It wasn’t all bad

Every autumn, rail passengers are delayed by “leaves on the line”. But now engineers at the University of Sheffield may have a solution. The technique, which is to be trialled by the operator Northern, involves blasting pellets of dry ice at leaves. They become brittle, then when the ice turns back to gas and expands, they’re destroyed. Leaves are currently tackled by specialist trains equipped with water jets: the dry-ice method can be used by passenger trains.

A chorister who dedicated more than 50 years of his life to the Exeter Cathedral choir is to be immortalised in stone on the roof of the 14th century building. Gordon Pike began singing at the cathedral as a boy in 1963; he left a few years later, but returned full time in 1974. He finally retired at Easter in 2020, but the plan to honour him with his own carving – complete with luxuriant beard – was delayed by the pandemic. The first he knew of it was when the clay model was unveiled at a ceremony last month. He described himself as “gobsmacked”. The stone version will be placed as a roof boss on the ceiling in the transept.

An antiviral drug has been hailed as a potential gamechanger in the fight against Covid-19, after early trial results suggested that it can cut the risk of hospitalisation and death in infected patients by about 50%. The hope is that the pill, known as molnupiravir, will keep people out of hospital by preventing their illness from escalating. It works by hampering the virus’s ability to replicate itself. Merck, the US company that developed the drug, has said it can make ten million courses of the treatment by the end of the year.