Scientists have used artificial intelligence to decode text on papyrus that was rolled and charred 2,000 years ago. So AI now looks back as well as forward. Three young scientists have won the grand prize in the Vesuvius Challenge for deciphering passages on a previously unreadable Herculaneum scroll. More than a thousand scrolls were buried and covered in volcanic debris when Mount Vesuvius erupted about 2,000 years ago. They were in a library at a Roman villa in the ancient city of Herculaneum and discovered in the 1800s by a local farmer. Many people have tried to read the ancient papyrus scrolls since then, but most attempts have destroyed the documents, which were left underground rolled, carbonized and fragile, for centuries. The winners — Youssef Nader, Luke Farritor and Julian Schilliger — overcame this challenge by managing to read four passages without ever unrolling the scrolls.   Winning the Vesuvius Challenge They used machine learning, a form of artificial intelligence, to read the ancient Greek text. Nadery, Farritor and Schillinger independently contributed to the Vesuvius scrolls community and now share the grand prize of $700,000 (€650,000). The object was to decipher four passages of text, each of at least 140 characters, with at least 85% of characters "recoverable" — or readable. Their work has revealed what are believed to be unknown texts by Philodemus, the villa's so-called philosopher-in-residence. In the text, Philodemus writes about living a good life through the pleasures of beauty, music and food. Researchers say this and future discoveries in the texts will give them a "unique window into the classical world."   How scientists used AI to read a Herculaneum scroll The scrolls were digitally "unwrapped" using computed tomography (CT) — or X-ray photos — and machine-learning technology. First, in late 2023, the prize organizers had the scrolls imaged at the Diamond Light Source particle accelerator near Oxford in the UK. That produced high-resolution CT scans of scrolls. The scans were then turned into a 3D volume of voxels. Voxels are 3D pixels, similar to the building blocks used in the video game Minecraft. The second step is known as segmentation. They traced crumpled layers of the rolled papyrus in the 3D scan. That allowed them to unroll, or flatten, the images. And the third step was detecting ink on papyrus. They used machine learning to identify regions of ink in the flattened segments of the papyrus. But this is where it gets very clever. The machine-learning model was not trained to spot ancient Greek letters, optical character recognition (OCR), or any other language models. Instead, it simply detected spots of ink in the CT scan and then combined and reconstructed each individual spot — and where letters appeared, that's where there was writing.   Decades of work coming to fruition One of the prize organizers, Brent Seales of the University of Kentucky, had been working on deciphering the Herculaneum scrolls for decades. Seales was the first to use CT scans but found that it was difficult to detect the ink because it had a density similar to the papyrus on which it was written. But developments gained speed when Seales, Silicon Valley entrepreneur Nat Friedman and engineer Daniel Gross launched the competition in March 2023. A breakthrough came within a few months. A former physicist, Casey Handmer, noticed a cracked texture in the text and called it crackle. Co-winner Farritor, an undergraduate student and SpaceX intern, used Handmer's observation to train a machine-learning model and deciphered the first entire ancient Greek word: ΠΟΡΦΥΡΑϹ, which means purple. By October, Nader, an Egyptian PhD student in Berlin, was able to read a few columns of text. Schillinger, a Swiss robotics student, who had previously won three prizes for segmentation, enabled the 3D-mapping of the papyrus scrolls. And there is more to come in 2024. The next Vesuvius Challenge is to read an entire work or scroll by the end of the year.

Researchers from Germany, the United States and Peru have named a recently discovered species of snake after actor Harrison Ford. Ford famously played Indiana Jones, who himself had some perilous encounters with snakes. And on Tuesday the German Society for Herpetology and Herpetoculture (DGHT) announced the naming of Tachymenoides harrisonfordi to recognize the Hollywood actor's environmental advocacy. Ford's namesake snake measures 16 inches (40.6 centimeters) in length and is yellowish-brown with scattered black blotches, a black belly, and a vertical streak over its copper-colored eye. Ford says experience is 'humbling' "These scientists keep naming critters after me, but it's always the ones that terrify children," Ford said jokingly in a statement.  "I don't understand. I spend my free time cross-stitching. I sing lullabies to my basil plants, so they won't fear the night." The 81-year-old actor went on to thank researchers for the honor and note the significance of the discovery. "In all seriousness, this discovery is humbling. It's a reminder that there's still so much to learn about our wild world — and that humans are one small part of an impossibly vast biosphere," he said. "On this planet, all fates are intertwined, and right now, one million species are teetering on the edge of oblivion. We have an existential mandate to mend our broken relationship with nature and protect the places that sustain life." The snake was discovered in May 2022 by a team of researchers from the United States, Germany and Peru. The only specimen, a male, was discovered sunbathing in a marsh in the Peruvian Andes located some 3,248 meters above sea level.

