Lifeboat Foundation

The Defense Department will provide 5 million medical-grade air-filtering masks — 1 million of them available immediately — as well as 2,000 ventilators as it steps up its role in the U.S. response to the coronavirus pandemic, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said.

The Pentagon can also make the Navy’s two hospital ships available on the East and West coasts, Esper told reporters Tuesday. But he emphasized that the ships and other military resources would best be able to treat some trauma cases to make room for coronavirus patients at civilian hospitals that are properly equipped to handle infections.

“They don’t have necessarily the space, the segregated spaces, you need to deal with infectious diseases,” Esper said at the Pentagon. “So one of the ways by which you could use either field hospitals, the hospital ships or things in between, is to take the pressure off of civilian hospitals when it comes to trauma cases, is to open up civilian hospital rooms for infectious diseases.”

The Curious Case of Sickle-Cell Anemia

Even those uninterested in biology have likely heard of the disorder. Sickle-cell anemia holds the crown as the first genetic disorder to be traced to its molecular roots nearly a hundred years ago.

The root of the disorder is a single genetic mutation that drastically changes the structure of the oxygen-carrying protein, beta-globin, in red blood cells. The result is that the cells, rather than forming their usual slick disc-shape, turn into jagged, sickle-shaped daggers that damage blood vessels or block them altogether. The symptoms aren’t always uniform; rather, they come in “crisis episodes” during which the pain becomes nearly intolerable.

Old human cells can become more youthful by coaxing them to briefly express proteins used to make induced pluripotent cells, Stanford researchers and their colleagues have found. The finding may have implications for aging research.

Excellent interview:

Dr. Gerald Parker Associate Dean for Global One Health at Texas A&M and Professor Andrew S Natsios Executive Professor at The Bush School and Director of the Scowcroft Institute of International Affairs have a sit down with Patrick Bet-David about the Coronavirus Pandemic. About our guests Dr. Gerald Parker https://bit.ly/2IZPRAl Professor Andrew S. Natsios https://bit.ly/2UkWBy6

Continue reading “Biowarfare Experts On Coronavirus (COVID19)” »

From vaccines being tested around the world to a Nobel prize-winning biophysicist predicting recovery, here are some good updates on the COVID-19 pandemic.

Terahertz (THz) waves fall between microwave and infrared radiation in the electromagnetic spectrum, oscillating at frequencies of between 100 billion and 30 trillion cycles per second. These waves are prized for their distinctive properties: they can penetrate paper, clothing, wood and walls, as well as detect air pollution. THz sources could revolutionize security and medical imaging systems. What’s more, their ability to carry vast quantities of data could hold the key to faster wireless communications.

THz waves are a type of non-ionizing radiation, meaning they pose no risk to human health. The technology is already used in some airports to scan passengers and detect dangerous objects and substances.

Despite holding great promise, THz waves are not widely used because they are costly and cumbersome to generate. But new technology developed by researchers at EPFL could change all that. The team at the Power and Wide-band-gap Electronics Research Laboratory (POWERlab), led by Prof. Elison Matioli, built a nanodevice that can generate extremely high-power signals in just a few picoseconds, or one trillionth of a second, which produces high-power THz waves.

There are no US Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved drugs specifically for the treatment of patients with COVID-19. At present clinical management includes infection prevention and control measures and supportive care, including supplementary oxygen and mechanical ventilatory support when indicated. An array of drugs approved for other indications as well as several investigational drugs are being studied in several hundred clinical trials that are underway across the globe. The purpose of this document is to provide information on two of the approved drugs (chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine) and one of the investigational agents (remdesivir) currently in use in the United States.

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a virus (more specifically, a coronavirus) identified as the cause of an outbreak of respiratory illness first detected in Wuhan, China.

The longfin inshore squid can edit the RNA inside its nerve cells, Wired reports, meaning that it can drastically alter the behavior of its biological machinery as needed — perhaps to help the animal rapidly adapt to new environments. It’s a bizarre discovery, and one that could potentially lead to better genetic treatments for humans.

Neat Trick

Researchers from the Marine Biological Laboratory found that the squid alters the RNA within its axons instead of the DNA within its nuclei, according to research published Monday in the journal Nucleic Acids Research. Thus far, it’s the only animal known to do so.

O,.,o.

A passenger who died on a bus in China has tested positive for a completely different virus than COVID-19 — one more fatal that often produces very similar symptoms, according to state-run media.

The unidentified victim from Yunnan province died while on a chartered bus heading to his workplace in Shandong province, the state-run Global Times announced in a tweet Monday.

Continue reading “Man who died on bus in China tests positive for ‘hantavirus’” »