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.
Millions of people struggle with insomnia, but the sleep disorder is now a solvable problem – and the most effective therapy might involve your smartphone rather than sleeping pills
Rebecca Wragg Sykes on the objects that reveal the Neanderthal mind
A third of scientists working on AI say it could cause global disaster
What’s the best recipe for bubble mixture? Scientists have the answer
A family tree of sea cows suggests that the dugong traversed an ocean to reach its present habitat.
Builder drones
Ground-based robots have potential for helping in the construction industry, but they are limited by their height. In this week’s issue, Mirko Kovac, Robert Stuart-Smith and their colleagues introduce highly manoeuvrable aerial robots that can perform additive 3D construction tasks. Inspired by natural builders such as wasps and bees, the researchers created BuilDrones (as shown on the cover) that can work in an autonomous team to perform 3D printing tasks using foam- or cement-based materials. They also created ScanDrones to assess the quality of the structures
being built. The team hopes that this approach of ‘aerial additive manufacturing’ could help to build structures in difficult to access areas.
Seasonal monsoon rainfall replenishes groundwater reserves in the Bengal basin of Bangladesh thanks to the region’s seemingly counterintuitive intensive dry-season irrigation practices, a new Science study finds.
The cover shows an artist’s impression of Mbiresaurus raathi, a newly discovered species of herbivorous dinosaur found in Zimbabwe and dating to around 230 million years ago.
Boomers Daily 