Lifeboat Foundation

Dangerous superbugs are clinging on to surgical gowns and instruments even after the items have been disinfected, scientists have revealed.

Hospitals have been warned to monitor their hygiene practices after tests showed the pathogen C. difficile is becoming resistant to standard decontamination agents.

The bug, which is thought to be responsible for around 1,600 deaths a year in the UK, can cause diarrhea, fever, rapid heartbeat, inflammation of the intestines, and kidney failure.

A number of events are planned next week on the Mall to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the historic moon mission.

Medical experts hail ‘paradigm shift’ of implant that transmits video images directly to the visual cortex, bypassing the eye and optic nerve.

Rising seas imperil the delicate web of cables and power stations that control the internet.

Anchorage could set a heat record this week, with a forecast high potentially reaching 90 degrees. The city has canceled its Fourth of July fireworks celebration.

Governments should prioritize ‘adaptation and resilience’ measures designed to curb the effects of ongoing lower-impact climate events, experts say.

The El Niño-Southern Oscillation has been responsible for widespread, simultaneous crop failures in recent history, according to a new study from researchers at Columbia University’s International Research Institute for Climate and Society, the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and other partners. This finding runs counter to a central pillar of the global agriculture system, which assumes that crop failures in geographically distant breadbasket regions such as the United States, China and Argentina are unrelated. The results also underscore the potential opportunity to manage such climate risks, which can be predicted using seasonal climate forecasts.

The study, published in Science Advances, is the first to provide estimates of the degree to which different modes of climate variability such as ENSO cause volatility in global and regional production of corn, wheat and soy. Such variability caused nearly 18 percent volatility in global corn production from 1980 to 2010, for example.

“Global agriculture counts on the strong likelihood that poor production in one part of the world will be made up for by good production elsewhere,” said Weston Anderson, a postdoctoral research scientist at the International Research Institute for Climate and Society and lead author on the study.

EIGHT volcanoes along the west coast of the USA are being monitored by scientists in the wake of a series of earthquakes and aftershocks in southern California.