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People queue up to receive the Medigen and Moderna vaccines for the Covid-19 coronavirus at Taipei's main train station on April 29, 2022. (Photo by Sam Yeh / AFP) (Photo by SAM YEH/AFP via Getty Images)

Why we probably won't get new covid-19 vaccines in 2023

28 December 2022

Any new covid-19 vaccine must be better than the ones we already have, setting a high bar for approval that is not expected to be met in 2023

EU's Artificial Intelligence Act will lead the world on regulating AI

28 December 2022

The European Union is set to create the world's first broad standards for regulating or banning certain uses of artificial intelligence in 2023

Aerial view of the Potaro River running across the Kaieteur National Park which sits in a section of the Amazon rainforest in the Potaro-Siparuni region of Guyana, taken on September 24, 2022. - Despite the dispute with Guyana, the Esequibo region is a destination of migration from Venezuela. Guyana defends a limit established in 1899 by an arbitration court in Paris, while Venezuela claims the Geneva Agreement, signed in 1966 with the United Kingdom before Guyanese independence, which established the basis for a negotiated solution and ignored the previous treaty. But the Guyanese government is promoting a process in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to ratify the current borders and put an end to the dispute. (Photo by Patrick FORT / AFP) (Photo by PATRICK FORT/AFP via Getty Images)

2023 could mark a turning point for the Amazon rainforest

28 December 2022

New political leaders in Brazil and Colombia have promised to protect the rainforest, raising hopes of saving the ecosystem from becoming savannah

LARGE REGIONS OF ROCK AND METAL: PSYCHE ASTEROID ILLUSTRATION This illustration depicts the 140-mile-wide (226-kilometer-wide) asteroid Psyche, which lies in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Psyche is the focal point of NASA?s mission of the same name. The Psyche spacecraft is set to launch in August 2022 and arrive at the asteroid in 2026, where it will orbit for 21 months and investigate its composition. Based on data obtained from Earth, scientists believe Psyche is a mixture of metal and rock. The rock and metal may be in large provinces, or areas, on the asteroid, as illustrated in this rendering. Observing and measuring how the metal and rock are mixed will help scientists determine how Psyche formed. Exploring the asteroid could also give valuable insight into how our own planet and others formed. The Psyche team will use a magnetometer to measure the asteroid?s magnetic field. A multispectral imager will capture images of the surface, as well as data about Psyche?s composition and topography. Spectrometers will analyze the neutrons and gamma rays coming from the surface to reveal the elements that make up the asteroid itself. The illustration was created by Peter Rubin. View or download the full resolution versions from NASA?s Photojournal Date Added: 03-29-2021 Credit: Peter Rubin

Spacecraft are heading to a metal asteroid and Jupiter's moons in 2023

28 December 2022

The JUICE and Psyche mission are set to blast off in 2023, with the aim of studying Jupiter's largest moons and a possible iron core of a planet in the hopes of understanding how worlds become habitable

Engineers working on the Psyche spacecraft

A sneak peek at the biggest science news stories of 2023

22 December 2022

What are you looking forward to reading about in 2023? Whether it is health, physics, technology or environment news, New Scientist will have you covered

SARS-CoV-2 Delta variant. Coloured scanning electron micrograph (SEM). Here the delta variant is shown budding (cyan dots) from an apoptotic Caco-2 human gut epithelial cell 24 hours after infection. SARS-CoV-2 Delta variant took over globally from the alpha variant in 2021. The delta variant has evolved to better replicate in its new human host allowing it to spread between people more efficiently. The coronaviruses take their name from their crown (corona) of surface proteins, which are used to attach and penetrate their host cells. As of mid-September 2021 226, 130, 821 cases and 4, 653, 230 deaths have been recorded world- wide. Magnification x 8000 at 10cm wide. Specimen courtesy of Greg Towers, UCL

2022 preview: What will the coronavirus do next?

29 December 2021

The coronavirus will continue to evolve and could trigger further waves of infections, requiring more vaccinations and boosters

2G9MFKY Munich, Germany. 27th July, 2021. A Google quantum processor

2022 preview: Quantum computers may finally become useful tools

29 December 2021

"Google and other research teams have proved that quantum computers can operate faster than a regu-lar machine, but in 2022 we might actually see them tackle useful problems

FILE -- Henry Magendantz, a participant in the Aduhelm clinical trial, finishes receiving an infusion of the drug at Butler Hospital in Providence, R.I., May 27, 2021. Two months before the Food and Drug Administration's deadline to decide whether to approve Biogen's controversial Alzheimer's drug aducanumab, a council of senior agency officials resoundingly agreed that there wasn't enough evidence it worked. (Kayana Szymczak/The New York Times) / Redux / eyevine Please agree fees before use. SPECIAL RATES MAY APPLY. For further information please contact eyevine tel: +44 (0) 20 8709 8709 e-mail: info@eyevine.com www.eyevine.com

2022 preview: Expect a row over controversial Alzheimer's drug

29 December 2021

In 2021, the US approved the first drug designed to treat the cause of Alzheimer's, but the European Union rejected it. Whether the drug can actually treat the chief symptoms of the disease will be a point of contention in 2022

MARBURG, GERMANY - MARCH 29: Employees in special suits test the procedures for the manufacturing of the messenger RNA (mRNA) for the Covid-19 vaccine in German company BioNTech, in Marburg, Germany on March 29, 2021. BioNTech Marburg's coronavirus vaccine production target will be 2.5 billion doses for 2021, up from 2.3 billion as it is considered as one of the largest manufacturing facilities producing mRNA vaccines in the world. The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was developed by Ozlem Tureci and Ugur Sahin, a couple who are children of Turkish immigrants in Germany. (Photo by Abdulhamid Hosbas/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

2022 preview: mRNA tech behind covid-19 vaccines could get new uses

29 December 2021

Once seen as experimental, the mRNA tech that has enabled us to quickly develop covid-19 vaccines could also be used to tackle other stubborn diseases