Thursday 26 August 2021

Coronavirus vaccine protection waning ...

Coronavirus vaccine protection waning in those first jabbed, study suggests

The protection provided by two doses of the Pfizer or AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccines begins to wane within six months, new research suggests.

Daniel Keane 22 hrs ago Independent

The protection provided by two doses of the Pfizer or AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccines begins to wane within six months, new research suggests (Stock image)

In a reasonable “worst-case scenario”, protection could fall to below 50 per cent for the elderly and healthcare workers by winter, analysis from the Zoe COVID study found.

The Pfizer jab was 88 per cent effective at preventing Covid-19 infection a month after the second dose, but this fell to 74 per cent after five to six months - a drop of 14 percentage points in four months.

With the AstraZeneca vaccine, there was a protection against infection of 77 per cent one month after the second dose. This decreased to 67 per cent after four to five months, suggesting a fall of 10 percentage points over three months.

Pfizer’s mid-term efficacy trial observed an initial 96.2 per cent risk reduction in infection up to two months after the second dose. There was an 83.7 per cent reduction more than four months after the second dose, a 12.5 percentage point risk reduction.

The results of the study, which drew on more than 1.2 million test results and participants, will intensify calls for an Autumn booster vaccination campaign to help prevent a spike in cases and hospitalisations.

Other countries have already set out plans for booster campaigns. Earlier this month, the Biden administration announced that third inoculations will be available to most US adults from September.

Israel has already been administering booster shots for those aged over 50 following a surge in cases. Research conducted by the country’s health ministry also suggested the protection conferred by the Pfizer vaccine had begun to wane in the vulnerable population.

The vaccine rollout in the UK prioritised the elderly and vulnerable, beginning with care home residents and those aged over 80. As many will have received their jab over six months ago, the Zoe study suggests they are likely to be vulnerable to infection this Winter compared with those vaccinated more recently.

Real world analysis would be expected to show less protection than clinical trials, and the vaccines in the Zoe study were not trialled against the now dominant Delta variant of the virus.

Professor Tim Spector, lead scientist on the Zoe Covid Study app, said: “In my opinion, a reasonable worst-case scenario could see protection below 50% for the elderly and healthcare workers by winter.

“If high levels of infection in the UK, driven by loosened social restrictions and a highly transmissible variant, this scenario could mean increased hospitalisations and deaths.

“We urgently need to make plans for vaccine boosters, and based on vaccine resources, decide if a strategy to vaccinate children is sensible if our aim is to reduce deaths and hospital admissions. Waning protection is to be expected and is not a reason to not get vaccinated.

“Vaccines still provide high levels of protection for the majority of the population, especially against the Delta variant, so we still need as many people as possible to get fully vaccinated.”

Yesterday, the UK government signed a deal to get 35 million more doses of the Pfizer vaccine for the second half of next year, in a clear indication that ministers are preparing for regular ongoing booster programmes. The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation is expected to rule soon on a booster plan for the UK.

The Zoe Covid Study launched an app feature on December 11, 2020 to enable logging of Covid-19 vaccines and monitor real-world side-effects and effectiveness in its cohort of over a million active users.

It used data from vaccines which were logged from December 8 last year to July 3, 2021 and from infections which occurred between May 26 this year when the Delta variant became dominant, and July 31.

The results of the study have been adjusted to give an average risk of infection reduction across the population.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/health/medical/coronavirus-vaccine-protection-waning-in-those-first-jabbed-study-suggests/ar-AANIxrN

LED streetlights decimating moth numbers in England

‘Eco-friendly’ lights found to be worse than sodium ones – but both contribute to insect decline, says study

Damian Carrington Environment editor

@dpcarrington

Wed 25 Aug 2021 19.00 BST

The study was the first to examine the impact of LEDs in a real-world setting. Photograph: Douglas Boyes/Science Advances

“Eco-friendly” LED streetlights produce even worse light pollution for insects than the traditional sodium bulbs they are replacing, a study has found.

