South Korea successfully got its coronavirus outbreak under control in three weeks without enforcing extreme lockdowns. Here’s how.
Astronomers try to salvage conference meetings and observational astronomy in the midst of this global pandemic.
The Covid-19 pandemic and the resulting lockdowns are altering how businesses operate. Here is how some leaders of the world’s biggest companies described in recent days the changes they are seeing.
“A number of years ago, we talked about, ‘What if there wasn’t clean water? What if there wasn’t enough food? Where might we go? What might we do as a family?’ So, I think we should leave those preparations to ourselves,” Melinda Gates told BBC Radio Live on Thursday.
“We had prepared, and had some food in the basement in case needed, and now we’re all in the same situation,” she said.
Melinda said they could not prepare with a particular drug or vaccine, of course, as “there are no tools” for Covid-19.
The global coronavirus death toll surpassed 200,000 on Saturday, according to John Hopkins University data.
The grim total was reached a day after presidents and prime ministers agreed to work together to develop new vaccines, tests and treatments at a virtual meeting with both the World Health Organization (WHO) and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
“We will only halt COVID-19 through solidarity,” said Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General. “Countries, health partners, manufacturers, and the private sector must act together and ensure that the fruits of science and research can benefit everybody.”
An inexpensive assay based on the technique can provide yes or no answers in under an hour—perhaps even in the home soon.
Healing the heart
Posted in biotech/medical
Researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center discovered that a protein called calcineurin plays a key role in blocking the ability of heart muscle to regenerate after the first week of life. The finding could be used to develop treatments that reverse this process, offering new strategies for repairing hearts damaged by heart attacks, high blood pressure, viruses and more, they said.
Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) emerged in Wuhan, China, at the end of 2019, and there are currently no specific antiviral treatments or vaccines available. SARS-CoV-2 has been shown to use the same cell entry receptor as SARS-CoV, angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2). In this report, we generate a recombinant protein by connecting the extracellular domain of human ACE2 to the Fc region of the human immunoglobulin IgG1. A fusion protein containing an ACE2 mutant with low catalytic activity is also used in this study. The fusion proteins are then characterized. Both fusion proteins have a high binding affinity for the receptor-binding domains of SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 and exhibit desirable pharmacological properties in mice. Moreover, the fusion proteins neutralize virus pseudotyped with SARS-CoV or SARS-CoV-2 spike proteins in vitro. As these fusion proteins exhibit cross-reactivity against coronaviruses, they have potential applications in the diagnosis, prophylaxis, and treatment of SARS-CoV-2.
SARS-CoV-2 uses ACE2 as the entry receptor. Here, the authors show that an ACE2-Ig fusion…
Robots could soon assist humans in a variety of fields, including in manufacturing and industrial settings. A robotic system that can automatically assemble customized products may be particularly desirable for manufacturers, as it could significantly decrease the time and effort necessary to produce a variety of products.
To work most effectively, such a robot should integrate an assembly planner, a component that plans the sequence of movements and actions that a robot should perform to manufacture a specific product. Developing an assembly planner that can rapidly plan the sequences of movements necessary to produce different customized products, however, has so far proved to be highly challenging.
Researchers at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) have recently developed an algorithm that can transfer knowledge acquired by a robot while assembling products in the past to the assembly of new items. This algorithm, presented in a paper published in IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, can ultimately reduce the amount of time required by an assembly planner to come up with action sequences for the manufacturing of new customized products.