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Category: biotech/medical – Page 1,803

Global tally of COVID-19 cases top 142 million as India’s surge raises the alarm

The number of confirmed cases of the coronavirus-borne illness COVID-19 climbed above 142 million on Tuesday, and India remained a hot spot, recording more than 250000 new infections and over 1700 deaths in the past 24 hours alone.

India has the second-highest case tally in the world after the U.S. with more than 15 million cases, according to data aggregated by Johns Hopkins University. The country of more than 1.3 billion has suffered more than 180000 deaths — and experts say these numbers are likely an undercount, the Associated Press reported.

The capital New Delhi entered lockdown again on Monday in an effort to curb a surge in cases that has hospitals overflowing, intensive-care units full and oxygen in short supply.

Ultraviolet-LED Maker Demonstrates 30-Second Coronavirus Kill

Circa 2020

Robots and stranger machines have been using a particular band of ultraviolet light to sterilize surfaces that might be contaminated with coronavirus. Those that must decontaminate large spaces, such as hospital rooms or aircraft cabins, use large, power-hungry mercury lamps to produce ultraviolet-C light. Companies around the world are working to improve the abilities of UV-C producing LEDs, to offer a more compact and efficient alternative. Earlier this month, Seoul Viosys showed what it says is the first 99.9 percent sterilization of SARS-COV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, using ultraviolet LEDs.

UV LEDs are deadly to viruses and bacteria, because the 100–280 nanometer wavelength C-band shreds genetic material. Unfortunately, it’s also strongly absorbed by nitrogen in the air, so sources have to be powerful to have an effect at a distance. (Air is such a strong barrier, that the sun’s UV-C doesn’t reach the Earth’s surface.) Working with researchers at Korea University, in Seoul, the company showed that its Violed LED modules could eliminate 99.9 percent of the SARS-COV-2 virus using a 30-second dose from a distance of three centimeters.

Unfortunately, the company did not disclose how many of its LEDs were used to achieve that. Assuming that it and the university researchers used a single Violed CMD-FSC-CO1A integrated LED module, a 30-second dose would have delivered at most 600 millijoules of energy. This is somewhat in-line with expectations. A study of UVC’s ability to kill influenza A viruses on N95 respirator masks indicated that about 1 joule per square centimeter would do the job.

Ancient Bear DNA Sequenced From Old Cave Dirt in Historic First For Science

The dirt scattered across the floor of an ancient, remote cave in Mexico has yielded a new source of viable ancient DNA.

For the first time, scientists have sequenced ancient DNA from soil samples — and it’s all thanks to the Upper Paleolithic bears that prolifically used the cave as their toilet around 16000 years ago.

The scientists describe their work as “the Moon landing of genomics”, as the breakthrough means fossilized remains are no longer the only way of obtaining ancient DNA. Further, it shows ancient DNA can now be studied in the context of populations, rather than scattered, fragmentary individuals.

How Covid Vaccine Tech Could Fight Cancer Soon

The mRNA technology at the heart of two Covid-19 shots has been decades in the making. Now it may soon be used to fight cancer and HIV.

#Prognosis #Vaccine #BloombergQuicktake.

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The short and long view of how AI is changing health

As the electronic health record grows in detail, the possibilities for customized care are becoming a reality. This article features some useful links to things in the making.

Illustrated woman. While AI is driving value in all aspects of our lives, there are times where it’s hard to separate the aspirations of those who want to use it to do good from those leverag ing AI today to positively impact real change in health and medici ne.

I have the privilege of working with many talented leaders and organizations that are truly making health and medical services better by harnessing the power of healthcare’s data tsunami using AI and other analytical solutions.

COVID-19, p art t wo

There is growing optimism in how we manage COVID-19 going forward to restore many of the daily living activities we miss and treasure. One of the good things we learned from COVID-19 is that, when faced with a challenge, health systems are capable of agile transformation. As part of this, we also demonstrated that AI could drive a “short time to value.”

Gene That Could Help Prevent or Delay Onset of Alzheimer’s Disease Identified

Summary: Boosting the expression of the ABCC1 gene may not only reduce amyloid plaques in the brain, it might also delay the onset of Alzheimer’s disease.

Source: TGen.

Findings of a study by the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen), an affiliate of City of Hope, suggest that increasing expression of a gene known as ABCC1 could not only reduce the deposition of a hard plaque in the brain that leads to Alzheimer’s disease, but might also prevent or delay this memory-robbing disease from developing.

DNA robots designed in minutes instead of days

Someday, scientists believe, tiny DNA-based robots and other nanodevices will deliver medicine inside our bodies, detect the presence of deadly pathogens, and help manufacture increasingly smaller electronics.

Researchers took a big step toward that future by developing a new tool that can design much more complex DNA robots and nanodevices than were ever possible before in a fraction of the time.

In a paper published today in the journal Nature Materials, researchers from The Ohio State University—led by former engineering doctoral student Chao-Min Huang—unveiled new software they call MagicDNA.

Age-related diseases can be linked by genetics

In a research paper published in Nature Aging, the team reports using a novel approach to provide the first data-driven classification of multiple diseases obtained using human genetic and medical data freely available from the UK Biobank.

Co-author Professor Linda Partridge (UCL Institute of Health Aging and Max Planck Institute for Biology of Aging) said: Advancing age is the main risk for major diseases, including cancer, dementia, and . Understanding the molecular links between the aging process and age-related diseases could allow them to be targeted with drugs to improve late-life health.

The striking finding from the study was that diseases with a similar age of onset were genetically more similar to each other than they were to diseases in the other three clusters.

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