Feature Channels: Public Health

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Using recent satellite observations, ground monitoring and computational modeling, researchers at the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis have released a survey of global pollution rates. There are a couple of surprises, for worse, but also, for better.

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Researchers have performed the first room temperature X-ray measurements on the SARS-CoV-2 main protease—the enzyme that enables the virus to reproduce. It marks an important first step in the ultimate goal of building a comprehensive 3D model of the enzymatic protein that will be used to advance supercomputing simulations aimed at finding drug inhibitors to block the virus’s replication mechanism and help end the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Internet trackers are more likely to follow people who visit popular health sites to other types of sites, suggesting that advertisers might be more likely to target people based on sensitive health information than previously understood.

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A monthly roundup of research briefs showcasing recent scientific advances led by Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center faculty.

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Due to the rapid spread of COVID-19, there is an increasing shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE) crucial to protecting health care workers from infection.

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A team from Lawson Health Research Institute and Western University are the first in the world to profile the body's immune response to COVID-19.

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The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) has developed and begun using high-accuracy antibody testing to determine the magnitude of COVID-19 infection in Arkansas and inform the decisions of policymakers.

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There’s some good news in New Jersey about a potentially deadly tick-borne bacterium. Rutgers researchers examined more than 3,000 ticks in the Garden State and found only one carrying Rickettsia rickettsii, the bacterium that causes Rocky Mountain spotted fever. But cases of tick-borne spotted fevers have increased east of the Mississippi River, and more research is needed to understand why, according to a study in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.

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Acknowledging health as a universal human right could galvanize people and organizations to make major improvements in health worldwide, according to new research from faculty at Binghamton University, State University of New York.

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Since March, the COVID-19 pandemic has changed the way we learn, work and socialize. Now, as nearly all of Pennsylvania is in the green phase of reopening, it is essential for people to remain vigilant by wearing face masks when unable to maintain proper social distancing.

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Humans interact with animals in a huge variety of ways, including wildlife trade, livestock farming and keeping pets

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A research team from the National University of Singapore and the National University Hospital has developed a reusable protective barrier which lowers the risk of frontline healthcare workers being exposed to COVID-19 via droplets and aerosols when they look after patients.

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More than 300 scientists and clinicians from the federal government, industry and academia published a report of their conclusions and recommendations on COVID-19 serology studies online in Immunity.

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Irvine, Calif., June 24, 2020 – The Lincoln Dynamic Foundation, created by University of California, Irvine alumnus John D. Lincoln, has made a $1 million gift to the university’s Henry Samueli School of Engineering to establish the World Institute for Sustainable Development of Materials. The new institute will advance interdisciplinary research, education and knowledge translation in an effort to innovate, evaluate and adopt technologies that utilize safer, nontoxic chemicals and materials, with the goal of mitigating environmental impacts.

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A team of researchers at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) reported on the epidemiology of COVID-19 illness experienced at an NCI-designated cancer center during the height of pandemic in New York City.

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Exposure to wildfire smoke affects the body's respiratory and cardiovascular systems almost immediately, according to new research from the University of British Columbia's School of Population and Public Health.

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At Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS), participation in virtual health and wellness offerings has increased almost 500 percent since March. The webinars, which are open to the public, have garnered interest nationwide. They run from an hour-long discussion on managing chronic pain to seven-week sessions in yoga, Pilates or Tai Chi.

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LifeBridge Health & Fitness is ready and energized to reopen its doors, following Maryland Governor Larry Hogan’s announcement allowing health clubs around Maryland to resume operations at modified capacity following the COVID-19 shutdown.

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A study analyzing and describing US police-involved fatalities across racial/ethnic groups at the level of individual metropolitan statistical areas publishes June 24, 2020 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE, by Gabriel Schwartz and Jaquelyn Jahn from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

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The American Cancer Society recently updated its nutrition and physical activity guidelines for cancer prevention. These updates focus on increasing physical activity and developing healthy eating patterns at every age, with an emphasis on maintaining a healthy body weight through all stages of life.

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A persistent cough and fever have been confirmed as the most prevalent symptoms associated with COVID-19, according to a major review of the scientific literature.

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A new study from Binghamton University, State University of New York may help to peel back the layers of unhealthy skin — at least metaphorically speaking — and get closer to a cure.

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According to a new survey by TimelyMD, a telehealth company that specializes in higher education, an overwhelming majority (85%) of college students say they continue to experience increased stress and/or anxiety as a result of COVID-19, with women reporting higher rates of coronavirus-related stress than men (93% vs. 78%).

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A device to monitor health conditions in the body using a person’s sweat has been developed by researchers at Penn State and Xiangtan University.

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Researchers are creating a knowledge base that includes information for modeling outbreak and mutation of COVID-19, which will serve as a benchmark for better understanding the spread of the virus. They also are developing a multi-source deep neural network-based predictive tool to combine demographics, policies, regional infections, and individual information for risk evaluation using graph/network to represent entities and their relationships. The entities are fully compatible to the Unified Medical Language System standard for convenient knowledge sharing.

