A comprehensive report from Oxford University’s Reuters Institute, the number of individuals displaying a significant interest in the news has experienced a notable decline over the past six years.
The study reveals that 48% of people worldwide are currently categorized as very or extremely interested in the news, representing a decline from the 63% recorded in 2017.
A concerning trend identified in the report is that more than a third of individuals globally, approximately 36%, admit to actively avoiding the news on occasion or even frequently.
This avoidance behavior highlights a growing disengagement from news consumption among a significant portion of the population.
The authors of the institute’s report said there was evidence that audiences “continue to selectively avoid important stories such as the war in Ukraine and the cost-of-living crisis as they cut back on depressing news and look to protect their mental health”.
The Digital News Report 2023 also concluded that traditional TV and print news media are continuing to decline, while “online consumers are accessing news less frequently than in the past and are also becoming less interested”.
Four in 10 people (40%) say they trust most news most of the time, down two percentage points compared with last year.
The research also reported that more than half (56%) of those surveyed worry about identifying what news is real and fake online – up two percentage points.
Rise of TikTok
The most important social media platform for news is still Facebook, although it is in long-term decline, with the number accessing it each week for news dropping from 42% to 28% over the past seven years.
Facebook has also downgraded news. It says less than 3% of its news feed these days is traditional news stories. The tweaking of the algorithm over recent years has been catastrophic for some organisations that relied on its traffic.
TikTok and Instagram have both seen increases in use. Instagram is now a source of news for 14% of people, with TikTok on 6%.
But the figures are much higher for young users. One in five (20%) 18 to 24-year-olds get news from TikTok, up from 15% last year. The report says the platform “is the fastest growing social network in our survey”.
However, it is not necessarily news from traditional news providers. TikTok users are more likely to get news on the platform from celebrities, influencers or ordinary creators than mainstream news outlets or journalists.
Reuters Institute director Rasmus Neilsen said: “Younger generations increasingly eschew direct discovery for all but the most appealing brands.
“They have little interest in many conventional news offers oriented towards older generations’ habits, interests, and values, and instead embrace the more personality-based, participatory, and personalised options offered by social media, often looking beyond legacy platforms to new entrants.”
Liking, sharing and commenting about news on open social media platforms is also in decline.
However, while the sharing of articles and engagement time may have dropped, it doesn’t mean such sites are being deserted.
Twitter made headlines after it was bought by Elon Musk, but the number of people using the site each week appears to have has barely changed. There is, Reuters said, no evidence of a mass movement to rivals such as Mastodon.
The University of Oxford’s Exeter College has honored the late former president John Agyekum Kufuor by exhibiting two pieces of art with his likeness.
The two commissioned works of art—a photographic portrait and an oil painting – will decorate the hall of an 18th century building, Cohen Quad, and the medieval 1600s dining hall of the college.
The art works by the British photographer Fran Monks and the Tunisian-Belgian oil painter Naima Aouni were inaugurated and unveiled by the historian and Rector of the College, Sir Rick Trainor last Tuesday.
The event was attended by a galaxy of patrons that included the Asantehene, Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, and his wife Lady Julia, as well as Lord Boateng of the British House of Lords, Ghana’s High Commissioner to the UK, Papa Owusu-Ankomah, Ghanaian and other African Ambassadors in Europe and family members of President Kufuor.
Sir Trainor said the over 700-year college and the university was proud of Mr Kufuor as one of its best-known alumni.
He said the former President had also joined the founders and distinguished individuals through the hanging of his portraits.
The Rector said Mr Kufuor had become a rare individual to have received such honours after his Honorary Fellowship under Rector Frances Cairncross.
He also praised the commissioned planning team that over the last two years worked on the event.
The team included the Director of Development and Alumni Relations at the College, Yvonne Rainy; Historian and Mr Kufuor’s biographer, Ivor Agyeman-Duah, and the Alumni Relations and Events Officer, Amelia Crosse.
