Environmental expert, Professor Chris Gordon has issued a dire warning, forecasting that 2024 will experience higher temperatures compared to previous years as Ghana continues to witness a steady rise in temperatures.
Highlighting the alarming trend of increasing temperatures both globally and locally, Professor Gordon expressed his concern, particularly amidst the ongoing electricity challenges faced by Ghanaian communities.
During an interview on the Citi Breakfast Show on Monday, April 8, 2024, Professor Gordon emphasized the significant impact of rising temperatures on the population.
He referenced a notable incident in January 2021 when Accra recorded an exceptionally high temperature of 39.5 degrees Celsius, well above the usual average.
Such temperature surges pose a serious threat, especially for residents of informal settlements dealing with inadequate housing and poor ventilation.
Professor Gordon emphasized the urgent need for action to address the growing challenges of climate change.
He pointed out a critical flaw in building design, citing inadequate spacing between structures and lack of proper ventilation, making them vulnerable to climatic pressures.
Furthermore, Professor Gordon highlighted the stark contrast between different housing types, with occupants of air-conditioned homes facing fewer challenges than those residing in informal settlements.
“Well, unfortunately, 2024 is going to be hotter than 2023. That is the trend globally and nationally. Every year is hotter than the previous year on average. And I should point out that I just checked the record. In January 2021, Accra had a temperature of 39.5 degrees centigrade, which is almost 57 degrees higher than normal. And it is those spikes which are the problem.”
“Yes, we have made a mess, as I have been saying, for decades now. And we need to solve it. Unfortunately, I was listening to the programme. All the points made by your people in the studio, the people who have phoned in and so forth, they are all valid. The way we design our buildings, we just decimate the space in between buildings. Back in the day, we are supposed to leave 10 feet between your fence wall and the building. ”
“Now people are building one foot away from the fence wall. We have problems with the glass that you’re talking about. Everything that would make us climate-resilient, we are not doing. This is something that we at my institute, the Institute for Environments and Financial Studies, we sort of anticipated about five, six years ago, and we have developed two projects currently, looking at urban heat and health.”
On November 17, 2021, Ghana’s Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta, announced the removal of all tollbooths from public roads nationwide.
This strategic decision received accolades from Ghanaian Scientist Dr. Charles Odame-Ankrah, based in Canada, who commended it as a smart and decisive initiative to address vehicular emissions and combat climate change.
The immediate impact of the tollbooth removal was a noticeable reduction in vehicular traffic, with the promise of long-term benefits for human health across Ghana.
Building on this momentum, Ghana’s Parliament took a historic stand on December 24, 2023, by passing the emissions levy.
Dr. Odame-Ankrah celebrated the passage of the Emissions Levy Act as a pivotal stride in Ghana’s commitment to sustainable climate change efforts.
This recognition followed his earlier proposal, gaining prominence after the United States Patent Office patented his innovative work.
Renowned for his background in air quality sciences, Dr. Odame-Ankrah had advocated for the emissions levy as a groundbreaking alternative to tollbooths, providing a local solution to generate revenue for climate change initiatives.
His visionary insight highlights the Act’s potential not only to reduce emissions but also to propel Ghana toward a more sustainable future, creating thousands of jobs through the establishment of an air quality monitoring network.
Responding to this monumental step, Dr. Odame-Ankrah emphasized the need for immediate action, calling for the removal of all speed ramps nationwide.
Instead, he proposed replacing them with speed cameras to enforce posted speed limits, identifying vehicle owners through their numbers and imposing hefty violation fines.
Dr. Odame-Ankrah argued that this move would further enhance the reduction in emissions, as speed ramps, designed for safety, contribute to vehicle pollution, negatively impacting human health.
He urged the government to allocate a portion of the revenue from the emissions levy to establish a comprehensive air quality monitoring network across Ghana.
This strategic measure, he asserted, is crucial in the fight against climate change, providing policymakers with verified data for informed decision-making to protect the environment and human life.
The passage of the Emissions Levy Act symbolizes Ghana’s Parliament’s profound commitment to proactively combat climate change.
It signifies not only a transformative policy shift but also Ghana’s leadership in embracing innovative solutions endorsed by experts like Dr. Charles Odame-Ankrah.
