Lifeboat Foundation

Data collected from 18 states between March and August suggest the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine reduces the risk of being hospitalized with COVID-19 by 91% in the first four months after receiving the second dose. Beyond 120 days, however, that vaccine efficacy drops to 77%.

Meanwhile, Moderna’s vaccine was 93% effective at reducing the short-term risk of COVID-19 hospitalization and remained 92% effective after 120 days.

Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine does a significantly better job of preventing COVID-19 hospitalizations compared with Pfizer’s shot.

A newly discovered manipulation mechanism used by parasitic bacteria to slow down plant aging, may offer new ways to protect disease-threatened food crops.

Parasites manipulate the organisms they live off to suit their needs, sometimes in drastic ways. When under the spell of a parasite, some plants undergo such extensive changes that they are described as “zombies”. They stop reproducing and serve only as a habitat and host for the parasitic pathogens.

Until now, there’s been little understanding of how this happens on a molecular and mechanistic level.

“You may hit the tipping point when you’re 50; it may happen when you’re 80; it may never happen,” Schindler said. “But once you pass the tipping point, you’re going to accumulate high levels of amyloid that are likely to cause dementia. If we know how much amyloid someone has right now, we can calculate how long ago they hit the tipping point and estimate how much longer it will be until they are likely to develop symptoms.”

Summary: A new algorithm uses neuroimaging data of amyloid levels in the brain and takes into account a person’s age to determine when a person with genetic Alzheimer’s risk factors, and with no signs of cognitive decline, will develop the disease.

Source; WUSTL

Continue reading “Time Until Dementia Symptoms Appear Can Be Estimated via Brain Scan” »

Intel, Qualcomm try to wean auto companies from dependence on obsolete technology.

SpaceX’s satellite internet service is apparently preparing to enter its next phase.

The material offers the high performance and stability needed for industrial-scale electrolysis, which could produce a clean energy fuel from seawater.

Hydrogen fuel derived from the sea could be an abundant and sustainable alternative to fossil fuels, but the potential power source has been limited by technical challenges, including how to practically harvest it.

We talk to Anil Mankar, Co-founder and Chief Development Officer at BrainChip, about artificial intelligence and neural-networking ICs.

Researchers recently found that a few years back, they “slept” through a hurricane. On analyzing weather satellite data from 2,014 scientists discovered evidence of a hurricane from space that pushed plasma toward Earth’s upper atmosphere. Though these events are invisible to the eye, the evidence reveals that they’re not uncommon. Understanding more about them could help to protect satellite and communications systems from disturbance and preserve radar and GPS output for life below on the planet’s surface.

Satellites in orbit around the planet gather immense amounts of data on environmental and climate activity. A recent publication in Nature Communications explains how the first hurricane from space was discovered through analysis of data gathered back in August 2014.

The research team looked at recently released files containing measurements taken by four satellites in the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program. From their analysis, the scientists created a 3D image that showed the hurricane from space forming features similar to what we’re familiar with in Earth’s lower atmosphere. A press release in Science Daily describes it as a gigantic spiral of plasma, with its arms swirling counterclockwise above the North Pole.

Four private astronauts are currently circling the globe in a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft, and you can see the capsule from Earth — if you’re in the right place at the right time.

The Crew Dragon launched into space on Wednesday (Sept. 15), carrying the Inspiration4 mission on a three-day orbital trip. It is currently traveling around Earth in a nearly circular orbit up to 367 miles (590 kilometers) above our planet, according to SpaceX, and completes an orbit about every hour and a half.