Humility
Later at a Fidelity Bank-hosted dinner, the Asantehene said Mr Kufuor humbled himself to the service of the country as President and that the pride Ghanaians had of him and the recognition he had received at the college, the university and around the world was squarely to do with his humility.
“He never changed before he became president, never changed during his presidency and remains the same after his presidency, “he stated.
Gratitude
Former President Kufuor said he never expected such an honour over half a century after he left Oxford where he had met his wife who, he regretted, could not be present because of ill health.
Placement value
Mr Agyeman-Duah, whose book, “Art and the Power of Goodness- A Collection of John Agyekum Kufuor,” with a foreword by former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, was later autographed by former President Kufuor for the Asantehene and other VIPs of the day, explained that the significance of “art in the University’s ancient traditions dated to its founding .
He said the commissioning of Mr Kufuor’s portraits in the almost sacred dining hall of the college amid the pantheon of intellectual gods of 700 years ago showed its placement value on the alumnus, Kufuor.
“For centuries to come, that portrait will resonate among the million who will see it,” he added.
Dr. Nana Yaw Peprah, acting program manager for theGhana Health Service‘s (GHS) National Malaria Elimination Program, has refuted allegations that industry actors purposefully launched the new R21 malaria vaccine a few days after the new mosquito strain was identified.
The vaccine was developed by Oxford Universityand manufactured by the Serum Institute of India.
The Food and Drugs Authority (FDA) disclosed that it has given market authorisation to the new malaria vaccine – R21.
The FDA says after a thorough evaluation of the quality, efficacy, and safety of the vaccine, they realized that the benefits far outweigh the risks.
A similar malaria vaccine RTS, S which was the world’s first malaria vaccine was also developed in 2019 for children between 6 months upwards.
A new strain of mosquito, Anopheles stephensi, was discovered in parts of the capital Accra-Tuba and Dansoman, a few days after the announcement of the approval of a malaria vaccine -R21, for use in Ghana.
Some Ghanaians argued that the new vaccine was introduced in an attempt to compel Ghanaians to accept the new vaccine.
But reacting to this on the Citi Breakfast Show with Bernard Avle, Dr. Peprah explained, “We can’t conclude that it’s about money. It’s difficult, but it wasn’t a deliberate attempt to bring these two together [RTS,S and R21-vaccines]. It’s just happened that we have identified a strain of mosquito which we think can only be contained when all stakeholders come on board. They started working on the R21 vaccine 30 years ago, so it’s not like a new thing that we are trying to put together with the mosquito new species. So there is no evil thought with this”.
He said industry players are excited about vaccines due to the important roles they play in the fight against malaria.
“We are excited about vaccines because we believe that they are important in this fight, vaccines are part of the interventions we are using. In fact, we are using it in high-burden areas. Whether it’s RTS,S or R21 vaccine, it all depends on the approval processes. As at when it’s available to be used, we will use it, we are really excited about it [R21-vaccine]. It’s early days yet, we have to wait for clinical trials because that is when donors come in,” he asserted.
Acting Programme Manager, National Malaria Elimination Programme of Ghana Health Service disclosed that the country was able to discover the new breed of mosquito through surveillance.
“The new breed adapts easily, it’s very dynamic, it’s able to live in both clean and dirty waters. That makes it a very deadly one in that it can increase in population. It has resistance issues unlike the ones we are used to, which is why it has become an issue. We know that mosquito flies, and have been found in Africa, it’s moving all around the place, and until you put surveillance, you may not identify it even if it exists. We were able to pick it up through surveillance,” he underscored.
He said despite the new breed of mosquito, they are confident of containing malaria, calling on the public to be involved to help contain the new breed.
“We are calling on the communities to ensure that we are able to contain the Anopheles stephensi. We are doing a lot to contain it. We have zero confidence of containing malaria,” he stated.
April 25 is slated for the celebration of Malaria Day at the International Conference Center dubbed ‘zero malaria’.
A new malaria vaccine created by researchers at Oxford University has been approved by Nigeria.
