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Apr 20 2024

The female gamers competing for thousands of pounds at first event of its kind in UK | Science & Tech News

The UK’s first professional women’s gaming tournament of its kind starts on Saturday.

Four teams of professional gamers will play the first-person shooter game Valorant, which is the most-watched esports game in women’s leagues.

It is the first time Europe’s best teams have battled it out in the UK, and organisers hope it will bring more women into gaming.

“The more people see you can enjoy gaming as somebody who’s not native to it, the more confident they’ll get and the more they’ll enjoy it,” said host and streamer Meg ‘Megsoundslikeegg’ Gardner.

The players are competing over two days at London‘s Red Bull Gaming Sphere for a prize pool of £15,000.

Michaela ‘mimi’ Lintrup, who is the one of world’s best Valorant players and has been professionally gaming since she was 18, said: “Back then it was not a big thing like it is today.”

The 26-year-old Dane added: “We fought for a case of Red Bull or something, it was not a prize pool with money. I just played because I had passion for it and I loved it.”

But that’s all changed.

Last year, fans watched more than 28 million hours of professional women’s esports, according to industry tracker Esports Charts. The competitions are usually streamed on places like Twitch, TikTok and YouTube.

Those figures don’t even include people watching in China, where esports are so big that more people watched them than traditional sports at the 2023 Asian Games.

In esports, where people play competitively in a variety of video games, there are leagues, prizes and hordes of fans just like in other sports.

French player Mathilde ‘Nelo’ Beltoise, who is in a team called Karmine Corp, said the level of fandom in France is off the scale.

“Karmine Corp is so huge that everywhere you go, someone will recognise you. Every time I go into the street, I see someone with the jersey. It’s really huge,” she said.

The popularity of her team in France helped Beltoise’s parents, who are teachers, warm to the idea of her playing video games for a living.

“Sometimes one of their students has a Karmine Corp jersey on and they’re like, ‘Is that you?’ Now they just love it,” she explained.

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Being a professional gamer means glamorous-sounding international travel and online streaming, but it is also a regular nine to five job.

“We practice from Monday to Friday but when we get close to tournament time, we will add Sundays,” said Lintrup.

“We have four games a day which usually last for 50 minutes. Then we can talk a little bit about the mistakes we made [for 10 minutes before the next one]. Then we have about one and a half hours of theory time.”

Lintrup is the in-game leader of G2 Gozen and her role is fairly similar to that of a football captain.

She said: “After practice, I will usually stream or review which means I will go back and watch our games and point out the mistakes. I have to put in a bit of extra work. I love it like that.”

British competitor Sarah ‘sarah’ Ahmed is 18 years old and from Derby. She has been playing professionally for six months and became interested in gaming because of her brother.

She said: “He had a laptop and I didn’t so when I was 16, I got my first PC, and that’s when I started playing games, just like my brother.”

Now, she is travelling the world, having recently competed in Turkey in the first-ever mixed-gender tournament. She described the moment she discovered the women’s gaming scene on Valorant.

“When I was younger, none of my friends played video games so whenever I played, it was just by myself, it was hard making girl friends.

“So when I saw there was a big community with a lot of girls just playing, I wanted to be a part of it.”

Valorant was released during one of the COVID lockdowns, when there was a surge in the number of people playing video games. Host Meg Gardner thinks it is more popular with women because of its storytelling.

She said: “Valorant is very good at being inclusive so you’ll see a lot of female characters that aren’t just in a supportive role, but like people that are very strong in the game. People want to pick them to play with.”

The Red Bull Instalock tournament is being streamed live on Twitch from 12pm UK time on Saturday and Sunday.

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Apr 12 2024

British astronaut Tim Peake hopes to return to space with first all-UK mission to International Space Station | Science & Tech News

British astronaut Tim Peake hopes to take an all-British crew to the International Space Station (ISS), he has revealed to Sky’s FYI children’s news show.

“Possibly as early as next year, we’re taking four astronauts back [to the ISS] to do lots of science and lots of education outreach,” he said.

The 52-year-old became the first Briton to complete a spacewalk outside the ISS in 2016 and is one of only two astronauts Britain has ever sent to space.

“We’re hoping to announce the whole crew in June this year,” he told FYI.

Asked if he would be part of that mission, Major Peake replied: “Well, I very much hope so.”

