Lifeboat Foundation

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. and TARRYTOWN, N.Y., March 16, 2020 /PRNewswire/ — Sanofi and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc today announced they have started a clinical program evaluating Kevzara^® (sarilumab) in patients hospitalized with severe COVID-19. Kevzara is a fully-human monoclonal antibody that inhibits the interleukin-6 (IL-6) pathway by binding and blocking the IL-6 receptor. IL-6 may play a role in driving the overactive inflammatory response in the lungs of patients who are severely or critically ill with COVID-19 infection. The role of IL-6 is supported by preliminary data from a single-arm study in China using another IL-6 receptor antibody.

This U.S.-based trial will begin at medical centers in New York, one of the epicenters of the U.S. COVID-19 outbreak, and will assess the safety and efficacy of adding Kevzara to usual supportive care, compared to supportive care plus placebo. The multi-center, double-blind, Phase 2/3 trial has an adaptive design with two parts and is anticipated to enroll up to 400 patients. The first part will recruit patients with severe COVID-19 infection across approximately 16 U.S. sites, and will evaluate the impact of Kevzara on fever and patients’ need for supplemental oxygen. The second, larger part of the trial will evaluate the improvement in longer-term outcomes including preventing death and reducing the need for mechanical ventilation, supplemental oxygen and/or hospitalization.

“At Sanofi, we are taking a leading role in addressing the global challenge of COVID-19 disease. Scientific evidence has emerged to suggest that Kevzara may be a potentially important treatment option for some patients, and this trial will provide the well-controlled, rigorous scientific data we need to determine if IL-6 inhibition with Kevzara is better than current supportive care alone. Additionally, we expect to rapidly initiate trials outside the U.S. in the coming weeks, including areas most affected by the pandemic such as Italy,” said John Reed, M.D., Ph.D., Sanofi’s Global Head of Research and Development. “In addition to Kevzara, Sanofi Pasteur, the vaccines global business unit of Sanofi, is leveraging previous development work for a SARS vaccine as part of our goal to quickly develop a COVID-19 vaccine.”

Have you ever gotten a whiff of a certain smell that brought you back to childhood? Or maybe a scent that reminded you of a past love affair?

A paper published in Learning and Memory reveals the power scents have to trigger memories of past experiences, as well as the possibility for odor to be used in treating memory-related disorders.

“If odor could be used to elicit the rich recollection of a memory — even of a traumatic experience — we could take advantage of that [therapeutically],” said Boston University neuroscientist Steve Ramirez, assistant professor of psychology and brain sciences and senior author of the study, in a statement.

I have spent the past several years of my life desperately trying to warn humanity that the robots are coming to destroy us all, and everybody laughed at me. But this week—shortly after the T-1000 was seen smooching his miniature horse and donkey—a robot noodle chef has taken over soba-making duties at a Tokyo train station, so who’s laughing now? (The robots are laughing now.)

To understand the behavior of quantum particles, imagine a pinball game—but rather than one metal ball, there are billions or more, all ricocheting off each other and their surroundings.

Physicists have long tried to study this interactive system of strongly correlated particles, which could help illuminate elusive physics phenomena like high-temperature superconductivity and magnetism.

One classic method is to create a simplified model that can capture the essence of these particle interactions. In 1963, physicists Martin Gutzwiller, Junjiro Kanamori and John Hubbard—working separately—proposed what came to be called the Hubbard model, which describes the essential physics of many interacting quantum particles. The solution to the model, however, only exists in one dimension. For decades, physicists have tried to realize the Hubbard model in two or three dimensions by creating quantum simulators that can mimic it.

We already have medicines for treating cytokine storm syndrome, the immune response that’s killing many who die of Covid-19.

In 2018, Putin approved a national research strategy that stretches to 2024. It calls for more money, extra support for early-career scientists, and some 900 new laboratories, including at least 15 world-class research centres with a focus on mathematics, genomics, materials research and robotics. Last year, the government completed a sweeping evaluation of scientific performance at its universities and institutes; it has vowed to modernize equipment in the 300 institutes that made the top quartile. And it says it wants to strengthen previously neglected areas, including climate and environmental research (see ‘Russia’s climate-science ambitions’).

Some researchers see promise in planned reforms.

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Phoronix is the leading technology website for Linux hardware reviews, open-source news, Linux benchmarks, open-source benchmarks, and computer hardware tests.

An advanced communications system comprising an emitter and an improved receiver (detector) utilizing modulated beams of neutrino and antineutrino waves as information carriers between the emitter and the receiver. of modulated neutrino and antineutrino beams in the emitter is achieved by a laser-like medium, while detection and demodulation of the neutrino and antineutrino beams is accomplished by a second laser-like medium which registers the flux (or of modulated neutrinos and antineutrinos passing there-through by means of resonant stimulated deexcitation of lasable excited states. In addition to the information transmission utilization, the neutrino emitter and receiver (detector) system may also be employed to gather information by the probing of internal earth structures. Such structures cause measurable refractions and retardations of the propagated pulses of monochromatic neutrino waves traveling through the earth between the emitter and receiver (detector), at certain predetermined neutrino

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Recent NASA findings show there is a lot of water on Mars — but can future settlers actually drink it? If not, what will be needed for making water on Mars?