Lifeboat Foundation

Researchers in England say they have the first evidence that a drug can improve COVID-19 survival: A cheap, widely available steroid reduced deaths by up to one third in severely ill hospitalized patients.

The results were announced Tuesday and the British government immediately authorized the drug’s use across the United Kingdom for coronavirus patients like those who did well in the study. Researchers said they would publish results soon, and several independent experts said it’s important to see details to know how much of a difference the drug, dexamethasone, might make and for whom.

But “bottom line is, good news,” said the United States’ top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci. “This is a significant improvement in the available therapeutic options that we have.”

A pair of researchers at University College London has found that people with low socioeconomic status experience more declines in age-related functions as they grow older than do people who have a higher socioeconomic status. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Andrew Steptoe and Paola Zaninotto describe their study of data from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing, and what they learned.

Prior research has shown that poor people tend to suffer more adverse health effects than those who are better off. They also tend to die younger. But one area of aging that has not been well-studied is the impact of poverty on age-related functional decline, associated with such symptoms as loss of hearing or muscle strength. To learn more about the relationship between socioeconomic status and age-related functional decline, the researchers analyzed data in the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing—an ongoing long-term study of the aging process. Launched in 2002, the study involved collecting data on volunteers aged 50 and over as they grew older. The data includes both medical and physical information, along with test results designed to measure cognitive and emotional levels. The data sample for this new effort included information on 5,018 people 52 years of age or older as they aged over periods of six to eight years.

The researchers found that people living at the lower end of the economic spectrum performed worse on every measure of age-related functionality. Those less well-off lost grip strength, lung function, gait speed, processing speed and executive function. They also tended to report enjoying life less than those who were more affluent. The researchers noted their findings were independent of race, gender, education or age. They also found that those of lesser means experienced more vision problems and were more likely to be depressed.

Sending a handful of people certainly could serve as a proof of concept analogous to America’s Spanish and Portuguese outposts in the early 1500’s, or the English and Dutch settlements in the early 1600’s. In these instances the populations measured in the dozens and would not have amounted to a lasting European presence had they not been followed by thousands of new settlers over the next few decades. But, given our more advanced technology, our level of medicine, the idea that humans could have equipment that will utilize the Martian environment to produce food, air, and other consumables, and the certainty that settlers will not be at war with the Martian equivalent of the Aztecs or Incas—couldn’t a Martian settlement survive long term with just a low number of colonists?

The answer is no—not if the goal is a permanent human presence. Not if the goal is to provide our species with some kind of extinction insurance against planetary disaster on Earth, such as a mega-volcanic eruption, nuclear war, or some other existential threat. Mars setters can use technology to get air and food from the Mars environment, but early European explorers in the New World had access to one natural resource that mid-21st century Mars colonists will not be able to manufacture: a human gene pool.

If we really want Martian colonies, we can’t send just a few Adams and Eves. We can’t set-up a Martian Jamestown of 100 people. Long-term survival will depend on the genetic diversity of a large gene pool, and this means the Elon Musk plan of sending thousands might be the only colonization plan that could work.

This mouth-full of a boat uses simple physics to create a cushion of air that allows it to effortlessly fly along the tops of ocean waves with near inexhaustible solar energy. The researchers say that this sleek, solar vessel could act as a mobile charging station for drones in the deep ocean or could conduct oceanic search and rescue missions.

Researchers in Russia have designed a solar-powered, and AI piloted, boat that can walk on water and serve as a mid-ocean fuel-up station for drones.

There’s nothing small about the impact small businesses have on local communities. They turn towns into hometowns and strangers into neighbors.

And right now, they need our support.

Continue reading “Small Business Live” »

Interesting.

How we can all benefit from cognitive automation.

UK experts say the low-dose steroid treatment is a major breakthrough in the fight against the deadly virus.

It cut the risk of death by a third for patients on ventilators. For those on oxygen, it cut deaths by a fifth.

The drug is part of the world’s biggest trial testing existing treatments to see if they also work for coronavirus.

Continue reading “Coronavirus: Dexamethasone proves first life-saving drug” »

SpaceX Starship

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Now, the same researchers have achieved their goal of entanglement-based quantum cryptography using the Micius satellite. The scientists, who detailed their findings online in the 15 June edition of the journal Nature, say they again connected two observatories separated by 1,120 kilometers. But this time, the collection efficiency of the links was improved by up to four-fold, which resulted in data rates of about 0.12 bits per second.

A space-based, virtually unhackable quantum Internet may be one step closer to reality due to satellite experiments that linked ground stations more than 1,000 kilometers apart, a new study finds.

Quantum physics makes a strange effect known as entanglement possible. Essentially, two or more particles such as photons that get linked or “entangled” can influence each other simultaneously no matter how far apart they are.

Continue reading “Quantum Satellite Links Extend More Than 1,000 Kilometers” »