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Tuesday November 21 2023

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Tom Whipple

science editor

Tom Whipple is science editor at The Times. He has been covering science for the paper since 2012. He writes news, features, reviews and commentary across the paper, as well as appearing regularly on Times Radio. Tom joined The Times shortly after graduating with a degree in mathematics. During the course of his job he has visited the tunnels below Cern and the top of Mont Blanc above it. He has been inside the world's hottest sauna and the world's most irradiated nature reserve. He has interviewed Stephen Hawking and Jedward.

Showing 1 - 20 of 4610 results

What Vallance told the Covid inquiry — and why it matters

Europe’s scientific advisers, it seems, had a support group. Sometimes, said Sir Patrick Vallance, they called each other during the pandemic and...

Tuesday November 21 2023, 12.01am, The Times

The diary of Sir Patrick Vallance, right, written at the time of the pandemic, contained stinging criticism of Boris Johnson and his chancellor, Rishi Sunak

Sunak ‘wanted to let people die during pandemic’

Rishi Sunak wanted to “just let people die” during discussions of a second lockdown in 2020, according to extracts from Sir Patrick Vallance’s...

Monday November 20 2023, 8.30pm, The Times

Sir Patrick Vallance said Boris Johnson often changed his mind between “imposing full lockdowns and no restrictions at all”

Sunak thought it ‘OK to let people die’, Covid inquiry told

Rishi Sunak argued against a second lockdown and, like Boris Johnson, thought it was OK if people died, according to a diary entry by Sir Patrick...

Monday November 20 2023, 6.10pm, The Times

Should Britain have adopted the Swedish approach to Covid?

Pity Sir Patrick Vallance. First the left-wing press attacked the chief scientific adviser for not being more like his opposite number in New...

Monday November 20 2023, 3.41pm, The Times

Wildcats once roamed across Britain but are now almost extinct

Freed wildcats must survive winter — and the temptation of domestic moggies

Somewhere, deep in one of Scotland’s last wildernesses, a cat looks over its last domain. Here, amid mountains and tundra, it is the king...

Monday November 20 2023, 12.01am, The Times

Questions remain over the origin of a process to which Henry Cort gave his name

Academic scrap over iron-working technique ‘buried in gibberish’

Questions about metallurgy rarely attract such controversy. But then questions about metallurgy also rarely get praised for “problematising the...

Monday November 20 2023, 12.01am, The Times

Anders Tegnell said the UK should do more in response to a second wave

Swedish expert ‘told UK to get tougher on Covid’

The architect of Sweden’s light-touch pandemic policy told Britain that it needed to do more to tackle the coronavirus, Sir Patrick Vallance is...

Monday November 20 2023, 12.01am, The Times

What happens if Iceland’s volcano erupts?

Beneath the surface, the magma is rising. In the town of Grindavik, cracks criss-cross the main road — metre-wide fissures in the Earth’s crust...

Friday November 17 2023, 3.00pm, The Times

East Sussex and North Essex Foundation NHS Trust has installed air filtration units in some clinical areas of its hospitals

Air filters ‘don’t stop disease spreading’

There is no evidence that air filtration systems cut the risk of infection, according to an analysis of the state of research.

Scientists looked...

Friday November 17 2023, 7.20am, The Times

Figures show antibiotic resistant infections in the UK rose by 4 per cent following the pandemic

Bacteria zapped with electricity in a fight with antibiotic resistance

The graphs are an anatomy of a massacre. In one, the bacteria are squished flat. In another, they blow up like balloons. One shows some getting...

Thursday November 16 2023, 12.01am, The Times

The American model Jojo Babie is among the top influencers who can charge thousands for sponsored posts

Old rules apply for Instagram — flash the flesh

New media might rely on the latest advances in technology but success still relies on one of the first rule of promotion — sex sells.

Wednesday November 15 2023, 8.30pm, The Times

Healthy heart, happy mind: Why the risk of dementia is on the decline

Albert Hofman, a professor of epidemiology at Harvard University, was initially surprised by the results. He had been looking at how the risk of...

Friday November 10 2023, 9.00am, The Times

The legal case against AstraZeneca hinges on how statistics from vaccine clinical trials are interpreted

Vaccine ‘victim’ case is tragic — but do numbers stack up?

The documents are, in legal language and bullet-pointed paragraphs, a record of a tragedy. Yesterday the details of a claim filed in the High...

Friday November 10 2023, 12.01am, The Times

Scientists are hopeful smart tech could help people work out quite how drunk they are

How your smartspeaker could tell if you’re drunk

Alexa? Am I drunk? Soon, you might get an answer. Provided, that is, you read her a tongue twister first.

Scientists think your smartspeaker...

Thursday November 09 2023, 8.30pm, The Times

Blood test on NHS will bring faster diagnosis of Alzheimer’s

Blood tests for Alzheimer’s could be available on the NHS within five years, leading to faster, wider diagnoses and earlier treatment.

Thursday November 09 2023, 12.01am, The Times

Lawyers argue that the patients were not warned about the risk of a very rare blood clot side effect

Father with brain injury sues Covid vaccine maker

A man who suffered a brain injury after receiving the AstraZeneca Covid vaccine has launched a legal action against the drug company, alleging...

Thursday November 09 2023, 12.01am, The Times

Boris Johnson’s former adviser Dominic Cummings has criticised his boss’s response to the pandemic at the Covid inquiry

Was lockdown the right decision? What the evidence says

Was it all a monstrous error? There was a time, we now know, when the UK’s pandemic policy hung in the balance. There were, as Dominic Cummings...

Saturday November 04 2023, 7.30am, The Times

Dominic Cummings shared with the inquiry a whiteboard of less than scientific graphs in No 10

‘Voters would want to lynch people if they knew’: a surreal week at the Covid inquiry

The tones used in the two documents are, admittedly, a little different. The first, from Helen MacNamara, former deputy cabinet secretary, is...

Saturday November 04 2023, 12.01am, The Times

Inside Technogym headquarters

Behind the scenes at Technogym

They still have the first Technogym weights machine. Its paint is peeled, its 40-year-old frame is battered, its mechanism is held together with...

Saturday November 04 2023, 12.01am, The Times

The best luxury tech gadgets of all time

Sometimes, Tom Whipple says, the best thing a technology can do is take a simple pleasure and just make it more pleasurable. Ever since there...

Saturday November 04 2023, 12.00am, The Times