A solution to P vs NP could unlock countless computational problems -- or keep them forever out of reach. MIT Technology Review: On Monday, July 19, 2021, in the middle of another strange pandemic summer, a leading computer scientist in the field of complexity theory tweeted out a public service message about an administrative snafu at a journal. He signed off with a very loaded, "Happy Monday." In a parallel universe, it might have been a very happy Monday indeed. A proof had appeared online at the esteemed journal ACM Transactions on Computational Theory, which trades in "outstanding original research exploring the limits of feasible computation." The result purported to solve the problem of all problems -- the Holy Grail of theoretical computer science, worth a $1 million prize and fame rivaling Aristotle's forevermore.

This treasured problem -- known as "P versus NP" -- is considered at once the most important in theoretical computer science and mathematics and completely out of reach. It addresses questions central to the promise, limits, and ambitions of computation, asking:

Why are some problems harder than others?
Which problems can computers realistically solve?
How much time will it take?

And it's a quest with big philosophical and practical payoffs. "Look, this P versus NP question, what can I say?" Scott Aaronson, a computer scientist at the University of Texas at Austin, wrote in his memoir of ideas, Quantum Computing Since Democritus. "People like to describe it as 'probably the central unsolved problem of theoretical computer science.' That's a comical understatement. P vs NP is one of the deepest questions that human beings have ever asked." One way to think of this story's protagonists is as follows: "P" represents problems that a computer can handily solve. "NP" represents problems that, once solved, are easy to check -- like jigsaw puzzles, or Sudoku. Many NP problems correspond to some of the most stubborn and urgent problems society faces. The million-dollar question posed by P vs. NP is this: Are these two classes of problems one and the same? Which is to say, could the problems that seem so difficult in fact be solved with an algorithm in a reasonable amount of time, if only the right, devilishly fast algorithm could be found? If so, many hard problems are suddenly solvable. And their algorithmic solutions could bring about societal changes of utopian proportions -- in medicine and engineering and economics, biology and ecology, neuroscience and social science, industry, the arts, even politics and beyond.

For the first time, a pig kidney has been transplanted into a human without triggering immediate rejection by the recipient's immune system, a potentially major advance that could eventually help alleviate a dire shortage of human organs for transplant. Reuters reports: The procedure done at NYU Langone Health in New York City involved use of a pig whose genes had been altered so that its tissues no longer contained a molecule known to trigger almost immediate rejection. The recipient was a brain-dead patient with signs of kidney dysfunction whose family consented to the experiment before she was due to be taken off of life support, researchers told Reuters. For three days, the new kidney was attached to her blood vessels and maintained outside her body, giving researchers access to it.

Test results of the transplanted kidney's function "looked pretty normal," said transplant surgeon Dr. Robert Montgomery, who led the study. The kidney made "the amount of urine that you would expect" from a transplanted human kidney, he said, and there was no evidence of the vigorous, early rejection seen when unmodified pig kidneys are transplanted into non-human primates. The recipient's abnormal creatinine level - an indicator of poor kidney function - returned to normal after the transplant, Montgomery said.

Montgomery's team theorized that knocking out the pig gene for a carbohydrate that triggers rejection - a sugar molecule, or glycan, called alpha-gal - would prevent the problem. The genetically altered pig, dubbed GalSafe, was developed by United Therapeutics Corp's Revivicor unit. It was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in December 2020, for use as food for people with a meat allergy and as a potential source of human therapeutics. Other researchers are considering whether GalSafe pigs can be sources of everything from heart valves to skin grafts for human patients.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from People: Doctors around the world are seeing a rise in cases of tic-like behaviors in teen girls, which they believe could be caused by watching TikTok videos about Tourette syndrome. Pediatric hospitals have reported an increase in teen girls coming in after developing tics, sudden twitches or noises that are a common symptom of Tourette syndrome, during the pandemic. The sudden rise is unusual, with tics typically occurring in boys, not girls. Experts in the U.S., Canada, the U.K. and Australia studied the patients for months and consulted between hospitals, finding that the common factor between the girls was an interest in watching TikTok videos from influencers who said they have Tourette syndrome, The Wall Street Journal reported.

