Peer review moves to Twitter, muddling public health information.

Ex-official alleges cronyism, says warnings about supply shortages were ignored.

"There will be no social distancing in place," union rep wrote to city leaders.

Consumers are starting to see meat shortages after thousands of workers fall ill.

Just 1,000 light years from Earth, its two companion stars are visible to the naked eye.

Dr. Joseph Allen studies where building design meets health—he took our questions for 30min.

LauncherOne to cap eight years of development with upcoming flight.

YouTube, Facebook crack down on two viral videos for spreading medical misinformation.

From Fair Isle to German Bight, Charlie Connelly has visited all 31 sea areas, but still finds the poetry of the daily radio odyssey mesmerising

The shipping forecast is probably the closest thing we have in the modern age to a national epic. The institution’s rhythms and rituals have changed little since it was first broadcast on New Year’s Day 1924: there is poetry in the daily litany and mystery in its terminology. “The radio’s prayer,” Carol Ann Duffy called it. For Seamus Heaney it was “a sibilant penumbra”.

The forecast reminds us we’re a maritime nation and its map binds us to our continent, covering not only our own coasts and waters but an area extending from Norway to Portugal to Iceland. There is democracy in its geography, where tiny Fair Isle carries as much heft as mighty Biscay while Lundy, a sliver of rock in the Bristol Channel, is equal in importance to the Irish Sea. And from the salty old seadog in his brine-encrusted fishing boat to the merchant banker on his yacht, the shipping forecast, all seafarers are equally reliant on it.

On a 9,288km journey inspired by the centennial anniversary of the railway’s completion in 1916, photographer Annie Ling captures life onboard the Trans-Siberian Railway, and beyond the carriage window

The first known comet to visit us from another star system has an unusual make-up.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says it has forged a new agreement with Vulcan Inc., the Seattle-based holding company created by the late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, to share data on ocean science and exploration. The memorandum of understanding builds on an existing relationship between NOAA and Vulcan. “The future of ocean science and exploration is partnerships,” retired Navy Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet, assistant secretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere and deputy NOAA administrator, said today in a news release. “NOAA is forging new collaborations, such as the one with Vulcan, to accelerate our mission to map, explore… Read More

How the ancient techniques of the world's indigenous people could help to combat climate change.

Swarm Technologies has struck an agreement with California-based Momentus for the launch of a dozen telecommunication satellites, each the size of a slice of bread, aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in December. The December rideshare mission is the first of a series that Momentum plans to execute for Swarm, continuing into 2021 and 2022. Swarm plans to have 150 satellites launched over the next couple of years for a communication network in low Earth orbit. The first 12 SpaceBee satellites covered by the agreement announced today will be deployed into orbit from the Falcon 9. The inch-thick satellites fit… Read More

The health of insect populations globally is far more varied than previous research suggested.

One month after the debut of the COVID-19 Open Research Dataset, or CORD-19, the database of coronavirus-related research papers has doubled in size – and has given rise to more than a dozen software tools to channel the hundreds of studies that are being published every day about the pandemic. In a roundup published on the ArXiv preprint server this week, researchers from Seattle's Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, Microsoft Research and other partners in the project say CORD-19's collection has risen from about 28,000 papers to more than 52,000. Every day, several hundred more papers are being published, in… Read More

The veteran telescope celebrates three decades in orbit with a colourful image of star formation.

NASA has awarded a $2 million grant to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, The Aerospace Corp. — and Xplore, a Seattle-based space venture — to develop the design architecture for a far-out telescope array that would use the sun's gravitational field as a lens to focus on alien planets. The Phase III award from the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts program, or NIAC, would cover two years of development work and could lead to the launch of a technology demonstration mission in the 2023-2024 time frame. Xplore's team will play a key role in designing the demonstration mission's spacecraft, which would be… Read More

New techniques are being used to transform images from Hubble into spectacular 3D visualisations.

Bill Gates has been big on vaccines since before the start of the coronavirus pandemic, but in a new blog posting, the Microsoft co-founder and billionaire philanthropist says the only way to end the pandemic for good is to offer a vaccine to almost all of the planet's 7 billion inhabitants. That's big. "We've never delivered something to every corner of the world before," Gates notes. It's especially big considering that a vaccine hasn't yet been approved for widespread use, and that it may take as long as a year to 18 months to win approval and start distribution. Some… Read More

Mediterranean sediments are shown to have up to 1.9 million tiny plastic pieces per square metre.

The space agency announces the companies that will work on landers to return astronauts to the Moon.

