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Category: biotech/medical – Page 1515

😃 Well, at least fossil-fuel emissions went down.

Global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil fuel and industry are expected to drop by 7% in 2020, new analysis shows, as economies around the world feel the effects of Covid-19 lockdowns.

The latest estimates from the Global Carbon Project (GCP) suggest that these emissions will clock in at 34bn tonnes of CO2 (GtCO2) this year – a fall of 2.4GtCO2 compared to 2019.

This annual decline is the largest absolute drop in emissions ever recorded, the researchers say, and the largest relative fall since the second world war.

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A former independent presidential hopeful is vexed at the COVID-19 vaccine at the moment, and for multiple reasons. That would be Zoltan Istvan, a self-described transhumanist candidate who was billed as the “cyborg who is running against President Trump” in press reports throughout 2020. The California hopeful — who ran in the Republican primary — based his campaign on a futuristic message of fusing radical technology with daily life under the motto “Upgrade America.”

Mr. Istvan recently looked into how long it would be before he got a COVID-19 vaccine.

“I took the New York Times’ ‘Find your Place’ in the vaccine line report, and I was near the bottom 15% of the timeline for getting the vaccine — meaning I’ll be nearly last,” Mr. Istvan wrote in an email to Inside the Beltway.

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Hello rejuvenation friends! Did you know that Heales, the Belgian entity led by Didier Coeurnelle, is financing two very interesting experiments with the great rejuvenation scientists Harold Katcher and Rodolfo Goya in order to test if Elixir (in the case of Katcher) and plasma of young rats (in the case of Goya) are capable to considerably extend the lifespan of rats? Today I found out on Google that six days ago, Didier published this article in Heales website: https://heales.org/wp-content/plugins/multisite-language-switcher/flags/. In the article, Didier explains in depth both experiments, and put the links to the detailed protocol of the experiments, in two Word files. It’s incredible the power of the collaboration of people who are enthusiastic of rejuvenation science, such as Didier, Harold and Rodolfo. I don’t know if the experiment will extend considerably the rats lives, but it seems that these two experiments deserve a close look from the rejuvenation field.

Today, in spite of the gigantic progress in medicine and research, we still do not know how to be healthy beyond about 85 years of age.

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New methods enable scientists at IST Austria to take a look at the innermost of cells: High-resolution images of deep-frozen cells show structures that previously could only be guessed at.

The cells in our body are in motion. Some migrate from A to B to heal wounds or fight pathogens. They do so with the help of small “feet” at the leading edge of migrating cells, so-called lamellipodia. These thin extensions are pushed forward and bind to the surface while the rest of the cell is pulled along. Inside these feet is a dense network of interwoven protein threads, called actin filaments, which form the cell’s cytoskeleton. So far, it was unclear how the Arp2/3 complex, an assembly of seven proteins central for cell motility, sprouts off new actin filaments from pre-existing ones and thus generates dense, branched networks providing the required protrusive forces to the cell.

Until now, scientists had to decide when they wanted to analyze the structure of the Arp2/3 complex: One option was to study it in isolation, where the protein complex is in an inactive conformation and hence does not allow understanding of how the network is formed. In order to become fully activated, however, the Arp2/3 complex needs to be bound to actin filaments. This requires using a method called electron tomography, which comes at the cost of considerably lower resolution. “Previous electron tomography data of Arp2/3 complexes bound to actin filaments in a test-tube environment was too imprecise, making it impossible to unambiguously tell where the individual elements of the complex must be located,” explains Florian Fäßler, a postdoc in the group of IST Austria professor Florian Schur.

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For those of us who don’t think that even our bowel movements will soon be inventoried, tracked and timestamped during every moment of existence, here is a just published white paper from the Rand Corporation, an influential think tank created in 1948 to offer research and analysis to the US military, which begs to differ.

The November 2020 whilte paper, published under the title “The Internet of Bodies,” focuses on the advantages and disadvantages, security and privacy risks, plus the ethical implications of what it calls a growing “Internet of Bodies (IoB).”

IoB tools are internet-connected “smart” devices increasingly available in the marketplace which promise to track and upload to the internet measurements related to individual heartbeat, blood pressure and other bodily functions in real time for purposes of health, exercise, security or other reasons.

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In October, threat actors hit the Wyckoff Heights Medical Center in Brooklyn and the University of Vermont Health Network. The cyber attack took place on October 28 and disrupted services at the UVM Medical Center and affiliated facilities.

A month later, the University of Vermont Medical Center was continuing to recover from the cyber attack that paralyzed the systems at the Burlington hospital.

In early December, Hospital CEO Dr. Stephen Leffler announced that the attack that took place in late October on the computer systems of the University of Vermont Medical Center is costing the hospital about $1.5 million a day in lost revenue and recovery costs.

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It looks like virtual education(which is happening more now) is actually preparing students for the workplace of the future.

That said, there may be a silver lining to virtual classrooms and distance learning, which many universities and schools this academic year are defaulting to, in various degrees, due to the coronavirus. As students and teachers may have to compensate for logistic challenges, collaborating online might prepare high school students with the kind of organizational acumen, emotional intelligence and self-discipline needed for modern careers, particularly those that allow for the growing trend of working in remote, distributed teams. The sooner that students master those proficiencies, the better off they’ll be when they reach the job market.

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A 75-year-old man from Northern Israel died of a heart attack about two hours after being vaccinated against the novel coronavirus, the Health Ministry has confirmed. The man had pre-existing conditions and had suffered from heart attacks in the past, the ministry said. Health Ministry director-general Chezy Levy has launched an investigation into the incident. “We share in the grief of the family,” Levy said in a statement. The man was inoculated at around 8:30 a.m. at a Clalit clinic. He stayed at the facility, as is customary, for a short period of time to ensure he had no side effects. When he felt well, the clinic released him. Levy noted that the initial findings do not show a link between the man’s death and his vaccination. Recall that when Pfizer presented its safety data to the US Food and Drug Administration back in early December, it was found that two trial participants had died after receiving the vaccine.

A 75-year-old man from Beit She’an died of a heart attack about two hours after being vaccinated against the novel coronavirus on Monday morning, the Health Ministry reported. The man had preexisting conditions and had suffered from heart attacks in the past, it said. Health Ministry director-general Chezy Levy has launched an investigation into the incident. “We share in the grief of the family,” he said in a statement. The man was inoculated at around 8:30 a.m. at a Clalit Health Services clinic. He stayed at the facility, as is customary, for a short period of time to ensure he had no side effects. When he felt well, the clinic released him. The initial findings do not show a link between the man’s death and his vaccination, Levy said. When Pfizer presented its safety data to the US Food and Drug Administration in early December, it was found that two trial participants had died after receiving the vaccine. One of the deceased was immunocompromised, meaning the person’s immune defenses were low. In response to the report of those deaths, Israel’s Midaat Association said when vaccines are administered to at-risk populations, “there may be unfortunate cases. One should not infer from this about the safety of the vaccine, but welcome the transparency required from the pharma companies in the drug approval process.”

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