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Scientists empower wireless sensors with vision abilities to fight viruses

Current and former early-career scientists share their stories and tell how Europe has bet on them, making their high-risk research possible: from intelligent wireless sensors with vision abilities to RNA-based techniques to fight viruses, from the mathematical formulas of the MRI waves to optoceutics, the new technique that uses light to repair the heart after a stroke.

15 Dec 2020

Smartphone-based adherence program can optimize uptake of COVID-19 vaccine

The light at the end of the pandemic tunnel is getting brighter. This week, the first health care workers will receive the first doses of an FDA-approved coronavirus vaccine. Soon, so will other front-line workers in health care and beyond, and residents of long-term care facilities.

15 Dec 2020

Virtual reality-based rehabilitation for recovery of stroke and neurodegenerative disease patients

Virtual reality-based rehabilitation programs are becoming an important complement to conventional motor therapy for stroke patients and individuals with neurodegenerative diseases.

14 Dec 2020

Sharing health data could improve a person's weight loss maintenance

Creating healthy habits, like increasing physical activity and improving eating habits, can be difficult to maintain long term, especially without accountability.

14 Dec 2020

Expansion of telepsychiatry may outlast the COVID-19 pandemic

Once the COVID-19 pandemic is over, a lot of things will go back to normal. We'll stop wearing masks. We'll crowd into restaurants. We'll walk whatever direction we want to down grocery store aisles. But some changes that the pandemic spurred might be here to stay. Among them: the expansion of telepsychiatry.

11 Dec 2020

Saliva-based smartphone COVID-19 testing platform provides results within 15 minutes

Offering an ultrasensitive yet accessible approach to COVID-19 testing, a portable saliva-based smartphone platform provides results within 15 minutes without the resource-intensive laboratory tests the current gold standard requires, according to a new study.

11 Dec 2020

Pioneering diagnostics platform changes the way COVID-19 is detected

Montreal-based Two-Photon Research Inc. announces CAST, a diagnostics platform that changes the way viruses are detected. The CAST platform uses TPR’s patented Aptamer Molecular Photonic Beacon™ that photonically interfaces with smartphones.

10 Dec 2020

Peracetic acid fumigation as powerful and cost-effective disinfectant of SARS-CoV-2 on surfaces

In a recent study, researchers at the Public Health Agency of Canada found that dry fog fumigation using peracetic acid (PAA) completely deactivated SARS-CoV-2 on all nine of their test surfaces.

8 Dec 2020

Paper-based electrochemical sensor can enable rapid detection of SARS-CoV-2

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to spread across the world, testing remains a key strategy for tracking and containing the virus.

7 Dec 2020

UC San Diego’s proactive strategies effectively detected and prevented COVID-19 transmission on campus

UC San Diego's nationally recognized, evidence-based Return to Learn program employs a comprehensive suite of education, monitoring, testing, intervention and notification tools that no other university is using.

6 Dec 2020

CRISPR-based test could provide rapid, low-cost testing to help control COVID-19 spread

Imagine swabbing your nostrils, putting the swab in a device, and getting a read-out on your phone in 15 to 30 minutes that tells you if you are infected with the COVID-19 virus.

5 Dec 2020

New lab-on-a-chip can process and present results rapidly

The chip, developed at Imperial College London and known as TriSilix, is a 'micro laboratory' which performs a miniature version of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) on the spot. PCR is the gold-standard test for detecting viruses and bacteria in biological samples such as bodily fluids, faeces, or environmental samples.

2 Dec 2020

Everyday activities can improve a person's well-being

Physical activity makes happy and is important to maintain psychic health. Researchers of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and the Central Institute of Mental Health in Mannheim studied the brain regions which play a central role in this process.

25 Nov 2020

Digital warm-start CRISPR assay enables sensitive quantitative detection of SARS-CoV-2 in clinical samples

In a recent medRxiv* preprint paper, researchers from the University of Connecticut Health Center in the United States unveil their digital warm-start CRISPR (WS-CRISPR) method for stringent and sensitive quantitative detection of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) in clinical samples of patients with coronavirus disease (COVID-19).

24 Nov 2020

Parents complain that pediatricians, wary of COVID, shift sick kids to urgent care

A mom of eight boys, Kim Gudgeon was at her wits' end when she called her family doctor in suburban Chicago to schedule a sick visit for increasingly fussy, 1-year-old Bryce.

23 Nov 2020

New COVID-19 app can make contact tracing more private and secure

Engineers at Worcester Polytechnic Institute and Virginia Tech are collaborating on a smartphone app that can help conduct contact tracing needed to contain the spread of COVID-19 without risking users' privacy or personal security. Their work is funded by a one-year, $120,000 RAPID grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF).

20 Nov 2020

People proving to be weakest link for apps tracking COVID exposure

The app builders had planned for pranksters, ensuring that only people with verified COVID-19 cases could trigger an alert. They'd planned for heavy criticism about privacy, in many cases making the features as bare-bones as possible.

19 Nov 2020

Around 30 percent of Australians hesitant to accept SARS-CoV-2 vaccine, study finds

A new study published on the preprint server medRxiv* in November 2020 suggests that a significant proportion of the Australian population is likely to show vaccine hesitancy. This indicates the need for public health messaging as well as, in some cases, other policy measures.

18 Nov 2020

Aggressive COVID testing minimize the spread of disease among students

An aggressive COVID-19 surveillance and testing effort at Duke University was highly effective in minimizing the spread of the disease among students on campus, according to a case study appearing Tuesday in the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.