• Second Skin Protects against Chem, Bio Agents

    Recent events such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the use of chemical weapons in the Syria conflict have provided a stark reminder of the plethora of chemical and biological threats that soldiers, medical personnel and first responders face during routine and emergency operations. Researchers have developed a smart, breathable fabric designed to protect the wearer against biological and chemical warfare agents. Material of this type could be used in clinical and medical settings as well.

  • Park-Like Tsunami Defenses: Sustainable Alternative to Towering Seawalls

    In tsunami preparedness, it turns out there can be strength in beauty. Rows of green hills strategically arranged along coastlines can help to fend off destruction from tsunamis while preserving ocean views and access to the shore. For some communities, they may offer a better option than towering seawalls.

  • Sea Level Could Rise More than 1 Meter by 2100 if Emission Targets Are Not Met

    Global mean sea-level rise could exceed 1 meter by 2100 and 5 meters by 2300 with unchecked emissions, a survey among 100 leading international experts finds. The risk assessment is based on the increasing body of knowledge of the systems involved – while the scientists highlight the remaining uncertainties, they say it is clear now that previous sea-level rise estimates have been too low.

  • Wobbly” Tracing App “Failed” Clinical Safety and Cybersecurity Tests

    The government’s coronavirus contact tracing app has so far failed the tests needed to be included in the NHS app library, HSJ understands. Jasmine Rapson writes in HJS that the app is being trialed on the Isle of Wight this week, ahead of a national rollout later this month. Senior NHS sources told HSJ it had thus far failed all of the tests required for inclusion in the app library, including cyber security, performance and clinical safety. There are also concerns at high levels about how users’ privacy will be protected once they log that they have coronavirus symptoms, and become “traceable,” and how this information will be used. Senior figures told HSJ that it had been hard to assess the app because the government was “going about it in a kind of a ham-fisted way. They haven’t got clear versions, so it’s been impossible to get fixed code base from them for NHS Digital to test. They keep changing it all over the place.” HSJ’s source described the app as “a bit wobbly.”

  • A Face-Recognition Tech that Works Even for Masked Faces

    In these corona days, face-recognition technologies — used for a variety of security purposes — are severely challenged by the fact that everyone’s wearing protective masks. The Israeli company Corsight says it has solved that problem with autonomous artificial intelligence.

  • An Atomic Catch 22: Climate Change and the Decline of America's Nuclear Fleet

    Nuclear energy in the United States has become deeply unprofitable in the last decade, driven by a combination of aging infrastructure and other electricity sources like renewables and natural gas simply becoming cheaper to build and operate. While some in the environmental community may cheer nuclear’s decline, others are concerned. Love it or hate it, nuclear plays a unique role in the American electric sector, one for which we currently have no market-ready replacement, and its decline will likely make other environmental issues, particularly climate change, harder to solve.

  • Climate Change Increases Risk of Fisheries Conflict

    A team of fisheries scientists and marine policy experts examined how climate change is affecting the ocean environment and found that the changing conditions will likely result in increased fisheries-related conflicts and create new challenges in the management of global fisheries.

  • Researchers Release COVID-19 Symptom Tracker App

    A consortium of scientists with expertise in big data research and epidemiology recently developed a COVID Symptom Tracker app aimed at rapidly collecting information to aid in the response to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. As reported in the journal Science, early use of the app by more than 2.5 million people in the U.S. and the U.K has generated valuable data about COVID-19 for physicians, scientists and public officials to better fight the viral outbreak.

  • Monitoring COVID-19 from Hospital to Home: First Wearable Device Continuously Tracks Key Symptoms

    The more we learn about the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), the more unknowns seem to arise. These ever-emerging mysteries highlight the desperate need for more data to help researchers and physicians better understand — and treat — the extremely contagious and deadly disease. Northwestern University says that Researchers at Northwestern and Shirley Ryan AbilityLab in Chicago have developed a novel wearable device and are creating a set of data algorithms specifically tailored to catch early signs and symptoms associated with COVID-19 and to monitor patients as the illness progresses. 