The abundance of moth caterpillars in hedgerows by rural roads in England was 52% lower under LED lights and 41% lower under sodium lights when compared with nearby unlit areas.

In grass margins, moth caterpillar numbers near LEDs were a third lower than in unlit areas, whereas sodium lights had little effect on abundance. The white LED lights are more energy efficient but produce more blue light, say scientists, which is the colour predominantly seen by insects.

Moths are important pollinators and provide essential food for birds and animals, but the total abundance of moths in Britain has dropped by a third over the past 50 years.

Reports of plunging insect populations have alarmed scientists, with the destruction of wild places, pesticides and the climate crisis being major causes. Light pollution is increasing globally and was described by a recent review as an “important but often overlooked bringer of the insect apocalypse”, as it makes insects more visible to predators and disrupts feeding and reproduction.

The study is the first to examine the impact of LEDs in a real-world setting and the first to show the direct impact of light pollution on caterpillars. The caterpillars are less mobile than adult moths, and therefore show more precisely the local losses caused by light pollution.

The researchers said flying moths were attracted by light but may then be more vulnerable to predators, meaning they lay fewer eggs. They said the wide range of moth species they studied suggested their results would apply to other nocturnal insects.

“It’s a really striking result,” said Douglas Boyes, of the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, who led the new research. “We found numbers that you’re not really used to ecology. You usually find maybe 5-10% changes here and there, but we found up to 50% drops in the number of caterpillars in the areas lit by streetlights.

“LEDs are the baddies in our story, if you like, because they’re worse in terms of their effect at the moment, but they also have the potential to be much better than sodium lighting.”

LEDs are dimmable, can be linked to motion sensors and can have cheap filters fitted to screen out blue light. LEDs are energy efficient, leading to reduced climate-warming emissions. They are often brighter than sodium lamps, although not at the locations in the study.

Prof Darren Evans, of Newcastle University, who was part of the study, said: “Light pollution is one of the few causes of biodiversity loss that has easy [and immediate] solutions. We need a balance between protecting both public safety and wildlife, by ensuring that lighting is well designed, away from important habitats and switched on for limited times.” Bat-friendly red lighting was installed on a road in Worcestershire in 2019.

Matt Shardlow, of the insect charity Buglife, said: “This new evidence demonstrates the massive impact that light pollution is having on local populations of insects, contributing to the terrible decline in insect abundance we have all observed.

“Given the harm artificial light causes, and the government commitment [in 2018] to reduce light pollution, it is unacceptable that it is refusing to commit to a national light pollution reduction target.”

Another study in Belgium showed that streetlights harmed the ability of female glow worms to attract a mate. It found that beetles in dark areas usually found a mate after one night of glowing but those in lit areas took up to 15 nights. In England, glow worm numbers have plunged by three-quarters since 2001.

Insect populations are suffering “death by a thousand cuts”, with many falling at “frightening” rates that are “tearing apart the tapestry of life”, according to scientists behind a volume of studies published earlier in 2021.

The latest research, published in the journal Science Advances, studied 26 pairs of roadside sites in Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Berkshire, where lit and unlit sections were on average 100 metres apart. Boyes spent more than 400 hours sampling more than 2,000 caterpillars.

The scientists are using DNA analysis to see whether parasitic wasps lay their eggs more frequently in caterpillars in lit areas, which could be an additional explanation for the lower populations.

Boyes said better protecting moths was essential. “We’ve got 2,500 species in the UK. They’re really important as prey for birds, bats, hedgehogs and other predatory invertebrates. But they’re also really important pollinators. They do the night shift after the daytime pollinators have gone to bed.”

A spokesperson for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said: “Insects are a vital part of our natural environment and protecting them is a priority. We have set a legally binding target for species abundance for 2030, which will drive the right mix of actions to address the loss of wildlife, including insects, and address the interacting pressures on biodiversity such as light pollution.”

