Researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine are launching a pair of studies to answer critical questions regarding the roles COVID-19 may play in breast milk and pregnancy.
On March 19, Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered Californians—all 40 million of us—to stay in our homes as much as possible in the coming weeks as the state confronts the escalating coronavirus outbreak. As of March 24, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported a total of 1,931 cases in California as a result of the pandemic.
Scientists are preparing a massive computer model of the coronavirus that they expect will give insight into how it infects in the body. They've taken the first steps, testing the first parts of the model and optimizing code on the Frontera supercomputer at the University of Texas at Austin. The knowledge gained from the full model can help researchers design new drugs and vaccines to combat the coronavirus.
Even as university campuses close across the nation in an effort to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus, a team of engineers and physicians at the University of California San Diego is rapidly developing simple, ready-to-use ventilators to be deployed if the need arises.
Can robots be effective tools in combating the COVID-19 pandemic? A group of leaders in the field of robotics, including Henrik Christensen, director of UC San Diego’s Contextual Robotics Institute, say yes, and outline a number of examples in an editorial in the March 25 issue of Science Robotics. They say robots can be used for clinical care such as telemedicine and decontamination; logistics such as delivery and handling of contaminated waste; and reconnaissance such as monitoring compliance with voluntary quarantines.
The COVID-19 pandemic is stressful. Emotions are running high. We are all coming to terms with many aspects of the situation: risks to physical health posed by the virus, disruptions to daily routines, struggles to find solutions to evolving challenges, and worries about the economic fallout of social-distancing and shelter-in-place orders, just to name just a few.
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