Lifeboat Foundation

Of the spread of COVID-19 aboard the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt and the subsequent relief of its Commanding Officer has highlighted the tension that exists between maintaining military readiness and the need to safeguard the health of members of the armed forces in the face of a pandemic.

The disease has been a feature of war for the vast majority of human history – from the plague that ravaged Athens early in the Peloponnesian War, killing the Athenian strategos Pericles; to the diseases that European settlers brought with them to the New World, devastating local populations; to the host of tropical diseases that caused appalling casualties in the China-Burma-India and Southwest Pacific theaters in World War II. The fact that we were surprised by the emergence, growth, and spread of COVID-19 reflects the false conceit of 21^st century life that we have “conquered” disease.

In fact, pandemics are but one class of low-probability but high-impact contingencies that we could face in the coming years, including an earthquake or other natural disaster in a major urban area, regime change in an important state, and the collapse of financial markets leading to a global depression. When I served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Policy Planning between 2006 and 2009, we explored a series of such “shocks” as well as the role the Defense Department could play in responding to them as a way of helping the Department’s leaders address such contingencies. During my time in the Pentagon, we also held a series of wargames with members of Congress and their staff, governors of several states and their cabinets, and the government of Mexico, to explore in depth the consequences of a pandemic. Much of what we found then resonates with what we are experiencing now.

Networks are at the heart of everything from communications systems to pandemics. Now researchers have found that a unique type of network also underlies the structures of critical cellular compartments known as membraneless organelles. These findings may provide key insights into the role of these structures in both disease and cellular operations.

“Prior to this study, we knew the basic physical principle by which these protein-rich compartments form — they condense from the cytoplasm into liquid droplets like dew on a blade of grass,” said David Sanders, a post-doctoral researcher in Chemical and Biological Engineering at Princeton University. “But unlike dew drops, which are composed of a single component (water), cellular droplets are intimidatingly complex. Our work uncovers surprisingly simple principles that we think are universal to the assembly of liquid organelles, and opens new frontiers into studying their role in health and disease.”

Sanders is the lead author in an article in the journal Cell describing a blueprint for the assembly of these liquid structures, also called condensates. The researchers looked closely at two types of condensates, stress granules and processing bodies (“P-bodies”). In the Cell paper, researchers directed by Clifford Brangwynne, a professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Princeton and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, combined genetic engineering and live cell microscopy approaches to reveal the rules underlying the assembly and structure of stress granules, and why they remain distinct from their close relatives, P-bodies.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration, NASA, aims to send human missions to Mars in the 2030s. But scientists are still trying to learn more about the potential cancer risks for astronauts due to radiation exposure. Cancer risk from galactic cosmic radiation exposure is considered a potential “showstopper” for a manned mission to Mars.

A team led by researchers at Colorado State University used a novel approach to test assumptions in a model used by NASA to predict these health risks. The NASA model predicts that astronauts will have more than a three percent risk of dying of cancer from the radiation exposures they will receive on a Mars mission. That level of risk exceeds what is considered acceptable.

The study, “Genomic mapping in outbred mice reveals overlap in genetic susceptibility for HZE ion- and gamma-ray-induced tumors,” was published April 15 in Science Advances.

A version of this story was first published by COVID-19 Waterblog. Read the original.

There has been quite some talk about SARS-CoV-2 shedding in faeces and what that might mean for the water industry. Here, Susan Petterson provides a snapshot of the current data.

As I see it, there are two aspects to this conversation: the first is a concern that sewage may contain infectious SARS-CoV-2 viruses; and the second relates to the more theoretical potential of using SARS-CoV-2 RNA concentration in sewage as a public health surveillance tool.

Editor’s note: The story has been updated.

Japan could see some 850,000 people seriously sickened by the coronavirus and almost half of them dying if no social distancing or other measures are followed, according to an expert estimate released Wednesday.

