Doctors in Saudi separate Yemeni baby from twin

A team of doctors in Saudi Arabia has separated a Yemeni baby from her parasitic twin, authorities said, marking their 50th successful operation on conjoined twins.

China says Delta variant behind virus surge

China raced Saturday to contain its worst coronavirus outbreak in months, as health officials blamed the highly infectious Delta variant for a surge in infections spanning 14 provinces.

UK warns COVID monitor devices work less well for darker skin

Britain's state-run healthcare service warned Saturday that devices used by people with COVID to monitor blood-oxygen levels at home may give inaccurate readings for people with darker skin.

China, Australia ramp up COVID curbs as Delta variant spreads

China and Australia ramped up COVID-19 curbs Saturday as Delta variant cases surged and tens of thousands rallied in France against restrictions designed to stop the pandemic.

Drive to charge packagers for recycling, but industry fights

States across the U.S. are looking to adopt new recycling regimes that require producers of packaging to pay for its inevitable disposal—but industry is digging in to try to halt the movement.

Heatwave causes massive melt of Greenland ice sheet

Greenland's ice sheet has experienced a "massive melting event" during a heatwave that has seen temperatures more than 10 degrees above seasonal norms, according to Danish researchers.

Researchers find gaps in clinical trial data sharing

Access to clinical-trial data helps doctors make informed prescribing decisions and promotes good science, but a new study co-authored by Yale researchers reveals that few pharmaceutical companies are fully transparent about the data behind the products they develop. The study also shows that large companies are far more transparent than smaller ones.

Image: Hubble spots squabbling galactic siblings

A dramatic triplet of galaxies takes center stage in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, which captures a three-way gravitational tug-of-war between interacting galaxies. This system—known as Arp 195—is featured in the Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies, a list which showcases some of the weirder and more wonderful galaxies in the universe.

Biden says US to see new Covid restrictions 'in all probability'

US President Joe Biden said on Friday "in all probability" new guidelines or restrictions would be imposed in the United States in response to a resurgence of COVID-19 cases.

Australia's third-largest city of Brisbane to enter COVID lockdown

Australia's third-largest city of Brisbane and other parts of Queensland state will enter a snap COVID-19 lockdown from Saturday as authorities race to contain an emerging outbreak of the Delta strain.

Two more parts of China report COVID outbreaks

China raced Saturday to contain its worst coronavirus outbreak in months as fresh cases were reported in two more parts of the country including the sprawling megacity of Chongqing.

UN warns hunger is expected to rise in 23 global hotspots

Hunger is expected to rise in 23 global hotspots in the next three months with the highest alerts for "catastrophic" situations in Ethiopia's embattled Tigray region, southern Madagascar, Yemen, South Sudan and northern Nigeria, two U.N. agencies warned Friday.

West African health officials race to vaccinate amid spikes

A resurgence of coronavirus cases in West Africa is hitting the region hard, inundating cemeteries where funeral numbers are rising and hospitals where beds are becoming scarce.

Canada official: 4th virus wave possible if steps not taken

Canada's chief public health officer said Friday that the country could face a fourth wave of COVID-19, driven by the delta variant, by the end of summer if restrictions are eased too quickly and before enough people have been vaccinated.

Florida coronavirus cases jump 50% as surge continues

Florida's coronavirus cases jumped 50% this week, the state Health Department reported Friday, continuing a six-week surge that has seen it responsible for 1 in 5 new infections nationally, becoming the outbreak's epicenter.

China outbreak spreads as WHO sounds alarm on Delta

Mushrooming outbreaks of the highly contagious Delta variant prompted China and Australia to impose stricter COVID-19 restrictions on Saturday as the WHO urged the world to quickly contain the mutation before it turns into something deadlier and draws out the pandemic.

Obstetrician groups recommend COVID vaccine during pregnancy

Two leading obstetricians' groups on Friday recommended COVID-19 shots for all pregnant women, citing concerns over rising cases and low vaccination rates.

Walmart, Disney announce new COVID-19 steps amid Delta surge

Walmart announced Friday it is again requiring some American employees to wear face masks, while Disney mandated non-union US employees get vaccinated.

