Science & Technology News – Page 198

Analysis, Coronavirus, Healthcare, Medicine, Science & Technology News

CDC data shows 9% vaccine effectiveness for influenza A, virus H3N2 flu shot last year

April 13, 2020

While governments, international bodies and the public health community scramble to arrest the COVID-19 virus, now a pandemic, and with states of emergency declared nationwide and in Massachusetts, medical experts are still trying to come up with vaccines that can do a better job against various strains of influenza that have sickened and killed people for many decades.

The experts say the effectiveness rate of flu shots should be at least 90% successful.

But data collected for nearly two decades by the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention show effectiveness rates often hovers between 40 and 50%.

Data from the 2018-2019 flu season, the most recent set of complete information, first published in June, indicated that a flu shot to prevent influenza A, the H3N2 strain, was only 9% effective in preventing onset of the flu, among all age groups.

Continue reading… “CDC data shows 9% vaccine effectiveness for influenza A, virus H3N2 flu shot last year”

NASA, new technology, Science & Technology News, Space

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope full mirror deployment a success

April 13, 2020

The primary mirror of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is planned to be deployed only once more on Earth, before being packaged for delivery to South America.

In a recent test, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope fully deployed its primary mirror into the same configuration it will have when in space.

As Webb progresses towards liftoff in 2021, technicians and engineers have been diligently checking off a long list of final tests the observatory will undergo before being packaged for delivery to French Guiana for launch. Performed in early March, this procedure involved commanding the spacecraft’s internal systems to fully extend and latch Webb’s iconic 21 feet 4-inch (6.5 meter) primary mirror, appearing just like it would after it has been launched to orbit. The observatory is currently in a cleanroom at Northrop Grumman Space Systems in Redondo Beach, California.

The difficulty and complexity of performing tests for Webb has increased significantly, now that the observatory has been fully assembled. Special gravity offsetting equipment was attached to Webb’s mirror to simulate the zero-gravity environment its mechanisms will have to operate in. Tests like these help safeguard mission success by physically demonstrating that the spacecraft is able to move and unfold as intended. The Webb team will deploy the observatory’s primary mirror only once more on the ground, just before preparing it for delivery to the launch site.

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Analysis, Big Problems, Coronavirus, Healthcare, Science & Technology News

Sewage analysis suggests a New England metro area with fewer than 500 COVID-19 cases may have exponentially more

April 12, 2020

Epidemiologists are studying wastewater to gauge rates of COVID-19 infection.

Preliminary findings released this week from a new effort to track the spread of the coronavirus through sewage data suggests that one metro region in Massachusetts that’s reported fewer than 500 positive tests actually may actually have exponentially more.

Last month, Massachusetts lab Biobot Analytics launched a partnership with Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Brigham and Women’s Hospital to use its technology pro bono to map and analyze the spread of the virus through wastewater.

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cutting edge, Energy, new technology, Science & Technology News, Wi-Fi

Energy-harvesting design aims to turn Wi-Fi signals into usable power

April 12, 2020

Terahertz waves are pervasive in our daily lives, and if harnessed, their concentrated power could potentially serve as an alternate energy source. Imagine, for instance, a cellphone add-on that passively soaks up ambient T-rays and uses their energy to charge your phone.

Any device that sends out a Wi-Fi signal also emits terahertz waves —electromagnetic waves with a frequency somewhere between microwaves and infrared light. These high-frequency radiation waves, known as “T-rays,” are also produced by almost anything that registers a temperature, including our own bodies and the inanimate objects around us.

Terahertz waves are pervasive in our daily lives, and if harnessed, their concentrated power could potentially serve as an alternate energy source. Imagine, for instance, a cellphone add-on that passively soaks up ambient T-rays and uses their energy to charge your phone. However, to date, terahertz waves are wasted energy, as there has been no practical way to capture and convert them into any usable form.

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brain hacking, communication, cutting edge, Science & Technology News

Scientists develop AI that can turn brain activity into text

April 12, 2020

Researchers in US tracked the neural data from people while they were speaking

Reading minds has just come a step closer to reality: scientists have developed artificial intelligence that can turn brain activity into text.

