COVID-19

A partnership between Sandia National Laboratories and the Boston firm BioBright to improve the security of synthetic biology equipment has become more relevant after the United States and others issued warnings that hackers were using the COVID-19 pandemic to increase their activities. “In the past decade, genomics and synthetic biology have grown from principally academic…

by Michigan Technological University Joshua Pearce is the Richard Witte Endowed Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He runs the Michigan Tech Open Sustainability Technology (MOST) Lab, which works on solar photovoltaics, 3D printing, and open source science hardware. There is a desperate need…

by Karen K. Dunlap Experts at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory are now offering short-term technical and scientific assistance to entities working to combat the coronavirus through the COVID-19 Technical Assistance Program, or CTAP, an initiative of DOE’s Office of Technology Transitions. CTAP provides targeted funding to ORNL and other national laboratories…

European Union/U.K. R&D Like most other regions of the world, the European Union (EU) and the U.K. have been caught in the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown and economic consequences. In April, the U.K., the world’s sixth largest economy, saw its output drop 20% from March and 25% from April 2019. The U.K.’s Office for National Statistics…

by PLOS A new low-cost diagnostic test for COVID-19 quickly delivers accurate results without the need for sophisticated equipment, according to a study published August 27 2020 in the open-access journal PLOS Pathogens by Teng Xu of the Vision Medicals Center for Infectious Diseases, Tieying Hou of the Guangdong Academy of Medical Sciences, Bing Gu…

By Michaela Jarvis | MIT News correspondent MIT researchers have developed a simple, low-cost technology to administer powerful drug formulations that are too viscous to be injected using conventional medical syringes. The technology, which is described in a paper published today in the journal Advanced Healthcare Materials, makes it possible to inject high-concentration drugs and…

Novation Industries, an Illinois-based injection molding and vertically integrated product production company, received increased production orders for personal protection equipment (PPE) and rapidly replied to demand. Increased order volume, which started in April and will continue at least through September, includes molding and complete product assembly of face protection products. Novation produces the PPE for an…

By Tim Studt This special editorial section is an update to R&D World’s 2020 Global R&D Funding Forecast (GFF), which has been published annually since January 1959 (the first issue of R&D World’s predecessor, Industrial Research). The original 2020 GFF was created and published in the February 2020 issue of R&D World (and online at www.rdworldonline.com)…

PerkinElmer (NYSE:PKI) today announced the launch of a series of explorer workstations for SARS-CoV-2 testing capable of preparing and running up to 10,000 COVID-19 tests per day. These modular and scalable workstations enable laboratories to ramp up SARS-CoV-2 testing capacity quickly to generate results. Currently many laboratories are unable to deliver COVID-19 testing results in…

By Manuel Gnida Researchers at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have invented an emergency ventilator that could help save the lives of patients suffering from COVID-19, the disease caused by novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. Using standard parts that cost less than $400, the ventilator could be an affordable option when more sophisticated technology…

When plasma equipment manufacturer PVA TePla America was asked by a manufacturer of real-time PCR diagnostic tests, to treat hundreds of thousands of plastic cartridges used to test for COVID-19, they immediately jumped at the task. Plasma is a state of matter, like a solid, liquid or gas. When enough energy is added to a…

Auburn University Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences Joanna Sztuba-Solinska recently received a big boost in her quest to discover what makes viruses target specific enzymes within cells. The accomplished researcher and her team received a $451,661 grant from the National Institutes of Health or NIH, that will propel her team’s research tasked with discovering the…

By Alison Caldwell PhD The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic is shining a bright spotlight on vaccine development. As numerous vaccines race through clinical trials, physicians and researchers continue to work on developing new vaccine technologies to generate the most effective vaccines with the fewest side effects. A new proof-of-concept study by researchers at the University of…

By Manette Fisher  A media comprised of a sandwich of materials, tested by Sandia National Laboratories, is being manufactured into N95-like respirators that could be used in local medical facilities. The project originated from the urgent need for personal protective equipment when the COVID-19 outbreak began. “I can almost assure you that no one else…

Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers have developed a machine learning model that could help predict the impact pandemics such as COVID-19 have on fuel demand in the United States. Called the Pandemic Oil Demand Analysis, or PODA, this model compared mobility patterns before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, analyzing historical weekly motor travel trends and…

by Iowa State University There would be no tents set up in parking lots. No long lines of cars. No medical staff in full protective gear. No waiting for results. Instead, you’d take your own COVID-19 diagnostic test at home with a $1 (or so) kit. You’d take your own nasal and cough samples. You’d…

A team of scientists at the University of Southampton have established significant results in the elimination of Covid-19 within minutes, on a copper-based alloy, demonstrating its ability to reduce coronavirus transmission rates, via commonly touched surfaces, manufactured with this metal. Working with Sylatech, an engineering business in North Yorkshire, U.K., Professor Bill Keevil, Dr. SandraWilks…

On July  29, 2020 the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory opened a new cryo-electron microscopy center, the Laboratory for BioMolecular Structure (LBMS), with an initial focus on COVID-19-related research. This state-of-the-art research center for life sciences imaging offers researchers access to advanced cryo-electron microscopes (cryo-EM) — funded by NY State — for…

By Sara S Shoemaker Analyses of lung fluid cells from COVID-19 patients conducted on the nation’s fastest supercomputer point to gene expression patterns that may explain the runaway symptoms produced by the body’s response to SARS-CoV-2. A team led by Dan Jacobson of the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory used the Summit supercomputer…

PerkinElmer, a global leader committed to innovating for a healthier world, today announced that it has launched two online, free-access Perkin Elmer COVID-19 Data Dashboards to help the global scientific community accelerate the discovery of COVID-19 antivirals and vaccines. These dashboards are powered by PerkinElmer’s data analytics and data visualization solutions which help researchers more…

With the global pandemic still in full swing, scientists are working to develop a vaccine in record time. While everyone wants an effective vaccine, they don’t all agree on how to get there and what “effective” really means. Chemical & Engineering News, the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society, spoke with researchers, doctors and…

Thermo Fisher Scientific (NYSE: TMO) continues to expand global capacity and capabilities across its leading pharma services network to support customers in government, industry and academia as they accelerate development and production of COVID-19 vaccines, therapies and other treatments. The company is now supporting more than 200 of these projects globally. “Well before the pandemic,…

By Aliyah Kovner  If you want to research historical events for a college essay, learn about tropical fish, or even translate text into a different language, you can type keywords into an internet search engine and get almost instant results drawn from diverse, international sources on that subject. Unfortunately, it’s not so easy for the…

Scientists in academic centers and companies around the world desperately search for novel therapeutics and vaccines to treat and prevent COVID-19. However, with lockdowns and limited access to laboratories, researchers are being forced to work from home, putting research continuity at risk. To help scientists continue their life-saving R&D, and ensure research continuity, Arctoris established…

By Luke Frank COVID-19 researchers the world over face a daunting task of sifting through tens of thousands of existing coronavirus studies, looking for commonalities or data that might help in their urgent biomedical investigations. To accelerate the filtering of relevant information, Sandia National Laboratories has assembled a combination of data mining, machine-learning algorithms and…