Scientists on Tuesday said that sediment at Crawford Lake in Canada provides evidence of the beginning of the Anthropocene age. The Anthropocene Working Group (AWG) said that layered sediment at the bottom of the lake in the Canadian province of Ontario showed that the world had entered a new epoch defined by human activity's destabilizing influence on the environment. They chose the lake from a shortlist of 12 potential sites where the evidence of the impacts could be best measured and observed.  The group said that the bottom of the lake contained microplastics, residues from burnt oil and coal and detritus from nuclear bombs. Scientists said that the sediment showed a "golden spike" illustrating a sudden and irreversible shift in Earth's conditions. "The data show a clear shift from the mid-20th century, taking Earth's system beyond the normal bounds of the Holocene," working group member Andy Cundy, who is a professor at the University of Southampton, told the Agence France-Presse (AFP) news agency, referring to the epoch that started at the end of the last ice age 11,700 years ago. "The sediment found at the bottom of the Crawford Lake provides an exquisite record of recent environmental change over the last millennia," said AWG chair Simon Turner, a professor at University College London. "It is this ability to precisely record and store this information as a geological archive that can be matched to historical global environmental changes." Anthropocene not yet recognized by international commission The members of the working group plan to present the findings to the International Commission on Stratigraphy in order to get the Anthropocene epoch formally recognized. There has been disagreement within the scientific community on when this period began, or whether it has begun, and the evidence required to demonstrate it. "At present, we've had 70 years of the Anthropocene," AWG chair Colin Waters said. "That has been long enough, because of the rapidity of the change and the preciseness of it, to recognize that we've moved into this new Earth state, and that it should be defined by a new geological epoch." "Clearly the biology of the planet has changed abruptly," Waters said. "We cannot go back to a Holocene state now." Holocene derives from the ancient Greek words for "whole" and "new," with the name chosen to denote the vastly changed characteristics on Earth as the last Ice Age ended. Anthropocene meanwhile derives from the Greek for "human" and "new."   

Astronomers have made a discovery that confirms the existence of gravitational waves, which sound like the hum at a large gathering. These ripples in space-time were proposed by Albert Einstein over a century go. An international group of scientists has made a groundbreaking discovery that confirms the existence of gravitational waves first envisioned by Albert Einstein. The report, published on Thursday, says that astrophysicists were able to "hear" low-frequency gravitational waves — changes in the fabric of the universe that are created by huge objects moving around and colliding in space. "It's really the first time that we have evidence of just this large-scale motion of everything in the universe," said Maura McLaughlin, co-director of NANOGrav, the research collaboration that published the results in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. These gravitational waves, detected at low frequencies, create a cosmic background hum that permeates the universe. The research indicates that space is filled with these waves, which oscillate over extended periods, primarily originating from pairs of supermassive black holes spiraling and merging together. Confirming Einstein's theory Einstein initially proposed the existence of gravitational waves, or ripples in space-time, in 1916 as an extension of his revolutionary theory of general relativity. The famous theory described gravity as the distortion of space and time caused by matter. However, it wasn't until 2016 that scientists successfully detected these waves directly, having relied on indirect evidence since the 1970s. The recent research heavily relied on pulsars, which are the highly dense remnants of exploded stars spinning at extraordinary speeds. "Gravitational waves are generated by astronomically dense objects in our universe, typically in orbital motion around each other. As these waves travel through space, they physically stretch and compress the fabric of space-time itself," Jeff Hazboun, an astrophysicist from Oregon State University and lead author of one of the papers published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters told the Reuters news agency. The data for the latest report was collected by North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav) Physics Frontiers Center, comprising over 190 scientists from the United States and Canada, in the period of 15 years. Gravitational waves sound like hum Scientists liken the universe's gravitational wave background to the hum of a large gathering, where individual voices cannot be distinguished. This discovery comes seven years after the initial detection of gravitational waves generated by two distant black holes, dense objects with gravity so intense that even light cannot escape them. The motion of black holes and other massive objects can produce these gravitational waves. The previous research was conducted using the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO). Hazboun said, "We now have compelling evidence of gravitational wave hum in a new frequency range. These frequencies are significantly smaller, around 10-12 orders of magnitude, compared to those detected by LIGO, and they have wavelengths spanning light years." He further added, "The most straightforward explanation for these gravitational waves involves a collection of supermassive black hole pairs orbiting each other in our cosmic neighborhood. However, alternative explanations could involve intriguing new physics related to the early stages of the universe, near the Big Bang, approximately 13.8 billion years ago."

