• Israel Launches New “Contactless” Roadside CPVID-19 Testing Booths Which Have Zero Contact between Nurse and Patient

    Israel has launched a network of new ‘contactless’ roadside covid-19 testing booths which have zero contact between nurse and patient. The Daily Mail reports that the country has offered to share the design, which is relatively cheap and easy to produce, with other countries as part of the fight against the coronavirus pandemic. The booths, produced by healthcare companies together with civilian and military partners, provide an entirely sealed, sterile environment for the medic, and can be quickly disinfected between patients. Tests are carried out using two rubber gloves which are attached to the outer wall with airtight seals. Results are processed in a matter of hours and reported directly via the patient’s electronic health record.

  • Abbott Launches COVID-19 Antibody Test

    Abbott has launched its third test for coronavirus (COVID-19) and will start shipping it in the U.S. The test is a serology test – also called an antibody test – which could be a critical next step in battling this virus. Abbott says its test helps to detect the IgG antibody to SARS-CoV-2. An antibody is a protein that the body produces in the late stages of infection and may remain for up to months and possibly years after a person has recovered. Detecting these IgG antibodies will help determine if a person was previously infected with the virus that causes COVID-19. The new antibody test is to be used on Abbott’s ARCHITECT i1000SR and i2000SR laboratory instruments, which can run up to 100-200 tests an hour.

  • Toward an Unhackable Quantum Internet

    A quantum internet could be used to send un-hackable messages, improve the accuracy of GPS, and enable cloud-based quantum computing. For more than twenty years, dreams of creating such a quantum network have remained out of reach in large part because of the difficulty to send quantum signals across large distances without loss. Researchers have found a way to correct for signal loss.

  • Increasing Fire Protection through Virtual Reality

    Fire is one of the most dreaded anxieties in households worldwide. In 2018 Dutch insurance companies registered no less than 80,000 domestic fires. The most common cause is smoking, followed by technical malfunctions in appliances and cooking. Preventive measures can avoid many of the consequences and there is a lot to be gained.

  • We Simulated How a Modern Dust Bowl Would Impact Global Food Supplies and the Result Is Devastating

    When the southern Great Plains of the United States were blighted with a series of droughts in the 1930s, it had an unparalleled impact on the whole country. Combined with decades of ill-advised farming policy, the result was the Dust Bowl. Massive dust storms began in 1931 and devastated the country’s major cereal producing areas. But what consequences would a disruption like the Dust Bowl have now, when the Great Plains of the U.S. are not just the breadbasket of America, but a major producer of staple cereals that are exported around the world?

  • Super-Charging Drug Development for COVID-19

    Researchers are ramping up production of a promising drug that has proven effective in obliterating SARS-CoV in cellular cultures. The team hopes that the drug might also be effective in the fight against SARS’s close genetic cousin, the novel coronavirus (COVID-19). Northwestern University says that the team, led by Northwestern University and ShanghaiTech University, has produced the promising molecule, called valinomycin, in a cell-free system. With this approach, they increased production yields more than 5,000 times in just a few rapid design cycles, achieving higher concentrations of the molecule than achieved previously in cells.The research was published online recently in the journal Metabolic Engineering and will appear in the July 2020 print issue. 

  • Model Quantifies the Impact of Quarantine Measures on COVID-19’s Spread

    Every day for the past few weeks, charts and graphs plotting the projected apex of Covid-19 infections have been splashed across newspapers and cable news. Many of these models have been built using data from studies on previous outbreaks like SARS or MERS. Now, a team of engineers at MIT has developed a model that uses data from the Covid-19 pandemic in conjunction with a neural network to determine the efficacy of quarantine measures and better predict the spread of the virus. Mary Beth Gallagher writes in MIT News that Most models used to predict the spread of a disease follow what is known as the SEIR model, which groups people into “susceptible,” “exposed,” “infected,” and “recovered.” Dandekar and Barbastathis enhanced the SEIR model by training a neural network to capture the number of infected individuals who are under quarantine, and therefore no longer spreading the infection to others. Raj Dandekar, a Ph.D. candidate studying civil and environmental engineering, and George Barbastathis, professor of mechanical engineering, enhanced the SEIR model by training a neural network to capture the number of infected individuals who are under quarantine, and therefore no longer spreading the infection to others.

  • Extreme Coastal Flooding in the U.S. Expected to Rise

    Extreme flooding events in some U.S. coastal areas could double every five years if sea levels continue to rise as expected, a new study says. Today’s “once-in-a-lifetime” extreme water levels — which are currently reached once every fifty years — may be exceeded daily along most of the U.S. coastline. Associated coastal hazards, such as beach and cliff erosion, will likely accelerate in concert with the increased risk of flooding, suggest the authors.

