Researchers at King’s College London analysed data from participants logging their symptoms, tests and vaccines on the UK ZOE COVID Symptom Study app between 8th December 2020 and 4 July 2021, including 1,240,009 (first dose) and 971,504 (second dose) vaccinated UK adults. The research team assessed a range of factors, including age, frailty and areas of deprivation and compared that with post-vaccination infection.

The study, published today in The Lancet Infectious Diseases, found that in the unlikely event of catching COVID-19 after being double vaccinated, the risk of Long COVID was reduced by almost half. There were also fewer hospitalisations (73% less likely) and lower burden of acute symptoms (31% less likely) among those fully vaccinated. The nature of the most common symptoms were similar to unvaccinated adults — e.g. anosmia,(loss of smell) cough, fever, headaches, and fatigue. All these symptoms were milder and less frequently reported by people who were vaccinated, and they were half as likely to get multiple symptoms in the first week of illness. Sneezing was the only symptom which was more commonly reported in vaccinated people with COVID-19.

However, people living in most deprived areas were at greater risk of infection after a single vaccination. While age on its own was not a risk factor, individuals who had health conditions that limited their independence — such as frailty — were up to two times more likely to contract COVID-19 infection after vaccination, and of getting sick.

The findings demonstrate the need to target at-risk groups. Frail adults have already been shown to be disproportionately affected by COVID-19. The research team suggests strategies such as a timely booster programme, targeted infection control measures and more research into the immune response to vaccination in this group could help address the issue.

Lead researcher Dr Claire Steves from King’s College London said: “In terms of the burden of Long COVID, it’s good news that our research has found that having a double vaccination significantly reduces the risk of both catching the virus and if you do, developing long standing symptoms. However, among our frail, older adults and those living in deprived areas the risk is still significant and they should be urgently prioritised for second and booster vaccinations.”

Professor Tim Spector from King’s College London and Lead investigator of ZOE COVID Study comments: “Vaccinations are massively reducing the chances of people getting Long COVID in two ways. Firstly, by reducing the risk of any symptoms by 8 to 10 fold and then by halving the chances of any infection turning into Long COVID, if it does happen. Whatever the duration of symptoms we are seeing that infections after two vaccinations are also much milder, so vaccines are really changing the disease and for the better. We are encouraging people to get their 2nd jab as soon as they can.”

Health and Social Care Secretary, Sajid Javid said: “COVID-19 vaccines have saved more than 105,000 lives and prevented over 24 million infections in England alone. This research is encouraging, suggesting vaccines are not only preventing deaths but could also help prevent some of the longer lasting symptoms.

“We have invested £50 million in research to better understand the lasting effects of COVID and over 80 long COVID assessment services have opened across England as part of a £100 million expansion of care for those suffering the effects.

“It is clear vaccines are building a wall of defence against the virus and are the best way to protect people from serious illness. I encourage everyone who is eligible to come forward for both their jabs as quickly as possible.”

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Without improving its management, the right whale populations will decline and potentially become extinct in the coming decades, according to a Cornell- and University of South Carolina-led report in the journal Oceanography.

“Most of the warming in the Gulf of Maine is not coming from the atmosphere or ocean surface, as one may think,” said senior author Charles Greene, professor emeritus in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Cornell. “It is coming from invading slope water many hundreds of feet below the ocean surface, forcing the right whales to abandon their traditional habitat.”

Since 2010, the calving rate has declined and the right whale population has dropped by an estimated 26%, according to the paper. At the beginning of the decade, the North Atlantic right whale population had numbered over 500. Now, the North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium estimates the population at just 356 whales.

The species is considered critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List of Threatened Species.

The warm slope water entering the Gulf of Maine at depth derives its heat from the Gulf Stream. As the tail end of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, the Gulf Stream has changed its trajectory dramatically during the past ten years.

“Due to a warming climate, the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation is slowing down, causing the Gulf Stream to move North, injecting warmer and saltier slope water into the Gulf of Maine,” Greene said.