As Ghana strides boldly toward a greener, more sustainable future, the implementation of a robust air quality monitoring network stands poised to fortify the nation’s resolve in decisively combating climate change and creating well-paying jobs.
Scientists who study space have found a strange burst of radio waves that took a very long time, about 8 billion years, to travel to our planet Earth. The fast radio burst is a really far away and powerful signal that scientists have seen.
Fast radio bursts are really strong and really quick bursts of radio waves that we don’t know where they come from. The first FRB was found in 2007, and since then, scientists have detected many more of these fast flashes from faraway places in space.
The explosion called FRB 20220610A was very short, lasting less than a millisecond. However, during that very brief time, it released as much energy as the sun emits in 30 years. This information comes from a study published in the journal Science on Thursday.
FRBs are very short bursts of bright radio waves that vanish quickly. This makes it hard to study them.
Radio telescopes, like the ASKAP array in Western Australia, have helped astronomers track fast cosmic bursts. Scientists studying space used a special device called ASKAP to find a Fast Radio Burst (FRB) in June 2022 and figure out where it came from.
“Dr(Study coauthor) said that we were able to find out exactly where the burst came from by using ASKAP’s group of (radio) dishes. ” Stuart Ryder, who is a scientist studying space at Macquarie University in Australia, said in a statement. Afterwards, we used a powerful telescope in Chile, called the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope, to look for the galaxy where the signals came from. We found that this galaxy is very old and located at a greater distance compared to other sources of Fast Radio Bursts discovered so far. It is probably situated within a small group of merging galaxies.
The group of researchers found that the burst came from a couple of galaxies that are combining, interacting, and creating new stars. This discovery supports the idea that fast radio bursts may come from magnetars. Magnetars are really powerful things that form when stars explode.
Scientists think that fast radio bursts could help us find out how much stuff there is in the universe by measuring the matter that is missing between galaxies.
Ryan Shannon, a professor at Swinburne University of Technology in Australia, said that when we tally up all the regular stuff in the Universe (like atoms), we see that more than half of it is not where it should be. We believe that the matter that is missing could be in the empty areas between galaxies. However, it might be really hot and spread out, making it impossible to see with regular methods.
Currently, the ways we measure how much the universe weighs don’t match up, which means we might be missing some of the universe.
“According to Shannon, fast radio bursts can detect this charged material. ” Even in very empty space, they are able to detect all the electrons. This helps us determine the amount of matter between the galaxies.
The late Australian astronomer Jean-Pierre Macquart showed in 2020 how we can use fast radio bursts to find missing matter.
J-P found that the further a fast radio burst is, the more spread out gas it shows between the galaxies. Now, people refer to this as the Macquart relation,” Ryder said. Some recent bursts of radio waves were different than what scientists expected them to be. Our measurements show that the Macquart relation is true for more than half of the Universe that we already know about.
Almost 50 quick radio bursts have been located to find where they came from, and about half of them were discovered using ASKAP.
Shannon stated that although the cause behind these powerful bursts of energy is still unknown, the paper confirms that fast radio bursts happen frequently in space. These bursts can help us detect matter in the areas between galaxies and gain a deeper understanding of the Universe’s structure.
Scientists who study space said they believe that new radio telescopes being built in South Africa and Australia will help them find many more fast radio bursts, which are bursts of energy from outer space, even farther away than before.
Shannon said it’s incredible how frequent FRBs are. This shows how good the field can be. You’re not only going to do this for a short time, but you can do it for a very long time. You can create a new map of the universe and use it to find answers to important questions about space.
Scientists say they have discovered a live worm in the brain of an Australian woman. This is the first time such a finding has been made. The worm measures about 8cm or 3 inches.
The “string-like structure” was taken out of the patient’s injured frontal lobe during a surgery in Canberra last year.
It was not what we thought would happen. Dr Hari Priya Bandi, the surgeon in charge, stated that everyone was extremely surprised.
The woman, who is 64 years old, had been experiencing stomach pain, a cough, and night sweats for several months. These symptoms then progressed to forgetfulness and feeling sad all the time.
