A decade ago, a band of astronomers set out to investigate one of the oldest questions taunting philosophers, scientists, priests, astronomers, mystics and the rest of the human race: how many more Earths are out there, if any? How many far-flung planets exist that could harbour life as we know it? Are there any other ... Read More »
A front-runner coronavirus vaccine developed by drug giant Pfizer and German biotechnology firm BioNTech was more than 90 percent effective at protecting people compared with a placebo saline shot, according to an interim analysis by an independent data monitoring committee that met Sunday. The early look at the ongoing trial provides a decisive initial ... Read More »
Robin Shattock won’t say it himself – he is a man of modesty, after all – but more people should be paying attention to his vaccine. As the race for a Covid-19 jab intensifies, the team at Imperial College London has somewhat flown under the radar. Headlines have instead been dominated by the fast-moving ... Read More »
Research on mice taken to the International Space Station (ISS) has found a protein that could help combat ageing and help in the development of drugs to treat age-related diseases such as Alzheimer’s and diabetes. A joint study by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (Jaxa) and Tohoku University showed that while the mice were in ... Read More »
Artificial intelligence is able to distinguish between people who have the coronavirus simply by their coughs. The difference between cough from someone with coronavirus and a healthy one is something not discernable to the human ear, but is able to be ‘heard’ by a machine learning algorithm. Researchers from MIT took thousands of samples of ... Read More »
Mysterious, intense blasts of radio energy have been detected from within our own galaxy, astronomers have said. Fast radio bursts, or FRBs, last only a fraction of a second but can be 100 million times more powerful than the Sun. Despite their intensity, their origin remains largely unknown. Now astronomers ... Read More »
Tributes paid to fearless reporter described as ‘the greatest journalist of his generation’ Robert Fisk, a veteran Middle East correspondent for The Independent and the most celebrated journalist of his era, has died after an illness. He was 74. Fisk was renowned for his courage in questioning official narratives from governments and ... Read More »
Water could be used for humans who travel to the Moon and create permanent lunar base there, as Nasa hopes to Water has been definitively found on the Moon, Nasa has said, and there are a set of “water traps” that could hold it stably. The research suggests that water could be distributed ... Read More »
A new IUCN report finds that an estimated 229,000 tonnes of plastic is leaking into the Mediterranean Sea every year, equivalent to over 500 shipping containers each day. Unless significant measures are taken to address mismanaged waste, the main source of the leakage, this will at least double by 2040. Based ... Read More »
Study team says Covid-19 patients in intensive care should be asked about hearing loss Covid-19 may cause sudden and permanent hearing loss, experts have found, adding that such problems need early detection and urgent treatment. The coronavirus has been found to affect the body in myriad ways, from a ... Read More »
Lebanese Ministry of Information