According to the outlet, Texas Children's Hospital said they've had around 60 teens come in with tics since March 2020, compared to just one or two a year before then, while at Johns Hopkins University Tourette's Center, the number of patients reporting tic-like behaviors has jumped from 2 to 3% a year to 10 to 20%. And Rush University Medical Center in Chicago had 20 patients with tics over just four months this year, compared to 10 all of last year. Researchers from pediatric hospitals around the world found that referrals for tic-like behaviors soared during the pandemic, especially in girls aged 12 to 25, they wrote in a study published in August in the journal Movement Disorders. Since March 2020, referrals in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Germany and Australia went from 1 to 2% to 20 to 35%. The researchers wrote that they've seen a "similarity between the tics or tic-like behaviors shown on social media and the tic-like behaviors of this group of patients." Another group of doctors say they "believe this to be an example of mass sociogenic illness," where people are copying the behaviors they see in the videos. Doctors recommend therapy to treat kids experiencing these symptoms. They also advise parents to require their teens to "take a social media break or block Tourette videos on their TikTok account," adds the report.

How Natalie Grams, who once abandoned her medical education to study alternative therapies, became Germany's most prominent homeopathy skeptic. From a report: The pseudoscience of homeopathy was invented in Germany in the 18th century by a maverick physician named Samuel Hahnemann. His theory was based on the ancient principle of like cures like -- akin to the mechanism behind vaccines. The remedies Hahnemann developed, meant to help the body heal on its own, originate as substances that with excess exposure (like pollen) can make a patient ill (in this case, with hay fever) -- or kill them: Arsenic is used as a treatment for digestive problems, and the poisonous plant belladonna is meant to counteract pain and swelling. These substances are diluted -- again and again -- and shaken vigorously in a process called "potentization" or "dynamization." The resultant remedies typically contain a billionth, trillionth, orâ...âwellâ...âa zillionth (10 to the minus 60th, if you're counting) of the original substance.

Today, homeopathy is practiced worldwide, particularly in Britain, India, the U.S. -- where there's a monument to Hahnemann on a traffic circle six blocks north of the White House -- and, especially, Germany. Practitioners, however, differ greatly in their approach. Some only prescribe remedies cataloged in homeopathic reference books. Others take a more metaphoric bent, offering treatments that contain a fragment of the Berlin Wall to cure feelings of exclusion and loneliness or a powder exposed to cellphone signals as protection from radiation emitted by mobile handsets. Grams, the daughter of a chemist, first turned to homeopathy in 2002. While she was attending medical school to become a surgeon, a highway accident left her car in the ditch with the windshield shattered. Grams walked away unhurt, but she soon began to suffer from heart palpitations, panic attacks, and fainting spells that doctors couldn't explain. Her roommate suggested she visit a heilpraktiker, a type of German naturopath that offers alternative therapies ranging from acupuncture and massage to reiki and homeopathy.

Homeopaths typically spend a lot of time with patients, asking not just about symptoms but also about emotions, work, and relationships. This is all meant to find the root cause of a patient's suffering and is part of its appeal. The heilpraktiker asked Grams about her feelings and the accident, things she hadnâ(TM)t spoken about with her doctors -- or anyone -- thinking they weren't important in understanding what was wrong. The heilpraktiker prescribed her belladonna globules and recommended she visit a trauma therapist. Steadily, her symptoms fell away. She was healed. Soon after, Grams dropped the idea of becoming a surgeon, opting for a future as a general practitioner while taking night courses in alternative therapies. After completing her medical degree, she began a five-year residency to qualify as a GP. But three years in, Grams abandoned conventional medicine and began an apprenticeship with a homeopath near Heidelberg.