She went to the hospital in late January 2021, and a scan later showed “an unusual spot in the front right part of her brain”.
However, the reason for her condition was only discovered when Dr. Bandi performed a biopsy in June 2022 using his knife.
Doctors are saying that a red parasite may have been living in her brain for around two months.
The woman, who lived close to a lake in the south-eastern part of New South Wales state, is getting better.
A study in the Emerging Infectious Diseases journal mentioned a case where larvae invaded and grew in a person’s brain. This is the first known case of this happening.
When I removed it, it was joyfully moving.
The neurosurgeon who discovered the worm claimed that when she first touched it, she had just started to touch the portion of the brain that had mysteriously appeared in the images.
Dr. Bandi remarked, “I thought, gosh, that feels funny, you couldn’t see anything more abnormal.”
“And after I could actually feel something, I yanked it out with my tweezers and said, ‘Gosh! And what is that? It’s jogging!”
“Everyone was in disbelief. The worm that we discovered was also enthusiastically and furiously crawling outside the brain, she added.
Then, she asked her coworker Sanjaya Senanayake, who is an expert in infectious diseases, for advice on what they should do.
“Everyone in the operating room was very surprised when the surgeon used a tool called forceps to grab something unusual. It turned out to be a moving, live worm that was 8 centimeters long and light red,” explained Dr.
“Even if you remove the grossness, this is a new illness that has never been recorded in a person before. ”
Scientists are cautioning that this case shows how diseases and infections can easily spread from animals to humans, posing a greater risk.
The Ophidascaris robertsi worm is often found in carpet pythons, which are harmless snakes that live in many parts of Australia.
Scientists believe that the woman probably got the roundworm when she picked up a kind of grass called Warrigal greens near a lake close to her home. Carpet pythons also live in the area.
An Australian parasite expert named Mehrab Hossain wrote in a journal that she thinks a woman became an “accidental host” because she used plants she found for cooking that were contaminated with snake poop and parasite eggs.
DrHossain says that no one had ever reported before that Ophidascaris larvae invade the brain.
The growth of the third-stage larva in humans is important because other studies haven’t shown larva development in animals like sheep, dogs, and cats.
Dr Senanayake, who is a professor of medicine at the Australian National University (ANU), told the BBC that this case serves as a warning.
The ANU team has found that 30 new kinds of infections have emerged in the past 30 years. Three out of every four diseases are zoonotic, which means they are infectious and have passed from animals to humans.
As the number of people grows, we get closer to where animals live and take over their homes. This is a problem that keeps happening. For example, the Nipah virus moves from wild bats to domestic pigs and then to humans. Another example is the Sars or Mers coronavirus, which goes from bats to possibly another animal before infecting humans.
Even though Covid is getting better, it is still important for experts and governments to have good ways to monitor infectious diseases.
A recent study conducted on stone tools unearthed in Vietnam has shed light on the ancient culinary practices in the region.
Traces of spices discovered on a grinding slab and other stone tools indicate that curry was consumed in this area over 2,000 years ago.
The sandstone slab, recovered from the Oc Eo archaeological complex in southern Vietnam, was buried at a depth of 2 meters (6.5 feet) below the surface.
This site, which was once a thriving overseas trading center of the ancient Southeast Asian kingdom called Funan, has provided valuable insights into the historical dietary habits and cultural exchanges of the region.
“Preparing curry involves not only a diverse range of spices but also the use of grinding tools, considerable time, and human effort,” said study author Dr. Hsiao-chun Hung, a senior research fellow in the department of archaeology and natural history at Australian National University in Canberra.
“Remarkably, even individuals residing outside of India nearly 2,000 years ago expressed a strong desire to savor the flavors of curry, as evidenced by their diligent preparations,” Hung said.
The grinding slab was found two meters below the surface.
Analyzing ancient curry
The ingredients the researchers identified are similar to those in curries eaten in Vietnam and other places in Southeast Asia today.
“Nowadays, preparing curry in Vietnam has become much simpler for most families due to the widespread availability of curry powder in supermarkets. However, it is interesting to note that the curry recipe used today has not deviated significantly from the ancient Oc Eo period,” said study coauthor Dr. Khanh Trung Kien Nguyen, an archaeologist at the Center for Archaeology, Southern Institute of Social Sciences in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
According to Nguyen, the research team is enthusiastic about recreating the ancient curry, utilizing the ingredients discovered at the 2,000-year-old site.