'Our homeland is burning': Volunteers join Siberia wildfire fight

The father and son stood in the forest burning around them, the elder with a shovel in hand, the younger with a plastic bottle filled with gasoline.

World races to contain Delta variant, US steps up anti-virus plan

Governments around the world on Thursday raced to head off a surge in coronavirus cases driven by the Delta variant, with US President Joe Biden offering new incentives to vaccine holdouts and Israel authorizing booster shots.

World's first re-progammable commercial satellite set to launch

The European Space Agency will on Friday launch the world's first commercial fully re-programmable satellite, paving the way for a new era of more flexible communications.

China virus success under threat as Delta variant spreads

A coronavirus cluster that emerged in the Chinese city of Nanjing has now reached five provinces and Beijing, forcing lockdowns on hundreds of thousands of people as authorities scramble to stamp out the worst outbreak in months.

In Spain, dozens of villages struggle for drinking water

Less than two hours from Madrid, 76-year-old Francisca Benitez has to brush her teeth every night with bottled water because her village has no supply of drinking water.

Japan to widen virus emergency after record spike amid Games

Japan is set to expand the coronavirus state of emergency in Tokyo to neighboring areas and the western city of Osaka on Friday in the wake of a record-breaking surge in infections while the capital hosts the Olympics.

States race to use COVID-19 vaccines before they expire

Hundreds of thousands of COVID-19 vaccine doses have been saved from the trash after U.S. regulators extended their expiration date for a second time, part of a nationwide effort to salvage expiring shots to battle the nation's summer surge in infections.

Florida virus cases soar, hospitals near last summer's peak

Hospital admissions of coronavirus patients continue to soar in Florida with at least two areas in the state surpassing the previous peaks of last summer's surge, prompting calls by local officials for the governor to declare an emergency.

Research looks for possible COVID tie to later Alzheimer's

Researchers are trying to unravel why some COVID-19 survivors suffer "brain fog" and other problems that can last for months, and new findings suggest some worrisome overlaps with Alzheimer's disease.

Washington, DC, is back to requiring masks be worn indoors

In the face of rising regional COVID-19 infection numbers, the nation's capital is returning to mandatory indoor mask requirements, regardless of vaccination status.

Thailand builds another field hospital for virus-hit Bangkok

Health authorities in Thailand raced to set up a large field hospital in a cargo building at one of Bangkok's airports on Thursday as the country reported record numbers of coronavirus cases and deaths.

'Dangerous' heatwave hits Athens again

In Athens' parliament square, the Evzones parade under their red berets and stifling heat.

In effort to curb COVID, Tokyo Olympics collect lots of spit

They spit. They wait. They hope.

Largest US quake in half-century causes Alaska little damage

The largest earthquake in the United States in the last half century produced a lot of shaking but spared Alaska any major damage in a sparsely populated region, officials said Thursday.

New Russian lab briefly knocks space station out of position

A newly arrived Russian science lab briefly knocked the International Space Station out of position Thursday when it accidentally fired its thrusters.

Buffer zones, better regulation needed to prevent agricultural pollution in rivers, streams

Greater buffer zones around bodies of water and more consistent enforcement of water protection regulations are needed to reduce agriculture-based pollution in the Western U.S., a recent review from Oregon State University found.

Differentiating strong antibiotic producers from weaker ones

An untapped trove of desirable drug-like molecules is hidden in the genomes of Streptomyces bacteria—the same bacteria responsible for the first bacterial antibiotics to treat tuberculosis back in the 1940s.

Researchers film human viruses in liquid droplets at near-atomic detail

A pond in summer can reveal more about a fish than a pond in winter. The fish living in icy conditions might remain still enough to study its scales, but to understand how the fish swims and behaves, it needs to freely move in three dimensions. The same holds true for analyzing how biological items, such as viruses, move in the human body, according to a research team led by Deb Kelly, Huck Chair in Molecular Biophysics and professor of biomedical engineering at Penn State, who has used advanced electron microscopy (EM) technology to see how human viruses move in high resolution in a near-native environment. The visualization technique could lead to improved understanding of how vaccine candidates and treatments behave and function as they interact with target cells, Kelly said.