People with mild or moderate hearing loss could soon be able to buy hearing aids without a medical exam or special fitting, under a new rule being proposed by the Food and Drug Administration. The agency says 37.5 million American adults have difficulties hearing. From a report: "Today's move by FDA takes us one step closer to the goal of making hearing aids more accessible and affordable for the tens of millions of people who experience mild to moderate hearing loss," Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said as he announced the proposed rule on Tuesday. There is no timeline yet for when consumers might be able to buy an FDA-regulated over-the-counter hearing aid. The proposed rule is now up for 90 days of public comment. The Hearing Loss Association of America, a consumer advocacy group, welcomed the proposal. "This is one step closer to seeing OTC hearing devices on the market," Barbara Kelley, HLAA's executive director said in an email to NPR. "We hope adults will be encouraged to take that important first step toward good hearing health."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ExtremeTech: The world's first drone delivery of lungs has gone down in history as a success. Unither Bioelectronique, a bioengineering firm focused on organ transportation, recently completed a "proof-of-concept" flight in which a pair of human lungs were shipped via drone to the transplant site in about six minutes. The lungs were flown from the Toronto Western Hospital to Toronto General Hospital, where Dr. Shaf Keshavjee, surgeon-in-chief of Canada's University Health Network, received the cargo at about 1 a.m. He needed the lungs for a transplant he was performing that very day on a male engineer who'd soon become the first transplant patient to receive his "new" lungs by drone.

Though the circumstances of the trip were urgent, the trip itself was 18 months in the making. Organs have been shipped by drone before, but lungs are particularly sensitive to environmental shifts during transport, with a majority of donated lungs rendered unusable by insufficient oxygenation. In order to make the trip worthwhile, engineers at Unither Bioelectronique had to design a lightweight carbon fiber shipping container that could withstand vibrations and in-flight changes in elevation and barometric pressure. Preparation involved practice flights and drop tests using simulation lung packages. The drone and its container counterpart were fitted with a parachute and an advanced GPS system, as the drone would fly through the air unmanned. "This innovation in the transportation of organs has the potential to significantly increase the transfer efficiency between donors and recipients, especially in congested urban areas," Unither Bioelectronique says of the trip on their website. "Through this project, we have established an important stepping stone for future organ delivery that ultimately will open the door for large-scale adoption of larger fully autonomous, electrically-powered, environmentally-friendly drones... for transplant across trans-continental distances."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The group of chemicals called phthalates, also known as plasticizers, may contribute to the early deaths of 91,000 to 107,000 older adults in the US each year, according to a new study. Adults between 55 and 64 with the highest concentrations of phthalates in their urine were more likely to die of any cause, especially heart disease, than adults with lesser exposure, according to the study published on Tuesday in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Pollution. The study also estimated that this loss of life could cost the US between $40 billion and $47 billion each year. In the US, three types of phthalates have been restricted or banned in toys, but are less restricted in cosmetics and food packaging materials. Researchers said the study "focuses substantial urgency" in putting further limits on phthalates in food packaging materials and other consumer goods. Phthalates, a group of chemicals most commonly used to make plastic harder to break, can interfere with the function of hormones, and researchers plan to examine what role the chemical plays in hormone regulation and inflammation in the body. "Our research suggests that the toll of this chemical on society is much greater than we first thought," said the study's lead author, Dr Leonardo Trasande. "The evidence is undeniably clear that limiting exposure to toxic phthalates can help safeguard Americans' physical and financial wellbeing." He cautioned that the biological connection between phthalates and early deaths has not been established, so the study does not prove phthalates were the direct cause of these early deaths.

During its next@Acer event today, the company announced three new PCs -- a laptop, a two-in-one, and a tablet -- that will be joining its antimicrobial lineup. Ars Technica reports: Something is considered antimicrobial if it's capable of "destroying or inhibiting the growth of microorganisms, and especially pathogenic microorganisms." That means it fights disease-causing things you can't see. Acer claims its Antimicrobial 360 Design, as it brands the feature, fights germs in two ways. First, high-touch surfaces -- such as the chassis's exterior and hinge, the keyboard, the touchpad, and the fingerprint reader -- are coated with a silver-ion agent. For years, research has pointed to silver ions' ability to fight bacteria. As a more recent report published in ACS Applied Bio Materials explains, "They can readily adsorb to most biomolecules (DNA, membrane protein, enzymes, or intracellular cofactors) in bacteria to inactivate their functions." Acer's silver-ion agent is compliant with regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency and the Biocidal Products Regulation; it can cut the bacteria count to 1,000 after a 99.9 percent reduction, based on the International Organization for Standardization 22196 test protocol. The 22196 standard specifies methods for testing the "antibacterial activity of antibacterial-treated plastics and other non-porous surfaces of products."