The study further highlights that curry consumption dates back around 4,000 years in India, evident from the presence of turmeric, ginger, eggplant, and mango in cooking pots and dental plaque. However, the recent findings from Oc Eo reveal a rich and captivating history of curry production beyond India’s borders.
Hung emphasized that this discovery showcases the long and fascinating journey of curry, not confined solely to India but spreading its influence to Southeast Asia as well.
The ingredients unearthed at Oc Eo, like turmeric, share similarities with Indian curries, while other components, such as coconut milk and galangal, distinctly reflect the culinary preferences of Southeast Asia, making the ancient curry a delightful blend of diverse flavors and cultural influences.
How curry linked cultures
According to Hung, the exact individuals responsible for making curry at the site remain uncertain, but they are believed to have been either migrants from India or local inhabitants in Vietnam influenced by South Asian culture. The discovery of the large grinding stone, measuring 76 centimeters (30 inches) in length and 31 centimeters (12 inches) in width, alongside the remains of stilt houses, suggests that these people may have lived in close proximity to or above water.
Previous DNA analysis of a cemetery in Cambodia, connected to Oc Eo through an ancient canal system, has indicated population movement from South Asia into Southeast Asia during the first to third centuries, providing further evidence of cultural exchange and migration in the region.
The new study concluded that curry recipes arrived in Southeast Asia with South Asian traders and migrants as contact between the regions increased during the early centuries of the first millennium, and it showed how the global spice trade has linked cultures and economic systems.
Most surprising, Hung said, was that some of the nutmeg seeds unearthed during the dig still released a unique aroma.
“Food culture is significant in human history,” Hung added. “When we enjoy delicious food, we often wonder about how its flavors were formed, the origins of the recipes, and when these culinary methods were first practiced.”
The research published in the journal Science Advances on Friday.
In the early universe, when it was only around 1 billion years old, things moved much more slowly than they do now, according to research.
The discovery is consistent with Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity, which postulates that the past cosmos moved far more slowly.
Studying the universe’s earliest moments is like going back in time because of how enormous it is. Scientists can only observe the deepest regions of the universe because faint light from the oldest galaxies is still traversing the universe to reach Earth.
But looking back into the ancient universe, formed by the big bang about 13.8 billion years ago, is an incredibly difficult task. The reach of sophisticated telescopes, which observe in different wavelengths of light, can only extend so far across the cosmos.
So, scientists turned to a phenomenon that can serve as a kind of celestial timetable: a quasar.
A quasar, or hyperactive supermassive black hole at the center of an early galaxy, is so luminous that it outshines our Milky Way galaxy by 100 times. This brightness acts as a cosmic clock that researchers can use to track time across the universe.
Observing quasars over time allowed a team of astronomers to see how the universe seemed to speed up as it aged. The results of the study published Monday in the journal Nature Astronomy.
“Looking back to a time when the universe was just over a billion years old, we see time appearing to flow five times slower,” said lead study author Geraint Lewis, professor of astrophysics at the University of Sydney’s School of Physics and Sydney Institute for Astronomy, in a statement.
“If you were there, in this infant universe, one second would seem like one second — but from our position, more than 12 billion years into the future, that early time appears to drag.”
Research shows that the universe is expanding, and at an accelerated rate, too, which scientists are still trying to understand.
Unlocking what happened during the early days of the universe can help scientists tackle the biggest mysteries about its origin, how it evolved and what the future holds.
“Thanks to Einstein, we know that time and space are intertwined and, since the dawn of time in the singularity of the Big Bang, the universe has been expanding,” Lewis said.
“This expansion of space means that our observations of the early universe should appear to be much slower than time flows today. In this paper, we have established that back to about a billion years after the Big Bang.”
Study coauthor Dr. Brendon Brewer, a senior lecturer in statistics and an astro-statistician at the University of Auckland, conducted an analysis of 190 quasars that were observed over two decades. The observations, captured at different wavelengths of light, seemed to “tick” like clocks.