At least 1,400 US-based ethnic Chinese scientists switched their affiliation last year from American to Chinese institutions, according to a joint report by academics from Harvard, Princeton and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The high number illustrates a “chilling effect” resulting from US government policies deterring research and academic activity by scientists of Chinese descent and suggests American research could suffer, said the Asian American Scholar Forum, an advocacy group that published the findings. “We see an increase in that trend,” said Yu Xie, a sociology professor at Princeton University as he presented the report at a webinar on Monday. He added that the US had been “losing talent to China for a while and particularly after the China Initiative”. The China Initiative, launched in 2018 by the administration of former US president Donald Trump, aimed to fight suspected Chinese theft of technical secrets and intellectual property as competition between the two countries intensified. While the administration of US President Joe Biden formally ended the programme this year amid concerns over racial bias and a culture of fear, it still exacted a lingering toll on Chinese-descent scientists, according to the report. “Our study reveals the widespread fear among Chinese-origin scientists in the US arising from conducting routine research and academic activities,” Xie and his four fellow authors from the three US universities concluded. “If this fear is not alleviated, there are significant risks of an underutilisation of scientific talent as well as losing scientific talent to China and other countries,” they added. The data collected by the authors indicated that 1,415 scientists of Chinese origin, as identified by their last names, had changed their professional affiliations. These changes were identified in addresses listed under the scientists’ names in academic journals. They worked in engineering, computer science, mathematics, physical sciences and life sciences. The figure marked a 21.7 per cent jump from the previous year, and is more than twice the number of switched affiliations compared with 2011. A weekly curated round-up of social, political and economic stories from China and how they impact the world. Since the launch of the China Initiative, critics said Chinese scientists in the US, including Chinese-Americans, felt they were being racially profiled and pressured to shut down joint projects and avoid future collaboration with Chinese counterparts. A poll last year by researchers at the University of Arizona and the Committee of 100, a non-partisan organisation of prominent Chinese-Americans, found 40 per cent of scientists who are ethnic Chinese considered leaving the US due to a fear of American government surveillance. A similar sentiment was reflected in the AASF report, which surveyed 1,300 “Chinese-origin scientists” employed by US universities in tenure or tenure-track positions between last December and March this year. Of these, 54.4 per cent were naturalised American citizens and another 36.8 per cent were US permanent residents. The report found that 61 per cent of the scientists, especially young researchers, felt pressure to leave the US, and 65 per cent expressed concern about their collaborations with China. About 45 per cent of the respondents said they were avoiding applying for US federal grants. Christina Ciocca Eller of the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy said the US government’s policies had a direct impact on well-being in the research ecosystem in both “beneficial” and “difficult” ways. Ciocca Eller said the Biden administration would keep striving to protect research security and improve policies. “We have to take research security challenges with care … especially if we want to facilitate the trust and openness that is at the heart of the American research enterprise,” she explained at the webinar. Ciocca Eller said her office, which develops and implements research security policies for the Biden administration, was now trying to standardise and be more transparent when it came to research applications for federal funding. “If our policies to address the challenges posed in relation to research security diverge from our core values or fuel xenophobia or prejudice of any kind, then we will significantly diminish our ability to attract and retain scientific talent or to facilitate productive international collaboration,” she added. The China Initiative was formulated as part of the Trump administration’s response to Beijing’s Thousand Talents Plan, set up in 2008 to attract foreign talent as part of the central government’s strategy “for foreign technology acquisition”. There were 77 cases and more than 150 defendants prosecuted under the China Initiative over three years, according to MIT Technology Review’s analysis in December 2021. The FBI said in January some 2,000 investigations focused on the Chinese government stealing information and technology, but it did not specify how many of these came under the China Initiative. Meanwhile, US universities appeared to have reacted differently when their employees were indicted, with some quickly firing professors and distancing themselves, while others openly supported their staff during the prosecutions. Tobin Smith, senior vice-president for science policy and global affairs at the Association of American Universities, said some institutions were confused about rules on federal grants. He believed there needed to be across-the-board collaboration between the government and different levels at universities ranging from the leadership to their faculties. “Let’s face it, there have certainly been government policies in the China Initiative which I think have created perhaps some of these challenges and concerns … but as universities, we need to get it right too,” said Smith, whose organisation represents 65 research universities in the US and Canada. He called for better collaboration between universities and government “when there are issues of concern about disclosure” to set punishment appropriate to the crime. “We want to work with the Asian American Scholars Forum, other Asian-American groups [and] OSTP federal research agencies to work on getting this right because we need to protect and ensure that we continue to attract that talent, which is proven so valuable to our universities and the research we do as a country,” Smith said.  Source: South China Morning Post. 

