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Patients recovering from severe lung infections develop “immunological scars” that stifle their body’s immune response and heighten their risk of contracting pneumonia, a common killer of COVID-19 sufferers, researchers said Monday.

Studies in both humans and mice showed that the body’s is temporarily switched off after some severe infections, rendering more vulnerable to new bacterial or viral diseases.

A team of researchers from the University of Melbourne’s Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity and the University Hospital of Nantes found that the cells that form the ’s first line of defence—macrophages—were “paralysed” after severe .

We read about different innovations in clean technology almost on a daily basis. A small Massachusetts-based start-up, FloDesign Wind Turbine, has created a wind turbine design based on jet engine technology. This revolutionary wind turbine can generate much more electricity at half the cost than today’s traditional wind turbines. It has also won two clean-energy competitions for its amazing innovation.

A traditional wind turbine can extract just 50% of the available wind energy in the given area it occupies. However, the Wind Jet by FloDesign uses blades covered in shrouds to direct the air through the turbine blades. This results in increased flow of air. As the airflow through the blades increases, the higher the speed of the turbines and ultimately the more power that is generated. The energy generated by this new wind turbine matches that of a traditional turbine with blades that are half the size.

FloDesign boasts that its turbines are 3–4 times more efficient than traditional open-fan turbines and they can be placed much closer together than conventional wind turbines while aligning themselves with the wind like a kite on a string. Not only that, FloDesign wind turbines require much smaller blades which occupy less space, are much easier to manufacture, and easier to ship.

An element which could hold the key to the long-standing mystery around why there is much more matter than antimatter in our Universe has been discovered by a University of the West of Scotland (UWS)-led team of physicists.

The UWS and University of Strathclyde academics have discovered, in research published in the journal Nature Physics, that one of the isotopes of the element thorium possesses the most pear-shaped nucleus yet to be discovered. Nuclei similar to thorium-228 may now be able to be used to perform new tests to try find the answer to the mystery surrounding matter and antimatter.

UWS’s Dr. David O’Donnell, who led the project, said: Our research shows that, with good ideas, world-leading nuclear physics experiments can be performed in university laboratories.

Beijing (AFP) — A Chinese laboratory has been developing a drug it believes has the power to bring the coronavirus pandemic to a halt.

The outbreak first emerged in China late last year before spreading across the world, prompting an international race to find treatments and vaccines.

A drug being tested by scientists at China’s prestigious Peking University could not only shorten the recovery time for those infected, but even offer short-term immunity from the virus, researchers say.