'Digging' into early medieval Europe with big data

During the middle of the sixth century CE a dramatic transformation began in how the people of western Europe buried their dead. The transition from 'furnished' inhumation (those with grave goods to include jewellery, dress accessories, tools and personal items etc) to 'unfurnished' (those without grave goods) was widespread and by the early eighth century an unfurnished inhumation was by far the favoured method of burial.

Why uncertainty makes us change our behavior—even when we shouldn't

People around the world dramatically changed their shopping behaviors at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Vitamin D supplements ineffective treatment for painful IBS symptoms

Vitamin D supplements are not an effective treatment for easing painful symptoms of Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS), a new study from the University of Sheffield reveals.

Pretreatment fatigue can mean worse survival outcomes for patients with cancer

Patients with cancer who reported clinically significant fatigue at the start of their treatment had shorter overall survival times and more side effects than patients without fatigue. Those are the findings of a new analysis of patients who took part in four clinical trials testing treatments for lung cancer or prostate cancer conducted by the SWOG Cancer Research Network, a cancer clinical trials group funded by the National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Black and Latinx conservatives 'upshift' competence to white audiences: study

When communicating in mostly white settings, politically conservative Black and Latinx Americans use words associated with competence more often than their liberal counterparts, distancing themselves from negative racial stereotypes, according to a new study by Yale social psychologist Cydney Dupree.

US subsidies boost the expected profits and development of new oil and gas fields

Researchers at the Stockholm Environment Institute (Somerville and Seattle, U.S.) and Earth Track, Inc. (Cambridge, MA, U.S.) examined 16 subsidies and environmental regulatory exemptions, providing one of the first estimates of how government subsidies will affect investment decisions for new gas fields in the coming decade. Their results are published on 29 July 2021 in the IOP Publishing journal, Environmental Research Letters.

Diabetes patients in high-deductible health plans 28% more likely to skip their medications due to cost: study

For Americans with diabetes, being enrolled in a high-deductible health plan (HDHP) substantially increases the risk of not taking prescribed medications due to cost, according to a new study conducted by researchers at Harvard Medical School that was published today in the Journal of General Internal Medicine. HDHPs, which now account for half of all commercial health insurance plans, require patients to pay for all care out of pocket until a plan's deductible is reached. Only after the deductible is reached (typically $1,300 for an individual and $2,600 for a family) does insurance begin to cover medical costs.

Study: Adding color to your plate may lower risk of cognitive decline

A new study shows that people who eat a diet that includes at least half a serving per day of foods high in flavonoids like strawberries, oranges, peppers and apples may have a 20% lower risk of cognitive decline. The research is published in the July 28, 2021, online issue of Neurology. The study looked at several types of flavonoids, and found that flavones and anthocyanins may have the most protective effect.

Metabolic syndrome linked to increased risk of second stroke, death

People with larger waistlines, high blood pressure and other risk factors that make up metabolic syndrome may be at higher risk for having a second stroke and even dying than people who do not have metabolic syndrome, according to a meta-analysis published in the July 28, 2021, online issue of Neurology.

Spin-sonics: Acoustic wave gets the electrons spinning

Researchers have detected the rolling movement of a nano-acoustic wave predicted by the famous physicist and Nobel prize winner Lord Rayleigh in 1885. This phenomenon can find applications in acoustic quantum technologies or in so-called "phononic" components, which are used to control the propagation of acoustic waves.

Officials in Tokyo alarmed as cases hit record highs

Japanese officials sounded the alarm Thursday after Tokyo reported record-breaking coronavirus cases for two straight days with the Olympics well underway.

Europe on vacation, but vaccinations not taking a break

Europe's famed summer holiday season is in full swing, but efforts to inoculate people against the coronavirus are not taking a break.

UNESCO awards Gabon's Ivindo park World Heritage status

Gabon's Ivindo National Park was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site on Wednesday in recognition of the nation's success in defending biodiversity and challenging climate change.

Delta variant drives virus spread to three China provinces

China Thursday reported small coronavirus outbreaks driven by the Delta variant in three provinces as a cluster linked to an eastern airport spreads despite mass testing and a vaccination drive.