Astronomers have also looked to supernovas, or the explosions of massive stars, as another type of cosmic clock that allowed them to track the slow-motion movement of the universe to about half of its current age.
While very bright, supernovas become much harder to observe at greater distances from Earth, which means that astronomers needed another source that would be visible deeper in the early universe.
“Where supernovae act like a single flash of light, making them easier to study, quasars are more complex, like an ongoing firework display,” Lewis said. “What we have done is unravel this firework display, showing that quasars, too, can be used as standard markers of time for the early universe.”
The brains of Homo naledi, an animal that does not exist anymore, were much smaller than the brains of humans. In fact, they were only about one-third the size of our brains.
These new findings might change what we know about how people evolved. In the past, only humans with bigger brains like the Homo sapiens and Neanderthals were thought to show these types of behaviors.
The findingsare detailed in three studies that have been accepted for publication in the journal eLife, and preprints of the papers are available on BioRxiv.
Fossils belonging to Homo naledi were first discovered in the Rising Star cave system in South Africa during excavations in 2013. The cave system is part of South Africa’s Cradle of Humankind, a UNESCO World Heritage Site encompassing an area where scientists have found fossils of multiple ancient human ancestor species — remains that are helping to unlock the story of human evolution.
Paleoanthropologist and National Geographic Explorer in Residence Dr. Lee Berger and his team of “underground astronauts” have continued their work in the extensive, dangerous caves to better understand the extinct hominins, or ancient human ancestors.
Now, the research team has discovered the remains of Homo naledi adults and children that were laid to rest in the fetal position within cave depressions and covered with soil. The burials are older than any known Homo sapiens burials by at least 100,000 years.
During the work to identify the cave burials, the scientists also found a number of symbols engraved on the cave walls, which are estimated to be between 241,000 and 335,000 years old, but they want to continue their testing for more precise dating.
The symbols include deeply carved hashtag-like cross-hatchings and other geometric shapes. Similar symbols found in other caves were carved by early Homo sapiens 80,000 years ago and Neanderthals 60,000 years ago and were thought to have been used as a way to record and share information.
“These recent findings suggest intentional burials, the use of symbols, and meaning-making activities by Homo naledi. It seems an inevitable conclusion that in combination they indicate that this small-brained species of ancient human relatives was performing complex practices related to death,” said Berger, lead authoron two of the studies and coauthor on the third, in a statement. “That would mean not only are humans not unique in the development of symbolic practices, but may not have even invented such behaviors.”
Exploring the labyrinth-like Rising Star cave system and its chambers isn’t for the faint of heart.
The team has mapped over 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) of the caves so far, which have a vertical depth of 328 feet (100 meters) and expand for more than 656 feet (200 meters) in length, said the studies’ lead geologist Dr. Tebogo Makhubela, senior lecturer of geology at the University of Johannesburg.
The cave system includes deadly steep drops and tiny passageways like Superman’s Crawl, a tunnel measuring 131 feet (40 meters) long and 9.8 inches (25 centimeters) across, requiring the researchers to belly crawl their way through, said Dr. Keneiloe Molopyane, National Geographic Explorer and lead excavator of Dragon’s Back Expedition (named for one of the cave’s features).
Berger said he had to lose 55 pounds (25 kilograms) to enter the cave’s precarious chambers in 2022.
“It was the most awful and wonderful experience in my life,” Berger said. “I almost died coming out of there, but it was obviously worth it to make some of these discoveries. But, I think an important part of that, though, is that the journey would not be nearly as difficult, I think, for Homo naledi.”
Homo naledi shared some similarities with humans, like walking upright and manipulating objects by hand, but members of the species had smaller heads, a shorter stature, and were thinner and more powerfully built, Berger said.
Homo naledi’s shoulders — which were oriented for better climbing — and teeth shared similarities with earlier hominins like Australopithecus, said Dr. John Hawks, professor of anthropology and paleoanthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The researchers have found many Homo naledi fossils throughout the caves, including the remains of very young infants and aged adults, to help them understand Naledi as a population, Hawks said. And as the team continued deeper into the caves, it became clear that Homo naledi was very familiar with and using broad parts of the cave system.
