SCIENCE
World's largest airplane closer to use for space vehicles
Last week, 80 years later, an even bigger aircraft, the "Stratolaunch," took to the skies over southern California's Mojave Desert, in a second successful test flight that awed onlookers marvelling at its wingspan of 117.3 metres and six Boeing engines that roared in synchronicity, Xinhua news agency reported on Tuesday.
Social distancing not enough to cut Covid risk indoors: Study
Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in the US, stated that the two-metre rule was originally developed when the prevailing belief was that Covid-19 transmission occurred solely through heavier droplets projected from the mouth and nose during speech, coughing and sneezing, CTVnews.ca reported.
Covid may be seasonal, but won't vanish in summer: Study
A team of researchers from Harvard University in the US and Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, Beijing, conducted a visual inspection of world maps and found that coronavirus disease 2019 is less prevalent in countries closer to the equator, where heat and humidity tend to be higher.
SpaceX-NASA crew-1 astronauts return safely from space station
The astronauts -- NASA's Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover, and Shannon Walker, along with Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) mission specialist Soichi Noguchi -- returned to Earth in a parachute-assisted splashdown at 2:56 a.m. EDT off the coast of Panama City, Florida on Sunday.
Covid's spike protein plays key role in illness: Study
The paper, published in the journal Circulation Research, showed conclusively that Covid-19 is a vascular disease, demonstrating exactly how the SARS-CoV-2 virus damages and attacks the vascular system on a cellular level. The findings help explain Covid-19's wide variety of seemingly unconnected complications, and could open the door for new research into more effective therapies.
NASA suspends $2.9B SpaceX lunar lander project amid protests
Blue Origin had filed a protest with the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) against NASA for awarding $2.9 billion contract to SpaceX for landing astronauts on the Moon by 2024. The US space agency was expected to pick two lunar lander prototypes (including one of Blue Origin's) but funding cut from US Congress led the agency to select SpaceX over Blue Origin.
NASA to launch balloons to study Sun-Earth system
The experiment, under NASA's Scientific Balloon Programme, will kick off an ambitious schedule of 18 flights in 2021. The first campaign of 2021 -- with six balloon flights -- will lift off from NASA's Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility's field site in Fort Sumner, New Mexico, between April-end and mid-June.
China launches core module for new space station
The Long March-5B Y2 rocket, carrying the Tianhe module, blasted off from the Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site on the coast of the southern island province of Hainan at 11.23 a.m. (Beijing Time), Xinhua news agency reported.
Covid may prolong infection in children, adults with cancer
In the study, published in the journal EBioMedicine, the team described two children and a young adult with acute lymphoblastic leukemia who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 for months. Lymphoblastic leukemia is a type of cancer of the blood and bone marrow that affects white blood cells.
Brazilian Covid variant more transmissible, can evade immunity
"Our analysis shows that P1 emerged in Manaus around November 2020. It went from not being detectable in our genetic samples to accounting for 87 per cent of the positive samples in just seven weeks. It has since spread to several other states in Brazil as well as many other countries around the world," said Samir Bhatt, a researcher at Copenhagen University's Department of Public Health.
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