The move comes days after Ghana became the first country in the world to approve the (R21) vaccine.
Mojisola Adeyeye, the director-general of Nigeria’s National Agency for Food and Drug Administration, stated that the vaccine would be used to prevent malaria in children between the ages of five months and three years, who are the most vulnerable population.
The approval is rare because it occurs before the vaccine’s final stage trial results, which are anticipated to show an effectiveness of 80%, are released.
Nigeria has the highest number of malaria deaths worldwide.
The disease kills more than 6,000 people around the world every year – many of them children in Sub-Saharan Africa.
According to Dr. Delese Darko, the FDA’s Chief Executive Officer, Ghana was selected by the manufacturers of the malaria vaccine because the country has a Food and Drugs Authority(FDA) that is a Maturity Level 3 National Regulatory Authority for the regulation of pharmaceuticals and vaccines.
She further stated that the FDA had extensive competencies in evaluating the quality of clinical and non-clinical parts of a product.
“We are also a regional centre of regulatory excellence with clinical trial oversights,” she said at a press conference in Accra on Thursday, April 13.
Ghana became the first country in the world on Thursday, April 13 to approve a new malaria vaccine from Oxford University.
The FDA Boss said “On March 28 this year, the FDA granted approval to R21 malaria vaccine manufactured by the Serum Institute of India which was submitted through the local agent, DEK Pharmaceuticals Ghana.
“The approval was granted following extensive series of reviews and peer reviews of the clinical, non-clinical, and quality parts of the vaccine development procedure.
“The vaccine has been approved for use for the immunization of children between five months to thirty-six months.
“It is a colourless to mild turbid solution for injection, and it is supposed to be stored in a refrigerator and has a shelf life of twenty-four months. Our evaluation indicated that the vaccine has the potential to reduce infant mortality caused by malaria in Africa.”
“Ghana was chosen because the FDA is a level three maturity national regulatory authority for medicines and vaccines and regulatory oversights and has extensive competencies in evaluating the quality of clinical and non-clinical parts of a product. We are also a regional centre of regulatory excellence with clinical trial oversights.”
Ghana has become the first country to approve a malaria vaccine from the Oxford University.
The keenly-watched malaria vaccine from Oxford University secured its first approval, in Ghana, as the African country ramps up efforts to combat the mosquito-borne disease that kills a child every minute.
The effort is one of several focused on addressing the disease that kills over 600,000 each year, most of them children in Africa.
The complicated structure and lifecycle of the malaria parasite has long stymied efforts to develop vaccines.
After decades of work, the first malaria vaccine, Mosquirix from British drugmaker GSK, was last year endorsed by the World Health Organization (WHO), but a lack of funding and commercial potential has thwarted the company’s capacity to produce as many doses as needed.
The Oxford vaccine, which has secured regulatory approval in the age group at highest risk of death from malaria – children aged 5 months to 36 months – has a manufacturing advantage thanks to a deal with Serum Institute of India to produce up to 200 million doses annually.
In contrast, GSK has committed to produce up to 15 million doses of Mosquirix every year through 2028, well under the roughly 100 million doses a year of the four-dose vaccine the WHO says is needed long-term to cover around 25 million children.
Mid-stage data from the Oxford vaccine trial involving more than 400 young children was published in a medical journal in September.
Vaccine effectiveness was 80% in the group that received a higher dose of the immune-boosting adjuvant component of the vaccine, and 70% in the lower-dose adjuvant group, at 12 months following the fourth dose. The doses were administered ahead of the peak malaria season in Burkina Faso.
Data from an ongoing phase III clinical trial in Burkina Faso, Kenya, Mali and Tanzania that has enrolled 4,800 children is expected to be published in a medical journal in the coming months.
However, late-stage data – which suggests a similar vaccine performance as in the phase II trial – has been shared with regulatory authorities over the last six months, Oxford scientist Adrian Hill said.
