sciam.com – Lessons from other viruses show that even if vaccines don’t completely stop disease spread, they can still successfully contain it
Source: Fernando P. Polack, et al. Safety and Efficacy of the BNT162b2 mRNA Covid-19 Vaccine. New England Journal of Medicine, 2020.
zmescience.com – The test only takes 20 minutes.
Source: Hojun Kim, et al. Noninvasive Precision Screening of Prostate Cancer by Urinary Multimarker Sensor and Artificial Intelligence Analysis. ACS Nano, 2020.
newscientist.com – People from ethnic minorities are up to 19 per cent less likely to be contacted by job recruiters, according to an analysis of users on a Swiss public employment website
Source: Dominik Hangartner, Daniel Kopp, Michael Siegenthaler. Monitoring hiring discrimination through online recruitment platforms. Nature, 2021.
livescience.com – In poorly-ventilated spaces, COVID-19 is more likely to spread through talking than coughing, a new study says.
Source: P. M. de Oliveira, L. C. C. Mesquita, S. Gkantonas, A. Giusti, E. Mastorakos. Evolution of spray and aerosol from respiratory releases: theoretical estimates for insight on viral transmission. Proceedings of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, 2021.
newscientist.com – A robot that mimics the way squid move is most efficient when it operates with a particular rhythm
Source: Thierry Bujard, Francesco Giorgio-Serchi, Gabriel D. Weymouth. A resonant squid-inspired robot unlocks biological propulsive efficiency. Science Robotics, 2021.
upi.com – The use of fixed-dose combination antibiotics needs to reconsidered, given questions about their efficacy and safety, as well as their possible role in increasing antibiotic resistance, according to the authors of a stud
Source: Barbara Bortone, et al. High global consumption of potentially inappropriate fixed dose combination antibiotics: Analysis of data from 75 countries. PLOS ONE, 2021.
arstechnica.com – A mix of actuator and bit-level memory.
Source: Tian Chen, Mark Pauly, Pedro M. Reis. A reprogrammable mechanical metamaterial with stable memory. Nature, 2021.
bbc.com – Satellite imagery is being used to count elephants in a breakthrough that could aid conservation.
Source: Isla Duporge, et al. Using very‐high‐resolution satellite imagery and deep learning to detect and count African elephants in heterogeneous landscapes. Remote Sensing in Ecology and Conservation, 2020.
nytimes.com – A new study hints that plants like catnip and silver vine may also protect your feline friend from mosquitoes.
Source: Reiko Uenoyama, et al. The characteristic response of domestic cats to plant iridoids allows them to gain chemical defense against mosquitoes. Science Advances, 2021.
nytimes.com – A new modeling study hints that odor-based screens could quash outbreaks. But some experts are skeptical it would work in the real world.
Source: Janine Makaronidis, et al. Seroprevalence of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in people with an acute loss in their sense of smell and/or taste in a community-based population in London, UK: An observational cohort study. PLOS Medicine, 2020.