Month: January 2022

Dr. Janet Woodcock Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images There's good news about this Omicron phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, and bad news, but much of it is based on educated guesses and the good and bad often blur together. One bit of good news, The Associated Press reports, is that "scientists are seeing signals that COVID-19's alarming omicron wave may have peaked in Britain and is about to do the same in the U.S., at which point cases may start dropping off dramatically." "It's going to come down as fast as it went up," says Ali Mokdad, a professor of health metrics sciences at the University of Washington, whose influential model predicts that daily cases will peak at 1.2 million by Jan. 19 then start plummeting, he says, "simply because everybody who could be infected will be infected." ...

One day soon you may have a tool to help you quickly learn and retain names and faces, according to a new study published Wednesday in the journal NPJ: Science of Learning. Researchers from Northwestern University found playing a recording of people's names during a night's deepest sleep period reinforced peoples' memories and improved their ability to recall names and faces the next morning. "Our study showed that when memories are reactivated during sleep, memory abilities can be improved after you wake up," said senior author Ken Paller, a professor of psychology and director of the Cognitive Neuroscience Program at Northwestern University. In fact, people were found to remember an average of one and a half more names than they did before they slept. But, Paller added, it only worked w...

Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson gestures while visiting St Thomas Hospital to receive his coronavirus booster vaccination, in London, Britain December 2, 2021. Paul Edwards | Reuters LONDON — It's been criticized by many for its reluctance to introduce more Covid-19 restrictions in the face of the omicron variant, but the U.K. could be one of the first countries to emerge from the coronavirus pandemic, according to one leading scientist. Speaking of various responses to Covid, and particularly the latest wave of cases caused by the virulent omicron variant, leading public health official Professor David Heymann of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine said that "the U.K is the closest to any country in being out of the pandemic if it isn't alr...