For the first time, Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo rocket plane flew free in the skies over New Mexico's Spaceport America, its new base of operations. The SpaceShipTwo plane, known as VSS Unity, has made rocket-powered flights beyond the 50-mile space milestone during tests at California's Mojave Air and Space Port, but today's unpowered test flight was the first to be flown from Spaceport America. "Today's VSS Unity flight is another exciting milestone for Virgin Galactic's progress in New Mexico," Dan Hicks, executive director of the New Mexico Spaceport Authority, said in a news release. "We are extremely happy and proud of… Read More

Native woodlands can resist the spread of invasive species if they block light reaching the ground.

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine has confirmed in a tweet that the space agency is working with movie star Tom Cruise on a project that involves shooting a film on the International Space Station. Deadline Hollywood reported on Monday that a space movie project involving NASA and SpaceX is in the works, but that "no studio is in the mix at this stage." Bridenstine followed up with a tweet saying that NASA was "excited" to be working with Cruise, and explaining that "we need popular media to inspire a new generation of engineers and scientists to make NASA's ambitious plans a… Read More

Areas such as India, Australia and Africa are predicted to be among the worst affected.

An unseen object is found to be lurking in a double-star system a mere 1,000 light-years from Earth.

NASA has awarded the University of Washington a $499,864 grant to develop a competition that calls on students to turn a simulated lava tube into a habitat suitable for harboring humans on the moon or Mars. The exploration and habitation skills competition will be funded as part of NASA's Artemis Student Challenges program, which plays off the themes of the Artemis moon program to inspire the next generation of explorers and engineers. The competition will involve navigating a rover through a facsimile lava tube and surface structures, generating maps, identifying valuable resources and deploying an airtight barrier to seal the… Read More

The following is a brief roundup of the latest scientific studies on the novel coronavirus and efforts to find treatments and vaccines for COVID-19, the illness caused by the virus. A new antibody test is highly accurate at determining whether people have been infected with the novel coronavirus, according to a study published on Friday in The Journal of Clinical Microbiology. Researchers at the University of Washington School of Medicine found the test, manufactured by Abbott Laboratories, had a specificity rate of 99.9% and a sensitivity rate of 100%, suggesting little chance of incorrectly diagnosing a healthy person as having been infected and virtually no chance of a false negative readout.

Scientists usually find black holes by detecting X-rays they emit as they devour nearby stars. But this one was quietly hidden 1,000 light-years away.

Australian photographer Christian Bowman from Queensland was among Australians waking up before the sun rose to capture images of the Eta Aquarids meteor shower

• Australians told to look to the skies early Wednesday for best views

Two gems from the wizard of recreational maths

UPDATE: Puzzle solutions can be read here.

Today’s column is a celebration of John Horton Conway, the legendary British mathematician, who died of coronavirus earlier this month, aged 82.

Conway was an inspirational, iconoclastic genius who invented and studied countless puzzles and games, in addition to his more highbrow work in group theory, number theory, geometry, topology and many other fields.

The answers to today’s puzzles

Earlier today I set you two puzzles that the late John Horton Conway suggested for this column:

1) The Miracle Builders

Smartphones can be used to digitally trace Covid-19. But not if the public don’t download an app over privacy fears – or find it won’t work on their device

The idea of the NHS tracing app is to enable smartphones to track users and tell them whether they interacted with someone who had Covid-19. Yet this will work only if large proportions of the population download the app. No matter how smart a solution may appear, mass consent is required. That will not be easy. Ministers and officials have failed to address the trade-offs between health and privacy by being ambiguous about the app’s safeguards.

Instead of offering cast-iron guarantees about the length of time for which data would be held; who can access it; and the level of anonymity afforded, we have had opacity and obfuscation. It is true that we are dealing with uncertainties. But without absolute clarity about privacy the public is unlikely to take up the app with the appropriate gusto.

Some weeks ago my main worries were around my GCSEs. Now I hear every day about deaths from Covid-19

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It is the sixth week of lockdown, and for many people things are getting progressively more intense. Most families are physically distancing at home. People are only leaving the house for their weekly shop – and spending a lot of that time waiting in the queue – or to exercise once a day.

In my family things are a bit different. Our driveway is usually empty during the day as my parents, who are doctors, go in to work. It is difficult to imagine how only some weeks ago my main worries were around my GCSEs. Now every day, I hear about deaths from coronavirus. I cannot help but feel a surge of fear for my parents as I watch these updates with my brother. I’m painfully aware of the many healthcare workers who have lost their lives.