  • All Disease Models Are “Wrong,” but Scientists Are Working to Fix That

    An international team of researchers has developed a new mathematical tool that could help scientists to deliver more accurate predictions of how diseases, including COVID-19, spread through towns and cities around the world. Rebecca Morrison, an assistant professor of computer science at CU Boulder, led the research. CU says that for years, she has run a repair shop of sorts for mathematical models—those strings of equations and assumptions that scientists use to better understand the world around them, from the trajectory of climate change to how chemicals burn up in an explosion.  As Morrison put it, “My work starts when models start to fail.”

  • Changes in Snowmelt Threaten Farmers in Western U.S.

    Farmers in parts of the western United States who rely on snowmelt to help irrigate their crops will be among the hardest hit in the world by climate change, a new study reveals. The study pinpointed basins globally most at risk of not having enough water available at the right times for irrigation because of changes in snowmelt patterns. Two of those high-risk areas are the San Joaquin and Colorado river basins in the western United States.

  • U.S. Allows Use of Remdesivir, 1st Drug Shown to Help Virus Recovery

    U.S. regulators on Friday allowed emergency use of remdesivir, the first drug that appears to help some COVID-19 patients recover faster, a milestone in the global search for effective therapies against the coronavirus. Matthew Perrone and Marilynn Marchione write for AP that the Food and Drug Administration cleared Gilead Science’s intravenous drug for hospitalized patients with “severe disease,” such as those experiencing breathing problems requiring supplemental oxygen or ventilators. The FDA acted after preliminary results from a government-sponsored study showed that the drug, remdesivir, shortened the time to recovery by 31%, or about four days on average, for hospitalized COVID-19 patients. Those given the drug were able to leave the hospital in 11 days on average vs. 15 days for the comparison group. The drug may also help avert deaths, but that effect is not yet large enough for scientists to know for sure. The National Institutes of Health’s Dr. Anthony Fauci said Wednesday the drug would become a new standard of care for severely ill COVID-19 patients. Remdesivir, which blocks an enzyme the virus uses to copy its genetic material, has not been tested on people with milder illness. The FDA previously allowed narrow use of a malaria drug, hydroxychloroquine, for hospitalized patients who were unable to take part in ongoing studies of the medication. President Trump touted the drug as a “game changer” and repeatedly promoted it as a possible COVID-19 treatment, but no large high-quality studies have shown the drug works for that and it has significant safety concerns.

  • Hydroxychloroquine for Treatment of COVID-19 Linked to Increased Risk of Cardiac Arrhythmias

    In a brief report published today in JAMA Cardiology, a team of pharmacists and clinicians at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) found evidence suggesting that patients who received hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19 were at increased risk of electrical changes to the heart and cardiac arrhythmias. The combination of hydroxychloroquine with azithromycin was linked to even greater changes compared to hydroxychloroquine alone. Hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin each can cause an electrical disturbance in the heart known as a QTc prolongation, indicated by a longer space between specific peaks on an electrocardiogram. QTc prolongation denotes that the heart muscle is taking milliseconds longer than normal to recharge between beats. The researchers note that the delay can cause cardiac arrhythmias, which in turn increases the likelihood of cardiac arrest, stroke, or death. “While hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin are generally well-tolerated medications, increased usage in the context of COVID-19 will likely increase the frequency of adverse drug events (ADEs),” said co-first author Nicholas J. Mercuro, PharmD, a pharmacy specialist in infectious diseases at BIDMC. Senior author Howard S. Gold, MD, an infectious disease specialist at BIDMC and an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, said: “Based on our current knowledge, hydroxychloroquine for the treatment of COVID-19 should probably be limited to clinical trials.”

  • Epidemic Dictates an Open Exchange of Modeling Knowledge

    It has become increasingly clear that, depending on the computer model used, either we could still be in the midst of the pandemic with rising numbers of cases and deaths or we could be nearing the time to reintroduce society to normal operations. Why such disparity? Because each model works a bit differently and depending on the model used and assumptions added in, the results will change, sometimes dramatically.

  • U.S. Navy Releases "Unexplained Aerial Phenomena" Videos

    The U.S. Department of Defense earlier this week released three declassified videos of “unexplained aerial phenomena” (the official name for “unidentified flying objects,” or UFOs). The three videos released Monday had already been leaked to the press in 2007 and 2017. Believers in the existence of extraterrestrial life cheered the Pentagon’s release of the videos, but experts caution that earthly explanations usually exist for such sightings — and that when people do not know why something happened, it does not mean it happened because of aliens.