  • Climate-Driven Megadrought Is Emerging in Western U.S.: Study

    With the western United States and northern Mexico suffering an ever-lengthening string of dry years starting in 2000, scientists have been warning for some time that climate change may be pushing the region toward an extreme long-term drought worse than any in recorded history. A new study says the time has arrived: a megadrought as bad or worse than anything even from known prehistory is very likely in progress, and warming climate is playing a key role.

  • Virology Lab Finds Drug Originally Meant for Ebola is Effective against a Key Enzyme of Coronavirus That Causes COVID-19

    Scientists at the University of Alberta have shown that the drug remdesivir is highly effective in stopping the replication mechanism of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, according to new research published today in the Journal of Biological Chemistry. The paper, Folio reports, follows closely on research published by the same lab in late February that demonstrated how the drug worked against the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) virus, a related coronavirus. The paper demonstrates how remdesivir, developed in 2014 to fight the Ebola epidemic, works in detail. He likens the polymerase to the engine of the virus, responsible for synthesizing the virus’ genome.

  • The Coronavirus Contact Tracing App Won't Log Your Location, but It Will Reveal Who You Hang Out With

    The Australian federal government has announced plans to introduce a contact tracing mobile app to help curb COVID-19’s spread in Australia. Roba Abbas and Katina Michael write in The Conversation that rather than collecting location data directly from mobile operators, the proposed TraceTogether app will use Bluetooth technology to sense whether users who have voluntarily opted-in have come within nine metres of one another. Contact tracing apps generally store 14-21 days of interaction data between participating devices to help monitor the spread of a disease. The TraceTogether app has been available in Singapore since March 20, and its reception there may help shed light on how the new tech will fare in Australia.

  • Antibody Tests May Hold Clues to COVID-19 Exposure, Immunity—but It's Complicated

    As the nation looks for ways to emerge from the shelter-in-place orders instituted across the country, there’s growing hope that our blood might hold clues for how we move forward. Chris Dall writes in CIDRAP that late last week, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced that it has begun recruiting volunteers for a study to determine how many Americans without a confirmed COVID-19 diagnosis have been exposed to the SARS-CoV-2 virus, based on the presence of antibodies in their blood. Antibody tests, while not useful for diagnostic purposes because of the time it takes to produce an antibody response, could indicate those who’ve had the illness at some point but never received official confirmation of infection, and those who’ve had very mild or even asymptomatic (symptom-free) infections. But experts say there remains a numbers of unknowns that need to be addressed.

  • U.K. Coronavirus Antibody Test Validated – but Results Show under-40s May Not Be Immune

    Tests aimed at determining whether Britons have recovered from coronavirus may not be useful because younger people do not produce sufficient quantities of antibodies to the virus, early research suggests. Sarah Knapton writes in The Telegraph that it was hoped that antibody tests could help kickstart the economy by allowing those who are immune out of lockdown. The government had been hoping to roll out millions of tests in the coming weeks in the belief that some kind of “immunity certificate” might be possible for those testing positive, but supplies from China have so far failed to pass sensitivity and specificity tests. Professor Karol Sikora, a private oncologist and Dean of Medicine at the University of Buckingham, this week validated a test kit using samples from staff at his clinics, which were then verified by a private lab. Around six per cent of staff were found to have had the virus but, crucially, under-40s who had tested positive came back negative, suggesting the test may not be useful for the wider population. 

  • Vanda Pharmaceuticals Starts Phase III COVID-19 Trial of Tradipitant

    Vanda Pharmaceuticals has partnered with The Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research’s arm Northwell Health to conduct a Phase III clinical trial of tradipitant to treat severe Covid-19 pneumonia. Clinical Trials Arena reports that enrolment for the trial, called ODYSSEY, has begun. The first patient was enrolled on 15 March at Lenox Hill Hospital, New York City. Tradipitant is a neurokinin-1 receptor (NK-1R) antagonist licensed by the company from Eli Lilly. The drug is being developed to treat gastroparesis, motion sickness, and atopic dermatitis. The double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomised ODYSSEY trial will assess the safety and efficacy of oral, 85mg twice-daily dose of the drug in treating neurogenic inflammation of the lung caused by Covid-19.

  • Coronavirus Shows We Are Not at All Prepared for the Security threat of climate change

    How might a single threat, even one deemed unlikely, spiral into an evolving global crisis which challenges the foundations of global security, economic stability and democratic governance, all in the matter of a few weeks? My research on threats to national security, governance and geopolitics has focused on exactly this question, albeit with a focus on the disruptive potential of climate change, rather than a novel coronavirus. At this stage in the COVID-19 situation, there are three primary lessons for a climate-changing future: the immense challenge of global coordination during a crisis, the potential for authoritarian emergency responses, and the spiraling danger of compounding shocks.