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Jan 26, 2020

Gilead assessing potential use of Ebola drug as China virus treatment

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

From January 23

Gilead Sciences Inc said on Thursday it was assessing whether its experimental Ebola treatment could be used against the new coronavirus that has sickened hundreds of people in China and led to at least 18 deaths. “Gilead is in active discussions with researchers and clinicians in the United States and China regarding the ongoing Wuhan coronavirus outbreak and the potential use of remdesivir as an investigational treatment,” a company spokesman said in an emailed statement.


(Reuters) — Gilead Sciences Inc said on Thursday it was assessing whether its experimental Ebola treatment could be used against the new coronavirus that has sickened hundreds of people in China and led to at least 18 deaths.

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Jan 26, 2020

NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley will be the first to fly SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spaceship. Here’s how they’re preparing

Posted by in category: space travel

The Crew Dragon is expected to launch a new era of US spaceflight. NASA will then stop relying on Russia to launch its astronauts.

Jan 26, 2020

Para-swimmer ‘overwhelmed’

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

By robotic suit walk Grace Harvey reveals the mixed emotions she had after walking for the first time in a robotic suit.

Jan 26, 2020

Coronavirus link to China biowarfare program possible, analyst says

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, military

The deadly animal-borne coronavirus spreading globally may have originated in a laboratory in the city of Wuhan linked to China’s covert biological weapons program, said an Israeli biological warfare analyst.

Radio Free Asia last week rebroadcast a Wuhan television report from 2015 showing China’s most advanced virus research laboratory, known the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The laboratory is the only declared site in China capable of working with deadly viruses.

Jan 26, 2020

Marty, grocery store robot, celebrates 1st birthday

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

Marty, the googly-eyed robot that helps with cleanups at grocery stores, celebrated its first birthday Saturday.

It has been one year since the wheeled robot was rolled out into nearly 500 grocery stores, including about 300 Stop & Shop stores.

Jan 26, 2020

Swiss researcher develops unreal robot hand that levitates objects

Posted by in categories: innovation, robotics/AI

Proving once again that truth is often stranger than fiction, a Swiss researcher has recently developed an astonishing new type of robotic hand that can actually lift small items via invisible sound waves. While it might appear to be a clever conjuror’s trick, it’s really employing an old invention called ultrasonic levitation, whereby objects are captured and levitated using the sorcery of science.

Researcher Marcel Schuck of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich is utilizing a strange phenomenon whose history dates back 80 years, but fusing the technology into modern robotics applications. Schuck’s initial touchless gripper resembles a halved gourd attached to a network of wires and containing dozens of miniature loudspeakers.

Jan 26, 2020

Gut bacteria could protect against Parkinson’s

Posted by in category: futurism

Read more.

Jan 26, 2020

Patient diagnosed with first case of coronavirus in Orange County

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, health

The first case of novel coronavirus was confirmed in Orange County Saturday, health officials said.

The Orange County Health Care Agency’s Communicable Disease Control Division, which received confirmation from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said the infected person is a traveler from Wuhan, China.

The respiratory disease has sickened 1,975 people and killed 56, almost all in Wuhan.

Jan 26, 2020

New drug may keep cancer metastasis under control

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, entertainment

Sorry, might be a re-post, new source (r;ns)


Fighting cancer can sometimes feel like a game of Whack-A-Mole – even after a primary tumor is removed the disease can crop up again in other organs. Now, researchers at the Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research have developed a drug that can prevent cancer from spreading.

Previous research has shown that before tumors start to spread, they secrete substances that prepare new places for them to settle down. One way in which the disease does this is by making blood vessels in the area “leaky,” allowing the cancer to penetrate them easier. And it’s this process that the new drug, created by researchers at the Harry Perkins Institute, prevents.

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Jan 26, 2020

Israeli drug makes Alzheimer’s symptoms disappear in mice

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, neuroscience

Medical science has been this optimistic before about finding a cure for Alzheimer’s, but in most cases the scientists, patients and their families have suffered serious disappointment. The bitter truth is that over 99 percent of all clinical trials for Alzheimer’s treatments end in failure. For now it is not only incurable, but a major mystery and irreversible. The chemical basis for the disease is still unclear. The research is directed in many directions and based on very different assumptions and approaches.

One focus in recent years is based on the “amyloid assumption,” which says the amyloid beta peptide plays a major role in the development of the disease. The accumulation of the “sticky” amyloid protein plaques is responsible for the damage, by building up into clumps that can cause inflammation in the brain and the death of neurons. These plaques are the main target of most Alzheimer’s research today. Almost 90 percent of the scientific resources in Alzheimer’s research are devoted to developing drugs and treatments to reduce the concentrations and activity of amyloid beta in the brain.