While the system currently works on neural patterns detected while someone is speaking aloud, experts say it could eventually aid communication for patients who are unable to speak or type, such as those with locked in syndrome.

“We are not there yet but we think this could be the basis of a speech prosthesis,” said Dr Joseph Makin, co-author of the research from the University of California, San Francisco.

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Coronavirus, Health & Fitness, Historical Perspectives, Human Behavior, Science & Technology News

How Epidemics of the past changed the way Americans lived

April 11, 2020

Past public health crises inspired innovations in infrastructure, education, fundraising and civic debate

At the end of the 19th century, one in seven people around the world had died of tuberculosis, and the disease ranked as the third leading cause of death in the United States. While physicians had begun to accept German physician Robert Koch’s scientific confirmation that TB was caused by bacteria, this understanding was slow to catch on among the general public, and most people gave little attention to the behaviors that contributed to disease transmission. They didn’t understand that things they did could make them sick. In his book, Pulmonary Tuberculosis: Its Modern Prophylaxis and the Treatment in Special Institutions and at Home, S. Adolphus Knopf, an early TB specialist who practiced medicine in New York, wrote that he had once observed several of his patients sipping from the same glass as other passengers on a train, even as “they coughed and expectorated a good deal.” It was common for family members, or even strangers, to share a drinking cup.

With Knopf’s guidance, in the 1890s the New York City Health Department launched a massive campaign to educate the public and reduce transmission. The “War on Tuberculosis” public health campaign discouraged cup-sharing and prompted states to ban spitting inside public buildings and transit and on sidewalks and other outdoor spaces—instead encouraging the use of special spittoons, to be carefully cleaned on a regular basis. Before long, spitting in public spaces came to be considered uncouth, and swigging from shared bottles was frowned upon as well. These changes in public behavior helped successfully reduce the prevalence of tuberculosis.

As we are seeing with the coronavirus today, disease can profoundly impact a community—upending routines and rattling nerves as it spreads from person to person. But the effects of epidemics extend beyond the moments in which they occur. Disease can permanently alter society, and often for the best by creating better practices and habits. Crisis sparks action and response. Many infrastructure improvements and healthy behaviors we consider normal today are the result of past health campaigns that responded to devastating outbreaks.

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communication, Coronavirus, Latest Trend, Science & Technology News, Transportation

Podcast listening sees decline with work-from-home requirements limiting commutes

April 11, 2020

As people adjust to shelter in place orders around the world due to the coronavirus pandemic, new behaviors are impacting almost every industry and that includes podcasts. While at first, you might think podcast listener numbers would be up with the extra time many people have on hand, it’s actually the opposite, here’s why.

Reported by The New Consumer, in the US, podcast audiences are down 10% over the last two weeks according to data from Podtrac. While that might sound strange considering that many people have a lot more free time with shelter in place orders, what is likely happening here is that normal routines like listening to podcasts on the commute to work isn’t happening as day-to-day routines have been disrupted.

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Energy, new technology, Science & Technology News, Solar Energy

This company wants to turn your windows into solar panels

April 11, 2020

Ubiquitous Energy solar glass

San Francisco (CNN Business)What if every window in your house could generate electricity? One Redwood City, California-based startup thinks its technology can achieve that by transforming the way solar power is collected and harnessed.

Ubiquitous Energy has developed transparent solar cells to create its ClearView Power windows, a kind of “solar glass” that can turn sunlight into energy without needing the bluish-grey opaque panels those cells are generally associated with. The company, spun out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2012, hopes to use that tech to turn practically any everyday glass surface into a solar cell.

“It can be applied to windows of skyscrapers; it can be applied to glass in automobiles; it can be applied to the glass on your iPhone,” Miles Barr, Ubiquitous Energy’s founder and chief technology officer, told CNN Business.