Major Peake announced his decision to retire from being a European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut in January last year.

The UK Space Agency signed an agreement with Axiom Space in October, which could lead to the first all-UK mission to space.

The mission would see British astronauts spend a fortnight in orbit to carry out research and UK universities have been asked to share ideas for experiments which could be carried out in space during the time.

It would be a commercially sponsored trip, supported by the ESA.

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Axiom, the US-based company working on the mission, is also trying to build the first commercial space station.

The company says the new station will “advance progress on Earth toward a sustained presence off the planet”.

Major Peake seemed content to live on planet Earth though.

“If you lived on Mars, you would have to spend all your time in a pressurised habitat, protected from the Martian atmosphere and the Martian storms and the temperatures and the radiation,” he said.

“We will be able to [live on other planets] at some point in the future, but I still think Earth is going to be the planet that we want to live on.”

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Mar 27 2024

Free vapes given to smokers at hospitals could help thousands quit, study suggests | Science & Tech News

Free vapes in emergency departments could help thousands quit smoking, a study has suggested.

Research from the University of East Anglia (UEA) said that providing A&E patients with e-cigarettes and a referral to a stop smoking adviser helped them kick the habit more than those who were just pointed to advice.

Dr Ian Pope, of UEA’s Norwich Medical School, added that the scientists behind the study now believe that “if this intervention was widely implemented it could result in more than 22,000 extra people quitting smoking each year”.

Figures from the Office for National Statistics show that about 6.4 million adults in the UK were smokers in 2022, while the NHS says around 76,000 people in the UK die every year from smoking.

Vaping: How harmful is it, is it better than smoking cigarettes, and what’s the evidence?

In their study – carried out between January and August two years ago in six emergency departments across the UK – the team offered around 484 daily smokers brief advice from a dedicated adviser while at hospital, along with an e-cigarette starter kit, and a referral to stop smoking services.

A second group of 488 patients were only given written information on how to access stop smoking services.

After six months, researchers offered members of the study a carbon monoxide test to confirm if they had given up cigarettes. Those given vapes and a referral were 76% more likely to have stopped.

Comparing the groups, 7.2% of those given vapes stopped smoking at six months while 4.1% of those given just advice had quit.

The first group were also more likely to try to stop, and self-reported that their seven-day abstinence from smoking after six months was a little over 23% compared to 13% in the group signposted to services.

Hazel Cheeseman, deputy chief executive of public health charity Action on Smoking and Health, said that the findings “are compelling” and should be “carefully considered by those in the NHS and local government who are planning services for smokers”.

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An NHS spokesperson said in response to the report: “Smoking costs the NHS and the taxpayer billions every year in avoidable health and social care costs.

“Encouraging more people to stop smoking tobacco will support them to have healthier lives.”

It’s not the first time vapes have been suggested for Britain’s hospitals. In 2018, Public Health England recommended that hospitals should sell e-cigarettes and provide patients with vaping lounges.

However, it comes after another study recently found vaping damages the DNA of its users in a similar way to smokers who develop cancer.

And it follows Rishi Sunak’s announcement of plans to ban disposable vapes in a bid to crack down on their use among children.

Published in the Emergency Medicine Journal, the UEA study said that “while the evidence for using e-cigarettes as a cessation intervention is growing, not enough research is being done to understand how to most effectively prevent e-cigarette use among adolescents, while making them available in a targeted way for cessation”.

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Mar 21 2024

AI could predict patients’ future health conditions, study finds | Science & Tech News

Artificial intelligence (AI) could be used to predict the type of health conditions a patient is likely to develop in the future, a study has found.

The technology could be used to help doctors when it comes to monitoring patients or making decisions around diagnosis, researchers said.

The AI tool, known as Foresight, belongs to the same family of AI models as ChatGPT but has been trained using information from NHS electronic records.

It was developed by researchers from King’s College London (KCL), University College London (UCL), King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust.

The researchers trained three different models of Foresight using data from more than 811,000 patients from two NHS trusts in London and a publicly available dataset in the US.

It was given 10 possible disorders a patient may experience next based on their records.

When using data from NHS hospitals, Foresight was able to correctly identify the condition 68% and 76% of the time. It was accurate 88% of the time when using US data.

