Massachusetts Institute of Technology engineers have developed a robot that plays Jenga using technology they say could be used to assemble consumer products or separate recycling.
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ScienceDirect ® is a registered trademark of Elsevier B.V.
This is the latest Lifeboat Foundation update on our worldwide pandemic.
It is also at https://www.facebook.com/groups/lifeboatfoundation/permalink/10158811699298455.
Key summary of this report:
- Hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin, zinc sulfate, and massive amounts of vitamin C taken intravenously should reduce your chance of death by about 50% and any hospital stays should be reduced by 50% as well. (Freeing up ventilators.) This treatment should be begun within 5 days of getting coronavirus symptoms.
- Wearing any type of mask should reduce the chance of transmitting the virus by 50%. You can reuse a mask by placing it in an oven at 170℉/77℃ for 30 minutes.
- Taking 2,000 IU per day of vitamin D should reduce your chance of infection by 50%.
- Social distancing should reduce the rate of infection by 50%.
- Ventilators are being overhyped by the media and you should take steps to avoid being put on them since they are associated with up to 80% death rates.
Following these four recommendations should improve everyone’s chances by a factor of 16 and get this pandemic under control. (All percentages are approximate, of course.) Such recommendations would bring the end to our extreme quarantines.
VENTILATORS
Ventilators can be shared in an emergency by 2 to 8 patients each. Simply sharing with 2 people plus following our four recommendations will increase the overall ventilator supply by a factor of 32. Learn more at https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/26/health/coronavirus-ventilator-sharing.html.
Patients are experiencing death rates as high as 80% on ventilators as discussed at https://time.com/5818547/ventilators-coronavirus. (50% is the best death rate being recorded anywhere.)
It is estimated that only 20–30% of coronavirus patients who are having problems breathing have the typical Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS) that calls for a ventilator. A CT scan will help identify such patients. Learn more at https://www.esicm.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/684_author-proof.pdf.
We recommend that the following be tried before a ventilator:
Scientists in Australia think hardy agave plants could be the next big biofuel source. In addition, the bioethanol produced from the plants could help fill unprecedented global demand for hand sanitizer.
Don’t despair: In just 45 seconds, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams demonstrates how to make your own cloth facemask.
It’s lo-tech. You can use a T-shirt, hand towel, or bandana. The only other thing you need is rubber bands.
The CDC now recommends wearing cloth face masks in public places where it’s difficult to social distance from others — meaning staying at least six feet away.
Scientists have found an ancient submarine forest of bald cypress trees entombed in Mobile Bay off the coast of Alabama.
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the forest flourished on the banks of a prehistoric river near the Gulf of Mexico nearly 60,000 years ago. When the trees died, their massive trunks became entombed in peat and sediment. Eventually, sea levels rose, the coastline receded, and the remains of these ancient trees were buried by the sea. The forest was preserved, undisturbed for millennia, until recent intensifying storms along the coast began to expose it.
Earlier this week, NOAA shared a video of the incredible site (below), showing it teeming with schools of fish.
The ongoing fight against the COVID-19 pandemic could get a boost if Canadians paid more attention to the relative humidity levels in public and private spaces, according to a growing body of international research.
Doctors, scientists and engineers agree that sufficient indoor air moisture levels can have a powerful but little-understood effect on the transmission of airborne diseases. While the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19 is currently treated as one that’s transmitted through droplet infection rather than the air, research on exactly how it passes between humans is still underway.
Most buildings, however, fall short of the recommended threshold of 40 to 60 per cent relative humidity, particularly in countries with colder, dryer climates such as Canada.
The implications of split-brain research have been widely debated. Scientists and philosophers have long argued over what is known as the mind-body quandary, the relationship between our mind and the physical brain. Some scientists saw the work of Sperry and others as supporting the notion that the brain operates almost entirely mechanically, and that consciousness, reasoning and free will have almost no effect. But Sperry strongly felt otherwise…
What this meant to Sperry was that free will, and responsibility, were no illusion. “It is possible to see today,” he believed, “an objective, explanatory model of brain function that neither contradicts nor degrades but rather affirms age-old humanist values, ideals, and meaning in human endeavor.”
It’s fair to say that the true significance of the split-brain experiments goes far beyond the significance of the lateralization of the brain; it also points to the immaterial nature of the mind.
The human cerebral cortex is important for cognition, and it is of interest to see how genetic variants affect its structure. Grasby et al. combined genetic data with brain magnetic resonance imaging from more than 50,000 people to generate a genome-wide analysis of how human genetic variation influences human cortical surface area and thickness. From this analysis, they identified variants associated with cortical structure, some of which affect signaling and gene expression. They observed overlap between genetic loci affecting cortical structure, brain development, and neuropsychiatric disease, and the correlation between these phenotypes is of interest for further study.
Science, this issue p. eaay6690.