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/aug/25/led-streetlights-moth-england-eco-friendly-sodium-insect-decline

Nuclear energy is anything but clean

The Guardian

Letters

11 hrs ago

Re your report (Nuclear storage plans for north of England stir up local opposition, 23 August), (see below for article), it is no surprise that ongoing discussions to choose locations for the dumping of nuclear waste are cloaked in secrecy.

Over the last decade, the nuclear power industry has successfully rebranded an appallingly toxic energy industry as “zero carbon” and even “clean” (Zero-carbon electricity outstrips fossil fuels in Britain across 2019, 1 January 2020) by never mentioning the terrible legacy of nuclear waste. Nuclear energy is neither clean nor zero-carbon when you consider its complete fuel cycle, from uranium mining overseas to the energy-intensive production of fuel rods to the management of highly toxic radioactive waste products such as plutonium.

The nuclear lobby has done a very effective PR job in diverting attention away from everything other than the electricity feed into the National Grid. It knows that there is no safe long-term solution for storing nuclear waste – how could you guarantee safety from the most dangerous chemical element on the planet for 24,000 years (the half-life of plutonium)? The last thing this industry wants is an open discussion. It would reopen the debate on nuclear waste that it has, up to now, successfully buried in millions of pounds’ worth of rebranding. Hence the secrecy.

Ann Denise Lanes, Halton, Lancashire

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/nuclear-energy-is-anything-but-clean/ar-AANK4kQ?ocid=msedgntp

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Nuclear storage plans for north of England stir up local opposition

Communities react with shock to news they are being considered as locations for underground facility

Tommy Greene

Mon 23 Aug 2021 18.12 BST

Roadside sign: ‘Nuclear waste buried under your house!’

A banner protesting against a proposal to build a nuclear waste facility in the Lake District. Photograph: Alamy

The long-running battle to build an underground nuclear waste facility in the north of England has run into fresh problems, as communities reacted with shock to the news that they were being considered as locations.

The north-east port town of Hartlepool is one of the sites in the frame as a potential site for a geological disposal facility (GDF), while a former gas terminal point at Theddlethorpe, near the Lincolnshire coast, is another. Cumbria, where much of the waste is stored above ground, is also being considered.

Victoria Atkins, a government minister and the MP for Louth and Horncastle, said she was “stunned” by the prospect that her constituency could host a GDF, claiming that the Conservative-controlled Lincolnshire county council’s engagement with the government’s radioactive waste management group had been kept hidden from her.

The facility is intended to deal with the long-running problem of nuclear waste storage by providing a safe deposit for approximately 750,000 cubic metres of high-activity waste hundreds of metres underground in areas thought to have suitable geology to securely isolate the radioactive material. The waste would be solidified, packaged and placed into deep subterranean vaults. The vaults would then be backfilled and the surrounding network of tunnels and chambers sealed.

The UK would be following the example of Finland, where a geological repository for high-level spent nuclear fuel is under construction at Olkiluoto. A handful of other countries are considering similar schemes in an attempt to tackle the long-term dilemma of radioactive waste management.

Between 70% and 75% of the UK’s high-activity radioactive waste, which would be designated for the GDF, is stored at the Sellafield facility in west Cumbria. The sources of the waste include power generation, military, medical and civil uses.

Existing international treaties prohibit countries from exporting the waste overseas, leading some scientists to argue for underground burial that, they say, would require no further human intervention once storage is complete.

Politicians first started talking about a GDF in the 1980s. This latest attempt would need a public consultation plus varying levels of approval, and would mean that, at the earliest, waste could be deposited there in the 2040s. It would resolve the long-term dilemma of radioactive waste storage “for a generation”, according to Prof Geraldine Thomas, a molecular pathologist at Imperial College London who also sits on the government’s radioactive waste management committee (RWM).