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Zeljko Kraljevic, research fellow in health informatics, biostatistics and health informatics at KCL and the first author of the study – published in The Lancet Digital Health – said the findings show the tool “can achieve high levels of precision in predicting health trajectories of patients, demonstrating it could be a valuable tool to aid decision-making and inform clinical research”.

Senior author Richard Dobson, a professor of medical informatics at KCL and UCL and theme lead for informatics at the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Maudsley Biomedical Research Centre (BRC), said: “It is an exciting time for AI in healthcare, and to develop effective tools we must ensure that we use appropriate data to train our models and work towards a shared purpose of supporting healthcare systems to support patients.”

The research team is now seeking more hospitals to be involved in developing Foresight 2, which Prof Dobson said will be “a more accurate language model”.

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Mar 18 2024

Flying taxis could take off in two years under new drones plan | Science & Tech News

The first piloted flying taxi could take to the UK skies in two years.

The Department for Transport (DfT) has released its Future of Flight Action Plan which also proposes flying taxis without pilots on board by 2030.

It has also predicted regular use of crime-fighting drones and critical 999 care deliveries by the end of the decade.

The “roadmap” – or more precisely flight plan – would mean the adoption of technology “once confined to the realm of sci-fi”, according to the DfT, with drone technology boosting the country’s economy by £45bn by 2030.

Aviation and technology minister Anthony Browne said: “Cutting-edge battery technology will revolutionise transport as we know it – this plan will make sure we have the infrastructure and regulation in place to make it a reality.

“From flying taxis to emergency service drones, we’re making sure the UK is at the forefront of this dramatic shift in transportation, improving people’s lives and boosting the economy.”

Across the Atlantic, New York City mayor Eric Adams unveiled a similar plan in November last year to use electric air taxis by 2025/26 to fly people to and from the city’s airports.

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The proposals would allow drones to fly Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) so the sector can grow without limiting the skies for other aircraft.

They also aim to reinvigorate smaller aerodromes by setting out how they can operate as vertiports for electric aircraft that take off vertically (known as electric vertical take-off and landing or eVTOL aircraft).

The plans aim to build on current uses of drone technology, such as the use by West Midlands Police to tackle violent crime and anti-social behaviour.

In July 2023, a drone team successfully identified two offenders and another suspect at a speed and distance that would have taken ground officers hours to track down.

In the NHS, drone service provider Skyfarer has partnered with University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust and Medical Logistics UK to test drones to deliver surgical implants and pathology samples between sites, cutting delivery times by up to 70%.

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Mar 15 2024

Applications open for Antarctica’s penguin post office with one applicant using tattoos to show her enthusiam | Science & Tech News

Applications are open to work in Antarctica’s famous “penguin post office”.

Successful applicants will be “self-motivated”, “empathetic” and fine with showering once every two weeks.

The shop in Port Lockroy is the southernmost post office in the world and frequently smells like penguin poo.

Every year, the Antarctic Heritage Trust is flooded with applications for the jobs. This year, there are three positions on offer and they are only open to UK residents.

As well as processing up to 80,000 letters and postcards a year, staff must run the shop and welcome roughly 18,000 cruise passengers who stop by.

One applicant, charity manager Katie Shaw in Manchester, wants to go so much, she has tattooed a geographically accurate map of the Antarctic on one leg and a portrait of explorer Ernest Shackleton on the other.

“I grew up wanting to be a marine biologist working in Antarctica,” said Ms Shaw.

“Academically, that didn’t work out but I’ve always found the wildlife, landscape and the exploration there fascinating.

“The continent is so important to the environment and feels like a place we haven’t totally f****** up yet.

“Each year it feels less and less likely we’ll be able to enjoy and appreciate it.”

Successful applicants need to have a range of skills. Employees have to sort post, sell stamps, look after the buildings and run the gift shop. They will have to put up with basic living conditions and be happy with their own company.

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The application form warns people about hygiene:

“We have no running water on the island, so washing facilities are very basic. Water is collected in jerry cans from visiting ships.

“There are no shower facilities at Port Lockroy, so staff are expected to be comfortable living with these limited washing facilities, yet still keeping hygiene levels high.

“Visiting ships will offer showers approximately once per week, but when weather conditions are poor you could go up to two weeks without visitors or a shower.”

Staff also need to count the roughly 1,500 gentoo penguins that live in a colony at Port Lockroy.

Holidays to the Antarctic are expensive. Ms Shaw estimates it would cost more than her annual mortgage payment to go on a two-week cruise to the region.

