Month: November 2020

At the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, there were high hopes that hot summer temperatures could reduce its spread. Although summer didn’t bring widespread relief, the connection between the weather and COVID-19 continues to be a hot topic. The link between weather and COVID-19 is complicated. Weather influences the environment in which the coronavirus must survive before infecting a new host. But it also influences human behavior, which moves the virus from one host to another. Research led by The University of Texas at Austin is adding some clarity on weather’s role in COVID-19 infection, with a new study finding that temperature and humidity do not play a significant role in coronavirus spread. That means whether it’s hot or cold outside, the transmission of COVID-19 from ...

Graphic by Ben Zigterman During the first week back in school for Unit 4 elementary students, there were eight cases of COVID-19, according to data posted on the district website. Five involved students and three staff, leading to 17 people required to quarantine (12 students, fi...

By Kate Kelland LONDON (Reuters) - A study of the lungs of people who have died from COVID-19 has found persistent and extensive lung damage in most cases and may help doctors understand what is behind a syndrome known as 'long COVID', in which patients suffer ongoing symptoms for months. Scientists leading the research said they also found some unique characteristics of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, which may explain why it is able to inflict such harm. "The findings indicate that COVID-19 is not simply a disease caused by the death of virus-infected cells, but is likely the consequence of these abnormal cells persisting for long periods inside the lungs," said Mauro Giacca, a professor at King’s College London who co-led the work. The research team analysed samples of ti...

A new study suggests doctors have found the culprit behind serious blood clotting in up to half of hospitalized coronavirus patients. Researchers at Michigan Medicine studied blood samples from 172 hospitalized COVID-19 patients in search of eight types of clot-causing autoimmune antibodies. Autoimmune disease refers to when the immune system attacks healthy cells by mistake, per Johns Hopkins Medicine. Findings were published Monday in Science Translational Medicine. Blood clots are known to cause strokes. (iStock) "In patients with COVID-19, we continue to see a relentless, self-amplifying cycle of inflammation and clotting in the body," Dr. Yogen Kanthi, co-corresponding author and assistant professor at the Michigan Medicine Frankel Cardiovascular Center and a Las...

Physicists from Leiden University have 3D-printed a miniature version of an Intrepid-class starship from Star Trek (via PC Gamer). The idea of a tiny starship is probably something you haven’t considered outside of the plot of a Star Trek episode, but this microscopic model is actually part of a larger research experiment the physicists published in the scientific journal Soft Matter. The five micrometer long ship looks like the USS Voyager and was microprinted by the physicists for their microswimmer research. Unlike the impulse engines and warp drive of its TV counterpart, this Voyager is propelled through liquid by chemical reactions between its platinum coating and the hydrogen peroxide solution the physicists placed it in. Their article notes that these studies usually use sphe...