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Building a mirror for one of the world’s biggest telescopes

20 tons of Ohara E6 borosilicate glass being loaded onto the mold of one of the GMT’s mirrors. Ray Bertram, Steward Observatory, CC BY-ND

Buddy Martin, University of Arizona and Dae Wook Kim, University of Arizona

When astronomers point their telescopes up at the sky to see distant supernovae or quasars, they’re collecting light that’s traveled millions or even billions of light-years through space. Even huge and powerful energy sources in the cosmos are unimaginably tiny and faint when we view them from such a distance. In order to learn about galaxies as they were forming soon after the Big Bang, and about nearby but much smaller and fainter objects, astronomers need more powerful telescopes.

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Teens and Parents Stuck at Home – Together

The last thing adolescents want is to be trapped at home alone, by order of their parents. Roos Koole/Moment via Getty Images

Teens are wired to resent being stuck with parents and cut off from friends during coronavirus lockdown

Catherine Bagwell, Emory University

“Can’t I just go see one friend?”

“I need to hang out with my friends.”

“You are being overprotective and unreasonable!”

Social distancing is both necessary and hard. If my Facebook news feed and anecdotal experience in my own family are at all representative of larger trends, adolescents are especially feeling the pain. Separating from others goes against basic human needs for companionship and connection that everyone feels, yet the challenge of social distancing may be especially difficult for teenagers.

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Digital Surveillance – During a Pandemic

Digital footprints. Prasit photo/Moment via Getty Images

Digital surveillance can help bring the coronavirus pandemic under control – but also threatens privacy

Jennifer Daskal, American University

Apple and Google are collaborating on new technology that will alert smartphone users who have come in sustained contact with someone who has tested positive for COVID-19. Users will need to opt-in to the contract tracing system, which will use Bluetooth technology in both iPhone and Android phones in ways designed to protect privacy.

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Blood sugar levels may influence vulnerability to coronavirus

syringe and glucose monitor
Image by Steve Buissinne from Pixabay

Blood sugar levels may influence vulnerability to coronavirus, and controlling them through conventional means might be protective

Can watching your blood sugar help fight COVID-19?

Sugar is not only something that sweetens our food. It is also something that is an essential part of the proteins that make up our bodies.

That led me to believe, as I wrote in the Journal of Medical Virology, that control of blood glucose by diet and exercise, as well as better control of blood sugar in diabetics, especially when ill with COVID-19, may possibly help control the severity of the disease and even its spread.

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COVID-19 May Hit Rural Residents Hard

Arial photo of rural town
The empty streets of Hebron, Illinois, population 1,200, a village three miles south of the Illinois/Wisconsin border.
Scott Olson/Getty Images

COVID-19 may hit rural residents hard, and that spells trouble because of lack of rural health care

Kevin J. Bennett, University of South Carolina

The burden of COVID-19 in rural areas has been under the radar, as the toll of the disease so far has been heaviest in dense urban areas. But up to 30% of the U.S. population lives in rural America, which already has experienced more than 128 hospital closures since 2010, including 19 last year.

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Labs Re-tooling for the War on COVID-19

Two technicians work on a production line on May 13, 2011 at the new vaccine manufacturing plant of the Pasteur Sanofi group, in Neuville-sur-Saône, southeastern France. AFP PHOTO / PHILIPPE DESMAZES --PHILIPPE DESMAZES/AFP via Getty Images

Researchers seek to re-purpose an existing manufacturing platform to produce a COVID-19 vaccine

Alan Rudolph, Colorado State University and Raymond P. Goodrich, Colorado State University

The Research Brief is a short take about interesting academic work.

The big idea

We are both biotechnology researchers and are currently seeking to repurpose an existing medical manufacturing platform to quickly develop a vaccine candidate for COVID-19.

This process is used for the treatment of blood products such as plasma, platelets and whole blood to prevent disease transmission when people receive transfused blood. It utilizes a common food ingredient, vitamin B2, or riboflavin, which is a light-sensitive chemical. When used in combination with ultraviolet light of specific wavelengths, B2 can alter genetic material, whether RNA or DNA, of infectious pathogens in the blood, making them unable to transmit disease.

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Why we need to get back to Venus

Visible-wavelength light is unable to penetrate the thick cloud layer on Venus. Instead, radar is required to view the surface from space. This is a global radar image mosaic of the planet, compiled with data returned by the Magellan mission. SSV/MIPL/MAGELLAN TEAM/NASA

Why we need to get back to Venus

Paul K. Byrne, North Carolina State University

Just next door, cosmologically speaking, is a planet almost exactly like Earth. It’s about the same size, is made of about the same stuff and formed around the same star.

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Why so many epidemics originate in Asia and Africa

On Feb. 18, 2020, in Seoul, South Korea, people wearing face masks pass an electric screen warning about COVID-19.
AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon

Why so many epidemics originate in Asia and Africa – and why we can expect more

Suresh V. Kuchipudi, Pennsylvania State University
The coronavirus disease, known as COVID-19, is a frightening reminder of the imminent global threat posed by emerging infectious diseases. Although epidemics have arisen during all of human history, they now seem to be on the rise. In just the past 20 years, coronaviruses alone have caused three major outbreaks worldwide. Even more troubling, the duration between these three pandemics has gotten shorter.
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On the Trail of a Killer

A person who has recovered from COVID-19 donates plasma in Shandong, China. STR/AFP via Getty Images

Antibodies in the blood of COVID-19 survivors know how to beat coronavirus – and researchers are already testing new treatments that harness them.

A person who has recovered from COVID-19 donates plasma in Shandong, China.
STR/AFP via Getty Images

Ann Sheehy, College of the Holy Cross

Amid the chaos of an epidemic, those who survive a disease like COVID-19 carry within their bodies the secrets of an effective immune response. Virologists like me look to survivors for molecular clues that can provide a blueprint for the design of future treatments or even a vaccine.

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Dwindling Medical Supplies Expressed in Number of Days Left

Paper bags hold N95 masks that staff in the Eskenazi Hospital COVID-19 ICU need to save for reuse. W. Graham Carlos/Indiana University, Author provided

A dispatch from the front lines: ‘We don’t talk in terms of supply numbers, we talk in terms of days’

W. Graham Carlos, Indiana University School of Medicine

Brown paper bags line the windowsill of the COVID-19 intensive care unit at Eskenazi Hospital in downtown Indianapolis. The bags are filled with the N95 masks we’re reusing, labeled with the handwritten names of my staff: Patrick, Angela, Brittany. They are mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters.

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