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina today (March 3) said as her government aims at reaching the scientific and technological advancement to a new height, she wants vigorous efforts from scientists and researchers to help the country cope with newer global technologies. The scientists and researchers will have to give commendable returns to the nation to prepare people for working in the Fourth Industrial Revolution, she said. The Prime Minister said the government would establish Bangabandhu Novo Theatre in each of the eight divisions, urging all the recipients of the fellowships and research assistances to work for the overall development of the nation. "We will set up Bangabandhu Novo Theatre in each of our eight divisions to enable our children to get better education on science and technology," she said. The Prime Minister was distributing cheques of "Bangabandhu Science and Technology Fellowship," "NST Fellowship" and special research donation among teachers, scientists and researchers. The Science and Technology Ministry arranged the ceremony at Osmani Smriti Auditorium. Joining the function virtually from her official Ganabhaban residence in the capital, the Prime Minister said her government has been doing everything possible for the advancement of science and technology mainly to build efficient human force fit for working in the fourth industrial revolution. As part of the move, she said her government has already given nod to establish four to five Bangabandhu Novo Theatres alongside enacting a required law, adding, "We will also set up the remaining others." The Premier said the fellowships particularly the Bangabandhu fellowship have been given mainly to attain MES, Mphil, Phd degrees on science and technology with the public money. She added: "You people who are receiving the fellowships and research assistances, would have to work for the development of the nation with the highest labour and responsibilities." The Prime Minister said she wanted to see the returns of giving the fellowships and research assistances. "The world is progressing with invention of newer technologies. We have to match with them as we want to build an efficient human force," she opined. She said that Bangladesh is an agriculture-based country for which her government has been made the agriculture mechanised alongside putting emphasis on industrialisation. "The Fourth Industrial Revolution (4RI) is knocking at our door. We have to build efficient human work forces capable of working for the revolution," she said. The Prime Minister said they are giving the fellowships and research assistances keeping in mind the 4RI. "I believe that we will march forward using talent," she said emphasizing on utilising the innovative knowledge for the welfare of the people. On behalf of the Prime Minister, Science and Technology Minister Architect Yeafesh Osman handed over the cheques of the fellowships and donations among teachers, scientists, researchers and science students of different universities and research institutes. Senior Secretary of Science and Technology Ministry Ziaul Hasan delivered the welcome speech. Sheikh Hasina said her government has given topmost importance to research after assuming power in 1996 and allocated Tk 12 crore for research for the first time in the country’s history and then started keeping Tk 100 crore as block allocation in the budget.    The Prime Minister said they have so far established 12 science and technology universities across the country to encourage students to science and computer study as students had once been reluctant to study science.    “Bangladesh attained sufficiency in food production first time in 1998 as it witnessed a sharp rise in food production since we’d given the most importance to agricultural research,” she said, adding that Bangladesh could not attain food-sufficiency without research.   The Prime Minister has stressed the need for research on science and technology particularly on medical science.    “Our research on medical science is fewer in number. So, I am giving importance to it. We’ll have to conduct research on it on a larger scale,” she said.   Noting that there was only an agriculture university in the country, she said her government established several more agriculture universities.   Sheikh Hasina said that her government also established the first medical university in the country confronting many hurdles.    The Premier said they have also established marine science research institute, biotechnology institute and novo theatre (planetarium).    She said her government established a total of 23 public universities and 54 private universities since assuming office for the second time in 2009.   Sheikh Hasina said her government has given utmost priority on application and expansion of the locally-innovated technology.   About fellowships, the Prime Minister said 596 persons were conferred Bangabandhu Science and Technology Fellowship and provided with an overall Tk 225.82 crore since 2010-11 fiscal year.   Since 2009-10 fiscal year, a total of 22,220 students and researchers were conferred with National Science and Technology (NST) Fellowship and provided with an overall 137.57 crore, she continued.    