Lifeboat Foundation

Covid-19 patients who are getting an experimental drug called remdesivir have been recovering quickly, with most going home in days, STAT News reported Thursday after it obtained a video of a conversation about the trial.

The patients taking part in a clinical trial of the drug have all had severe respiratory symptoms and fever, but were able to leave the hospital after less than a week of treatment, STAT quoted the doctor leading the trial as saying.

“The best news is that most of our patients have already been discharged, which is great. We’ve only had two patients perish,” Dr. Kathleen Mullane, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Chicago who is leading the clinical trial, said in the video.

For the first time, astronomers have observed a star orbiting the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy. And the star is dancing to the predicted tune of Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity.

Moderna Inc. said the U.S. government has agreed to pay as much as $483 million for the company to develop and test its Covid-19 vaccine now in an initial clinical trial.

A key component of NASA’s X-59 Quiet SuperSonic Technology (QueSST) aircraft is undergoing vibration tests at the space agency’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. The eXternal Vision System (XVS) is a special camera system that the pilot of the X-plane will use to see forward while the experimental supersonic craft is in flight.

When the X-59 takes to the skies in 2021, the pilot will be faced with a problem not often encountered since the Concorde fleet of supersonic passenger jetliners was retired. The X-59 is meant to test new technologies to build a new generation of supersonic commercial aircraft and, while it promises to overcome some of the drawbacks of Concorde, it will still share some of its difficulties.

One is that the ideal design of a long-range supersonic liner is essentially that of a needle-nosed dart. The annoying thing is that, though this shape may be fine from an aerodynamic point of view, it makes it extremely difficult for the pilot to see forward without a lot of complex mechanics, like Concorde’s droop nose and special sliding windscreen.

:oooo.

One of the defining features of Covid-19 is the excessive immune response that can occur in severe cases. This burst of immune overreaction, also called a cytokine storm, damages the lungs and can be fatal.

A team of MIT researchers has developed specialized proteins, similar in structure to antibodies, that they believe could soak up these excess cytokines.

Continue reading “Proteins may halt the severe cytokine storms seen in COVID-19 patients” »

“Do not challenge the government,” he warned the nation Wednesday. “You will lose.”

The Centre for Digestive Disease headed by Professor Thomas Borody has cured Crohn’s disease as reported today by Dr Gaurav Agrawal in Gut Pathogens.

Centre for Digestive Diseases.

How did matter gain the edge over antimatter in the early universe? Maybe, just maybe, neutrinos.

The Super-Kamiokande Neutrino Observatory, located more than 3,000 feet below Mount Ikeno near the city of Hida, Japan. Credit… Kamioka Observatory, Institute for Cosmic Ray Research, University of Tokyo.

A Chicago hospital treating severe COVID19 patients with Gilead Sciences’ antiviral medicine remdesivir in a closely watched clinical trial is seeing rapid recoveries in fever and respiratory symptoms, with nearly all patients discharged in less than a week, STAT has learned.

Remdesivir was one of the first medicines identified as having the potential to impact SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus that causes Covid-19, in lab tests. The entire world has been waiting for results from Gilead’s clinical trials, and positive results would likely lead to fast approvals by the Food and Drug Administration and other regulatory agencies. If safe and effective, it could become the first approved treatment against the disease.

The outcomes in patients at a Chicago hospital offer only a snapshot of remdesivir’s effectiveness, but are the first clinical data to surface to date.

Continue reading “Gilead data suggests coronavirus patients are responding to treatment” »