New Scientist Australian Edition 23-May-20

Virtual events Alien oceans on Earth and beyond Join NASA astrobiologist Kevin Hand for a fascinating online lecture exploring the best chances of finding life beyond Earth, at 6pm BST on 4 June. newscientist.com/events Podcasts Weekly The hunt for a fifth force of nature, a mouse-human chimera and using seaweed to fight climate change. Plus swifts and robot dogs. newscientist.com/podcasts Newsletter Health Check Our free newsletter brings you a monthly round-up of all the health and fitness news you need to know. newscientist.com/sign-up/health Video The tale of Homo naledi Lee Berger helped unearth stunning fossils of ancient human relatives in Africa. In this talk, he explains why we need to rewrite our family tree. youtube.com/newscientist Online Covid-19 daily update The day’s coronavirus coverage updated at 6pm BST with news, features…

Dear reader, On 7 January, New Scientist reported for the first time on a mystery disease in Wuhan, China. On 1 February, the virus responsible appeared on our front cover for the first time. “How bad is it likely to get?” we asked. The answer, of course, turned out to be very bad. As New Scientist went to press this week, confirmed global cases of covid-19 stood at 4,834,449, with 319,031 official deaths – and that is with much of the world in lockdown, our skies almost empty of planes. As lockdown measures start to lift, there will be resurgences of the disease (see page 8). No one should bet on anything like the old normal for a long while to come. In today’s magazine, we have a feature (see…

IF YOU feel like your diet has completely gone to pot during lockdown, you probably aren’t alone. Stress and boredom are known risk factors for overeating, and there is emerging evidence that many people, in the UK at least, are struggling to resist the comforts of food. Medical authorities are already worried about a parallel pandemic of mental illness. Maybe they should add weight gain to the list. An unhealthy diet is often blamed on poor choices and a lack of willpower. These can play a part, but new research on appetite tells us that they are far from the whole story. Appetite is conventionally viewed as a single, powerful drive to eat. But it isn’t so simple. Some animals, including humans, appear to actually have five separate appetites that…

THE covid-19 pandemic’s impact on hunger around the world could be worse than when food prices spiked calamitously in 2007 and 2008, a leading food security expert has warned. Unlike during the crisis 13 years ago, when the root of the problem was a scarcity of food, the big issue this time is economic downturns hitting the ability of millions of people to be able to afford food, Martin Cole at the University of Adelaide in Australia told New Scientist. “I think this has the potential to be more significant than the last time around. Not because of [food] availability, but because the big unknown is the extent and longevity of the global recession. That has the potential to push millions of people into extreme poverty and we know that…

BY APRIL this year, around half of the world’s population was under some kind of lockdown. Such restrictions helped slow the spread of the coronavirus. As new cases decline in many places, countries are beginning to ease restrictions. How can we know it is safe to do so? The World Health Organization’s principal recommendation is that, in order to move to a sustainable level of virus transmission, countries should have the spread of the virus under control. In practice, this means seeing a robust decline in the number of cases. The WHO also advises that countries use testing and contact tracing to identify and isolate new cases of covid-19. Without screening and isolation, easing restrictions will inevitably lead to the number of new infections rising again. When New Scientist went…

A NUMBER of studies suggesting smokers are less likely to catch coronavirus have led to headlines saying that smokers are “protected” against covid-19 – but this probably isn’t the case. Cigarettes seem like an unlikely ally against a respiratory virus. Tobacco smoke damages the tiny air sacs in the lungs where oxygen enters the blood, and slows down the hairs lining the body’s air passages that gently waft along mucus. Smokers are affected more severely by colds and flu, and years of smoking can lead to a type of lung failure known as emphysema, which is a form of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. But data emerging from the countries first hit by coronavirus gave doctors pause: the proportion of smokers among those being hospitalised for covid-19 was lower than in the general…