Childhood vaccines in Africa are typically paid for by international organisations such as Gavi and UNICEF after they have been backed by the World Health Organisation (WHO).
This is the first time a major vaccine has been approved first in an African country, before rich nations, Hill added, noting that it was unusual that a regulatory authority in Africa had reviewed the data quicker than the WHO.
“Particularly since COVID, African regulators have been taking a much more proactive stance, they’ve been saying…we don’t want to be last in the queue.”
Florence Otedola, better known as DJ Cuppy, is a Nigerian music producer and singer. She donated £100,000 ($125,000) to the Africa Oxford Initiative (AfOx) to help African graduate students at the University of Oxford in the UK.
According to a statement released by Oxford University on Monday, DJ Cuppy recently earned a master’s degree in African studies there. The university also said that the Cuppy Fund would help African postgraduate students “to meet unexpected and urgent financial needs and undertake activities that will ensure the pursuit of excellence in their graduate studies.”
The 30-year-old internationally successful DJ said she witnessed “variances in university life experiences” among African students studying at Oxford during her time at the university.
“The fundamental role that the Cuppy Fund will play is to narrow resource gaps for those who need it the most so they can fully commit to pursuing the education they deserve,” she said in the release.
Cuppy is the daughter of Femi Otedola, one of Nigeria’s wealthiest oil magnates. She has previously made philanthropic contributions to organizations advocating for child protection and education for girls, including people with disabilities.
DJ Cuppy is one of Africa’s best-known performers, who had fueled the rise of a new breed of highly successful female DJs from a male-dominated DJ scene in her home country. She has also performed internationally at the MTV Africa Music Awards.
In 2020, she presented Apple Music’s first radio show dedicated to the popular Afrobeats. Her debut album “Original Cuppy” released later that year, featured Grammy-winning singer Wyclef Jean and Julian Marley, son of Reggae legend Bob Marley.
The Natural History Museum in London and Cambridge University have stated their willingness to work with Zimbabwe to return human remains taken during the colonial era.
The new statements come after a Zimbabwean delegation met with officials from both institutions.
Zimbabweans are looking for the skulls of late-nineteenth-century anti-colonial heroes, which they believe are in the United Kingdom.
But these have not yet been found.
The authorities in Zimbabwe have long suspected that the remains of some of the leaders of an uprising against British rule in the 1890s – known as the First Chimurenga – were taken to the UK as trophies.
The most significant among them was a woman who became known as Mbuya Nehanda. She was executed in what is now the capital, Harare, and is revered as a national heroine.
In doing a search of its archive, the Natural History Museum did uncover 11 remains “that appear to be originally from Zimbabwe” – but its records do not connect them with Nehanda. These include three skulls taken in 1893, thought to be from Zimbabwe’s second city, Bulawayo, as well as remains uncovered in mineshafts and archaeological digs and later donated.
Cambridge University’s Duckworth Laboratory has not been so specific, simply saying it has “a small number of human remains from Zimbabwe”, but in a statement sent to the BBC, it said it had not identified any of these as belonging to First Chimurenga figures.
The Natural History Museum, with 25,000 human remains, and the Duckworth Laboratory, with 18,000, have some of the largest such archives in the world.
These have come from a variety of sources including archaeological excavations of ancient sites, but for many, the exact origins have been obscured by time.
During the colonial era, body parts were sometimes removed from battlefields or dug up from graves either as trophies or for research into a now-discredited scientific field.
In the 19th Century, phrenology, which investigated the idea that human characteristics could be determined by the shape of the skull, was very popular in the UK and other parts of Europe. Phrenological societies would collect skulls to help develop the theory, which for some extended to racial classification.
Some of the archives that now exist in the UK are amalgamations of what had been amassed by defunct phrenological societies as well as private collectors.
Zimbabwe’s government believes that somehow the skulls of the country’s heroes ended up in the archives of a British museum.
Chief among them were spiritual leaders, including Charwe Nyakasikana, who became known as Mbuya (Grandmother) Nehanda as she was the medium of the revered ancestral spirit Nehanda. She was arrested after being accused of murdering a British official.
