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An interactive illustration offers the chance to explore every gravitational-wave event detected so far. These ripples in spacetime occur when two massive celestial bodies such as black holes collide. The chart, which uses LIGO and Virgo collaboration data, compares 50 cosmic smash-ups across time and includes audio for some of the mergers.
The number of western monarch butterflies counted in a survey on the California coast this winter — down from almost 30,000 last year and more than 1.2 million in the first count in 1997. (Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation blog | 8 min read)
All eyes are on Israel, which has vaccinated roughly one-quarter of its population, for the first real-world evidence of a COVID vaccine’s efficacy. A preliminary analysis of people older than 60 who received the Pfizer–BioNTech vaccine found that it cut the chances of testing positive for the virus by a third at 2 weeks after the first injection, compared with a matched group who did not receive the jab. More conclusive results will come after people receive their second shot. “We were happy to see this preliminary result that suggests a real-world impact in the approximate timing and direction we would have expected,” says epidemiologist Ran Balicer.
The big question is how vaccines will change the course of the pandemic. Teasing apart the population-level effects of vaccines on a drop in COVID-19 cases from the impacts of other public-health interventions, such as social distancing and lockdowns, will be tricky. In places where outbreaks are rampant or lower-efficacy vaccines are being rolled out, it will be some time before immunization significantly reduces transmission. “But even with an imperfect vaccine, that population-level impact on deaths could still be quite substantial,” says epidemiologist Raina MacIntyre.
The consolations of art — in a not-too-distant world in which advanced artificial intelligences have proved so useful that we allowed them to oversee much of modern life — is the topic of the latest short story for Nature’s Futuresseries. “The story explores resilience,” writes author Deborah Walker, “and imagines that art, craft, creation and its subsequent destruction might comfort someone facing such an overwhelming grief and guilt.”
An analysis of a huge dataset from Switzerland confirms decades of research that widespread racial and sex discrimination occurs in job hiring. “People from minority ethnic and immigrant backgrounds face 4 to almost 20% lower contact rates” compared with other Swiss people, public-policy researcher Dominik Hangartner tells the Nature Podcast.
Loyce Pace, the executive director of the Global Health Council and a member of US President Joe Biden's COVID-19 Advisory Board, is among those welcoming the United States’ renewed relationship with the World Health Organization. (Forbes | 8 min read)