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Cancer, Healthcare, Medical Breakthrough, new technology, Science & Technology News

Universal cancer blood test detects and locates 50 types of tumors

April 10, 2020

A new universal cancer blood test can spot over 50 types of tumors and identify where they are in the body

Cancer is one of humanity’s leading killers, and the main reason for that is it’s often hard to detect until it’s too late. But that might be about to change. Researchers have developed a new type of AI-powered blood test that can accurately detect over 50 different types of cancer and even identify where it is in the body.

There are just so many types of cancer that it’s virtually impossible to keep an eye out for all of them through routine tests. Instead, the disease usually isn’t detected until doctors begin specifically looking for it, after a patient experiences symptoms. And in many cases, by then it can be too late.

Ideally, there would be a routine test patients can undergo that would flag any type of cancer that may be budding in the body, giving treatment the best shot of being successful. And that’s just what the new study is working towards.

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Automation, Business, Driverless vehicles, Science & Technology News, Transportation

The failure of this self-driving truck company tells you all you need to know about self-driving vehicles

April 10, 2020

Starsky Robotics is a self-driving truck company that was the first company to run an unmanned semi on a public highway. It’s now shutting down though, and its co-founder has some unusually sensible and honest things to say about the industry, unusual only because the industry is stuffed with charlatans.

Stefan Seltz-Axmacher co-founded Starsky around four years ago, eventually equipping a fleet of three tractor-trailers with self-driving equipment, making them capable of navigating private truck yards and, once, nine miles of a Florida highway.

Those might seem like modest accomplishments, but they were almost intentionally so, Seltz-Axmacher told Automotive News in an exit interview of sorts. That’s because the company placed a big emphasis on safety, which, shockingly, wasn’t popular with investors.

While competitors expended effort adding machine learning-based features such as enabling trucks to change lanes on their own, Seltz-Axmacher said he threw resources into safety engineering. The company was the first autonomous trucking company to submit a Voluntary Safety Self Assessment to the U.S. Department of Transportation.

But a problem emerged: that safety focus didn’t excite investors. Venture capitalists, Seltz-Axmacher said, had trouble grasping why the company expended massive resources preparing, validating and vetting his system, then preparing a backup system, before the initial unmanned test run. That work essentially didn’t matter when he went in search of more funding.

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Driverless vehicles, Electric Vehicles, Science & Technology News, Shopping, UPS

UPS orders 10,000 electric delivery trucks, plans driverless truck test

April 10, 2020

ATLANTA – UPS ordered 10,000 electric delivery trucks from electric vehicle maker Arrival, in what it calls a move to accelerate electrification of the fleet.

It is the largest single order for electric vehicles from the shipping giant based in Sandy Springs.

The two companies are working together to develop electric vehicles with advanced driver assistance systems, including the potential for automated movement in UPS warehouses, technology that it will test starting this year.

UPS also announced that it is partnering with Waymo to test autonomous vehicle package pickups in the Phoenix area. UPS said Waymo’s Chrysler Pacific minivans will transport packages from UPS stores to a UPS sorting facility, with a driver on board to monitor operations. The technology allows the company to test subsequent pickups at UPS stores.

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Coronavirus, Healthcare, Medical Breakthrough, Medicine, Science & Technology News

Israeli COVID-19 treatment shows 100% survival rate – preliminary data

April 9, 2020

Biologists work in a laboratory at Pluristem Therapeutics Inc. in Haifa

Not only have all the patients survived, according to Pluristem, but four of them showed improvement in respiratory parameters.

Six critically ill coronavirus patients in Israel who are considered high-risk for mortality have been treated with Pluristem’s placenta-based cell-therapy product and survived, according to preliminary data provided by the Haifa-based company.

The patients were treated at three different Israeli medical centers for one week under the country’s compassionate use program and were suffering from acute respiratory failure and inflammatory complications associated with COVID-19. Four of the patients also demonstrated failure of other organ systems, including cardiovascular and kidney failure.

Not only have all the patients survived, according to Pluristem, but four of them showed improvement in respiratory parameters and three of them are in the advanced stages of weaning from ventilators. Moreover, two of the patients with preexisting medical conditions are showing clinical recovery in addition to the respiratory improvement.

Continue reading… “Israeli COVID-19 treatment shows 100% survival rate – preliminary data”