I was very saddened the other day upon learning from a colleague that Teresa Rodrigo Anoro passed away. Teresa was a professor at IFCA, University of Cantabria in Santander, Spain, where she held the position since 1995. At the IFCA she led a strong team of experimental particle physicists who collaborate to the CMS experiment at the CERN LHC. Her premature loss leaves a very large void at her institution in particular, as well as in the development of Spanish particle physics in general, where she had a big role.

There is no question depression can have physical effects but it is unclear how much of depression is caused by biology and how much is psychology. 

A new study finds there are increased amounts of an unmodified structural protein, called tubulin, in lipid rafts, fatty sections of a cell membrane, compared with non-depressed individuals. Tubulin is part of a protein complex that provides structure to cells. This complex also is involved in binding a specific protein called Gs alpha, or Gsa, which is a signaling molecule that conveys the action of neurotransmitters like serotonin.

COVID-19 resulted from a coronavirus that originated in a horseshoe bat in China but with at least two dozen species of horseshoe bats in China (no one knows how many there really are), no one can determine which species  was involved.

Bats carry diseases, but unlike the useless disease vectors known as Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, bats have ecological value also; they can pollinate crops and eat disease-carrying mosquitoes.

Many people have recently discovered that the U.S. CDC is actually not that useful. For some, it came when CDC refused to send hospitals coronavirus tests until they proved to CDC their patients had coronavirus. Then, when the Trump administration forced them to send tests nationwide the career employees at CDC showed they were so clueless they hadn't even checked to see if the tests only they were allowed to send had the correct reagents (they didn't.) Then the public started to wonder if CDC could do anything more than reformat and reprint statistics they got from states using money they got from states.

Asthma is a chronic condition which causes a sudden inflammation and narrowing of airways in the lungs.

The resulting “asthma attack” causes the patient to suffer periods of wheezing, chest tightness, shortness of breath and coughing. Asthma is a truly global, non-communicable disease which afflicts people of all ages from infant to elderly adult.

The leaf beetle Ophraella communa can significantly reduce pollen and that may mean a more cost-effective way to reduce allergies and their health care costs using science, while still appealing to activists that otherwise would oppose it.

Ambrosia artemisiifolia, ragweed, causes sneezing and itchy eyes in those with an allergy and aggravates conditions such as asthma and eczema.

Though we convert fat, protein, and carbohydrates to make our common ATP energy currency, microbes have a far more diverse diet.

It turns out a new one can even digest organic compounds like ethane, the second most common component of natural gas.

In the seafloor of the Guaymas Basin at a water depth of 2000 meters in the Gulf of California, a new archaea named Ethanoperedens thermophilum ("heat-loving ethane-eater") has been discovered, and it can also convert carbon dioxide into ethane.

Disney and Warner Bros. are losing a small fortune pushing back the dates of "Black Widow" and "Wonder Woman 1984" respectively. Yet they did it.

Despite paying interest on $500 million in debt, they believe it will be better to change the date for theater release than sell their films directly. Movies, concerts, theater shows, etc. command a premium because they are communal. Anyone who has watched a filmed version of a Broadway show can tell you it's not the same.

The proposal is to select a small town of 200,000 people. While the rest of the UK follows the exit strategy proposed by the government, this small town will experimentally use a much stricter strategy. Everyone in the town gets tested for Covid-19 - whether they have symptoms or not. This is voluntary but they assume 90% compliance.

Letter with signatures here:

• Expert Public Health Covid-19 Forum

Article in the Lancet:

• Universal weekly testing as the UK COVID-19 lockdown exit strategy

The authors sent this proposal to the UK government on the 10th April.

We need to protect our health workers and find a way to fix this serious gap in personal protection equipment in the UK.

The survey was open over the Easter Bank Holiday weekend – from Friday 10 April until Monday 13 April 2020.

• RCN publishes results of member survey about PPE| Scotland | Royal College of Nursing

Dr Nisreen Alwan tweets :