“People sometimes think storage will mean a lot more waste is going to accrue from new nuclear activity. But, actually, new nuclear developments are producing less and less waste. And we’ve got so much legacy waste that we need to get on and do something about it soon.”

Alongside job creation and investment promises, financial incentives worth £1m and £2.5m are on offer for communities that sign up to the engagement process, which has already led to nominations for two Cumbrian boroughs. Drop-in sessions are being held across Copeland and Allerdale by area-specific working groups that would help deliver the GDF.

“We try to stress as best we can that engagement does not commit communities to anything and they can always pull out at a later stage,” said Steve Reece, head of siting at the RWM. “We see it more as the beginning of a long journey.”

However, the proposals have stirred up strong local feeling among both community leaders and residents, and accusations of secrecy have been levelled at councils and the RWM in recent weeks.

In north-east England, the political fallout generated by news of the GDF “early stage” discussions triggered the resignation of Hartlepool council’s deputy leader, Mike Young, on Tuesday evening.

“We are making huge strides in Hartlepool and across Teesside and Darlington,” the Tees Valley mayor, Ben Houchen, said following the decision. “And the last thing we need as we sell our region to the world is to be known as the dumping ground for the UK’s nuclear waste.”

Cumbria county council, which resisted the last efforts to site a GDF locally in 2013, has declined to take part in either of the two existing working groups, saying its involvement would give the process “a credibility it doesn’t deserve”.

There is already considerable opposition from local groups. “The vast majority of people here are horrified by the GDF,” said Jane Bright, a Mablethorpe resident and spokesperson for the Guardians of the East Coast campaign. “I should think it’s no more welcome elsewhere. But there’s a lot of pride in this area and we’ll fight this for as long as it takes.”

Marianne Birkby, a Cumbrian resident and founder of the Radiation-Free Lakeland group, said: “We’re seen as the line of least resistance here. In Cumbria, we’ve been there before with this. Now people are trying to get their heads around it again, in the middle of a pandemic. This dump would essentially make us a sacrifice zone to the nuclear industry.”

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/aug/23/nuclear-storage-plans-for-north-of-england-stir-up-local-opposition

iPad 9 (2021): release date, price, specs, news ...

iPad 9 (2021): release date, price, specs, news and all the latest rumours

What Hi-Fi?

20 hrs ago

Apple is rumoured to be readying a new iPad for 2021. The iPad 9 is said to feature a slimmer design, faster A13 Bionic chipset and a cheaper price than the current standard model. Here's everything we know so far about Apple's next tablet.

Apple tends to launch a new iPad every year; the iPad 8th Generation launched last September, so you won't be shocked to hear that analysts predict the 9th Generation iPad to appear in September 2021.

But how will the iPad 9 compare with its predecessor? And how might it fare against the best tablets on the market? We have examined all the latest iPad 9 leaks, rumours and news to build up a picture of Apple's next tablet.

iPad 9 (2021): release date

The iPad (5th Gen) launched in 2017, followed by the iPad (6th Gen) in 2018, iPad (7th Gen) in 2019 and iPad (8th Gen) in 2020. So it's highly likely that Apple is prepping the iPad (9th Gen) for 2021.

Most rumours point to a September launch date. A recent DigiTimes report, for example, says the iPad 9 is reportedly due next month (September), at around the same time as the iPhone 13.

Wedbush analysts have tipped the iPhone 13 to launch on 14th September (via Barrons), so it's possible the iPad 9 will make its debut alongside the iPhone 13 and new Apple Watch at an upcoming Apple event.

Apple usually sends out the invitations a week or so in advance, so keep checking back for all the latest on the iPad 9 release date.

iPad 9 (2021): price

The standard iPad is Apple's entry-level tablet, so it follows that the iPad 9 will carry an 'affordable' price tag, by Apple standards at least.

Indeed, many analysts predict that the iPad 9 could have the lowest starting price of any Apple tablet. A 10th August report by Bloomberg's Apple expert Mark Gurman, for instance, tips the iPad 9 to be a budget device 'targeted at students'.