Nehanda was then hanged and her body decapitated, it is believed. What happened next is not clear, but in recent years, Zimbabwean officials have made several public statements saying it ended up in the Natural History Museum.
With a death cry of “my bones will surely rise”, Nehanda became an increasingly potent symbol for those fighting against white-minority rule in what was then known as Rhodesia in the late 1960s.
Zimbabwe gained independence in 1980.
IMAGE SOURCE, SHUTTERSTOCK Image caption, The Mbuya Nehanda statue in Harare was put up in 2021
A three-meter statue of Nehanda now stands over a major road in the centre of Harare. At its unveiling in 2021, President Emmerson Mnangagwapledged to continue to call for the return of her skull and others from the Natural History Museum.
For Zimbabweans, the removal of the head “means that you have literally punished the person beyond the grave”, Godfrey Mahachi, who led the delegation to the UK, told the BBC in 2020 when the visit was being planned.
“If the head is separated, that means that the spirit of that person will forever linger and never settle.”
Despite not finding what the Zimbabwean delegation was looking for, both the Natural History Museum and Cambridge University say they are committed to working with the Zimbabwean government to repatriate what was found.
As part of its policy of repatriation, earlier this year, the Natural History Museum returned ancestral Moriori and Maori remains.
In a press statement following a recent cabinet meeting, Zimbabwe’s government said that the delegation that went to the UK was satisfied that “there are indeed human remains of Zimbabwean origin in the UK”.
“Government will spare no effort to ensure the repatriation of our ancestors,” it added.
The Zimbabwean delegation also held talks with the British Museum, Oxford University’s Pitt Rivers Museum, the University of Manchester Museum, and the UK’s National Archives. But no details are given about what was discussed.
We look at how the Southampton-born banker made his way to the top job in Downing Street.
Just seven weeks ago, Rishi Sunakwas licking his wounds after losing the Tory leadership race to Liz Truss.
Now, he has become the youngest prime minister of the modern era.
As he settles into his tenure in Number 10 as the third PM of 2022, let’s look back at how he made it to the top job.
First-class Oxford degree
Born in 1980 in Southampton, he is the eldest of three children to his parents of Punjabi descent.
Mr Sunak’s father was a family doctor and his mother ran a pharmacy, where he helped her with the books.
He attended England’s oldest public school, Winchester College, where he became the first Indian-origin head boy and was editor of the school paper.
He has since said his experience at the boarding school was “intellectually transforming” and put him “on a different trajectory”.
Mr Sunak went on to study philosophy, politics and economics at Lincoln College at Oxford University, where he obtained a first-class degree.
After completing an MBA at Stanford University, where he met his future wife, Akshata Murthy, Mr Sunak worked for the investment bank Goldman Sachs as an analyst.
He was said to have already had job offers from investment banks under his belt while still in his second year at Oxford.
He moved to work for hedge funds in 2006 when he joined TCI, known as a very aggressive fund, and left three years later to cofound a new hedge fund.
Mr Sunak then turned his attention to politics.
Replacing a Tory grandee
In 2014, Mr Sunak was selected as the Conservative Party candidate in the Yorkshire seat of Richmond – previously held by former Tory leader William Hague – before the following year’s general election.
Nicknamed the “maharajah of the Yorkshire Dales”, he recalled being introduced as “the new William Hague” to his constituents after winningthe ballot, to which a Yorkshire farmer replied: “Ah yes Haguey!
“Good bloke. I like him. Bit pale, though. This one’s got a nice tan.”
Soon after his entry into the Commons – where, as a Hindu, he took his oath on the Bhagavad Gita – the first big political fight of his career came along in Brexit.
Mr Sunak supported leaving the EU, claiming the UK would be “freer, fairer and more prosperous” outside the bloc.
His side won, and he bided his time on the backbenches, supporting Theresa May’s negotiations and writing papers on the benefits of freeports, before being appointed to government in January 2018 as a junior minister at the housing ministry.