There are also concerns Antarctica’s growing tourism industry is damaging the delicate ecosystem.

Antarctic tourists are even causing penguin species to change their reproductive and social behaviours, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

That makes the post office position even more attractive for applicants.

“There’s only three ways you can really visit Antarctica; working on a research base, elite tourism or applying for the post office,” said Ms Shaw.

Applications close on 18 March for the season starting from November and ending in March 2024.

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Mar 5 2024

Instagram and Facebook down for tens of thousands of users | Science & Tech News

Instagram, Facebook and Threads are experiencing widespread problems, locking users out of their accounts and failing to load properly.

Outages reported on Down Detector shot up just before 3pm, with more than 300,000 problems logged.

More than 25,000 Instagram outages were also reported via the website, which collates status reports from several sources, including users.

Problems on Facebook appear to leave users unable to login, with users logged out and unable to reset their password or access their accounts.

On Instagram, there are problems loading users’ timelines, stories and comments.

Sky News understands some of Meta’s internal systems have also been affected by the outage.

Sky News has contacted Meta, the parent company for both platforms, for comment.

Andy Stone, communications director at Meta, posted on X, formerly Twitter: “We’re aware people are having trouble accessing our services. We are working on this now.”

This breaking news story is being updated and more details will be published shortly.

Please refresh the page for the fullest version.

You can receive breaking news alerts on a smartphone or tablet via the Sky News app. You can also follow @SkyNews on X or subscribe to our YouTube channel to keep up with the latest news.

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Jan 23 2024

Blood test for Alzheimer’s disease could be as accurate as painful lumbar puncture, study suggests | Science & Tech News

A blood test could be just as good at detecting the signs of Alzheimer’s disease as painful and invasive lumbar punctures, research suggests.

Measuring levels of a protein called p-tau217 in the blood could be just as accurate at detecting signs of the progressive condition, experts say.

The protein is a marker for biological changes in the brain for people with Alzheimer’s disease, which is a form of dementia.

The new findings have the potential to “revolutionise” diagnosis for people who are suspected to have Alzheimer’s, experts say.

It could also be better than a range of other tests currently under development.

In the study of 786 people, the researchers were able to use the ALZpath p-tau217 test to identify patients as likely, intermediate and unlikely to have Alzheimer’s disease.

“This study is a hugely welcome step in the right direction as it shows that blood tests can be just as accurate as more invasive and expensive tests at predicting if someone has features of Alzheimer’s disease in their brain,” said Dr Richard Oakley, associate director of research and innovation at the Alzheimer’s Society.

“Furthermore, it suggests results from these tests could be clear enough to not require further follow-up investigations for some people living with Alzheimer’s disease, which could speed up the diagnosis pathway significantly in future.

“However, we still need to see more research across different communities to understand how effective these blood tests are across everyone who lives with Alzheimer’s disease.”

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Test could turn tide on devastating disease

This is a significant step towards a screening test for Alzheimer’s.

It detects a protein in the blood that is also found in the brains of people with the disease.

And the Swedish researchers say it is as accurate as existing tests.

At the moment Alzheimer’s is diagnosed either with special PET brain scans or samples of spinal fluid. The NHS doesn’t have enough machines or specialist staff to do that at the scale required.

It means that even if people ever get a diagnosis, it often comes when the disease has significantly progressed.

That matters because there are drugs coming down the tracks that have been shown in clinical trials to significantly slow the decline in memory and brain function.

But they have to be given at an early stage to be effective. That’s why doctors are excited about this test.

It needs to be validated in bigger clinical trials and in a diverse population.

But the hope is that in the near future it could be offered every few years to everyone over 50 to turn the tide on a devastating disease.

‘Huge potential’

Currently the only way to prove someone has a build-up of the proteins in the brain is to have a lumbar puncture or amyloid PET scan, which are available in only about one in 20 NHS memory clinics.

A lumbar puncture involves a needle being inserted into the lower back, between the bones in the spine.

Dr Sheona Scales, director of research at Alzheimer’s Research UK, said: “This study suggests that measuring levels of a protein called p-tau217 in the blood could be as accurate as currently used lumbar punctures for detecting the biological hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease, and superior to a range of other tests currently under development.

“This adds to a growing body of evidence that this particular test has huge potential to revolutionise diagnosis for people with suspected Alzheimer’s.”

