Coronavirus hits the old and those with other health problems hardest, but fit, youthful people are dying too, and experts are trying to understand why: It remains one of the biggest puzzles of the Covid-19 pandemic. The disease generally causes serious problems only in older people or those with underlying health problems. But occasionally it strikes [...]
he past few weeks have revealed the worst and the best in human responses to the coronavirus crisis – from the supermarket hoarders clearing the shelves to the neighbourhood groups organising help for elderly and vulnerable people. When it comes to the pharmaceutical companies, how should we judge their response? They, after all, hold [...]
An Oxford-based firm that uses artificial intelligence to develop new medicines has teamed up with a UK national science facility to screen more than 15,000 drugs for their effectiveness as a treatment for Covid-19. Exscientia, a spinoff company from the University of Dundee that is now based in Oxford science park, said it had [...]
New research has shed light on a crucial biological mechanism that may have helped the coronavirus to infect humans and spread rapidly around the world. A detailed analysis of the virus’s structure shows that the club-like “spikes” that it uses to establish infections latch on to human cells about four times more strongly than [...]
How does the COVID-19 pandemic compare to other infamous viral infections that have plagued us in modern times? It’s a question that’s been asked repeatedly in social media circles in recent weeks as people struggle to gain a better understanding of what we are facing. Recently, I received an answer that was terrifying. The [...]
There is no vaccine or specific treatment for COVID-19, the disease caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, or SARS-CoV-2. Since the outbreak began in late 2019, researchers have been racing to learn more about SARS-CoV-2, which is a strain from a family of viruses known as coronavirus for their crown-like shape. [...]
Michael Osterholm is an internationally recognized expert in infectious disease epidemiology. He is Regents Professor, McKnight Presidential Endowed Chair in Public Health, the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP), Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Division of Environmental Health Sciences, School of Public Health, a professor in the Technological [...]
With the new coronavirus spreading from person to person (possibly including from people without symptoms), reaching four continents, and traveling faster than SARS, driving it out of existence is looking increasingly unlikely. It’s still possible that quarantines and travel bans will first halt the outbreak and then eradicate the microbe, and the world will [...]
Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine (WFIRM) scientists have improved upon the 3D bioprinting technique they developed to engineer skeletal muscle as a potential therapy for replacing diseased or damaged muscle tissue, moving another step closer to someday being able to treat patients. Skeletal muscles are attached to bones by tendons and are responsible [...]
An international team of scientists from the University of Southampton, the University of Padova, and the University of Zurich has connected a silicon neuron to a neuron from the rat hippocampus with an artificial synapse, opening a door to one day linking artificial and biological brains. The experiment is detailed in the journal Scientific Reports. There are [...]