The warming Gulf of Maine has reduced the abundance of copepods, the tiny crustaceans that serve as the right whales’ favorite snack. This has reduced right whale calving rates and forced the whales to abandon their mid-summer feeding grounds in the Gulf of Maine. Instead, the whales have headed north to the cooler waters of the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

Since 2015, scientists have witnessed an increased number of right whales feeding in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, where there were no protections in place to prevent ship strikes and fishing gear entanglement. This has led to an Unusual Mortality Event declared by NOAA in 2017, when 17 right whale deaths were confirmed, mostly in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Ten right whales were found dead in 2019, while for 2020 and 2021, four deaths have occurred thus far.

“Right whales continue to die each year,” said lead author Erin Meyer-Gutbrod, assistant professor at the University of South Carolina. “Protective policies must be strengthened immediately before this species declines past the point of no-return.”

Ocean scientists are hoping for new policies on rope-free fishing gear, vessel speed limit enforcement and money for monitoring and ecosystem forecasting.

Funding for this research was provided by the Lenfest Ocean Program.

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Materials provided by Cornell University. Original written by Blaine Friedlander. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Sleep deficiency is well known to negatively impact human functioning. For example, it is associated with deficits in attention and memory, as well as increased risk of car accidents, heart problems, and other medical issues. However, while some research has addressed recovery after chronic sleep deprivation, it has been unclear how much time is needed to fully recover from prolonged periods of deficient sleep.

To shed more light on this topic, Ochab and colleagues conducted a small study with several healthy adults who underwent 10 days of purposeful sleep restriction followed by 7 recovery days of unrestricted sleep. Participants completed the study in their normal day-to-day environments and wore wrist sensors to monitor daily patterns of sleep and activity. They also underwent daily electroencephalography (EEG) to monitor brain activity, and they answered daily questions (Stroop tasks) to measure reaction times and accuracy.

After 7 days of recovery, the participants had not yet returned to pre-sleep deprivation performance on most measures of functioning. These included several EEG measures of brain activity, rest-versus-activity patterns captured by wrist sensors, and accuracy on Stroop tasks. Only their reaction times had recovered to baseline levels.

While the researchers note that it is difficult to compare these results with other studies that employed different methods, the findings contribute new insights into recovery from chronic sleep loss. Future research could expand to a greater number of participants, investigate longer recovery periods, and disentangle the order in which different functions return to normal.

The authors add: “The investigation of the recovery process following an extended period of sleep restriction reveal that the differences in behavioral, motor, and neurophysiological responses to both sleep loss and recovery.”

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Chocolate is a £61billion-per-year global industry that has seen the volatile price of cocoa lead to a surge in traders seeking to buy cheaper beans from deforested regions, with lower quality plants, and human rights abuses. This has affected the prices and practices of legitimate farmers, reducing sustainability gains.

In the findings, published in the journal Supply Chain Management, the multi-university research team reveal that biomarkers can create “meta-barcodes,” which are like biochemical fingerprints, an unchanging barcode extracted from the plant’s DNA, providing a unique identifier of a plant that is also observed in its beans and subsequent chocolate products. The biomarker of cocoa beans used in chocolate manufacturing could accurately identify the farm, production facility or cooperative where a cocoa product came from.

To make this new process a reality, a controlled data set of biomarkers of registered locations is required for audit. The study goes on to explain that this missing piece — a biomarker database that identifies the origin of cocoa products, can be built by companies at an estimated cost of £5 per sample — around the cost of a box of chocolates.

Glenn Parry, Professor of Digital Transformation at University of Surrey, said: “The chocolate market has become turbulent, and we have evidence of over 100 years of slavery in the supply chain. Governments and chocolate producers are faced with an ethical challenge and drastically need to improve a trade that is rife with environmental destruction and human misery.

“We have an effective approach for them to make progress. We demonstrate that biomarkers can provide supply chain visibility from the individual farm to the retail chocolate bar. This solution could now be within reach, where the journey of the chocolate in your fridge could be traced back to the cocoa trees where it began.”

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Materials provided by University of Surrey. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.