After Mrs May’s demise, he joined with colleagues Oliver Dowden and Robert Jenrick to write an article in The Telegraph, backing Boris Johnson as the only person who could “save” the Tory party.
His support paid off, as when Mr Johnson became prime minister in July 2019, Mr Sunak secured a promotion to become chief secretary to the Treasury, becoming the right-hand man to Mr Javid as chancellor.
Sunak won praise throughout the pandemic for rapidly introducing support schemes worth billions of pounds to keep jobs and businesses afloat during 18 months of lockdowns.
The likes of furlough and the “Eat Out to Help Out” scheme led to “dishy Rishi” becoming a household name, and a popular one with the public.
At the height of this popularity, he was seen by many Tory MPs as the sure-fire favourite to succeed Mr Johnson when the time came.
Image:The then-chancellor’s Eat Out to Help Out plan made him a household name.
But he seemed to fall from grace as quickly as he rose to fame.
Mr Sunak introduced a number of policies that went down badly with Tory MPs, especially the rise in national insurance to fund more money for the NHS and social care.
He was also fined for attending the prime minister’s birthday party during lockdown in 2020, compromising his ability to separate himself from the partygate scandal.
But it was revelations about his wife that really damaged his standing with the public.
Wife’s non-dom status damages leadership hopes
Ms Murty is a multimillionaire and the daughter of billionaire NR Narayana Murthy, the co-founder of the Indian technology giant Infosys.
In April, it was revealed she held non-dom status, meaning she did not have to pay UK tax on her sizeable international income, and it led to an uproar.
Image:Akshata Murthy’s tax affairs brought his position as chancellor into question.
She later confirmed she would begin to pay tax on her international earnings as it had “become clear that many do not feel [the non-dom status] is compatible with my husband’s role as chancellor”.
The row led to opposition parties highlighting his family’s wealth, with Mr Sunak facingaccusations that his personal circumstances made him an unsuitable candidate to take over and tackle the cost of living crisis.
Although he remained as chancellor, many wrote off his chances of becoming the next Tory leader.
But his resignation in July sparked a ministerial exodus and Mr Johnson’s resignation, paving the way for his first attempt at Downing Street.
In the ensuing leadership race, Mr Sunak came out on top in each of the five parliamentary rounds of the contest, making it to the final two along with Ms Truss.
But as the campaign hit its stride and widened to the party membership, Mr Sunak found himself transformed from favourite to underdog.
While he warned of “tough choices ahead” to tackle record levels of national debt incurred during the pandemic, Ms Truss promised tax cuts as a priority.
He accused his competitor of “fairy-tale” economics and peddling “something-for-nothing” plans that even Jeremy Corbyn would baulk at.
But Ms Truss doubled down, landing blows on Mr Sunak for putting taxes up to the highest level in 70 years.
Staying in the background
She went on to win the party leadership after securing 57% of valid votes cast, compared to 43% for Mr Sunak.
While Ms Truss embarked on a path of economic turmoil thanks to her tax-slashing mini-budget, the former chancellor kept a low profile, only appearing in the Commons for a few backbench debates and staying away from the cameras.
And after her resignation following a historically short tenure, all eyes were back on Mr Sunak as the candidate to bring back stability to the markets and, perhaps, the party.
He announced he was running to replace Ms Truss on Twitter three days later, having already reached the 100+ nominations needed to get a place on the ballot.
But that was all we saw of the favourite for PM as he again kept out of the spotlight, despite going for the highest-profile job in the land.
The United Kingdom is a great country but we face a profound economic crisis.
That’s why I am standing to be Leader of the Conservative Party and your next Prime Minister.
Following remarks on the status of the nation’s COVID-19 fight in March, President Joe Biden is given his second COVID-19 booster shot from Pfizer by a member of the White House Medical Unit.