The Prime Minister said, Tk 178.98 crore was also given as special research donations to different research institutes and organisations under 5020 projects.    This year, a total of 4,182 cheques of Bangabandhu Fellowship, NST Fellowship and special research donation have been distributed, she added.    Sheikh Hasina noted that “Joy Bangla” got recognition as the national slogan in accordance with the Higher Court order.    “It has turned into our national slogan. It is a great achievement and it was obtained in that month of March,” she said, recalling that millions of martyrs had brought independence by sacrificing their lives with the slogan.   Bangabandhu had taken the ‘Joy Bangla’ slogan from the poem of National Poet Kazi Nazrul Islam and directed the Chhatra League to popularize it, she said, adding that the Father of the Nation had given the name of Bangladesh replacing the East Pakistan.   The Prime Minister reiterated her call to follow the health guidelines accordingly and get vaccinated to be protected from the lethal Coronavirus.    She added they have already opened the primary schools and are planning to bring the children under the vaccination campaign following the protocols of the World Health Organisation (WHO).    Bangladesh has currently administered vaccines to students over 12 years of age and sent a letter to WHO seeking advice to bring students under age of seven to eight years or less to bring them under the vaccination campaign.  Source: BSS AH

Two scientists won the Nobel Prize in chemistry Wednesday for developing a way of editing genes likened to “molecular scissors” that offer the promise of one day curing inherited diseases. Working on opposite sides of the Atlantic, Frenchwoman Emmanuelle Charpentier and American Jennifer A. Doudna came up with a method known as CRISPR-cas9 that can be used to change the DNA of animals, plants and microorganisms. It was the first time two women have won the chemistry Nobel together — adding to the small number of female laureates in the sciences, where women have long received less recognition for their work than men. The scientists’ work allows for laser-sharp snips in the long strings of DNA that make up the “code of life,” allowing researchers to precisely edit specific genes to remove errors that lead to disease. “There is enormous power in this genetic tool, which affects us all,” said Claes Gustafsson, chair of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry. “It has not only revolutionized basic science, but also resulted in innovative crops and will lead to groundbreaking new medical treatments.” Gustafsson said that, as a result, any genome can now be edited “to fix genetic damage.” Dr. Francis Collins, who led the drive to map the human genome, said the technology “has changed everything” about how to approach diseases with a genetic cause, such as sickle cell disease. “You can draw a direct line from the success of the human genome project to the power of CRISPR-cas to make changes in the instruction book,” said Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health that helped fund Doudna’s work. But many also cautioned that the technology must be used carefully and that it raises serious ethical questions. Much of the world became more aware of CRISPR in 2018, when Chinese scientist He Jiankui revealed he had helped make the world’s first gene-edited babies, to try to engineer resistance to future infection with the AIDS virus. His work was denounced as unsafe human experimentation because of the risk of causing unintended changes that could pass to future generations, and he’s currently imprisoned in China. In September, an international panel of experts issued a report saying it’s still too soon to try to make genetically edited babies because the science isn’t advanced enough to ensure safety, but they mapped a pathway for countries that want to consider it. “Being able to selectively edit genes means that you are playing God in a way,” said American Chemistry Society President Luis Echegoyen, a chemistry professor at the University of Texas El Paso. Charpentier, 51, spoke of the shock of winning. “Strangely enough I was told a number of times (that I’d win), but when it happens you’re very surprised and you feel that it’s not real,” she told reporters by phone from Berlin after the award was announced in Stockholm by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. “But obviously it’s real, so I have to get used to it now.” When asked about the significance of two women winning, Charpentier said that while she considers herself first and foremost a scientist, she hoped it would encourage others. “I wish that this will provide a positive message to young girls who would like to follow the path of science,” said Charpentier, who is currently the director of the Max Planck Unit for the Science of Pathogens in Berlin. Doudna told The Associated Press of her own surprise — including that she learned she’d won from a reporter. “I literally just found out, I’m in shock,” she said. “I was sound asleep.” “My