Tag Archives: Covid-19

Research Preview: Science Magazine – May 12, 2023

Science | AAAS

Science Magazine – May 12, 2023 issue: Scalloped hammerhead sharks (Sphyrna lewini) form daytime schools near the ocean’s surface and, at night, dive into cold, deep waters to hunt deep-sea prey. They keep warm while deep diving by closing their gills—effectively holding their breath.

‘It’s still killing and it’s still changing.’ Ending COVID-19 states of emergency sparks debate

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus speaks at International Health Regulations Emergency Committee for COVID-19 meeting

Moves by WHO and U.S. usher pandemic into new phase of disease monitoring, even as coronavirus kills thousands weekly

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Culture: New York Times Magazine – Feb 26, 2023

The New York Times Magazine – February 26, 2023:

Three Years Into Covid, We Still Don’t Know How to Talk About It

Most Americans think they know the story of the pandemic. But when a writer immersed himself in a Covid oral-history project, he realized how much we’re still missing.

‘The Democratic Party in New York Is a Disaster’

After losing crucial seats in the congressional midterms, a bitter civil war over the moribund state organization has spilled into the open.

Preview: Science News Magazine – Nov 5, 2022

cover of the November 5, 2022 issue

Science News November 5, 2022 Issue:

Where are the long COVID clinics?

For people with long COVID, finding a place to get appropriate medical care is a challenge.

NASA’s DART mission successfully shoved an asteroid

Cooperative sperm outrun loners in the mating race

Previews: The Guardian Weekly – October 21, 2022

Guardian Weekly cover 21 October 2022

Living with long Covid. Plus Xi Jinping’s historic party congress

The October 21, 2022 cover story this week steps back from the news agenda to explore the impact of living with long Covid. For millions of people worldwide who have survived initial infection with the virus, recovery is slow. Symptoms such as breathlessness, fatigue and loss of smell or taste persist for months and, as our science editor Ian Sample explains, treatments that work for some may not be successful for others.

This week delegates to the Chinese Communist party’s 20th congress are in Beijing where they are expected to rubber stamp Xi Jinping’s historic third term as leader. Our big story looks at what the president’s supremacy means for the country and its closest neighbour – Taiwan – which lives in the shadow of Xi’s avowed intention to bring the island back under China’s tutelage. 

Research Preview: Science Magazine – Oct 14, 2022

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How SARS-CoV-2 battles our immune system

Meet the protein arsenal wielded by the pandemic virus

Evidence backs natural origin for pandemic, report asserts

Authors were dropped from broader Lancet review

A viral arsenal

SARS-CoV-2 wields versatile proteins to foil our immune system’s counterattack

Hydrogen power gets a boost

A fuel cell gains more power from ion-conducting, porous covalent organic frameworks

Medicine: Why Long Covid Is Still Not Understood

Even mild COVID-19 is at least correlated with a startlingly wide spectrum of seemingly every illness. We need a much better taxonomy to address people’s suffering.

Long Covid – Whole Body Symptoms

From The Atlantic, October 5, 2022:

The cases of long covid that turn up in news reports, the medical literature, and in the offices of doctors like me fall into a few rough (and sometimes overlapping) categories. The first seems most readily explainable: the combination of organ damage, often profound physical debilitation, and poor mental health inflicted by severe pneumonia and resultant critical illness.

This serious long-term COVID-19 complication gets relatively little media attention despite its severity. The coronavirus can cause acute respiratory distress syndrome, the gravest form of pneumonia, which can in turn provoke a spiral of inflammation and injury that can end up taking down virtually every organ. I have seen many such complications in the ICU: failing hearts, collapsed lungs, failed kidneys, brain hemorrhages, limbs cut off from blood flow, and more. More than 7 million COVID-19 hospitalizations occurred in the United States before the Omicron wave, suggesting that millions could be left with damaged lungs or complications of critical illness. Whether these patients’ needs for care and rehabilitation are being adequately (and equitably) met is unclear: Ensuring that they are is an urgent priority.

Read full article at The Atlantic

Research Preview: Science Magazine – Sept 30, 2022

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The genetics of a long life

Genetically diverse mice and cross-species comparison uncover links to longevity

New Omicron strains may portend big COVID-19 waves

Emerging subvariants are more immune evasive than ever

Room-temperature superconductor claim retracted

After doubts grew, blockbuster Nature paper is withdrawn over objections of study team

University pandemic policies raise equity worries

Tenure delays and pandemic impact statements could backfire, some fear

Signs of state meddling seen in Russian academy election

Leader of Russia’s largest chipmaker elected president after incumbent’s sudden withdrawal

Fraud charges crumble in China Initiative cases

Judges reject claims that defendants defrauded agencies by not disclosing China ties

Research Preview: Nature Magazine – Sept 15, 2022

Volume 609 Issue 7927

Monkeypox, COVID-19, AIDS: have we progressed so little?

Deaths and sufferings are not a failure of technology or knowledge, but a failure of will.

The world’s reservoirs are ageing — and belching out more methane

But carbon dioxide emissions resulting from the global reservoir-building spree in the 1960s and 1970s are falling.

The Jurassic vomit that stood the test of time

A fossilized pile of small bones is probably a meal that an animal heaved up 150 million years ago.

Rarest of elements yield their secrets with help from mighty metals

Surrounding an ion of curium with radiation-resistant clusters of other ions allows scientists to study the scarce substance.

Why some female hummingbirds mimic males: it’s all about nectar

Some female white-necked jacobins nab good feeding spots by adopting the flashy plumage of their bigger, brasher male counterparts.

A sugary diet wrecks gut microbes — and their anti-obesity efforts

A high-sugar diet unbalances the microbiome, so the body makes fewer of the gut immune cells that help to prevent metabolic disorders.

Covid-19: China Approves The First Inhaled Vaccine

The vaccine, called Convidecia Air, changes the liquid form of the vaccine into an aerosol using a nebuilzer. The vaccine can then be inhaled through the mouth using the nebulizer machine. The needle-free vaccine “can effectively induce comprehensive immune protection in response to SARS-CoV-2 after just one breath,” Cansino said in a statement.

Fortune.com on September 5, 2022 – China’s government approved the world’s first inhaled vaccine against COVID-19, the vaccine’s maker Cansino Biologics announced on Sunday.

In July, Chinese scientists published a pre-print study showing that people who received one booster dose of Cansino’s inhaled vaccine after two doses of the inactivated jab from Chinese maker Sinovac developed more antibodies than people who received three Sinovac shots. Four weeks after receiving the inhaled booster, 92.5% of people had developed neutralizing antibodies for Omicron.

Those who got three doses on Sinovac’s jab did not demonstrate any neutralizing antibodies for Omicron, either four weeks or six months after getting a booster.

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