The products also use Corning Gorilla Glass coated with the silver-ion product. "This is done via trace amounts of silver ions leaching to the glass surface to eliminate the surface bacteria, while still offering other benefits such as improved durability and improved scratch resistance," Acer said. Acer introduced new antimicrobial PCs to its lineup in 2020 but is still adding to the roster. The company sees its antimicrobial coating expanding even further "across multiple product lines," an Acer spokesperson told Ars.

Doctors should no longer routinely start most people who are at high risk of heart disease on a daily regimen of low-dose aspirin, according to new draft guidelines by a U.S. panel of experts. The New York Times reports: The proposed recommendation is based on mounting evidence that the risk of serious side effects far outweighs the benefit of what was once considered a remarkably cheap weapon in the fight against heart disease. The U.S. panel also plans to retreat from its 2016 recommendation to take baby aspirin for the prevention of colorectal cancer, guidance that was groundbreaking at the time. The panel said more recent data had raised questions about the benefits for cancer, and that more research was needed.

On the use of low-dose or baby aspirin, the recommendation by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force would apply to people younger than 60 who were at high risk of heart disease and for whom a new daily regimen of the mild analgesic might have been a tool to prevent a first heart attack or stroke. The proposed guidelines would not apply to those already taking aspirin or those who have already had a heart attack. The U.S. task force also wants to strongly discourage anyone 60 and older from starting a low-dose aspirin regimen, citing concerns about the age-related heightened risk for life-threatening bleeding. The panel had previously recommended that people in their 60s who were at high risk for cardiovascular disease consult their doctors to make a decision. A low dose is 81 milligrams to 100 milligrams.

The task force proposals follow years of changes in advice by several leading medical organizations and federal agencies, some of which had already recommended limiting the use of low-dose aspirin as a preventive tool against heart disease and stroke. Aspirin inhibits the formation of blood clots that can block arteries, but studies have raised concerns that regular intake increases the risk of bleeding, especially in the digestive tract and the brain, dangers that increase with age. "There's no longer a blanket statement that everybody who's at increased risk for heart disease, even though they never had a heart attack, should be on aspirin," said Dr. Chien-Wen Tseng, a member of the national task force who is the research director of family medicine and community health at the University of Hawaii. "We need to be smarter at matching primary prevention to the people who will benefit the most and have the least risk of harms." Those who are already taking baby aspirin should talk to their doctor.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ScienceAlert: At some point in life, you have probably enjoyed a 'flow' state -- when you're so intensely focused on a task or activity, you experience a strong sense of control, a reduced awareness of your environment and yourself, and a minimized sense of the passing of time. It's also possible to experience 'team flow,' such as when playing music together, competing in a sports team, or perhaps gaming. In such a state, we seem to have an intuitive understanding with others as we jointly complete the task at hand. An international team of neuroscientists now thinks they have uncovered the neural states unique to team flow, and it appears that these differ both from the flow states we experience as individuals, and from the neural states typically associated with social interaction.

Researchers found increased beta and gamma brain wave activity in the left middle temporal cortex. This region of the brain is typically associated with information integration and key functions like attention, memory, and awareness, which are "consistent with higher team interactions and enhancing many flow dimensions," the team writes. However, what was unique about team flow, was that participants' neural activity appeared to synchronize. When participants were performing the task as a unit, their brains would mutually align in their neural oscillations (beta and gamma activity), creating a "hyper-cognitive state between the team members." If brains can be functionally connected through inter-brain synchrony, does this mean it is not only our brain that contributes to our consciousness? It's a curious question, but the authors warn it is much too soon to tell. "Based on our findings, we cannot conclude that the high value of integrated information correlates with a modified form of consciousness, for instance, 'team consciousness'," they write. "Its consistency with neural synchrony raises intriguing and empirical questions related to inter-brain synchrony and information integration and altered state of consciousness." The study was published in the journal eNeuro.

