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The Race to Get Convalescent Plasma to Covid-19 Patients

One morning a few weeks ago, Rebecca Haley realized that her job had changed. Haley is the medical director for blood collection at Bloodworks Northwest, a nonprofit that serves 90 hospitals in the Pacific Northwest. But, Haley decided, regular blood and platelet donations weren’t the focus anymore. Like thousands of blood centers across the country, Bloodworks needed to collect something new: plasma from Covid-19 survivors. How Long Does the Coronavirus Live on Surfaces?  Plus: What it means to “flatten the curve,” and everything else you need to know about the…

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Amazing Stuff Happens When You Seal a Jar of Pond Water and Leave It by the Window

Last week, YouTuber Atomic Shrimp scooped a jar of muddy water and weed out of a local pond, sealed it and placed it on his north facing window sill, in an experiment to create a sealed ecosphere. Here’s a look at some of the things he saw in there during the first week. googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display(‘div-gpt-ad-1583941906523-0’); }); Read more: https://twistedsifter.com/videos/guy-seals-jar-of-pond-water-and-leaves-by-window/

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How to Measure Pressure With a Phone and a Baggie

Wouldn’t it be cool if you could do physics experiments on your phone, without needing a lab full of special instruments? Actually you can, with a free app called turning your phone into a sonar to measure the speed of sound. Or swinging it on a string to derive the gravitational constant. I decided to try this one, using the phone’s barometer to study pressure. Here’s the setup: Set your phone to display the atmospheric pressure. Put it in a sealed plastic bag with some extra air in there. Place…

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Fast Nanoscale Movies Shed Light on a Solar Cell Mystery

The perovskite solar cell is a photovoltaic wunderkind. Only a decade old, this next-generation solar technology is already hitting efficiency milestones that took conventional silicon solar cells nearly half a century to achieve. The cells are made from a class of materials called perovskite whose properties enable thin, flexible solar cells that can be printed like ink on the cheap. In principle, perovskite cells could turn everything into a solar panel—your car, your windows, even your clothes. But before perovskite can dethrone silicon as the king of solar semiconductors, researchers…

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Coronavirus outliers: four nations with very different approaches to the crisis

Some nations have managed to maintain surprisingly low death rates even without swinging into lockdown Harrowing images of emergency workers struggling to cope with the onslaught of Covid-19 cases have made front pages around the world, highlighting the terrible impact the disease is having. Death tolls in Italy and Spain have been especially alarming. But not every nation has suffered to the same grim extent. Some have avoided lockdowns but have still not suffered huge leaps in case numbers. Others have introduced strict monitoring and contact tracing of infected individuals…

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Covering Yourself in Aerogel and Jumping Into a Pool Looks So Surreal

Aerogel has extraordinary properties but it can be tough to work with. This video by Veritasium looks at modifying aerogels to take advantage of their unique characteristics. Aerogel’s extraordinary properties are due in large part to its structure. Aerogel is a solid but on the nanoscale it has a mesh or sponge-like structure. The struts of this structure are nanoscale, as are the pores at around 20nm across. This makes silica aerogel incredibly light (it was once the lightest solid but has now been superseded by graphene aerogel), transparent and…

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Can a face mask protect me from coronavirus? Covid-19 myths busted

The truth about how you can catch coronavirus, how much more elderly people are at risk and what you can do to avoid infection Claim: Face masks dont work Wearing a face mask is certainly not an iron-clad guarantee that you wont get sick viruses can also transmit through the eyes and tiny viral particles, known as aerosols, can penetrate masks. However, masks are effective at capturing droplets, which is a main transmission route of coronavirus, and some studies have estimated a roughly fivefold protection versus no barrier alone (although…

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Coronavirus deals China’s economy a ‘bigger blow than global financial crisis’

Factory production plummets at the fastest pace seen in three decades, as first-quarter figures emerge China has suffered even deeper economic damage from the coronavirus pandemic than predicted, with figures released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on Monday showing factory production inside the country dropped at the fastest pace seen in three decades. Financial analysts have said the economic impact of the pandemic may have cut Chinas growth in half during the first quarter. Industrial output fell 13.5% in January-February, compared with 2019, which ING economist Iris Pang…

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Doctors Tell Musician to Play Violin During Brain Surgery So She Wont Forget

A musician at King’s College Hospital in London played the violin while surgeons operated on her brain to remove a tumour. The medical team asked Dagmar Turner, 53, to play the instrument to ensure parts of the brain which control delicate hand movements and coordination were not damaged during the millimetre-precise surgery. Turner was diagnosed in 2013 with a brain tumour after suffering a seizure during a symphony Read more: https://twistedsifter.com/videos/woman-plays-violin-during-brain-surgery/

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Christina Koch returns to Earth after record-breaking space mission

Koch lands in Kazakhstan after 328 days in space, the longest continuous spaceflight by a female astronaut She would miss the friendship of her crewmates, she said, and of course the views. But after 328 days on the could not deny last week that she was looking forward to experiencing some very simple pleasures back on Earth, including the feeling of wind on my face. On Thursday the US astronaut was at last granted that wish, when the Russian Soyuz spacecraft, carrying Koch, Russian cosmonaut Alexander Skvortsov and Italys Luca…

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Surreal Video Captures Spanish Resort Town Covered in Sea Foam

High waves and flooding cause sea foam to cover the streets of Tossa De Mar in Spain. The seaside resort town is located near Girona in Catalonia and the rare phenomenon has not occurred in years. Sea foam forms when the ocean churns up high concentrations of ‘organic matter’, and the strong and steady winds made clean-up efforts only worse. Read more: https://twistedsifter.com/videos/coastal-spanish-resort-town-covered-in-sea-foam/

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Bionic neurons could enable implants to restore failing brain circuits

Scientists say creation could be used to circumvent nerve damage and help paralysed people regain movement Scientists have created artificial neurons that could potentially be implanted into patients to overcome paralysis, restore failing brain circuits, and even connect their minds to machines. The bionic neurons can receive electrical signals from healthy nerve cells, and process them in a natural way, before sending fresh signals on to other neurons, or to muscles and organs elsewhere in the body. One of the first applications may be a treatment for a form of…

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