Lifeboat Foundation

GUANGZHOU/TOKYO — Tech startups in Shenzhen, known as China’s Silicon Valley, are set to experience a range of outcomes as the novel coronavirus pandemic appears to near its end, with some seeing their businesses thrive while others face headwinds following significantly reduced investment.

AI and robot companies feel positive impact, while some face harsh climate.

Summary: Study reports SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, was well suited to making the jump from animals to humans by shapeshifting as it gained the ability to infect human cells. The virus’s ability to infect humans occurred via exchanging gene fragments from a coronavirus that infected pangolins. The species-to-species transmission was a result of the ability of SARS-CoV-2 to bind to host cells through alterations to its genetic material.

Source: Duke University

A team of scientists studying the origin of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that has caused the COVID-19 pandemic, found that it was especially well-suited to jump from animals to humans by shapeshifting as it gained the ability to infect human cells.

Circa 2015

Physicists have created a wormhole device that can tunnel a magnetic field through space. It sounds like Star Trek, but we won’t be zapping humans across the universe anytime soon. Still, the breakthrough could revolutionize certain magnet-based technologies, including MRIs.

The kit has been granted approval under ‘emergency use’ provisions, and should help to ease testing backlogs in the country.

ROME (Reuters) — The new coronavirus is losing its potency and has become much less lethal, a senior Italian doctor said on Sunday.

“In reality, the virus clinically no longer exists in Italy,” said Alberto Zangrillo, the head of the San Raffaele Hospital in Milan in the northern region of Lombardy, which has borne the brunt of Italy’s coronavirus contagion.

“The swabs that were performed over the last 10 days showed a viral load in quantitative terms that was absolutely infinitesimal compared to the ones carried out a month or two months ago,” he told RAI television.

HUNDREDS have defied strict coronavirus lockdown regulations to gather in Trafalgar Square, London, to protest the death of George Floyd in the US.

VIENNA — We all know that one person who can eat whatever they like and never gain a pound. Ice cream at 2 in the morning? Bring it on. A third, or fourth, slice of pizza? Sure, why not. For the rest of us, the genetic perks that these individuals enjoy can be frustrating to say the least. Now, a groundbreaking new international study appears to have zeroed in on the so-called “skinny gene” that help keep such individuals thin.

Scientists from Austria, Canada, and Estonia say that lower, or deficient, levels of the gene Anaplastic Lymphoma Kinase (ALK) are significantly linked to skinniness and bodily resistance to weight gain.

Most research projects focusing on weight loss and gain search for genes that cause obesity. This study is novel due to the fact that it focuses specifically for a gene linked to thinness instead.

A tale of GS-441524, the remdesivir sister drug that cures coronavirus (FIP) in cats, but that Gilead refused to develop for fear it would mess up the approval process of remdesivir.

Yes, it a tale of capitalism on steroids, and the FDA on drugs. It’s the kind of thing that may well kill you and your family, but you will never know about it (unless you read about it in The Atlantic, or some obscure journal).

Cat owners are resorting to China’s underground marketplace to buy antivirals for a feline coronavirus.

With more and more people contracting COVID-19, physician-scientists around the world are looking at existing drugs as potential treatments for the novel coronavirus.

Among them are cancer researchers launching new clinical trials or participating in multi-site ones to see whether drugs proven to be effective for another disease, particularly cancer, can help in treating COVID-19 cases.

At Miami Cancer Institute, part of Baptist Health South Florida, researchers are conducting several trials to investigate whether existing cancer drugs might provide some kind of therapy for COVID-19. The rationale: Cancer patients have similar immune system problems as coronavirus patients — namely, dangerous inflammation — and these medications effectively attack that problem.