"Lebanon's electricity network collapsed on Saturday," reports the Washington Post, "after the two most important power stations ran out of fuel, leaving private generators as the only source of power." The state-owned electricity company has been providing citizens with just a few hours of power a day for months, but the total collapse of the national grid will compound the misery of those who can't afford to run generators and had relied on those few hours. The outage marks the latest milestone in the unraveling of Lebanon, which is undergoing what the World Bank has described as one of the world's three biggest financial collapses of the past 150 years.

The banking system was the first to implode in 2019, triggering a 90 percent slide in the value of the currency that has left the government unable to afford fuel, food and medicine imports while plunging millions of Lebanese into poverty. The electricity grid ground to a halt after the country's two main power stations, Deir Ammar and Zahrani, ran out of diesel fuel, leaving the nationwide network without the minimum amount of power required to sustain it, said Energy Minister Walid Fayyad.

The government is working to secure emergency fuel supplies from other sources, including the army, to bridge the shortfall until a shipment of Iraqi oil due to arrive Saturday night can be offloaded and distributed into the network. At most, he said, the total outage can be expected to last only a couple of days, and he hoped to find a stopgap solution faster. But the collapse is a reminder of the dire state of Lebanon's electricity sector, which has been unable to provide 24-hour power for decades. In recent months, its capacity has been further eroded by the lack of money and by corruption, with smugglers diverting state purchases of fuel to sell at a profit in neighboring Syria.

A recent deal struck with Iraq to supply 80,000 tons of fuel a month still falls short of the minimum amount required to ensure a stable grid and at most will be able to keep the power on for about four hours a day, Fayyad said.

Washington State University this week launched a new $125 million program to collect and analyze animal viruses with the aim of preventing the next pandemic. GeekWire reports: The program is funded with an award from the U.S. Agency for International Development and includes researchers at the University of Washington and the Seattle-based nonprofit PATH. The project will partner with up to 12 countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America to build up lab capacity for surveillance of animal viruses that have the potential to "spillover" into humans and cause disease. The project will survey wildlife and domesticated animals for three families of viruses -- coronaviruses, filoviruses (which includes Ebola), and paramyxoviruses (which are in the same family as the measles and Nipah viruses). Researchers will not be working in the lab with the live viruses and will kill them as part of the collection process.

The team aims to collect more than 800,000 samples in the five years of the project, called Discovery & Exploration of Emerging Pathogens -- Viral Zoonoses, or DEEP VZN. The project is expected to yield 8,000 to 12,000 novel, previously unknown, viruses for analysis. The program has parallels with another USAID-funded program, STOP Spillover, which assesses risk factors for animal-to-human disease transmission and implements interventions to stop it. DEEP VZN will select partner sites outside the U.S. based on factors such as commitment to data sharing and whether there are lots of interactions between humans and animals in the region. Other partners for the project include Washington University in St. Louis and the nonprofit FHI 360.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: At Duke University's Marcus Center for Cellular Cures, parents can enroll their children into a number of clinical trials that aim to study the effects of cells derived from umbilical cord blood on treating the effects of autism and brain injuries; adults can also participate in a trial testing whether cord blood can help them recover from ischemic strokes. And when parents can't get their children into any of these clinical trials, particularly for autism, they often opt for what's called the Expanded Access Program (EAP), in which they pay between $10,000 and $15,000 to get their kids a single infusion. All of the trials use products derived from human umbilical cord blood, which is a source of stem cells as well as other types of cells. The autism trials are using a type of immune cells called monocytes, according to Dr. Joanne Kurtzberg, a well-respected Duke professor who's conducting clinical trials into whether cord blood can help with autism, and who has been researching stem cells since the early '90s. (On ClinicalTrials.gov, however, these trials are listed as using mesenchymal stromal cells, which are a completely different type of cord blood cell.)

Now, a for-profit company called Cryo-Cell International with ties to Duke researchers has indicated that it plans to open clinics promoting these treatments, under a licensing agreement with the renowned North Carolina university. In their investor presentation, Cryo-Cell said they plan to become "an autonomous, vertically integrated cellular therapy company that will treat patients." Duke and Cryo-Cell's rush to monetize a procedure before it's shown to have solid benefits has created concern, though, across the community of scientists, clinicians, and medical ethicists who study autism treatments. The hope is that these cord blood infusions can improve some autism symptoms, like socialization and language, or decrease the inflammation that some parents and clinicians think might exacerbate autism symptoms. Early study results, however, haven't been very promising.

