The Mammoth, the Starliner and the Origin of Covid

The science news on August 13, 2021 are:

In paleontology: The inscription of a roaming woolly mammoth in the Arctic in defense of it.

• Mammoth tusks are saturated with the elements of the animal’s diet, which makes it possible to deduce the type of climate or type of terrain in which the animal lives. by chemical analyses.

• Since tusks grow during a mammoth’s life, it is possible to follow the evolution of the environment in which the specimen evolved, after making connections between different isotopes and different places thanks to the analysis. The teeth of relatively immobile species, such as rodents.

• By analyzing the tusks of a 17,000-year-old woolly mammoth, researchers conclude that it did travel a lot, but that the duration of the trips varied during its lifetime, similar to elephants today.

in the space: A new delay in the flight of the Boeing Starliner space capsule.

• It is not yet known when the Boeing Starliner space capsule, which was scheduled to launch at the International Space Station (ISS) on August 4, 2021, will fly.

• NASA had instructed Boeing and SpaceX to deliver space shuttles to them to free themselves from Russian missiles.

• If SpaceX has already carried out three manned missions, the technical problems are related to Boeing.

In health: Origin of Covid: China rejects new WHO investigation.

• The World Health Organization has asked all countries to release their Covid-19 data, which China opposes, in the name of protecting privacy.

• The origin of the virus remains unknown to this day, and the hypothesis of a leak from a Chinese laboratory is still being studied, among other things, despite the conclusions of the first investigation of the World Health Organization.

• The head of the Danish delegation of experts who participated in this first investigation publicly regretted that he was unable to investigate further the impact of the leak from the laboratory.

In health: Should children be vaccinated? Expert opinion.

• The issue of vaccinating children will be raised further because they are more affected than Delta, they are the only unvaccinated and the start of the school year is approaching.

• For experts, if it is not a question of vaccinating children who do not pose a risk before the vaccines are approved and as long as the epidemic is under control, it is nevertheless necessary to ensure compliance with the gestures of barrier in the institutions hosting them.

• In their opinion, it makes no sense, if certain vaccines for this age group are licensed, to give them to children instead of sending them to other countries, where children can also be affected and transmitted the virus.

in the weather: Freshness and summer heat wave: where do these climate changes come from?

• On Thursday August 12, heat records were reached around the Mediterranean due to the arrival of an extremely hot air mass.

• The thermal dome goes hand in hand with the “cold drop,” a cold crater that leads to the formation of thunderstorms, responsible for the July floods in northern Europe.

• With global warming and the disruption to the water cycle it causes, these extreme events will become more and more common.