File
Image by Rod Lamkey/UPI | Free Image
21 October (UPI)
Pharmaceutical behemoth Pfizer announced on Friday that it would charge up to $130 per dose for its COVID-19 vaccinations, citing the vaccine’s “value.”
According to NBC News and CNN, the vaccine, which is currently free, would cost between $110 and $130 per dose when the U.S. government stops covering the shots at the beginning of 2023.
The cost comes even after Pfizer sold $36.7 billion of its COVID-19 vaccines in 2021, contributing to 45% of the company’s revenue that year.
Oxfam said that drug companies such as Moderna and Pfizer have profited from the monopolies their companies currently hold in vaccines, treatments, tests and personal protective equipment largely coming from public funding.
“Pharmaceutical giants are making over $1,000 a second in profit from vaccines alone and they are charging governments up to 24 times more than it would cost to produce vaccines on a generic basis,” Oxfam said, citing research the nonprofit previously conducted.
Pfizer, which has been accused of using “dirty tactics” to boost profits including funding misinformation about the Oxford University/AstraZeneca vaccine, has sold the most vaccines in the world but has delivered the least to low-income countries as a proportion of total doses sold.
Scientists have supercharged one of Earth’s most powerful telescopes with new technology that will reveal how our galaxy formed in unprecedented detail.
The William Herschel Telescope (WHT) in La Palma, Spain will be able to survey 1,000 stars per hour until it has catalogued a total of five million.
A super-fast mapping device linked up to WHT will analyse the make-up of each star and the speed at which it travels.
It will show how our Milky Way galaxy was built up over billions of years.
Prof Gavin Dalton of Oxford University has spent more than a decade developing the instrument, known as ‘Weave’.
He told me that he was “beyond excited” that it is ready to go.
“It’s a fantastic achievement from a lot of people to make this happen and it’s great to have it working,” he said. “The next step is the new adventure, it’s brilliant!”
BBC Science Correspondent Pallab Ghosh meets the scientists on a mission to discover where the stars we see in the night sky came from
Image source, Gavin DaltonImage caption, Weave’s nimble robotic fingers position a thousand fibre optics precisely, each one pointed at a star
Weave has been installed on the WHT, which sits high on a mountain top on the Spanish Canary Island of La Palma. The name stands for WHT Enhanced Area Velocity Explorer – and that’s exactly what it does.
It has 80,000 separate parts and is a miracle of engineering.
For each patch of sky the WHT is pointed at, astronomers identify the positions of a thousand stars. Weave’s nimble robotic fingers then carefully place a fibre-optic – a light-transmitting tube – precisely on each location on a plate, pointing towards its corresponding star.
These fibres are in effect tiny telescopes. Each one captures light from a single star and channels it to another instrument. This then splits it into a rainbow spectrum, which contains the secrets of the star’s origin and history.
All this is completed in just one hour. While this is going on, fibre optics for the next thousand stars are positioned on the reverse side of the plate, which flips over to analyse the next set of targets once the previous survey has been completed.
Image source, Science Photo LibraryImage caption, Artwork: The Milky Way is surrounded by “dwarf” satellite galaxies
Our galaxy is a dense spiral swirl of up to 400 billion stars. But it started out as a relatively small collection of stars.
It grew from successive mergers with other small galaxies over billions of years. As well as the addition of stars from the new galaxies joining ours, each merger stirs things up enough to lead to brand new star formation.
Weave is able to calculate the speed, direction, age and composition of each star it observes, essentially creating a motion picture of stars moving in the Milky Way. According to Prof Dalton, by extrapolating backwards, it will be possible to reconstruct the entire formation of the Milky Way in detail never seen before.
“We’ll be able to trace the galaxies that have been absorbed as the Milky Way has been built up over cosmic time – and see how each absorption triggers new star formation,” he said.
Dr Marc Balcells, who is in overall charge of the WHT told BBC News that he believed that Weave would lead to a big shift in our understanding of how galaxies are made.
”We have been hearing for decades that we are in a golden era of astronomy – but what the future awaits is a lot more important.