A large randomized clinical trial, the results of which were released in May 2020, showed that a single infusion of cord blood was not, in the words of the researchers, "associated with improved socialization skills or reduced autism symptoms." This is why Duke's latest move comes as such a surprise: The university and Cryo-Cell have told investors that they're planning to open a series of "infusion centers." At these clinics, Cryo-Cell will use Duke's technology and methods to offer cord blood treatments for $15,000 per infusion. In an exuberant presentation for investors (PDF), Cryo-Cell said it estimates an annual revenue of $24 million per clinic; it hasn't disclosed how many clinics it plans to open. At least one will reportedly open in Durham, North Carolina. The move follows a June 2020 announcement that Cryo-Cell had entered into an exclusive patent-option agreement with Duke, allowing it to manufacture and sell products based on patents from Dr. Joanne Kurtzberg.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: The Chinese province that was the initial epicenter of the Covid-19 outbreak made significant purchases of equipment used to test for infectious diseases months before Beijing notified international authorities of the emergence of a new coronavirus, according to research by a cybersecurity company. The province's purchase of polymerase chain reaction, or PCR, testing equipment, which allows scientists to amplify DNA samples to test for infectious disease or other genetic material, shot upward in 2019, with most of the increase coming in the second half of the year, the Australian-U.S. firm Internet 2.0 found. Hubei province is home to Wuhan, the large Chinese city where the first known cases of the virus emerged. The World Health Organization reported that its China Country Office was informed on Dec. 31, 2019, that cases of pneumonia from an unknown cause had been detected in the city.

Based on the research, Internet 2.0 concluded with "high confidence that the pandemic began much earlier than China informed the WHO about Covid-19," according to the report. The cybersecurity firm, which specializes in digital forensics and intelligence analysis, called for further investigation. But several medical experts said the Internet 2.0 report wasn't enough information to draw such conclusions. For one thing, PCR testing, which has been in broad use for several decades, has been been growing in popularity as it has become a standard method to test for pathogens, according to one of the experts. In addition, PCR equipment is widely used in laboratories to test for many other pathogens beside Covid-19, including in animals, and is commonly found in modern hospitals and labs. China was also dealing with an outbreak of African swine fever across the country in 2019.

Children across much of Africa are to be vaccinated against malaria in a historic moment in the fight against the deadly disease. From a report: Malaria has been one of the biggest scourges on humanity for millennia and mostly kills babies and infants. Having a vaccine -- after more than a century of trying -- is among medicine's greatest achievements. The vaccine -- called RTS,S -- was proven effective six years ago. Now, after the success of pilot immunisation programmes in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi, the World Health Organization says the vaccine should be rolled out across sub-Saharan Africa and in other regions with moderate to high malaria transmission. Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the WHO said it was "a historic moment." "The long-awaited malaria vaccine for children is a breakthrough for science, child health and malaria control." Using the vaccine on top of existing tools "could save tens of thousands of young lives each year," he said.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Sarah was the patient in a proof-of-concept trial of a new approach to treating severe, treatment-resistant depression, published today in the journal Nature Medicine. The findings open up another possible strategy for helping people with the disorder. The study only involved Sarah, and it's still not clear how well it might work in other people. The lessons from the trial, though, helped the researchers understand more about the nature of depression and could apply to other efforts to treat the disease. The trial used a technique called deep brain stimulation, where electrodes implanted within the brain deliver electrical impulses in an attempt to change or regulate abnormal brain activity. It's common for conditions like epilepsy and Parkinson's disease. Research over the past decade has shown that it can sometimes help with depression, but the findings have been inconsistent. Most previous efforts delivered stimulation to individual regions of the brain thought to be involved in depression. This study, though, was targeted at regions that were part of specific brain circuits -- interconnected parts of the brain that are responsible for specific functions.