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Experts weigh in on recent online reports that warn of frightening health consequences from new fifth generation (5G) wireless networks. Within current exposure limits, there appears to be little or no risk of adverse health effects related to radiofrequency (RF) exposure from 5G systems, concludes an evidence-based expert review in the June issue of Health Physics, official journal of the Health Physics Society. The journal is published in the Lippincott portfolio by Wolters Kluwer.

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Regions with an early interest in face masks had milder COVID-19 epidemics, according to a new letter-to-the-editor published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

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Scientists from the Vienna BioCenter have pushed SARS-CoV-2 detection to a new level. Their approach is as sensitive and robust, yet cheaper, simpler and faster to implement than conventional tests. 'bead-LAMP' and 'HomeDip-LAMP' could be game-changers for population-wide screening, especially in disadvantaged environments, such as developing countries.

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M. Hakan Hekimoğlu, an assistant professor in the Lally School of Management at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and his co-author, Burak Kazaz of Syracuse University, have developed a robust and highly accurate pricing model for Bordeaux wine futures using four factors: temperature, precipitation, market index, and expert reviews.

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Herd immunity to Covid-19 could be achieved with less people being infected than previously estimated according to new research.

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It seems there will never be enough “thank you’s” for the incredible doctors, nurses, technicians and support staff members who are working around the clock to help patients with the dangerous coronavirus disease. Their dedication, determination and spirit enable Johns Hopkins to deliver the promise of medicine.

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About three-quarters of U.S. workers, or 108 million people, are in jobs that cannot be done from home during a pandemic, putting these workers at increased risk of exposure to disease. This majority of workers are also at higher risk for other job disruptions such as layoffs, furloughs or hours reductions, a University of Washington study shows.

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Approximately 20 people in Pennsylvania lost their lives during a seven-year period because of particulate matter pollution emitted by shale gas wells, according to a recent study including faculty at Binghamton University, State University of New York.

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The American College of Radiology® (ACR®) Center for Research and Innovation™ (CRI) was selected by the Society of Clinical Care Medicine (SCCM) to serve as the overall imaging repository for the Discovery Viral Infection and Respiratory Illness Universal Study (VIRUS) COVID-19 Registry. The study aims to create a real time registry of current ICU and hospital care patterns to allow evaluation of safety and observational effectiveness of COVID-19 practices.

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In a new analysis of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, test results for nearly 38,000 people has found a positivity rate among Latinx populations about three times higher than for any other racial and ethnic group. The findings, published June 18 in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), add to evidence that there are much higher COVID-19 infection rates among U.S. minorities, particularly in Latinx communities.

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With the global pandemic and nationwide protests, Americans are more stressed than ever, and strange and vivid dreams are a reality for many.

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A team of engineers and physicians at the University of California San Diego has developed a low-cost, easy-to-use emergency ventilator for COVID-19 patients that is built around a ventilator bag usually found in ambulances. The team built an automated system around the bag and brought down the cost of an emergency ventilator to just $500 per unit--by comparison, state of the art ventilators currently cost at least $50,000. The device's components can be rapidly fabricated and the ventilator can be assembled in just 15 minutes.

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Preliminary results from this first-of-its-kind survey found that gender diverse people and queer people of color are experiencing a number of disparities. They include higher rates of COVID-19, more difficulty accessing a variety of services, and higher rates of anxiety and depression, as well as high unemployment compared with white participants.

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— In an animal model for COVID-19 that shares important features of human disease, scientists at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, the University of Tokyo and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai show that prior infection with the SARS-CoV-2 virus provides protection against reinfection, and treatment with convalescent serum limits virus replication in their lungs.

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Satya Dandekar, professor of microbiology and chairperson of the Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology at UC Davis, honored by Prestigious NIH MERIT award for her illustrious journey in HIV research.

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A drug is being studied for its effectiveness in treating a type of severe immune overreaction seen in patients with COVID-19-induced pneumonia by researchers at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth). The clinical trial is enrolling patients at Harris Health System’s Lyndon B. Johnson Hospital.

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Two types of tests are used to track SARS-CoV-2. Reverse transcriptase PCR (rt-PCR) tests for current infection. Antibody tests reveal that an infection has taken place, even long after the fact.

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Traveling restraints and shelter-in-place orders that grounded planes and emptied streets during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic brought greenhouse gas emissions down and air quality up.

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The lockdown measures introduced in Italy to deal with COVID-19 have produced a mobility contraction which is not homogeneously distributed across Italian municipalities and regions.

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Scientists have completed large-scale tests on a new type of five-minute urine test that measures the health of a person's diet, and produces an individual's unique urine 'fingerprint'.

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Patients with COVID-19 who were admitted to an intensive care unit were 10 times more likely than other hospitalized COVID-19 patients to suffer cardiac arrest or heart rhythm disorders, according to a new study. .

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The University of Kentucky announced a research collaboration with Atomwise, an industry leader in using artificial intelligence (AI) for small molecule discovery, to explore potential COVID-19 therapies.