Fresh Science Trends

The new data on hydroxychloroquine therapy is to discuss. The numbers will not clear anything up. First off is an abstract from the Marseilles IHU group of Dr. Didier Raoult. It presents 1061 patients treated for at least 3 days with their hydroxychloroquine/azithromycin combination, with followup of at least 9 days. It includes the statement “98% of patients cured so far” and says also “No cardiac toxicity was observed”, and also says that mortality figures were improved in these patients as compared with others receiving standard-of-care without such treatment. The other release is a data table on these patients (there is no full manuscript as of yet). It does not include any sort of control group, nor (as far as I can see) does it even have a comparison in it to those other patients mentioned in the abstract. Let’s hold on to these thoughts as we discuss the next data. Here is a preprint from a large multinational collaboration presenting data obtained from health care systems (clai...

WHAT IS EVALUATION? Evaluation is a set of approaches and techniques used to make judgments about the effectiveness or quality of a program or treatment; to improve its effectiveness; and to inform decisions about its design, development, and implementation ( National Research Council 2010 ).  For an informal STEM project, evaluation generally provides information that can guide the project, suggest how it might be improved, and provide evidence to demonstrate whether it worked as intended. When evaluating informal STEM education experiences, four main kinds of evaluation are often considered: Front-end, formative, remedial, and summative.  Front-end evaluation  occurs during the project planning process. It often takes the form of audience research as it gathers data about the knowledge, interests, and experiences of the intended audience.  Formative evaluation  guides project improvement during the development process by gathering data about a project's streng...

Fatty food concept (stock image). Fatty food may feel like a friend during these troubled times, but new research suggests that eating just one meal high in saturated fat can hinder our ability to concentrate -- not great news for people whose diets have gone south while they're working at home during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study compared how 51 women performed on a test of their attention after they ate either a meal high in saturated fat or the same meal made with sunflower oil, which is high in unsaturated fat. Their performance on the test was worse after eating the high-saturated-fat meal than after they ate the meal containing a healthier fat, signaling a link between that fatty food and the brain. Researchers were also looking at whether a condition called leaky gut, which allows intestinal bacteria to enter the bloodstream, had any effect on concentration. Participants with leakier guts performed worse on the attention assessment no matter which meal they had eaten. The...

Doctor, vitamin D concept (stock image). After studying global data from the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, researchers have discovered a strong correlation between severe vitamin D deficiency and mortality rates. Led by Northwestern University, the research team conducted a statistical analysis of data from hospitals and clinics across China, France, Germany, Italy, Iran, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom (UK) and the United States. The researchers noted that patients from countries with high COVID-19 mortality rates, such as Italy, Spain and the UK, had lower levels of vitamin D compared to patients in countries that were not as severely affected. This does not mean that everyone -- especially those without a known deficiency -- needs to start hoarding supplements, the researchers caution. "While I think it is important for people to know that vitamin D deficiency might play a role in mortality, we don't need to push vitamin D on everybody," sa...

High temperature on thermometer (stock image). Most everyone knows that humid heat is harder to handle than the "dry" kind. And recently, some scientists have projected that later in the century, in parts of the tropics and subtropics, warming climate could cause combined heat and humidity to reach levels rarely if ever experienced before by humans. Such conditions would ravage economies, and possibly even surpass the physiological limits of human survival. According to a new study, the projections are wrong: such conditions are already appearing. The study identifies thousands of previously rare or unprecedented bouts of extreme heat and humidity in Asia, Africa, Australia, South America and North America, including in the U.S. Gulf Coast region. Along the Persian Gulf, researchers spotted more than a dozen recent brief outbreaks surpassing the theoretical human survivability limit. The outbreaks have so far been confined to localized areas and lasted just hours, but they ar...

The COVID-19 lockdown has forced closure of film studios as well as outdoor shooting, but that has not stopped an enthusiastic bunch of filmmakers from making films. Shooting at home amid lockdown is the latest trend in Bollywood. The format could be anything – short or feature-length film, a limited series, or a music video — but the key to filmmaking has to be the fact that everything is done within a single house, from pre-production to post-production. Image Credit: IANS 2 of 8 It’s not just budding or struggling filmmakers who are at it. When Salman Khan shot an entire music video with Jacqueline Fernandez at his Panvel farmhouse — where he quarantined himself — the signal was loud and clear. In the time of social distancing, Bollywood loved the idea, too. The song, titled ‘Tere Bina’, was shot over four days, and it is his “cheapest production” till date, revealed Khan. The actor shared that he has learnt a lot while shooting during the lockdown. “It’s a learning experience that ...

Illustration of coronavirus under a microscope (stock image). By analysing virus genomes from over 7,500 people infected with Covid-19, a UCL-led research team has characterised patterns of diversity of SARS-CoV-2 virus genome, offering clues to direct drugs and vaccine targets. The study, led by the UCL Genetics Institute, identified close to 200 recurrent genetic mutations in the virus, highlighting how it may be adapting and evolving to its human hosts. Researchers found that a large proportion of the global genetic diversity of SARS-CoV-2 is found in all hardest-hit countries, suggesting extensive global transmission from early on in the epidemic and the absence of single 'Patient Zeroes' in most countries. The findings, published today in  Infection, Genetics and Evolution , also further establish the virus only emerged recently in late 2019, before quickly spreading across the globe. Scientists analysed the emergence of genomic diversity in SARS-CoV-2...

Neuron illustration (stock image). Like power lines in an electrical grid, long wiry projections that grow outward from neurons -- structures known as axons -- form interconnected communication networks that run from the brain to all parts of the body. But unlike an outage in a power line, which can be fixed, a break in an axon is permanent. Each year thousands of patients confront this reality, facing life-long losses in sensation and motor function from spinal cord injury and related conditions in which axons are badly damaged or severed. New research by scientists at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine Temple University (LKSOM) shows, however, that gains in functional recovery from these injuries may be possible, thanks to a molecule known as Lin28, which regulates cell growth. In a study published online in the journal   Molecular Therapy , the Temple researchers describe the ability of Lin28 -- when expressed above its usual levels -- to fuel axon regrowth in m...

Sars-CoV-2 virus illustration (stock image). Researchers at MIT; the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, and Harvard; and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard; along with colleagues from around the world have identified specific types of cells that appear to be targets of the coronavirus that is causing the Covid-19 pandemic. Using existing data on the RNA found in different types of cells, the researchers were able to search for cells that express the two proteins that help the SARS-CoV-2 virus enter human cells. They found subsets of cells in the lung, the nasal passages, and the intestine that express RNA for both of these proteins much more than other cells. The researchers hope that their findings will help guide scientists who are working on developing new drug treatments or testing existing drugs that could be repurposed for treating Covid-19. "Our goal is to get information out to the community and to share data as soon as is humanly possible, so that we ca...

Exoplanet illustration (stock image; elements furnished by NASA). A team of transatlantic scientists, using reanalyzed data from NASA's Kepler space telescope, has discovered an Earth-size exoplanet orbiting in its star's habitable zone, the area around a star where a rocky planet could support liquid water. Scientists discovered this planet, called Kepler-1649c, when looking through old observations from Kepler, which the agency retired in 2018. While previous searches with a computer algorithm misidentified it, researchers reviewing Kepler data took a second look at the signature and recognized it as a planet. Out of all the exoplanets found by Kepler, this distant world -- located 300 light-years from Earth -- is most similar to Earth in size and estimated temperature. This newly revealed world is only 1.06 times larger than our own planet. Also, the amount of starlight it receives from its host star is 75% of the amount of light Earth receives from our Su...