“Weave is going to be answering questions that astronomers have been trying to be answer for decades such as how many pieces come together to make a big galaxy and how many galaxies were united to make the Milky Way?”
Image source, BBC NewsImage caption, Instrumentation specialist Dr Cecilia Farina says that Weave might discover completely unexpected phenomenon
Dr Cecilia Farina, an instrumentation specialist on the project, said she believed that Weave would make astronomical history.
“There are an enormous amount of things that we are going to discover that we had not expected to find,” she said. “Because the Universe is full of surprises.”
Last week’s record-breaking heatwave in the UK was made at least 10 times more likely by climate change, according to a new study.
Hundreds of people are expected to have died during the scorching weather, though official figures are yet to emerge, the rapid analysis by the World Weather Attribution group (WWA)said.
There have been estimates of more than 840 extra deaths in England and Wales on 18 and 19 July.
The extreme weather caused widespread disruption to transport networks and hundreds of fires, including devastating blazes that destroyed homes.
A new UK record temperature of 40.3C was set in Coningsby, Lincolnshire, on 19 July – 1.6C hotter than the previous mark set just three years ago.
The impacts of heatwaves are often “very unequally distributed across demographics”, with poorer neighborhoods frequently lacking green space, shade, and water, said Emmanuel Raju, from the Copenhagen Centre for Disaster Research.
The heatwave swept across much of Europe this month.
But the group chose the UK for their latest analysis because the country is “particularly unaccustomed to very high temperatures as the ones that we have seen last week,” added Friederike Otto, senior climate science lecturer at Imperial College London.
Of the places the group analyzed, temperatures recorded at two of them would have been “statistically impossible” if the world hadn’t warmed by about 1.2C since the late 1800s, the paper said.
The international network is at the forefront of the science of quickly quantifying the role of climate change in recent extreme weather events.
The 21 researchers involved in this study compared the global climate as it is today, after 1.2C of warming, with an analysis of historical weather records.
While the computer simulations suggest climate change had increased temperatures in the heatwave by 2C, analysis of historical records indicated it would be around 4C cooler in pre-industrial times before global warming started to drive up temperatures.
The 10-fold increase in the chances of such extreme heat hitting the UK due to climate change is a “conservative estimate”, because “extreme temperatures” have climbed more than climate models estimate, the authors said.
This also suggests the consequences of the climate crisis for heatwaves could be even worse than previously thought.
“There must be something in the climate system that has a stronger influence here… that is just not captured in the models” for Western Europe yet, Dr. Otto explained.
Two years ago, Met Office scientists found the chance of seeing 40C in the UK was one in 100 in any given year, up from one in 1,000 in an unchanged climate.
“It’s been sobering to see such an event happen so soon after that study, to see the raw data coming back from our weather stations,” said Fraser Lott, attribution scientist at the Met Office Hadley Centre, who also worked on the paper.
Professor Tim Palmer, Royal Society Research Professor at Oxford University, said the group should have included error margins on their estimates, given the challenges of current climate models.
Final clinical trials for a coronavirus vaccine, developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University, have been put on hold after a participant had a suspected adverse reaction in the UK.
AstraZeneca described it as a “routine” pause in the case of “an unexplained illness”.
The outcome of vaccine trials is being closely watched around the world.
The AstraZeneca-Oxford University vaccine is seen as a strong contender among dozens being developed globally.
Hopes have been high that the vaccine might be one of the first to come on the market, following successful phase 1 and 2 testing.
Its move to Phase 3 testing in recent weeks has involved some 30,000 participants in the US as well as in the UK, Brazil and South Africa. Phase 3 trials in vaccines often involve thousands of participants and can last several years.
The New York Times is reporting a volunteer in the UK trial has been diagnosed with transverse myelitis, an inflammatory syndrome that affects the spinal cord and can be caused by viral infections.
However, the cause of the illness has not been confirmed and an independent investigation will now work out if there was any link to the vaccine.