Japan has the world’s oldest population, which is a particular concern since COVID-19 can be especially serious and fatal in the elderly. And there are concerns that Japan’s government has done too little and acted too late to stave off high numbers of seriously ill patients.

WASHINGTON — The Space Enterprise Consortium — an organization created in 2017 to attract space companies to work on military contracts — is canvassing firms to gauge the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on businesses.

The consortium known as SpEC is run by the U.S. Space Force’s Space and Missile Systems Center in Los Angeles. It has more than 350 member companies, many of them space startups and small businesses.

In an April 15 email the consortium asked members to identify those that have fewer than 50 employees.

Test Coronavirus in minutes:

The ongoing outbreak of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has spread globally and poses a threat to public health in more than 200 countries. Reliable laboratory diagnosis of the disease has been one of the foremost priorities for promoting public health interventions. The routinely used reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) is currently the reference method for COVID-19 diagnosis. However, it also reported a number of false-positive or –negative cases, especially in the early stages of the novel virus outbreak. In this work, a dual-functional plasmonic biosensor combining the plasmonic photothermal (PPT) effect and localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) sensing transduction provides an alternative and promising solution for the clinical COVID-19 diagnosis. The two-dimensional gold nanoislands (AuNIs) functionalized with complementary DNA receptors can perform a sensitive detection of the selected sequences from severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) through nucleic acid hybridization. For better sensing performance, the thermoplasmonic heat is generated on the same AuNIs chip when illuminated at their plasmonic resonance frequency. The localized PPT heat is capable to elevate the in situ hybridization temperature and facilitate the accurate discrimination of two similar gene sequences. Our dual-functional LSPR biosensor exhibits a high sensitivity toward the selected SARS-CoV-2 sequences with a lower detection limit down to the concentration of 0.22 pM and allows precise detection of the specific target in a multigene mixture. This study gains insight into the thermoplasmonic enhancement and its applicability in the nucleic acid tests and viral disease diagnosis.

Article Views are the COUNTER-compliant sum of full text article downloads since November 2008 (both PDF and HTML) across all institutions and individuals. These metrics are regularly updated to reflect usage leading up to the last few days.

Continue reading “Dual-Functional Plasmonic Photothermal Biosensors for Highly Accurate Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 Detection” »

Guide and considerations.

Often changes to mechanical ventilator settings are performed by health care providers that have limited training in specific functions of the ventilator in use. Mechanical ventilators are sophisticated and require training to ensure positive outcomes and harm. Inappropriate setting changes, failure to change alarms, changing settings without appropriate orders, and failure to communicate changes to the medical team can result in poor patient outcomes. This activity is intended to guide health professionals to ensure that all personnel trained are trained to set up, install, and make appropriate adjustments to mechanical ventilation. an interprofessional approach with communication between all members of the healthcare team will result in the safest delivery of care and produce the best outcomes.

Go to:

Continue reading “Ventilator Safety” »

I felt uneasy about the Swedish coronavirus plan the moment I heard about it. It seemed like an extreme gamble, in defiance of all known science and health recommendations. We have Red States here in America that have taken this same approach. Here’s the latest on Sweden: 🇸🇪 —“In an opinion piece published today in Dagens Nyheter, the group of researchers from a range of top Swedish universities and research institutes make harsh criticism of the Swedish Public Health Agency and their present coronavirus strategy. They say that elected politicians must now intervene with ” swift and radical measures.”

“According to Aftonbladet, Jan Lötvall, a professor at the University of Gothenburg, said that Swedish people have not understood the seriousness of the situation because they have received unclear messaging from health authorities and elected officials.”

Sweden’s relatively relaxed approach to controlling the spread of the coronavirus has come under fire in international media and from many locals in the capital Stockholm, where more than half the country’s deaths have been recorded. Now, 22 researchers have publicly criticized the strategy and called on politicians to make changes.

Continue reading “Sweden: 22 Scientists Say Coronavirus Strategy Has Failed As Deaths Top 1,000” »