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 –...
A third of Covid patients discharged from hospital are readmitted in five months
A study has found that almost a third of patients who have recovered from Covid-19 are re-admitted to hospital within five months. The research by Leicester University and the Office for National Statistics also found that up to one in eight die of Covid-related complications. It found that out of...
How coronavirus vaccine rollout faces a two-shot problem in the US
More than nine million shots have been given, according to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention and just shy of 400,000 people have received the second dose that confers 95 per cent protection against the virus. That seems like good news – but just about everyone watching the process...
Scientists worry efforts to free up limited vaccine doses driven by desperation
Amid skyrocketing coronavirus infections, some countries are attempting to stretch limited supplies of Covid-19 vaccines by reducing doses or changing vaccination schedules from those shown to be effective in clinical trials. But data are scarce on the impact of such measures and scientists are split over whether they are worth...
Plan to build a global network of floating power stations on oceans
Early last year, just a few weeks before the pandemic brought life in the United States to a standstill, Yi Chao and a small team of researchers dropped a slender metal tube into the Pacific Ocean off the Hawaiian coast. After nearly two decades as an oceanographer at NASA’s Jet...
Mystery of beetles depending on moon, sun light for orientation
Scientists know that bees, ants and many other insects can orient themselves using polarised sunlight, but dung beetles are the first known to orient themselves using the million-times-dimmer polarised light that emanates from the moon. Neurobiologist Marie Dacke of Lund University in Sweden, entomologist Marcus Byrne at the University of...
Ancient Egyptians believed dung beetles controlled the movement of the sun
Placed over the heart in the wrappings of Egyptian mummies, archaeologists have often found carved amulets of scarab beetles, a species of dung beetle. The amulets, many with spells inscribed on them, were intended to help the dead in a final judgment by the jackal-headed god of death, Anubis, who...
Travel restrictions have no bearing on coronavirus spread – researchers
As countries in Europe rush to close their borders to the United Kingdom to prevent transmission of a new – and potentially more transmissible – variant of SARS-CoV-2, research has estimated the effect of international travel restrictions on Covid-19 spread earlier in the pandemic. Models have found that strict border...
Wikipedia’s major challenge: Reliability and sturdiness of its community of editors
Facts are stubborn things. And that stubbornness was a vital asset for Wikipedia in 2020, as it unapologetically banned from its pages disinformation about the Covid-19 pandemic and the presidential election. The contrast was sharp with global digital platforms like Facebook and YouTube, which slowly, and often ineffectually, responded to...
