Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: biotech/medical – Page 1,970

Gap is rushing more robots into its warehouses to handle coronavirus disruption

U.S. apparel chain Gap is speeding up its rollout of warehouse robots for assembling online orders so it can limit human contact during the coronavirus pandemic, the company told Reuters.

Gap reached a deal early this year to more than triple the number of item-picking robots it uses to 106 by the fall. Then the pandemic struck North America, forcing the company to close all its stores in the region, including those of Banana Republic, Old Navy and other brands. Meanwhile, its warehouses faced more web orders and fewer staff to fulfill them because of social distancing rules Gap had put in place.

“We could not get as many people in our distribution centers safely,” said Kevin Kuntz, Gap’s senior vice president of global logistics fulfillment. So he called up Kindred AI, the vendor that sells the machines, to ask: “Can you get them here earlier?”

Italians Can Now Install Rooftop Solar PV Systems For Free

The Italian government had one of the early invasive experiences of the covid-19 pandemic. Scientists in Italy responded to the global crisis with serious research into the concern. Perhaps results of these inquiries and related information have affected policy makers. Italian homeowners now have new opportunities to put clean energy on the top of their roofs.

Huge bacteria-eating viruses narrow gap between life and non-life

From February 2020…

Scientists have discovered hundreds of unusually large, bacteria-killing viruses with capabilities normally associated with living organisms, blurring the line between living microbes and viral machines.

These phages — short for bacteriophages, so-called because they “eat” bacteria — are of a size and complexity considered typical of life, carry numerous genes normally found in bacteria and use these genes against their bacterial hosts.

University of California, Berkeley, researchers and their collaborators found these huge phages by scouring a large database of DNA that they generated from nearly 30 different Earth environments, ranging from the guts of premature infants and pregnant women to a Tibetan hot spring, a South African bioreactor, hospital rooms, oceans, lakes and deep underground.

“I never expected this:” Doctors and patients describe Covid-19 recovery

I agree, Michael is 100 % spot-on-as usual. Dr Ian Hale.

Shana tells Inverse she’s been battling consistent fevers and muscle aches ever since the first, and most severe, symptoms subsided.

“I go through periods of hope mixed with periods of despair. I want to be able to run again and have the energy to do physical activity, but my body isn’t letting me,” she says. “I never expected this.”

As the wave of severe Covid-19 patients tentatively flattens, patients and doctors alike are turning their attention to a new set of patient experiences. People like Shana, who have relatively mild coronavirus cases, are taking weeks if not months to recover.

3 Major Materials Science Breakthroughs—and Why They Matter for the Future

Few recognize the vast implications of materials science.

To build today’s smartphone in the 1980s, it would cost about $110 million, require nearly 200 kilowatts of energy (compared to 2kW per year today), and the device would be 14 meters tall, according to Applied Materials CTO Omkaram Nalamasu.

That’s the power of materials advances. Materials science has democratized smartphones, bringing the technology to the pockets of over 3.5 billion people. But far beyond devices and circuitry, materials science stands at the center of innumerable breakthroughs across energy, future cities, transit, and medicine. And at the forefront of Covid-19, materials scientists are forging ahead with biomaterials, nanotechnology, and other materials research to accelerate a solution.

Why the Hippocampus May Be the Most Important Region in Your Brain

Memory is the natural extension of attention and learning. The act of memory facilitates the formation, activation, and retention of circuits that contribute to the brain’s optimal functioning. Dr. Restak explains how we are the sum total of the memory we retain. Without memory, we wouldn’t know who we are.

The hippocampus, a portion of the brain located in the temporal lobe of each cerebral cortex, is the entry portal for information to be remembered. If the hippocampus is damaged, we have difficulty forming new memories.

This was demonstrated by Patient H. M., whose real name was Henry Molaison. He started having seizures when he was 10 years old. By age 20, he was completely incapacitated.

Since he could be felled with one of the sudden seizures at any time, he couldn’t work or form relationships, and lived at home with his mother. At age 27, in 1953, he underwent a new type of operation.

Physicists exploring use of Blu-ray disc lasers to kill COVID-19, other viruses

A new weapon in the arsenal against the coronavirus may be sitting in your home entertainment console. A team led by physicist Chris Barty of the University of California, Irvine is researching the use of diodes from Blu-ray digital video disc devices as deep-ultraviolet laser photon sources to rapidly disinfect surfaces and the indoor air that swirls around us.

Barty, UC Irvine distinguished professor of physics & astronomy, said that such UV light sterilizers would be cheap compared to current medical- and scientific-grade systems and that it’d be possible to deploy them almost anywhere.

“If these sources are successful, I think you could build them into a mask and clean the air that’s coming in and out of you,” he said. “Or you could set these things up in the air circulation ducts of major buildings, and the airflow that goes through could be sterilized.”