When Berger and his team announced the discovery of Homo naledi in 2015, they suggested it was possible that the species deliberately disposed of their dead in the cave.
But the idea of a small-brained hominin doing so was considered to be a very controversial hypothesis.
In 2018, the team began to find evidence that supported the idea that Homo naledi intentionally buried their dead. The scientists found ovals dug into cave surfaces resembling holes, and the remains of bodies placed inside in curled positions.
Other burial sites were dug horizontally into slopes, with bodies placed inside, showing that the remains didn’t end up there by other, nondeliberate means, Berger said.
“It’s not a body that died in a depression or hole. It was a whole body that was covered in dirt and then decayed within the grave itself, in part demonstrating that it was buried at the time as a whole flesh entity, but not by some dramatic collapse or being washed in,” Berger said. “We feel that they’ve met the litmus test of human burials or archaic human burials and the most ancient human burials, and therefore describe them as graves or burials by the nonhuman species, Homo naledi.”
And then, the team found an artifact within a burial and discovered carvings on the wall.
Within one of the graves is a tool-shaped rock, buried next to the hand of a Homo naledi adult. Within a passage above the burials, in an antechamber, is a wall covered with rock engravings.
The deeply carved geometric shapes appear on dolomite rock walls that reach 4.5 to 4.7 on Mohs Hardness Scale, which helps researchers assess the scratch resistance of minerals. Dolomite is halfway to a diamond (at the top of the scale) in terms of hardness, which means it would have taken an extreme amount of time and effort to carve into the walls, Berger said.
The team believes that Homo naledi, and not Homo sapiens, are responsible for the carvings because there is no evidence that humans have ever been inside the caves.
Homo naledi was able to see what they were doing inside the caves by using fire. There is evidence spread throughout the caves, including soot, charcoal and burnt bone, to show that they were actively setting fires, Berger said.
Both the burials and the symbols imply that Homo naledi was capable of engaging in meaningful behaviors, said Agustín Fuentes, National Geographic Explorer, on-site biocultural specialist and lead author of the third study.
The meaning of the symbols is unclear, and researchers can’t say whether they were used as a type of language or communication within the species.
“What we can say is that these are intentionally made geometric designs that had meaning for naledi,” Fuentes said. “That means they spent a lot of time and effort and risked their lives to engrave these things in these places where they’re burying bodies.”
The naledi findings suggest that larger brains can’t be the only connection with complex behavior that researchers once assumed related only to humans, Fuentes said.
“The challenge here, then, is that we now know that Homo naledi, in addition to Homo sapiens and Neanderthals and Denisovans and a few others, were engaging in the kind of behavior that we, even just a few decades ago, thought was unique to us,” he said. “That means we need to rethink the timing of fire use, of meaning-making and of the burial of the dead in hominin history.”
Chris Stringer, research leader in human origins at London’s Natural History Museum, said that although he was previously skeptical of claims of behavioral complexity in Homo naledi and its ape-size brain, “the considerable evidence presented now by Berger and colleagues for possible burials and wall engravings cannot be easily dismissed.” Stringer was not involved in the research.
“I would certainly like to see attempts at dating the evidence for the engravings and for the fire, but if these huge claims turn out to be well-founded, they have profound implications for our reconstructions of human evolution,” Stringer said.
The findings raise many questions, including whether the behaviors were already present in an ancient common ancestor that lived much earlier than Homo naledi or humans, and why we have such big brains “if human-like behavioural complexity can be achieved with a brain less than half that size,” Stringer said.
Berger and his colleagues’ work on the discovery of Homo naledi and how it potentially changes the human family tree will be shared in Netflix’s “Unknown: Cave of Bones” on July 17 and in a book coauthored by Berger and Hawks called “Cave of Bones: A True Story of Discovery, Adventure, and Human Origins,” available August 8.
The research team is continuing its work to better understand Homo naledi, including how old the species is, whether it existed closer in time to humans than previously thought, and if there is any DNA preserved in the bones found in the cave system.
A significant trial conducted within the NHS has demonstrated promising results for a blood test capable of detecting over 50 types of cancer, according to researchers.