In addition, the circuits involved might be different for each person. So in this trial, the study team personalized the treatment approach to the specific patient's depression. They mapped out the type of brain activity that occurred when Sarah's depression symptoms flared. Then, they surgically implanted a device that could detect that brain activity and send stimulation to the circuit where the activity was happening. For Sarah, the procedure was highly effective. Her scores on depression rating scales dropped the morning after the device was turned on. And perhaps more importantly, she felt dramatic changes in her mood. During her first time getting the stimulation, she laughed out loud in the lab. "And everyone in the room went, 'Oh my god,' because that's the first time I spontaneously laughed and smiled, where it wasn't faked, in five years," she said. Sarah's depression circuit flares up hundreds of times a day, and each time, the implanted device delivers a brief stimulating pulse. In total, she gets around 30 minutes of stimulation each day [...]. Sarah can't feel the pulses, but she said she does have a general idea of when they're happening throughout the day. "There's a sense of alertness and energy or positivity that I'll feel," she said.

The Nobel Prize in the field of physiology or medicine has been awarded to U.S.-based scientists David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian. From a report: They were cited for their discovery of receptors for temperature and touch. The winners were announced Monday by Thomas Perlmann, secretary-general of the Nobel Committee.Patrik Ernfors of the Nobel Committee said Julius, 65, used capsaicin, the active component in chili peppers, to identify the nerve sensors that allow the skin to respond to heat. Patapoutian found separate pressure-sensitive sensors in cells that respond to mechanical stimulation, he said. "This really unlocks one of the secrets of nature," said Perlmann. "It's actually something that is crucial for our survival, so it's a very important and profound discovery." The pair also shared the prestigious Kavli Award for Neuroscience last year. Further reading: California Scientists Share Nobel for Work on Sense of Touch.

A New York Times science/global health reporter reminds us that "Newer variants of the coronavirus like Alpha and Delta are highly contagious, infecting far more people than the original virus."

But then they add that "Two new studies offer a possible explanation: The virus is evolving to spread more efficiently through air." Most researchers now agree that the coronavirus is mostly transmitted through large droplets that quickly sink to the floor and through much smaller ones, called aerosols, that can float over longer distances indoors and settle directly into the lungs, where the virus is most harmful. The new studies don't fundamentally change that view. But the findings signal the need for better masks in some situations, and indicate that the virus is changing in ways that make it more formidable.

"This is not an Armageddon scenario," said Vincent Munster, a virologist at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who led one of the new studies. "It is like a modification of the virus to more efficient transmission, which is something I think we all kind of expected, and we now see it happening in real time." Dr. Munster's team showed that small aerosols traveled much longer distances than larger droplets and the Alpha variant was much more likely to cause new infections via aerosol transmission. The second study found that people infected with Alpha exhaled about 43 times more virus into tiny aerosols than those infected with older variants.

The studies compared the Alpha variant with the original virus or other older variants. But the results may also explain why the Delta variant is so contagious — and why it displaced all other versions of the virus...

At least in some crowded spaces, people may want to consider switching to more protective masks, said Don Milton, an aerosol expert at the University of Maryland who led the research. "Given that it seems to be evolving towards generating aerosols better, then we need better containment and better personal protection," Dr. Milton said of the virus. "We are recommending people move to tighter-fitting masks."

Last month U.S. President Biden issued "a mandate that all companies with more than 100 workers require vaccination or weekly testing," remembers the New York Times, and "also moved to mandate shots for health care workers, federal contractors and a vast majority of federal workers, who could face disciplinary measures if they refuse."

So what happened next? Until now, the biggest unknown about mandating COVID-19 vaccines in workplaces has been whether such requirements would lead to compliance or to significant departures by workers unwilling to get shots — at a time when many places were already facing staffing shortages. So far, a number of early mandates show few indications of large-scale resistance. "Mandates are working," said John Swartzberg, a physician and professor at the School of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley. "If you define 'working' by the percentage of people getting vaccinated and not leaving their jobs in droves."

Unlike other incentives — "prizes, perks, doughnuts, beer, we've seen just about everything offered to get people vaccinated" — mandates are among the few levers that historically have been effective in increasing compliance, said Swartzberg, who has tracked national efforts to increase rates of inoculation...

