Lifeboat Foundation

Our mindset is everything: what one person sees as a crisis, another person sees as opportunity.

The magnitude of economic and social disruption caused by COVID-19 (25% of small businesses have closed, bankruptcies are up 26%) means that many existing business models are being upended. In some cases, entire industries.

As an entrepreneur, you should be asking yourself: What challenges or problems can I solve? What are new digital business models I want to experiment with?

The YSPH-developed test, called SalivaDirect, has been used as part of an NBA testing program and will now be available to more diagnostic laboratories.

The high demand on medical devices and personal protective equipment (PPE) during the COVID-19 crisis left millions of health care professionals unprotected in the middle of this situation, as governments around the world were not prepared for such pandemic. The three-dimensional printing (3DP) community, from universities to 3DP enthusiasts with printers at home, was there to support hospitals from day 1 on this demand by providing PPE and other medical supplies (e.g., face shields and valves for respiratory machines). This editorial covers the importance of 3DP in the fight against COVID-19 and how this can be used to tackle potential pandemics and support the supply chain.

After a series of cases of pneumonia in Wuhan, the capital city of Hubei province (China), the Chinese health authorities announced in January 2020 that a novel coronavirus, officially known as severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV)-2, was responsible for these cases.¹ SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), was not detected before the recent pandemic and has been known to be genetically similar to SARS-CoV.¹ The COVID-19 is transmitted mainly through contact with an infected individual, through droplets that are produced when the patient coughs or sneezes or through droplets from the saliva or nasal cavity.^1,2 To avoid transmission, it is very important to implement individual hygiene measures and especially the use of personal protective equipment (PPE). However, the lack of PPE and other key resources during the COVID-19 crisis has been a constant problem, leaving many health care professionals across the world unprotected.

Dealing with a pandemic, such as COVID-19, is an unprecedented situation in this modern globalized word, which has created extraordinary emergency that is particularly affecting the supply chain.³ The supply chain disruptions, in combination with the enormous needs for medical devices and protective health care material, have created the need of new initiatives and the use of emerging technologies such as three-dimensional printing (3DP) to come forward and support the health care professionals and supply chain.

Scientists are hoping to deliver a vaccine that protects against Covid-19, and its transmission, by early 2021. In order to do that, the development process has been rapidly accelerated.

The world is betting on one thing to stop the pandemic: A vaccine. This is what it will take to bring one to the masses — and the key players behind those efforts.

Israeli hospitals were among the first anywhere to use dexamethasone, a steroid drug, to stop cytokines storms and reduce lung inflammation in severely ill Covid-19 patients. However, steroids can suppress the immune response too strongly.

Additionally, an Israeli hospital is among the first to do a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial of ivermectin, a drug to treat parasitic infections in people and animals, to see if it can shorten the duration of the disease if given to Covid-19 patients immediately after diagnosis.

Continue reading “13 promising Covid treatments emerging from Israel” »

No, dear Pope Francis. I 100% share the concept of the brotherhood of all humans. There can never be too many calls for brotherhood. What I do not share in the most absolute way is that it is “useless to go to the Moon, if we are not brothers on Earth”. Quite opposite: eight billion humans, closed on the surface of our mother planet, will not be able to be brothers unless they will achieve new resources, new spaces, a new horizon of development. Remaining confined to the ground we would find ourselves competing in a zero sum game, or worse, an increasingly negative sum game, considering how much the resources of planet Earth, especially the environmental ones, are already scarce. Once again, it is up to people of good will to refuse to remain and fight among brothers and sisters, and to resume the courageous path of exploration, the search for new resources, the opening of new frontiers and human settlement in space. Properly in order to nourish the many brothers and sisters in peace, harmony and freedom. Otherwise mafias, tyrannies, selfishness, fratricide and infanticide will prevail, as history unfortunately testifies, every time a world has become small and suffocating. Pandemics such as covid19 also teach us that we will be more and more forced into immobility in our homes, if we will insist on remaining in increasing numbers in a philosophically and physically closed world. Let alone “grow and multiply”. Now, from a Jesuit Pope I would have expected at least that he would not run into the most obvious clichés, like “before going into space we must solve problems on Earth”. Quite the contrary: if we will not urgently kick-off the civil expansion into space, not only will we not be able to solve Earth’s problems, but they will get worse and worse, bringing civilization to a very dangerous point of no return.

The Feast of the Assumption of Mary into Heaven coincides with August 15th. Bergoglio remembers those who do not have the opportunity to celebrate. And on the issue of the Nile between Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan he calls for dialogue and brotherhood.

The 19 hospitalized patients from a single nursing home had tested positive for the virus in April.

All were older than age 64 and had chronic health conditions such as hypertension, dementia, heart disease, diabetes and lung diseases. Their age and health issues are considered risk factors for severe COVID-19.

The patients received either one or two intravenous doses of itolizumab along with the standard treatments used in Cuba at the time. Those included antiviral drugs, antibiotics, chloroquine, interferon, and blood thinners. Only two patients required oxygen therapy after the first dose, and all but one were discharged from the hospital in 14 days.

N”(Reuters) — An antibody drug already being used against the coronavirus in Cuba decreased the risk of intensive care admission and death among nursing home residents with moderate COVID-19, according to a small study conducted in the island nation.

Continue reading “Antibody drug lowers risk of death in elderly COVID-19 patients: Cuban study” »

New research supported by the National Institutes of Health delineates how two relatively common variations in a gene called KIF3A are responsible for an impaired skin barrier that allows increased water loss from the skin, promoting the development of atopic dermatitis, commonly known as eczema. This finding could lead to genetic tests that empower parents and physicians to take steps to potentially protect vulnerable infants from developing atopic dermatitis and additional allergic diseases.

Atopic dermatitis is an inflammatory skin condition that affects up to 20% of children in developed countries. This chronic disease is characterized by dry, thickened and intensely itchy skin, particularly in skin folds. People with eczema are more susceptible to bacterial, viral and fungal skin infections and frequently develop additional allergic diseases such as asthma.

KIF3A is a gene that codes for a protein involved in generating signals from the outside to the inside of a cell, part of a complex sensory apparatus. Previously, scientists had identified an association between two genetic variations in KIF3A and asthma in children who also had eczema. In the new study, the researchers found that these variations, or single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), changed parts of the KIF3A gene to a form that can regulate, through a process called methylation, the rate at which a gene is transcribed into the blueprint for protein production. The investigators confirmed that skin and nasal-lining cells from people with the KIF3A SNP variants had more methylation and contained fewer blueprints for the KIF3A protein than cells in which KIF3A lacked the SNPs. In addition, the researchers demonstrated that people with the SNP-created regulating sites had higher levels of water loss from the skin.

Binary Defense researchers have identified a bug in the Emotet malware and have been using it to prevent the malware from making new victims.