greatest hope is that it’s used for good, to uncover new mysteries in biology and to benefit humankind,” said Doudna, who is affiliated with the University of California, Berkeley and is paid by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, which also supports AP’s Health and Science Department. The breakthrough research done by Charpentier and Doudna was published in 2012, making the discovery very recent compared to many Nobel wins that are often only honored after decades have passed. Speaking to reporters later at her lab, Charpentier said: “This discovery is only eight years ago. And it has boomed extremely. Everyone is using now the CRISPR-cas9.” Pernilla Wittung-Stafshede, a member of the Nobel Committee, noted that the method had “already benefited humankind greatly.” The Broad Institute at Harvard and MIT have been in a long court fight over patents on CRISPR technology, and many other scientists did important work on it, but Doudna and Charpentier have been most consistently honored with prizes for turning it into an easily usable tool. The prestigious award comes with a gold medal and prize money of 10 million kronor (more than $1.1 million), courtesy of a bequest left more than a century ago by the prize’s creator, Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel. The amount was increased recently to adjust for inflation. On Monday, the Nobel Committee awarded the prize for physiology and medicine to Americans Harvey J. Alter and Charles M. Rice and British-born scientist Michael Houghton for discovering the liver-ravaging hepatitis C virus. Tuesday’s prize for physics went to Roger Penrose of Britain, Reinhard Genzel of Germany, and Andrea Ghez of the United States for their breakthroughs in understanding the mysteries of cosmic black holes. The other prizes are for outstanding work in the fields of literature, peace and economics. Source: AP/UNB

According to a BBC report, The National Institute of Health (ISS) said water from Milan and Turin showed genetic virus traces on 18 December, long before the country's first confirmed cases. It adds to evidence from other countries that the virus may have been circulating much earlier than thought. Chinese officials confirmed the first cases at the end of December. Italy's first case was in mid-February. In May French scientists said tests on samples showed a patient treated for suspected pneumonia near Paris on 27 December actually had the coronavirus. Meanwhile in Spain a study found virus traces in waste water collected in mid-January in Barcelona, some 40 days before the first local case was discovered. In their study, ISS scientists examined 40 sewage samples collected from wastewater treatment plants in northern Italy between last October and February. Samples from October and November came back negative, showing that the virus had not yet arrived, ISS water quality expert Giuseppina La Rosa said. Waste water from Bologna began showing traces of the virus in January. The findings could help scientists understand how the virus began spreading in Italy, Ms La Rosa said. However she said the research did not "automatically imply that the main transmission chains that led to the development of the epidemic in our country originated from these very first cases". Italy's first known non-imported virus case was a patient in the town of Codogno in the Lombardy region. The town was closed off and declared a "red zone" on 21 February. Nine other towns in Lombardy and neighbouring Veneto followed and the entire country went into lockdown in early March. The ISS said the results confirmed the "strategic importance" of sewage water as an early detection tool because it can signal the virus's presence before cases are clinically confirmed. Many countries are now using the technique. The institute says it aims to begin a pilot project monitoring waste water at tourist resorts in July with a view to setting up a nationwide waste water monitoring network later this year. Nearly 35,000 people have died with Covid-19 in Italy, a tally from Johns Hopkins University shows. Source: UNB AH

As deadly coronavirus continues to spread across the globe, strategies for developing a safe and effective vaccine are rapidly moving forward, according to reports carried by various global news media. The first human trials of a coronavirus vaccine are to be launched within days, scientists in the US have said which has showed some kind of hope to the world citizens, even though the situation has already been declared COVID-19 pandemic. The 'genetic hack' was accelerated past the animal testing stage and will be used on healthy volunteers, then patients if it deemed safe, reports www.dailymail.co.uk. It comes as scientists in Britain said a vaccine could be tested on humans by June after encouraging results on mice. Massachusetts-based Moderna created the candidate cure but have taken a different route to traditional techniques. Normally, researchers would take months to test for the possibility of vaccine enhancement in animals. Given the urgency to stem the spread of the new coronavirus, some drug makers are moving straight into small-scale human