up across the United States, so he donned gloves to avoid contaminated surfaces and wore a mask to prevent him inhaling tiny virus-laden droplets from fellow shoppers....
Risky: Retracted studies still routinely cited in fight against coronavirus
In June 2020, in the biggest research scandal of the pandemic so far, two of the most important medical journals each retracted a high-profile study of Coovid-19 patients. Thousands of news articles, tweets, and scholarly commentaries highlighted the scandal, yet many researchers apparently failed to notice. In an examination of...
Although concussions heal, some patients struggle at times to remember tasks
Italian physician Paolo Mascagni created a detailed atlas of the lymphatic system – including this drawing from his 1787 Vasorum Lymphaticorum Corporis Humani Historia et Ichnographic. Mascagni depicted the vessels in the meninges around the brain, but other scientists dismissed the idea, arguing that the lymphatic system was separate from...
Research suggests mild head knocks can damage vessels that clear debris from brain
On a crisp September day, Zoe Aldrich walked onto a rugby pitch on a college campus in upstate New York. With her teammates surrounding her, she got ready for the kick-off and the pitch became a blur of coloured jerseys. A teammate passed Aldrich the ball and she started running,...
Despite high HIV awareness in western Kenya, cultural taboos undermine progress
While significant gains have been made in the fight against HIV-related stigma and discrimination, prejudiced attitudes still hold back people in rural Kenya from accessing healthcare services. Cultural inhibitions are still at play in the war against sexually transmitted infections (STI) and access to reproductive health services, further multiplying the...
Biden appoints bioethics and social inequality specialist to top science post
During his presidential campaign, Joe Biden pledged that his administration would address inequality and racism. Now that he’s been sworn in as US president, his appointment of a prominent sociologist to the nation’s top science office is raising hopes that the changes will extend to the scientific community. Alondra Nelson,...
Scientists grapple with what new coronavirus variants mean for schools
The emergence of fast-spreading coronavirus variants has once again put a spotlight on the role of children in the Covid-19 pandemic. Early data on one new variant had suggested that it was spreading more in children than in adults compared with other lineages. But researchers now suggest the variant is...
Pope’s drug trials: History of vaccination replete with tales of poisoning
It was a time of contagion and quacks. A Machiavellian power-broker keen to protect his position defied tradition to sponsor controlled experiments on the most marginalised of people. Therefore, the fear and suspicion by black people and people of colour the world has witnessed over the past few weeks since...
Collapsing aquifers, flooding of low-lying lands to affect 1.6 billion people by 2040
As California’s economy skyrocketed during the 20th century, its land headed in the opposite direction. A booming agricultural industry in the state’s San Joaquin Valley, combined with punishing droughts led to the over-extraction of water from aquifers. Like huge, empty water bottles, the aquifers crumpled, a phenomenon geologists call subsidence....
Bright side of Covid: Carbon emissions dipped in 2020 as energy use dropped
After rising steadily for decades, global carbon dioxide emissions fell by 6.4 per cent or 2.3 billion tonnes in 2020 as the Covid-19 pandemic squelched economic and social activities worldwide, according to new data on daily fossil fuel emissions. The decline is significant – roughly double Japan’s yearly emissions –...