During the trial, the test accurately identified two-thirds of cancers among 5,000 individuals in England and Wales who had sought medical attention for suspected symptoms. Moreover, in 85% of those positive cases, it successfully identified the primary location of the cancer.
Known as the Galleri test, it searches for specific alterations in genetic code fragments that are released from various types of cancers. Early detection of treatable cancers has the potential to significantly improve survival rates.
The test remains very much a “work in progress”, the researchers, from Oxford University, say, but could increase the number of cancers identified.
Often, patients have symptoms, such as weight loss, with a range of possible causes and require multiple tests and hospital visits.
More than 350 of those in the study – the biggest of its kind in patients with suspected cancer symptoms – were subsequently diagnosed with cancer, using traditional methods such as scans and biopsies. About:
75% of those testing positive on the blood test were found to have cancer
2.5% of those testing negative were found to have cancer
Although not accurate enough to “rule in or rule out cancer”, the test was really useful for patients lead researcher Prof Mark Middleton told BBC News.
“The test was 85% accurate in detecting the source of the cancer – and that can be really helpful because so many times it is not immediately obvious when you have got the patient in front of you what test is needed to see whether their symptoms are down to cancer,” he said.
“With that prediction from the test, we can decide whether to order a scope or a scan and make sure we are giving the right test the first time.”
The NHS has also been using the Galleri test, developed by Californian company Grail, in thousands of people without symptoms, to see if it can detect hidden cancers.
Initial results are expected this year – and, if successful, the NHS in England plans to extend the rollout to a further one million people in 2024 and 2025.
The test is particularly good at finding hard-to-spot cancers such as head and neck, bowel, lung, pancreatic, and throat cancers.
Dr David Crosby, from Cancer Research UK, said: “The findings from the study suggest this test could be used to support GPs to make clinical assessments – but much more research is needed, in a larger trial, to see if it could improve GP assessment and ultimately patient outcomes.”
NHS national director for cancer Prof Peter Johnson said: “This study is the first step in testing a new way to identify cancer as quickly as possible, being pioneered by the NHS – earlier detection of cancer is vital and this test could help us to catch more cancers at an earlier stage and help save thousands of lives.”
Climate change was the main cause of the floods that killed over 600 people in Nigeria this year, according to scientists.
In a study revealed on Wednesday, scientists claim that the floods that affected Nigeria, but also Niger, Chad, and neighbouring countries were directly linked to human activity.
According to the experts the floods between June and October this year displaced more than 1.4 million people and were 80 times likelier to occur because of human activity.
The report comes as COP27 climate talks continue in Egypt’s Sharm el-Sheikh, where developing nations are demanding rich polluters pay for climate-change-linked calamities.
Africa is home to some of the countries least responsible for carbon emissions but hardest hit by weather extremes, with the Horn of Africa currently in the grips of a severe drought.
Blackholes may still be one of the great mysteries of space, but at least scientists now know what they sound like.
On Sunday, NASA tweeted a 34-second audio clip featuring the sound of a black hole located 200 million light-years away.
“The misconception that there is no sound inspace originates because most space is a ~vacuum, providing no way for sound waves to travel,” the agency said in a post on its NASA Exoplanets Twitter page.
“A galaxy cluster has so much gas that we’ve picked up actual sound,” they wrote. “Here it’s amplified, and mixed with other data, to hear a black hole!”
The post quickly went viral, garnering more than 429,000 likes and 101,000 retweets on the platform.
Many on social media shared their differing opinions on the sound featured in the clip, which many described as being eery.
“I’m not religious, but I’m starting to think that those souls sent to Hell actually end up in a black hole,” wrote one user. “Sound ON to be horrified.”
Added another: “Everyone keeps talking about how scary this sounds but genuinely to me it just sounds like the song it makes. Everything vibrates and has a hum to it, she’s just singing to us.”
According to NASA, the black hole is located at the center of the Perseus galaxy, located 240 million light-years from Earth.
Scientists have known since 2003 that the area is filled with sound after pressure waves sent out by the black hole “caused ripples in the cluster’s hot gas that could be translated into a note,” the agency said in a news release from May.
But the note was one that the human ear can’t pick up, NASA explained, which is why they used technology to interpret the sound.
