Tag Archives: Pandemic

Magazines, Previews, Research, Reviews, Science

Research Preview: Science Magazine – March 24, 2023

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Science Magazine – March 24, 2023 issue: This color-enhanced scanning electron microscopy image shows Ti2CCl2 MXenes grown by chemical vapor deposition. The two-dimensional layers of this material grew perpendicular to the substrate and then folded into microspherical structures. Ion intercalation between two-dimensional MXene sheets has potential for energy storage and other applications.

A new pandemic origin report is stirring controversy. Here are key takeaways

Workers in hazmat suits carry rubbish bins at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market
Workers disinfected Wuhan’s Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in March 2020, but not before a Chinese research team collected samples there that would reveal the presence of SARS-CoV-2–susceptible mammals.

Virology database cuts off—and then reinstates—scientists who found and analyzed data collected 3 years ago by team in China

Earth at higher risk of big asteroid strike, satellite data suggest

Image with rings showing crater width on map of Kazakhstan
If Zhamanshin crater in Kazakhstan is 30 kilometers wide (red ring) instead of 13 kilometers (black ring), as a new study suggests, the impact that made it would have been far more fierce.

“It would be in the range of serious crap happening.”

At a basic level, humanity’s survival odds come down to one thing: the chances of a giant space rock slamming into the planet and sending us the way of the dinosaurs. One way to calibrate that hazard is to look at the size of Earth’s recent large impact craters. 

Magazines, Previews, Research, Reviews, Science

Cover Preview: Nature Magazine – August 11, 2022

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Volume 608 Issue 7922
Podcasts, Reviews, Science

Science: Scanning Sewage For Covid-19, Pandemic Questions, Future Threats

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First up, Contributing Correspondent Gretchen Vogel joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss what scientists have learned from scanning sewage for COVID-19 RNA. And now that so many wastewater monitoring stations are in place—what else can we do with them? 

Next, we have researcher Katia Koelle, an associate professor of biology at Emory University. She wrote a review on the evolving epidemiology of SARS-CoV-2: What have been the most important questions from epidemiologists over the course of the pandemic, and how can they help us navigate future pandemic threats?

Check out the full COVID-19 retrospective issue on lessons learned from the pandemic.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: Stephan Schmitz/Folio Art; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: partially constructed bridge over water filled with giant SARS-CoV-2 viral particles]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Gretchen Vogel

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adb1867

Magazines, Previews, Research, Reviews, Science

Cover Preview: Science Magazine – March 11

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News, Podcasts, Politics, Sports, Stories

Morning News: Olympic Skating Scandal, Smart Headlights, Pandemic

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Russian skater Kamila Valieva was still allowed to compete despite testing positive for a banned substance before the Olympic games. She was a heavy favorite for the gold – but ended up coming in fourth place yesterday. 

What does this say about the integrity of the Olympic games — and what does it mean for the future of figure skating?

  • Plus, smart headlights coming to U.S. cars could make American roads safer.
  • And, how the pandemic is giving us economic lessons in real time.

Guests: The Washington Post’s figure skating analyst Robert Samuels and Axios’ Joann Muller and Emily Peck.

Analysis, Economics, Podcasts, Politics, Reviews, Society

Analysis: Threats To U.S. Democracy, Pandemic Economies, Video Games

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A selection of three essential articles read aloud from the latest issue of The Economist. This week, how to think about the threat to American democracy, which economies have done best and worst during the pandemic (10:33) and whether video games really are addictive (17:34).

News, Podcasts, Politics

Morning News: Pandemic To Endemic, Addictive Video Gaming, Bangladesh

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The lightning-fast spread of a seemingly milder coronavirus variant may represent a shift from pandemic to endemic; we ask how that would change global responses. 

 Concern about video-game addictiveness is as old as video games themselves—but the business models of modern gaming may be magnifying the problem. And newly publicised photographs shed light on Bangladesh’s brutal war for independence.

Analysis, News, Reviews, Stories, Videos

The Economist: Top Issues & Stories For 2022 (Video)

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What will some of 2022’s top themes and stories be? Tom Standage, editor of The Economist’s future-gazing annual, “The World Ahead 2022”, gives his prediction.

Video timeline: 00:00 What to expect in 2022 00:35 Pandemic to endemic 01:35 Inequality in hybrid working 02:34 Taming cryptocurrencies 03:43 The race to dominate space 04:34 The need for corporate climate solutions

Read our latest coverage on The World Ahead: https://econ.st/3HtLmuQ

Analysis, Health, Medicine, Reviews, Science, Videos

Covid-19: ‘The Variant Hunters’ – Understanding Its Spread (Cambridge)

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The variant hunters are helping us to understand how and why the COVID-19 virus is spreading, allowing us to fight back against the COVID-19 pandemic.

Hear from some of the scientists behind the UK’s nationwide sequencing effort to track SARS-CoV-2. Sir Patrick Vallance (the government’s Chief Scientific Adviser) also describes how the expertise that came together during the pandemic is now recognised across the world – and why it’s crucially important to continue to sequence to be ready for future pandemics.

This pioneering work is being carried out by the COVID-19 Genomics UK (COG-UK) consortium, which comprises numerous academic institutions, four public health agencies and the Wellcome Sanger Institute, and is administered by the University of Cambridge.

“Incredibly impressive, incredibly high quality and incredibly focused on the mission to make sure that as many people benefited from the science as possible,” Sir Patrick Vallance.

Read more: https://www.cam.ac.uk/stories/variant…