During the Cold War, Vozrozhdeniya Island was a top-secret testing ground for deadly Soviet super-pathogens. Despite over two decades of abandonment, their legacy lives on.
Despite a potential vaccine, the novel coronavirus could return on a seasonal basis, much like the flu, according to Seattle-based company Adaptive Biotechnologies.
That’s one of the reasons Adaptive is teaming up with pharmaceutical giant Amgen, which plans to use Adaptive’s proprietary technology platform to develop therapies to treat the virus.
Adaptive’s CEO Chad Robins says it’s the next big thing in the field of immune sequencing. They will screen blood samples of COVID-19 survivors, then identify which naturally occurring antibodies in the immune system can be used to neutralize the SARS-CoV-2 virus which causes the disease.
German company Nanoflow Cell unveiled a sleek looking fully electric Quant 48Volt at the Geneva Motor Show this year with the goal of the company bringing the first production car in the world to be powered by saltwater. The Quant 48Volt has two tanks of liquid with dissolved metallic salt which gives them opposite charges. The liquid is separated by a membrane where positively charged ions lose an electron generating electricity.
One fill up of the tanks are good for 621 miles (1,000 km) which astonishingly is greater distance our gasoline vehicles can take us. However, to fill up the tank which has the 3x capacity of large SUV will take quite a bit of time but certainly not hours.
The salt water powered vehicle generates 560kW (760HP) and goes 0-60mph in 2.4 seconds.
While Hokkaido was not covered in the state’s declaration of an emergency, the prefectural government and the municipal government of Sapporo, the prefectural capital, issued a joint emergency declaration following reports of double-digit increases in infections for the fifth straight day.
“We are facing a crisis of a second wave in the spread of (the coronavirus) infections,” Hokkaido Gov. Naomichi Suzuki told reporters, asking residents to refrain from making nonessential outings.
Hokkaido had declared its own state of emergency on Feb. 28 ahead of the government and lifted it on March 19, citing signs that the coronavirus spread was abating in the prefecture, a popular area for both Japanese and foreign tourists.
[THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS “SOLVING OUR PROBLEMS ON EARTH BEFORE GOING TO SPACE”](https://spacerenaissance.space/heres-no-such-thing-as-solvin…-to-space/)
Bears, bobcats and other critters are roaming free in California’s most popular national park, closed to visitors since March 20.
Talk of a universal basic income (UBI), or regular cash payments with minimal or no requirements for receiving the money, has been brought to the forefront as social distancing and economic concerns have put millions of people out of work.
Amid the COVID-19 pandemic Pope Francis says it might be time for some sort of universal basic income.
“This may be the time to consider a universal basic wage” to “acknowledge and dignify the noble, essential tasks” and to “achieve the ideal … of no worker without rights,” Pope Francis said in a letter to the World Meeting of Popular Movements, an organization representing global grassroots organizations, published on Sunday via the Vatican.
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Scientists have engineered a mutant enzyme that converts 90 percent of plastic bottles back to pristine starting materials that can then be used to produce new high-quality bottles in just hours. The discovery could revolutionize the recycling industry, which currently saves about 30 percent of PET plastics from landfills, reported Science Magazine.
The coronavirus pandemic has resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of people across the globe. It is also causing huge damage to the global economy. According to the predictions of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), 2020 could be the worst year since the Great Depression in the 1930s, with more than 170 countries likely to experience negative per capita income growth due to the pandemic. Countries are taking different measures to mitigate that economic impact, depending on the situations in their countries. However, the process of overcoming economic crisis is going to be extremely difficult. Few businesses would find it hard even to sustain and there is going to be a significant upsurge in unemployment rates.
Like much of the rest of the world, India is under lockdown. It is bit premature to predict the exact impact of coronavirus crisis on the Indian economy since the situation is still evolving. However, it is clear at this stage that the country will be facing major economic downturn and levels of unemployment will steeply rise. The government has already offered an economic package of 1.7 trillion rupees ($22.3 billion) in the last month for providing food security and money to the poor. It is expected that the government would shortly announce the next economic stimulus package.
All this would require the government of India to undertake a ruthless review of existing patterns of expenditure. The government budgeting caters to the requirements of various segments of the society, including agriculture, health, education, and railways. The budget has two other important areas of attention: defense and science & technology.
