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Category: biotech/medical – Page 1,832

Oral drug blocks SARS-CoV-2 transmission

Sounds important.

Treatment of SARS-CoV-2 infection with a new antiviral drug, MK-4482/EIDD-2801 or Molnupiravir, completely suppresses virus transmission within 24 hours, researchers in the Institute for Biomedical Sciences at Georgia State University have discovered.

The group led by Dr. Richard Plemper, Distinguished University Professor at Georgia State, originally discovered that the drug is potent against .

“This is the first demonstration of an orally available drug to rapidly block SARS-CoV-2 transmission,” said Plemper. “MK-4482/EIDD-2801 could be game-changing.”

Glucosamine may reduce overall death rates as effectively as regular exercise, study suggests

After controlling for various factors — such as participants’ age, sex, smoking status and activity level — the researchers found that taking glucosamine/chondroitin every day for a year or longer was associated with a 39 percent reduction in all-cause mortality.

It was also linked to a 65 percent reduction in cardiovascular-related deaths. That’s a category that includes deaths from stroke, coronary artery disease and heart disease, the United States’ biggest killer.” “He explains that because this is an epidemiological study — rather than a clinical trial — it doesn’t offer definitive proof that glucosamine/chondroitin makes death less likely. But he does call the results “encouraging.””.

Glucosamine supplements may reduce overall mortality about as well as regular exercise does, according to a new epidemiological study from West Virginia University.

“Does this mean that if you get off work at five o’clock one day, you should just skip the gym, take a glucosamine pill and go home instead?” said Dana King, professor and chair of the Department of Family Medicine, who led the study. “That’s not what we suggest. Keep exercising, but the thought that taking a pill would also be beneficial is intriguing.”

He and his research partner, Jun Xiang — a WVU health data analyst — assessed data from 16,686 adults who completed the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey from 1999 to 2010. All of the participants were at least 40 years old. King and Xiang merged these data with 2015 mortality figures.

Here’s how lockdowns slashed global emissions, according to NASA

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.

Energy-generating synthetic skin for affordable prosthetic limbs and touch-sensitive robots

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.

Virginijus Sinkevičius, European Commissioner for Environment, Oceans and Fisheries

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.

Since the Covid-19 crisis, the twin green and digital transitions are now even more firmly at the core of their programme, with new resources to accelerate the transformation.

Commissioner Virginijus Sinkevičius:

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

Rewinding the biological clock: How to reverse ageing

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

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AI Solves Momentous Disease-Fighting Problem Decades Ahead of Schedule

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.

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Scientists reverse age-related vision loss, eye damage from glaucoma in mice

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.