It will still be many months before we see the back of Covid-19, but as various vaccines start to come onstream there is light at the end of the tunnel. Yet even as the beginning of the end of the pandemic looms, research from around the world is beginning to pose unsettling questions about where and when it all began and, in the process, offering clues to how the world might better defend itself against...
If the news of the new mutant strain of the SARS-CoV-2 virus spreading “like wildfire” in the UK, and the associated sound of borders around the world slamming shut is keeping you awake, you probably shouldn’t visit the website of the Nextstrain project. Viruses such as SARS-CoV-2 mutate all the time – not deliberately or even cunningly, as some apocalyptic recent coverage seems to imply, but as an inevitable accidental byproduct of the often error-strewn process...
If “empathy” sounds to you like a touchy-feely upgrade from “sympathy,” new research by psychiatrists at the University of California should make you think again. Traditionally, empathy is measured using psychological questionnaires. But the UCLA researchers set out to discover if it could be measured – and predicted – by monitoring brain activity. First, the resting brain activity of 58 male and female volunteers aged 18 to 35 was measured using functional magnetic resonance imaging, a...
This story is a part of Covering Climate Now’s week of coverage focused on Climate Solutions, to mark the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. Covering Climate Now is a global journalism collaboration committed to strengthening coverage of the climate story. In public rhetoric, at least, the UAE government confronts head-on the threat of global warming and acknowledges its role as part of the climate change problem. The UAE was one of the first...
Remember climate change, the great existential cloud hanging over the human race and the entire planet? Perhaps not. After all, most of us are now increasingly preoccupied with the newer threat from the coronavirus, or Covid-19: how to avoid catching it, what to do if we do and how to survive the economic meltdown that now seems inevitable in the face of closed shops and schools, grounded airlines and panic in the stock markets. There...
As the number of Covid-19 cases continues to rise around the world, it might seem insensitive to talk about the possible upsides of the virus, but upsides there most assuredly are. As companies and individuals follow the advice of their governments to self-isolate and stay away from the office, one of the biggest changes taking place is the sudden and unprecedented uptake of homeworking. We can only hope that, when the threat of Covid-19 has...
The words “cancer” and “breakthrough” have become so inseparable in headlines over the years that, given the rising global toll of deaths, one could be forgiven for thinking that researchers seeking a solution to the world’s second-leading cause of death are chasing a hopeless dream. In fact, as the uplifting message of the 20th World Cancer Day on February 4 makes clear, nothing could be further from the truth. Cancer is on the back foot...
At first, it looked like the outbreak of a new respiratory disease in China at the end of December had been limited to a few dozen people linked to a seafood market in the central city of Wuhan. The world should have been so lucky. All the Gulf states should be urgently following the example of Thailand, Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea and even some US airports and screening all passengers inbound from Wuhan or...
If you are one of the 30,000 runners expected to line up for the start of the Standard Chartered Dubai Marathon at 7am on Friday, January 24,and are perhaps now wondering whether all that training and the anticipated agony of the 42.195-kilometer slog that lies ahead of you is really going to be worth it, relax. Right now, the decision to enter Dubai’s 20th anniversary marathon – perhaps taken in the heat of the moment after...
HOW SWEET IT ISN’T: On December 1, the UAE government enacted its first-ever tax on sugary drinks. And on January 1, many people will vow once again to change their eating habits for good. That’s why livehealthy.ae is taking a closer look at scientific and anecdotal evidence telling us that the sugar we love to eat is hurting our health. Whatever you think of Coca-Cola’s contribution to the global obesity problem — and the company...
Few people lucky enough to live in the developed world, safe within the protective armour of modern sanitation, clean drinking water, decent nutrition and first-rate healthcare, will have heard of many of the 20 conditions categorised by the World Health Organization as “neglected tropical diseases.” Thankfully, they are spared the horrors of such life-altering conditions as dracunculiasis, Buruli ulcer and chistosomiasis. Yet between them these diseases and others like them, thriving in populations mired in...
