Category: Science and Tech
Bird flu infects Iowa egg farm with 1 million chickens
(ABC News) Iowa agriculture officials say another commercial egg farm has been infected with bird flu, the first commercial farm case identified since April when a turkey farm was infected. Iowa agriculture officials said Monday that another commercial egg farm in the state has been infected with bird flu, the first commercial farm case identified […]
Nov 1, 2022
Covid uses our proteins against us. A new strategy seeks to block that.
(Washington Post) With the United States headed into its third full winter of the pandemic amid fears that new variants will evade immunity from vaccines and prior infections, some scientists are seeking ways to blunt the coronavirus’s slippery evolution by blocking the human proteins it uses against us. If the strategy works, it has the potential […]
Nov 1, 2022
U.S. government to test Pfizer’s Paxlovid for long COVID
(Reuters) The U.S. National Institutes of Health’s $1 billion RECOVER Initiative has picked Pfizer Inc’s (PFE.N) antiviral drug Paxlovid as the first treatment it will study in patients with long COVID, organizers of the study said on Thursday. The complex medical condition involves more than 200 symptoms ranging from exhaustion and cognitive impairment to pain, fever and […]
Oct 28, 2022
Fungal Pathogens Flourish in the Pandemic’s Shadow
(The Scientist) The World Health Organization’s first ever fungal priority pathogens list highlights the growing threat of fungal diseases and antifungal resistance. In a new list of fungal “priority pathogens,” the World Health Organization identifies 19 of these often-overlooked microbes that pose the greatest threat to human health. The report, released today (October 25), highlights the […]
Oct 25, 2022
(Science) The United States is moving to tighten oversight of studies that could make viruses more dangerous. But how far should it go? In a U.S. government lab in Bethesda, Maryland, virologists plan to equip the strain of the monkeypox virus that spread globally this year, causing mostly rash and flulike symptoms, with genes from […]
Oct 21, 2022
Which Animals Catch COVID? This Database Has Dozens of Species and Counting
(Scientific American) Tracking how SARS-CoV-2 spreads among animals could help us prepare for the next pandemic. The virus that causes COVID-19 is a prolific sack of genes that targets not just humans but nonhuman animals as well. And just as humans and animals can infect one another, animals can also infect other animals, says Amélie Desvars-Larrive, […]
Oct 18, 2022
New Lab-Made Covid-19 Coronavirus At Boston University Raises Questions
(Forbes) This was one of those should-have-seen-it-coming moments. On October 14, a team of researchers posted on bioRxiv a preprint that described how they had created a new hybrid version of the Covid-19 coronavirus in their lab at Boston University and used this lab-created virus to infect mice, which ended up killing 80% of the mice. These days, if […]
Oct 18, 2022
Was a study that created a hybrid COVID-19 virus too risky?
(Science) Science looks at the furor over an experiment that combined Omicron with a more lethal SARS-CoV-2 variant. This week, Twitter exploded with outrage about a study that seemed to have created a Frankenstein COVID-19 virus: a version of SARS-CoV-2 that combines Omicron, the fast-spreading but relatively mild variant that’s now everywhere, and a deadlier […]
Oct 18, 2022
Authorized COVID Antiviral Fails to Cut Hospitalization Risk
MedPageToday – Molnupiravir failed to reduce the risk for hospitalization or death in high-risk COVID-19 outpatients who took the oral antiviral within 5 days of symptoms, a large open-label multicenter trial found. In more than 25,000 participants in the PANORAMIC study, the rate of all-cause hospitalization or death at 28 days was an identical 0.8% […]
Oct 18, 2022
Emmanuel, a TikTok-famous emu, has avian flu after a deadly outbreak on a Florida farm
NPR – Emmanuel, a widely beloved emu who went viral on TikTok, is in dire condition battling the avian flu. Taylor Blake’s family farm in South Florida, Knuckle Bump Farms, has lost more than 50 birds in just three days, Blake wrote on Twitter Saturday. Only two birds survived. “I am still trying to wrap […]
Oct 18, 2022
