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Category: biotech/medical – Page 1536

Lockdown — seen from space.

Almost as soon as the coronavirus pandemic began, experts started noticing that the global lockdown appeared to be resulting in a sharp drop in worldwide carbon emissions.

The idea generated both memes about humanity’s destruction of the planet and well-intentioned visions of a greener future. Now, NASA scientists have found that overall the lockdown has resulted in a 20 percent global reduction in nitrogen dioxide emissions since February, according to a press release – a shift that left them shocked.

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A new type of energy-generating synthetic skin could create more affordable prosthetic limbs and robots capable of mimicking the sense of touch, scientists say.

In an early-view paper published in the journal IEEE Transactions on Robotics, researchers from the University of Glasgow describe how a wrapped in their flexible solar is capable of interacting with objects without using dedicated and expensive .

Instead, the skin puts the array of miniaturized integrated on its soft polymer surface to a clever dual use. The cells generate enough energy to power the micro-actuators which control the hand’s movements, but they also provide the hand with its unique sense of ‘touch’ by measuring the variations in the solar cells’ output.

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Andrea Macdonald founder of ideaXme interviews Commissioner Virginijus Sinkevičius, European Commissioner for the Environment, Oceans and Fisheries.

The EU Commission @European Commission.

The Commission helps to shape the EU’s overall strategy, proposes new EU laws and policies, monitors their implementation and manages the EU budget. It also plays a significant role in supporting international development and delivering aid.

Following the result of the European elections, and the mandate received from the European Council and the European Parliament, the Dr Ursula von der Leyen Commission put forward a set of ambitious goals for Europe’s future: climate neutrality by 2050; making the 2020s Europe’s Digital Decade; and making Europe stronger in the world with a more geopolitical approach.

Continue reading “Virginijus Sinkevičius, European Commissioner for Environment, Oceans and Fisheries” | >

Researchers claim to have reversed ageing in mice. It has long been believed that if we understand the causes of ageing, it may be possible to reverse it. New work on mice shows that it is possible to cure vision loss caused by old age or injury. Researchers think that this effect may depend on rewinding the ‘biological clock’ which marks the age of cells, suggesting that the cells in the eye have been made functionally younger.

Read the paper here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2975-4

Sign up for the Nature Briefing: An essential round-up of science news, opinion and analysis, free in your inbox every weekday: https://go.nature.com/371OcVF

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Diseases caused by folded proteins in the body are all over the news every day, like cancer, Alzheimer’s, and COVID-19. And now, a Google model powered by artificial intelligence could map these folded proteins in more detail than ever before, allowing scientists to “unfold” proteins and better explore possible treatments.

➡ Read best-in-class science features and get unlimited access to Pop Mech, starting NOW.

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Harvard Medical School scientists have successfully restored vision in mice by turning back the clock on aged eye cells in the retina to recapture youthful gene function.

The team’s work, described Dec. 2 in Nature, represents the first demonstration that it may be possible to safely reprogram complex tissues, such as the nerve of the eye, to an earlier age.

In addition to resetting the cells’ aging clock, the researchers successfully reversed vision loss in animals with a condition mimicking human glaucoma, a leading cause of blindness around the world.

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For too long, the coronavirus has been allowed to ravage human society. However, now, we have begun deploying our own weapon to fight back against this deadly pestilence- a vaccine. Today, the UK has approved of Pfizer and BioNtech’s coronavirus vaccine.

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MHRA will only become fully independent on 1 January 2021, following Brexit, but U.K. regulations allow it to grant authorizations on an emergency basis. The United Kingdom has bought 40 million doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine—enough for 20 million people—and health secretary Matt Hancock today announced the first 800,000 doses will be available next week. The rollout will prioritize health workers as well as the elderly and other vulnerable populations, but the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation has yet to offer its final guidance on the exact priorities.

Russia on 11 August allowed its COVID-19 vaccine, developed by the Gamaleya Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology, to be used on certain groups of people, and China has granted emergency use authorizations (EUAs) for several vaccines and has already vaccinated hundreds of thousands of people with them. A few other countries, including the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, have issued an EUA for one of the Chinese vaccines, produced by Sinopharm.

The Pfizer vaccine, whose key ingredient is messenger RNA that encodes the spike protein of the pandemic coronavirus, was found to have 95% efficacy, a clinical trial measurement of effectiveness, in a phase III trial in 43,000 people. But it presents logistical challenges for a widescale and rapid rollout, as it requires storage at −70°C. The lesser demands of other vaccines—including a candidate developed by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca—mean they will likely still play an important role in providing vaccinations for the whole U.K. population—and for global coverage, according to Michael Head, a global health researcher at the University of Southampton, “but, for now, this is wonderful news to wake up to.”

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