A team of researchers has turned waste materials into a new rubber material that can stick itself back together when cut into pieces. They claim the approach is a new concept in repairing and recycling sustainable rubber.
Graphene has been touted as a game changer by materials scientists, with applications envisaged in the aerospace, electronics, coatings, batteries and automotive industries.
A clinical trial is under way to test whether BCG vaccination protects against or reduces the severity of illness from Covid-19. It will enroll 10,000 healthcare workers across Australia, the Netherlands and Spain.
Scientists in the US have hooked up electronics to cells, permitting genes to be controlled by applying a voltage outside of bacteria (Nature Commun., doi: 10.1038/s41467-020-16249-x).
The South African Competition Commission has cracked the whip on medical products and equipment suppliers taking advantage of the Covid-19 pandemic to hike prices of critical personal protection equipment (PPE), contrary to the country’s consumer protection regulations.
Two separate calculations suggest that the estimated ‘herd immunity threshold’ of 60 to 70% is too high for the pandemic. This threshold is crossed when enough people in a population are immune to a disease, after infection or vaccination, to provide indirect protection to those who are not immune.