There has been lots of talk of the iPad 9 going for just $299 in the US (£220, AU$420). That's a touch less than the 2020 iPad, which costs $329 (£329, AU$499).

We will bring you all the official iPad 9 pricing as soon as it surfaces online.

iPad 9 (2021): design

According to one recent report, the iPad 9 will look remarkably similar to its predecessor, with no "significant design changes".

If that is true, it sounds as though we are in for another solid-looking bezel, a physical Touch ID home button and a proprietary Lightning Port (rather than the USB-C seen on the iPad Air and iPad Pro).

Bloomberg's Mark Gurman has also chimed in on the subject. He believes the iPad 9 will be slimmer than its predecessor. "There's a slimmer and faster ninth-generation iPad coming for students," reads his 10th August report.

Will the iPad also be lighter? There has been talk of Apple crafting future iPads from titanium for while, but it sounds as though the ultra-tough metal is just too costly to use on an entry-level model such as the iPad 9. It's more likely that next iPad Pro will get a titanium chassis.

Finally, there's a rumour that Apple is testing its MagSafe connector for the iPad. Since the MagSafe failed to make an appearance on the 2021 iPad Pro, there's a (very slim) chance it could show up on the standard iPad.

iPad 9 (2021): screen

TechRadar tips Apple's next tablet for larger, 10.5-inch Retina (LCD) display, up from 10.2 inches on the 2020 iPad.

Apple has yet even to confirm the existence of the iPad 9 – or iPad 10.5 as some are calling it – so it's too early to reveal any specifics. That said, it sounds as though Apple is ready to embrace new display technologies in the future.

According to reliable Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, the iPad Air will get an OLED screen soon, while the iPad Pro – and possibly other tablets – will get microLED screens. The most recent 12.9-inch iPad Pro is the first Apple device with a mini LED display – the 11-inch Pro is rumoured to follow suit next year.

We expect more leaks about the iPad 9 screen in the run-up to the rumoured mid-September launch, so keep a close eye on this page.

Save big with this week's best tablet deals

iPad Pro (2021): specs

Rumours that Apple will equip the iPad 9 with a faster chip are gathering steam, although it's hardly surprising. The current iPad shares an A12 processor with the 2018 iPhone XS, so an upgrade is long overdue.

There is some talk of the A14, as seen in the 2020 iPhone 12, making its way into the iPad 9. But if we had to guess, we would say that Apple will opt for the A13 Bionic chip found in the 2019 iPhone SE; it should provide a decent speed hike at an affordable price.

The upgrades likely won't end there. Chinese tech site Cubeta tips Apple to boost the iPad's RAM from 3GB to 4GB. There's also a suggestion that the most affordable iPad will come with 64GB of storage, up from the 32GB available on the cheapest iPad (8th Gen).

There are no credible camera leaks yet, but we would expect Apple to go with a higher resolution set-up. The current iPad has a 1.2MP front-facing camera, which is a pretty low resolution for a premium Apple tablet.

The current iPad comes with 20W charging, so juicing up Apple's slate can be a time-consuming business. Given that the best smartphones offer a fast-charge function that can provide an hour's use after a quick, five-minute charge, we would hope Apple boosts the iPad 9 battery life.

Last but not least, there is talk of Apple switching out the Lighting Port for a USB-C connector, as seen on the iPad Pro and newest iPad Air. This would enable faster charging and quicker data transfer. But then, there are rumours that Apple will continue to reserve USB-C for its flagship models.

MORE:

Read our in-depth Apple iPad (2020) review

Find the perfect Apple tablet for you: the best iPads 2021

Apple's first over-ear headphones rated: read our AirPods Max review

Everything we know so far about the rumoured AirPods 3

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/technology/ipad-9-2021-release-date-price-specs-news-and-all-the-latest-rumours/ar-AANJhyU?ocid=msedgntp

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