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Testing for Omicron: the variant has spread rapidly in countries worldwide.Credit: Fabrice Coffrini/AFP/Getty
Will Omicron end the pandemic?
The World Health Organization and others have suggested the rapid spread of the Omicron coronavirus variant could signal the end of the pandemic, because of the short-term surge in immunity that will follow. Researchers warn that the situation remains volatile and difficult to model. Different vaccine strategies, types and take-up rates from country to country, as well as fluctuating rates of infection and recovery, have left a diverse immunological landscape. So, how will it end? Not with Omicron, researchers predict. “This will not be the last variant, and so the next variant will have its own characteristics,” says infectious-diseases modeller Graham Medley.
Drug-resistant infections kill millions
Infections caused by antibiotic-resistant bacteria are among the leading causes of death for people of all ages, finds the most comprehensive global study of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) yet. Researchers estimate that in 2019, 4.95 million people died from illnesses in which bacterial AMR played a part. Of those, 1.27 million deaths were the direct result of AMR — meaning that drug-resistant infections killed more people than HIV/AIDS (864,000 deaths) or malaria (643,000 deaths). “AMR is truly a global problem that requires urgent action from policymakers and the health community to avoid preventable deaths,” says health-metrics scientist Mohsen Naghavi.
Reference: The Lancet paper
UK DARPA clone poaches DARPA chief
The first chief executive of the United Kingdom’s high-risk, high-reward funding agency will be Peter Highnam, the deputy director of the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), on which the British organization is modelled. The UK agency, known as theAdvanced Research and Invention Agency, or ARIA, will have a budget of £800 million (US$1 billion) over 4 years. It will give Highnam, and whoever is recruited to chair the organization, the power to choose which areas of science to fund. This approach stands in contrast to the UK Research and Innovation, the country’s mainstream research-funding organization, which disburses its £7.8-billion yearly budget mostly through competitive grant schemes.
Features & opinion
Richard Leakey: ‘He embraced life’
Kenyan palaeoanthropologist, conservationist and political leader Richard Leakey died on 2 January, aged 77. Leakey left school at 16 and followed in the fossil-hunting footsteps of his trail-blazing parents, Louis and Mary Leakey. Alongside researchers dubbed the Hominid Gang, led by Kamoya Kimeu, Leakey discovered dozens of hominin fossils, including a new genus and four new species (Paranthropus aethiopicus, Australopithecus anamensis and Kenyanthropus platyops, as well as Homo rudolfensis). He used his high profile to boost science in Kenya, where he became a member of parliament, and conservation projects such as a notable battle against the ivory trade. “He embraced life, good and bad, and imbued those around him with the sheer excitement of what could be done, discovered, resolved and enjoyed,” writes evolutionary biologist Marta Mirazón Lahr.
Don’t cherry-pick advice, synthesize it
For some of the nations that have fared the worst in the COVID-19 pandemic, there’s a striking imbalance between the scientific advice available and the capacity to make sense of it, writes public-policy researcher Geoff Mulgan, who ran the UK Government’s Strategy Unit in the early 2000s. He argues that part of the problem has been a failure of synthesis — the ability to combine insights and transcend disciplinary boundaries.
Apollo 14’s forgotten Moon trees
In 1971, astronaut Stuart Roosa took a small bag of about 500 tree seeds on the Apollo 14 mission to the Moon. The seeds travelled with him multiple times around the Moon and, a few years after they returned home, were planted across the United States to see how they would grow — but were then forgotten. Almost two decades after they were planted, planetary scientist Dave Williams located as many of the trees as he could — sycamores, redwoods, pines, firs and sweetgums. He has records for some 100 trees, 30 of which have died or been cut down, but more are probably out there.
