over the last decade, geologists have come up with an explanation for these ecological anomalies: They originated 5000 miles away in Africa. For more than a million years, dust from the Sahara Desert has hitched a rideon westward-traveling winds to the Caribbean. Bermuda and the Bahamas are, quite literally, an extension of the world’s largest desert.
But African dust storms aren’t just responsible for developing Bermuda’s clay-and-iron-abundant “terra rossa” and the coral reefs of the Bahamas; they also play an important role in protecting them from destructive hurricanes. Like atmospheric superheroes, the dust storms’ combination of dry air, strong winds, and cloud-suppressing particles appears to have the ability to stop hurricanes in their tracks.
Gov. Kim Reynolds has adopted President Trump’s defiant attitude toward public health guidance on the coronavirus. But while she isn’t on the ballot, her leadership may be dragging down Republicans who are.
— Read on www.nytimes.com/2020/10/23/us/politics/iowa-kim-reynolds-face-masks.html
The next job will be to monitor the safety of vaccines once they’re in widespread use. But the administration last year quietly disbanded the office with the expertise for exactly this job, merging it into an office focused on infectious diseases. Its elimination has left that long-term safety effort for coronavirus vaccines fragmented among federal agencies, with no central leadership, experts say. Source: Impressive Water Purification System Found at Ancient Maya City | RealClearScience
The next job will be to monitor the safety of vaccines once they’re in widespread use. But the administration last year quietly disbanded the office with the expertise for exactly this job, merging it into an office focused on infectious diseases. Its elimination has left that long-term safety effort for coronavirus vaccines fragmented among federal agencies, with no central leadership, experts say.
the FDA’s approval of remdesivir falls on the heels of data form the fourth and largest trial of the drug, and that trial showed no benefit. The data comes from the World Health Organization’s massive Solidarity trial, which set up an international network of trials enrolling nearly 12,000 patients at 500 sites in over 30 countries, testing multiple repurposed therapeutics. Remdesivir was initially developed over a decade ago as a potential treatment for hepatitis C and RSV (respiratory syncytial virus). It has also been tested against Ebola but was beat out by other treatments. According to preliminary results from the Solidarity trial—reported online last week ahead of its planned publication in the New England Journal of Medicine—remdesivir was given to 2,743 patients, and their outcomes were compared with those of 2,708 patients given standard treatments. Between the two groups, WHO found that remdesivir did not reduce mortality. It also did not change how many patients progressed to needing mechanical ventilation, nor did it change the proportion of patients discharged after seven days of hospitalization.
