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Daily briefing: World’s largest vaccine maker bets on Oxford coronavirus candidate
The Serum Institute of India is getting ready to make millions of doses of a promising COVID-19 vaccine. Plus: watch human sperm corkscrew around to swim faster and lessons from astronomy’s big move into the cloud.
Japan’s cabinet just approved a strategy that aims to keep sensitive research and technologies linked to national security from leaving the country. The strategy, meant to protect research in fields such as quantum computing, artificial intelligence and semiconductor manufacturing, proposes that research funds be withheld from Japanese institutions that receive but do not declare money from foreign governments. The development follows crack-downs by US science agencies on researchers who do not disclose foreign ties, mainly with China.
Years of slow improvement in diversity and inclusion in science could come undone because of the COVID-19 crisis. Ecologist Raísa Vieira, who co-authored a June letter to Nature Ecology & Evolution that warned of the threat, says that hard-won diversity gains are already being eroded in her home country of Brazil. “It’s really sad to see what’s happening here,” she says. “It’s like we’re going back 30 years.”
The Serum Institute of India makes 1.5 billion doses of vaccines every year. It has put its might behind the coronavirus-vaccine candidate being developed at the University of Oxford, UK, and is preparing to produce 500 doses each minute in the hopes that trials will prove the vaccine’s efficacy. The private company was founded by Cyrus Poonawalla, a horse-breeder who pivoted his equine resources from running races to being used for horse-serum-based vaccines. Now one of India’s richest families, the Poonawallas have promised that the company’s output will be split 50–50 between India and the rest of the world, with a focus on poorer countries. “We just felt that this was our sort of moment,” says CEO Adar Poonawalla of the company’s US$450-million gamble.
Virologist Katherine McMahan is working on a potential vaccine at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, Massachusetts (with Belgian Johnson & Johnson subsidiary Janssen Pharmaceutica), that has shown promise in monkeys. (The New York Times | 13 min read)
At least 250 campers and staff members tested positive for COVID-19 after attending an overnight camp in the US state of Georgia. All campers and staff were required to test negative for the virus fewer than 13 days before arrival, and campers did not mix with those sleeping in other cabins. Staff wore masks, but campers did not. “This investigation adds to the body of evidence demonstrating that children of all ages are susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 infection and, contrary to early reports, might play an important role in transmission,” write the study authors.
T cells that are prepared to attack SARS-CoV-2 exist in some people who have never been exposed to the virus. Researchers surveyed blood samples from around 100 people for T cells that react to the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. Reactive cells were found in 83% of people with COVID-19, as well as 35% of healthy blood donors. These cells might have been primed by past infections with related coronaviruses. We still don’t know whether these cells offer real-world protection against SARS-CoV-2.
The Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile is geared up to collect 20 terabytes per night as part of its 10-year Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST), once it becomes operational in 2022. Instead of setting up a computing infrastructure that would cost many millions, astronomers are putting their massive data sets into the cloud. The move opens up opportunities for research at smaller institutions. “I could set up a notebook in South Africa to run on the LSST Science Platform that had all the same tools as if I was in Princeton,” says project manager William O’Mullane. “All I’d need is a web browser.”
Experimental psychologist Dorothy Bishop uses simulated data to teach her students how we can be led astray by our cognitive biases and faulty intuition. Sampling simulated data reveals how easy it is to find false results that seem statistically significant, and how small sample sizes can scupper an otherwise well-designed experiment.
Ecologist Fernando Maestre thought his good work–life balance before the pandemic made him less vulnerable to having poor mental health. But “I was wrong,” he says. After he was diagnosed with anxiety, he reassessed his approach to work, life and parenting to restore his health. His six-point plan includes postponing all non-essential work, setting up a schedule, reducing exposure to news and social media, focusing on the positive, exercising more and trying to live in the moment.
The aquatic beetle Regimbartia attenuata can swim right through a frog, found biologist Shinji Sugiura. (Current Biology paper) (Watch a video of it happening in The New York Times, if that’s what you’re into.)
doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-02310-8
What should you do if you stumble across a camera trap in the woods? Leave it undisturbed, of course — and, optionally, strike a glamorous pose.
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