After a string of studies that highlight the possible link between air pollution and Covid-19 deaths, Ian Sample hears from Prof Anna Hansell about the complicated relationship between pollution, health and infection with Sars-CoV-2

Hannah Devlin speaks to Prof Sabra Klein about why women are much less likely to become seriously ill or die from Covid-19, and what the implications of this knowledge for future treatments might be

With false information linking the coronavirus to 5G telecoms or Chinese labs being widely shared on social media, Ian Sample speaks to social psychologist Dr Daniel Jolley about why the pandemic is such fertile ground for conspiracy theories

As hay fever season approaches, Nicola Davis asks Prof Stephen Durham about the differences between the immune response to an allergen, such as pollen, and a pathogen, like Sars-CoV-2. Should those with allergies should be concerned about Covid-19?

Exclusive: report criticising government lockdown proposals heavily redacted before release

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Government scientific advisers are furious at what they see as an attempt to censor their advice on government proposals during the Covid-19 lockdown by heavily redacting an official report before it was released to the public, the Guardian can reveal.

The report was one of a series of documents published by the Scientific Advisory Group on Emergencies (Sage) this week to mollify growing criticism about the lack of transparency over the advice given to ministers responding to the coronavirus.

Lawyers say failure to provide adequate PPE may amount to corporate manslaughter

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The deaths of more than 50 hospital and care home workers have been reported to Britain’s health and safety regulator, which is considering launching criminal investigations, the Guardian has learned.

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE), which investigates the breaking of safety at work laws, has received 54 formal reports of deaths in health and care settings “where the source of infection is recorded as Covid-19”. These are via the official reporting process, called Riddor: Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences.

Sage told widespread use of antibody tests could lead to criminal behaviour, papers reveal

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Downing Street’s scientific advisers feared people might intentionally seek to contract coronavirus and that a black market in fake test results could emerge if employers allowed workers to return only when they had a positive antibody test.

The Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, known as Sage, was warned last month by its behavioural psychology subgroup that the widespread introduction of antibody tests could lead to a range of potentially dangerous and even criminal “negative behavioural responses” if not handled well.

Recent deaths have stood out, but scientists say they must be interpreted with caution

Amid the steady stream of stories on the lives lost to coronavirus are cases that stand out as remarkable. In the past month, at least two pairs of twins have died in Britain and two pairs of brothers, all within hours or days of each other. But do the deaths point to genetic factors that make some more likely than others to succumb to the disease?

Most scientists believe that genes play a role in how people respond to infections. A person’s genetic makeup may influence the receptors that the coronavirus uses to invade human cells. How resilient the person is to the infection, their general health, and how the immune system reacts will also have some genetic component.

Studies have examined some of the more unusual signs of Covid-19

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The World Health Organization lists the most common symptoms of Covid-19 as fever, tiredness and a dry cough. Others include a runny nose, sore throat, nasal congestion, pain, diarrhoea and the loss of sense of taste and/or smell. But there are also other more unusual symptoms that patients have presented.

As the coronavirus outbreak continues to be our focus on Science Weekly, we also want to try look at other science stories. In this episode, Nicola Davis speaks to Dave Krause about the 66-million-year-old fossil of a cat-sized mammal dubbed ‘crazy beast’. A giant in its day, we hear how this now extinct branch of mammals – known as Gondwanatherians – offers new insights into what could have been

Official figures show that wide disparity not just due to health and economic differences

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Black people are more than four times more likely to die from Covid-19 than white people, according to stark official figures exposing a dramatic divergence in the impact of the coronavirus pandemic in England and Wales.

The Office of National Statistics found that the difference in the virus’s impact was caused not only by pre-existing differences in communities’ wealth, health, education and living arrangements.

Researchers say cannibalistic tendency may help explain why the invasive creatures thrive

When the going gets tough, most parents try to protect their offspring. But the warty comb jelly takes a different tack: it eats them.

Despite initial appearances, comb jellies are not jellyfish but belong to a different group of animals, ctenophora, which swim using tiny hair-like projections called cilia.

‘Challenge’ studies would deliberately give coronavirus to healthy volunteers

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Controversial trials in which volunteers are intentionally infected with Covid-19 could accelerate vaccine development, according to the World Health Organization, which has released new guidance on how the approach could be ethically justified despite the potential dangers for participants.

So-called challenge trials are a mainstream approach in vaccine development and have been used in malaria, typhoid and flu, but there are treatments available for these diseases if a volunteer becomes severely ill. For Covid-19, a safe dose of the virus has not been established and there are no failsafe treatments if things go wrong.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford dropped by his cottage last month, days after asking the province’s residents to stay away from theirs. His office says Ford "drove alone" and was there for less than an hour to check on construction.

Danish Chagani was excited when the lawyer who lived down the hall from his Toronto condo wanted to rent his unit after he bought a house for his young family. But the first-time landlord says the feeling was short-lived.