However, she said a better picture is needed of how these types of blood tests perform day-to-day in real-world healthcare systems.

The study from Dr Nicholas Ashton at the University of Gothenburg, and colleagues, is published in the Jama Neurology journal.

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Jan 11 2024

Scientists make huge discovery – that ‘challenges our understanding of the universe’ | Science & Tech News

Scientists have discovered a huge ring-shaped structure in outer space – and it’s so big that it challenges our current understanding of the universe.

Dubbed the Big Ring, the ultra-large structure has a diameter of 1.3 billion light-years and a circumference of 4 billion light-years, making it roughly 15 times the size of the Moon, as seen in the night sky from Earth.

The structure is made up of galaxies and galaxy clusters and is the second of such a huge size to be identified by Alexia Lopez, a British PhD student.

She also found the Giant Arc – a structure spanning 3.3 billion light-years – three years ago.

Ms Lopez, who studies at the University of Central Lancashire, said: “Neither of these two ultra-large structures is easy to explain in our current understanding of the universe.

“And their ultra-large sizes, distinctive shapes, and cosmological proximity must surely be telling us something important – but what exactly?”

The findings, presented by Ms Lopez at the 243rd meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS), appear to challenge a key cosmological principle which states that on a large scale, the universe should look roughly the same everywhere.

The general consensus is that large structures in the universe are formed through a process known as gravitational instability.

This process has a size limit of approximately 1.2 billion light-years as anything larger would not have had enough time to form.

Ms Lopez said: “Both of these structures are much larger – the Giant Arc is almost three times bigger and the Big Ring’s circumference is comparable to the Giant Arc’s length.

“From current cosmological theories, we didn’t think structures on this scale were possible.”

The data being analysed is “so far away that it has taken half the universe’s life to get to us,” she added.

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Large structures have also been discovered by other cosmologists.

The biggest single entity scientists have identified is a supercluster of galaxies – the Hercules-Corona Borealis Great Wall – which is roughly 10 billion light-years wide.

The Big Ring appears as an almost perfect circle in the sky, but Ms Lopez’s analysis suggests it has more of a corkscrew shape with its face aligned with Earth.

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Dec 28 2023

RSV vaccine could cut baby hospital admissions by more than 80%, study suggests | Science & Tech News

A vaccine to combat a common seasonal virus among babies could reduce hospital admissions by more than 80%, a trial has shown.

Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) impacts 90% of children before they reach the age of two, often causing a mild cold-like illness.

But infection can also lead to severe lung problems like pneumonia, and an estimated 30,000 babies and youngsters are admitted to hospital in the UK each year – putting extra pressure on the NHS.

Scientists have said a jab called nirsevimab could offer a solution after a study suggested a single shot provided immediate protection against chest infections for up to six months.

The trial found this could lead to an 83% reduction in RSV-related hospital admissions.

It is already being rolled out in the US and Spain and is being considered for a UK rollout, where it has been approved but not yet made available on the NHS.

Experts who worked on the study said the findings showed it was safe and could protect thousands of babies.

What is nirsevimab?

Nirsevimab is a monoclonal antibody, which are man-made proteins designed to mimic the human immune system’s natural antibodies.

Like other vaccines, it is administered via an injection.

The study included 8,058 babies up to the age of 12 months, with a randomly assigned group of them given a single dose and the others given usual treatment.

Just 11 who got the jab ended up in hospital for RSV-related infections, compared to 60 in the standard group.

The researchers said this corresponded to an efficacy of 83.2%.

Jab could ‘dramatically’ help NHS

Sir Andrew Pollard, director of the Oxford Vaccine Group at the University of Oxford, said the jab could help combat a virus that places “huge pressure” on Britain’s health system.

During the past two winters, cases were higher than usual after COVID pandemic measures in previous years suppressed cases – meaning children had much lower immunity.

Sir Andrew said the jab could help “protect the youngest in society and dramatically alleviate winter strain in the NHS”.

One of the scientists involved in the study, Professor Saul Faust from the University of Southampton, said he hoped it would help the UK decide on how to proceed with a national vaccination rollout.

The University of Southampton was one of three UK universities whose experts worked on the research, along with University Hospital Southampton and St George’s University Hospital, London.

The research was funded by Sanofi and AstraZeneca and published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

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