The U.K.’s health minister on Wednesday rushed to defend AstraZeneca’s decision to pause a closely-watched coronavirus vaccine trial due to safety concerns, saying that the decision is not necessarily a setback to its development. AstraZeneca announced that the pause was due to a potentially unexplained illness in one of its trials. The pharma giant’s shares […] Read more
The 20th National Science and Technology Week kicked off in Beijing on Sunday. With a parallel venue in Wuhan, central China’s Hubei Province, the National Science and Technology Week this year features achievements in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic with science and technology. The year 2020 marks the 20th anniversary of the event. The content and […] Read more
Science’s COVID-19 reporting is supported by the Pulitzer Center. Timothy Sheahan, a virologist studying COVID-19, wishes he could keep pace with the growing torrent of new scientific papers about the disease and the novel coronavirus that causes it. But there are just too many—more than 4000 alone last week. “I’m not keeping up,” says Sheahan, […] Read more
While medical research has helped us overcome many health threats, we now face a new type of crisis: Many dangerous bacteria are becoming resistant to the drugs meant to fight them. Where do we go from here? Healthcare professionals frequently use antibiotics to treat many forms of bacterial infection — from those that are […] Read more
Newborn babies seem to hiccup a lot and there are myths and legends surrounding such behaviour. Now researchers have found that with each such hiccup in a new born, there is a trigger of brain signals that help the baby’s brain figure out breathing. The UCL scientists published the findings of their study in the […] Read more
An Ontario-led research group has discovered a novel cancer-driving mutation in the vast non-coding regions of the human cancer genome, also known as the “dark matter” of human cancer DNA. The mutation, as described in two related studies published in Nature on October 9, 2019, represents a new potential therapeutic target for several types of […] Read more
A new study has added to the existing evidence that a healthy and balanced diet could help reduce the symptoms of depression. The study titled, “A brief diet intervention can reduce symptoms of depression in young adults – A randomized controlled trial”, was published this week in the latest issue of the journal PLOS One. […] Read more
CBD is the buzzword of 2019, and no, we’re not talking about the Christian Book Distributors who had to change their name in July due to confusion over their acronym. Otherwise known as Cannabidiol, CBD oil is an active ingredient found in hemp, a certain strain of the Cannabis sativa plant. CBD is known for […] Read more
Indefinite strike called by hundreds of junior medicos has left healthcare services crippled in all nine government-run medical colleges and hospitals of Bihar. The worst-hit were the Patna Medical College and Hospital and Nalanda Medical College and Hospital where patients were reportedly seen wandering cluelessly. The strike was in support of their long-pending demands. Dr […] Read more
Regular exercise does in fact reduce people’s mental-health burden, according to a study published in The Lancet Psychiatry. The study examined the relationship between exercise and mental health to better understand the influence of exercise type, frequency, duration and intensity on people’s mental-health outcomes. It collected data from 1,237,194 Americans aged 18 years or older between 2011 and 2013, […] Read more