Lifeboat Foundation

BYD, one of the world’s largest electric bus manufacturer, boasted recently that its zero-emission buses already covered more than 13 million miles (21 million km) in the U.S.

The buses sold in North America are made in Lancaster, California, where local transit agency — the Antelope Valley Transit Authority (AVTA) — just crossed the 3-million-mile mark of zero-emission operations using BYD buses.

Overall, the company sold buses to more than 50 customers across the country. According to BYD, the total mileage translated into:

NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on 30 July, carrying a host of cutting-edge technology including high-definition video equipment and the first interplanetary helicopter.

Many of the tools are designed as experimental steps toward human exploration of the red planet. Crucially, Perseverance is equipped with a device called the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment, or MOXIE: an attempt to produce oxygen on a planet where it makes up less than 0.2 percent of the atmosphere.

Oxygen is a cumbersome payload on space missions. It takes up a lot of room, and it’s very unlikely that astronauts could bring enough of it to Mars for humans to breathe there, let alone to fuel spaceships for the long journey home.

Hereditary hearing loss is one of the most common disabilities among newborns, affecting approximately 1 in 1000 live-born babies. Most forms of hereditary hearing loss are nonsyndromic; 80% of affected newborns have hearing loss that is inherited in an autosomal recessive pattern, and in the remaining 20%, inheritance shows a dominant pattern.¹

Many forms of hereditary hearing loss are caused by mutations in genes that affect the formation and function of cochlear hair cells — highly specialized sensory cells that play an important role in the detection and processing of sound.¹ The hair cell has bundles of hair-like projections, called stereocilia, on its apical surface ( Fig. 1 ). The deflection of these bundles by sound results in the opening of mechanotransduction ion channels, which are located at the tips of the stereocilia, and consequently, in the depolarization of the hair-cell membrane. Mutations that affect the protein transmembrane channel-like 1 (TMC1), an integral component of the mechanotransduction complex, cause autosomal dominant and autosomal recessive forms of hearing loss.² Correction of the dominant form of hearing loss in a mouse model of Tmc1 (termed “Beethoven”) was recently reported by Gao and colleagues.³

Circa 2019 face_with_colon_three

Scientists at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital have used a novel gene-editing approach to salvage the hearing of mice with genetic hearing loss and succeeded in doing so without any apparent off-target effects as a result of the treatment.

NASA researchers have observed “superbolts” of lightning in Jupiter’s atmosphere, which form in clouds made of water and ammonia.

Here is some advice from tech founders.

Bacteriophage can reduce bacterial growth in the lungs, limiting fluid build-up. This could decrease the mortality of patients affected by COVID-19, according to the peer-reviewed journal PHAGE: Therapy, Applications, and Research.

“The bacterial growth rate could potentially be reduced by the aerosol application of natural bacteriophages. These prey on the main species of bacteria known to cause respiratory failure,” says Marcin Wojewodzic, PhD, University of Birmingham (U.K.). Decreasing bacterial growth would also give the body more time to produce protective antibodies against the disease-causing coronavirus.

Used correctly, phages have an advantage here of being able to very specifically target the bacteria that cause secondary infections. They would remove the problematic bacterium but leave an otherwise fragile microbiome intact.” Martha Clokie, PhD, Editor-in-Chief of PHAGE and Professor of Microbiology, University of Leicester (U.K.)

Continue reading “Bacteriophages Could Be a Potential Game Changer in the Trajectory of Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19)” »

Superinfections — a common complication in which a secondary bacterial infection occurs on top of the primary viral infection — are also to blame.

Early evidence (Trusted Source) suggests that about 50 percent of people who’ve died from COVID-19 also had a secondary bacterial or fungal infection, some of which were resistant to antibiotics.

First is a condition called ventilator-associated pneumonia (Trusted Source), a lung infection that develops when harmful germs get into a person’s lungs via the part of the ventilator that goes through the throat.

Continue reading “Drug-Resistant Bacteria Hidden Danger for People with COVID-19” »

50% of people who die of covid19 have bacterial co-infections. Procalcitonin (PCT) tests may be needed to predict who will have severe infections, and how to respond with adaquate treatment. Clearly the wrong testing is being done. People need 3 tests for covid. People need antigen tests, antibody tests, and Procalcitonin (PCT) tests to see the severity of sickness a person will have.

Procalcitonin (PCT) is a widely used biomarker to assess the risk of bacterial infection and disease progression. In patients with bacterial sepsis, suspected or confirmed lower respiratory tract infections, including community-acquired pneumonia, acute bronchitis and acute exacerbations of COPD, PCT can be a useful decision-making tool for antibiotic therapy (Schuetz et al. 2018). In addition, early evidence suggests that PCT may also be a valuable tool in identifying COVID-19 patients who may be at risk for bacterial co-infection.

Procalcitonin is widely used to assess the risk of bacterial infection and disease progression. Can it be an additional tool to identify COVID-19 patients at risk of severe disease?

Continue reading “The Role of Procalcitonin for Risk Assessment and Treatment of COVID-19 Patients” »