[T]he pushback has been less dramatic than initially feared. At Houston Methodist Hospital, which mandated vaccines this summer for 25,000 employees, for example, only about 0.6% of employees quit or were fired. Dorit Reiss, a professor at the University of California Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco who is tracking employer mandates, said that, despite their propensity for backlash and litigation, mandates generally increase vaccine compliance because the knowledge that an order is coming has often been enough to prompt workers to seek inoculation before courts even can weigh in. Mandates are becoming more commonplace as several other states have imposed requirements for workers. In New York, Rhode Island, Maine, Oregon and the District of Columbia, health care workers must get vaccinated to remain employed.
The Times's article (original URL here) provides statistics from specific examples:

• "When Tyson Foods announced Aug. 3 that it would require coronavirus vaccines for all 120,000 of its U.S. employees, less than half of its workforce was inoculated. Nearly two months later, 91% of the company's U.S. workforce is fully vaccinated, said Dr. Claudia Coplein, Tyson's chief medical officer."

• "In New York, where some 650,000 employees at hospitals and nursing homes were to have received at least one vaccine dose by the start of this week, 92% were in compliance, state officials said. That was up significantly from a week ago, when 82% of the state's nursing home workers and at least 84% of its hospital workers had received at least one dose."

• "As California's requirement that all health care workers be vaccinated against the coronavirus took effect Thursday, major health systems reported that the mandate had helped boost their vaccination rates to 90% or higher."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: An oral antiviral drug appears to cut the risk of hospitalization and death from COVID-19 by roughly 50 percent in people newly diagnosed with the infection and at risk for severe disease, pharmaceutical company Merck announced Friday morning. The drug-maker and its partner, Ridgeback Biotherapeutics, released top-line results of a Phase III trial, which the companies ended early given the positive results. The companies say they will apply for an Emergency Use Authorization from the US Food and Drug Administration as soon as possible.

The trial enrolled people who had newly tested positive for a SARS-CoV-2 infection and had onset of mild-to-moderate COVID-19 symptoms within just the past five days of starting the trial. The enrollees also had to have at least one risk factor for a poor outcome, such as having obesity, diabetes, heart disease, or being age 60 or above. While some participants received a placebo and standard care, others took an oral dose of the drug every 12 hours for five days. After 29 days of follow-up, 53 out of 377 participants who received the placebo were hospitalized with COVID-19, and eight of those participants died. Among those who received the drug, only 28 of 385 were hospitalized and none of those patients died. Put another way, 7.3 percent of patients on the drug were either hospitalized or died compared with 14.1 percent in the placebo group. Merck also highlighted that the trial was global and that the drug appeared to work equally well against varying SARS-CoV-2 variants, including delta, gamma, and mu. The drug-maker noted that it had viral genetic data to identify variants from 40 percent of participants. The safety data was equally promising, with participants reporting similar numbers of drug-related adverse events between the placebo group than the drug group (11 percent and 12 percent, respectively). About 3.4 percent of people in the placebo group quit the study due to adverse events, while only 1.3 percent quit in the drug group.

The drug at the center of these seemingly smashing results is dubbed molnupiravir -- a name inspired by that of Thor's hammer, Mjolnir. The idea is that the drug will strike down SARS-CoV-2, like a mighty blow from the god of thunder. In an interview with Stat news, Merck's head of research and development, Dean Li, said that the new data proves the drug's mythological force. "Our prediction from our in vitro studies and now with this data is that molnupiravir is named after the right [thing]... this is a hammer against SARS-CoV-2 regardless of the variant." Molnupiravir is a small molecule that wallops the work of a viral RNA-dependent RNA polymerase, an enzyme critical for making copies of RNA viruses, such as SARS-CoV-2. [...] Molnupiravir delivers a precise blow to viral RNA polymerase by posing as a building block for RNA. In the body, molnupiravir is forged into a deceptive ribonucleoside that the polymerase unwittingly incorporates into new strands of viral RNA instead of cytidine. This is essentially lethal. Researchers call the effect a "viral error catastrophe," in which the rate of genetic mutations or errors exceeds a threshold compatible with the virus surviving.