Natural Disasters During Pregnancy Have Big Implications For Kids’ Mental Health
When a child is diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder, there often follows a wave of parental guilt: What caused the problem? Could it have somehow been prevented? Although doctors are not able to pinpoint the cause of an individual child’s ADHD, depression or anxiety, we do know that genetics and environment both play a role […]
Can Paxlovid, Molnupiravir Benefit Hospitalized COVID Patients Too?
During the Omicron BA.2 wave, antivirals molnupiravir and nirmatrelvir-ritonavir (Paxlovid) appeared to have clinical benefit in hospitalized patients with mild-to-moderate COVID-19 who did not require oxygen therapy, a retrospective cohort study from Hong Kong showed. For patients who were treated with the antivirals within 2 days of hospitalization, a 52% and 66% lower risk of […]
Spiral wave teleportation theory offers new path to defibrillate hearts, terminate arrhythmias
A spiral wave of electrical activity in the heart can cause catastrophic consequences. One spiral wave creates tachycardia — a heart rate that’s too fast — and multiple spirals cause a state of disorganized contraction known as fibrillation. Researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology offer a new method to disrupt spiral waves that uses […]
No Underlying Conditions in 63% of Young Kids Hospitalized During Omicron
During the peak of the Omicron wave, weekly hospitalizations for infants and toddlers due to COVID-19 were approximately five times what they were during the peak of the Delta variant, new research from the CDC showed. In the first week of January, COVID-associated hospitalizations in children ages 0-4 years reached 14.5 per 100,000 children, reported […]
Mass die-off of Magellanic penguins seen during 2019 heat wave
In June 2021, an unprecedented heat wave hit the Pacific Northwest and Canada, killing an estimated 1,400 people. On June 28, Seattle reached 108 F — an all-time high — while the village of Lytton in British Columbia recorded Canada’s highest-ever temperature of 121.3 F on June 29, the day before it was destroyed by […]
New study proposes expansion of the universe directly impacts black hole growth
Over the past 6 years, gravitational wave observatories have been detecting black hole mergers, verifying a major prediction of Albert Einstein’s theory of gravity. But there is a problem — many of these black holes are unexpectedly large. Now, a team of researchers from the University of Hawai?i at M?noa, the University of Chicago, and […]
More Than a Nursing Shortage: A ‘Skills Gap’, Too
During the fourth wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, hospitals have closed beds, shut down elective surgeries, and called in federal assistance due to a shortage of a critical healthcare resource — nurses. Shortages of nurses and other healthcare workers are plaguing hospitals throughout the U.S., especially those in COVID hotspots. Mississippi has 2,000 fewer nurses […]
Our Narrow Understanding of Myocarditis After COVID Vaccines
As the wave of vaccination to protect against COVID-19 spreads across the world, surveillance for possible vaccine-related adverse events remains active. So far, no data have emerged to definitively link the mRNA vaccines manufactured by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna with serious adverse events other than rare episodes of anaphylaxis, and the vaccines are performing well in […]