tests, without waiting for the completion of such animal tests. American, UK researchers hopeful American researches leading the fight against the deadly bug admit hopes of millions of vaccines within a year are 'aspirational'. And in a further blow for Britain, any cure would not be able to halt the anticipated peak in cases in May, www.dailymail.co.uk report said. But UK researchers, led by Mucosal Infection and Immunity head Dr Robin Shattock, said they have successfully trialed a vaccine in mice and are hopeful it could be ready for human trials by June. Meanwhile, senior researcher Dr Paul McKay, of Imperial College London, said, “I've got results from a month after I injected (the mice) and the vaccine works really, really well.” The team is working with scientists in Paris to determine the vaccine's effectiveness in monkeys, he added. Dr McKay said they have applied for further funding from the Medical Research Council to conduct human clinical trials. “If we get the funding for the human clinical trials, we’ll put it into people by June. If British scientists here develop a vaccine it would be great if the Government supported it,” he said. Some scientists and medical experts are concerned rushing a vaccine could end up worsening the infection in some patients rather than preventing it. Progress in Canada A team of Canadian scientists has successfully isolated and grown copies of the coronavirus — bringing the world a step closer to finding a vaccine to fight the deadly illness, reports the New York Post. Researchers from the Sunnybrook Research Institute, the University of Toronto, and McMaster University were able to isolate and replicate the virus in a lab using samples taken from two Canadian patients. The lab-grown copies will now be able to help scientists study the pathogen to develop better diagnostic testing, treatments, vaccines, and gain a better understanding of its biology, the team said in a statement. Researchers working in China Eight institutes in China are working on five approaches to inoculations in an effort to combat COVID-19, reports New York Post. Chinese officials say it could result in a vaccine ready for emergency situations and clinical trials next month. Israeli researchers also working on vaccine   Scientists in Israel are expected to announce in the coming days that they have completed development of a vaccine for the new coronavirus COVID-19, reports The Economic Times. Quoting medical sources, Israeli daily Ha'aretz, reported on Thursday that scientists at the Israel's Institute for Biological Research, supervised by the Prime Minister's office, have recently had a significant breakthrough in understanding the biological mechanism and qualities of the virus, including better diagnostic capability, production of antibodies for those who already have the coronavirus and development of a vaccine. The development process, however, requires a series of tests and experiments that may last many months before the vaccination is deemed effective or safe to use, the report said. Experts’ opinion about vaccine for coronavirus Dr Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in USA, said: “I understand the importance of accelerating timelines for vaccines in general, but from everything I know, this is not the vaccine to be doing it with. There is a risk of immune enhancement. The way you reduce that risk is first you show it does not occur in laboratory animals.” The vaccine prototype is being funded by the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, with the foundation's Dr Melanie Saville telling the Telegraph: “Contain and delay is the approach taken in the UK and a number of different countries. The approaches are really to buy time in the context of the stretch it puts on the healthcare system - it also buys time for vaccines to be developed. We don't know how the pandemic will evolve, whether, for example, it comes in various different waves.” Source: UNB AH

U.S. health scientists said in an essay Thursday that a candidate vaccine for the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) could be ready for early-stage human testing in three months. In an essay published on the U.S. medical journal JAMA, Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and Catharine Paules, an assistant professor of infectious diseases at Penn State University, said advances in technology since the SARS outbreak in 2003 have greatly compressed the vaccine development timeline. The researchers moved from obtaining the genomic sequence of SARS virus to a phase-one clinical trial of a DNA vaccine in 20 months and have since compressed that timeline to 3.25 months for other viral diseases. The scientists hope to move even faster for 2019-nCoV, using messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccine technology, according to the authors. The predominant human receptor for the SARS glycoprotein is human angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2). Preliminary analyses indicated that 2019-nCoV has some amino acid homology to SARS virus and may be able to use ACE2 as a receptor. This could have important implications for predicting pandemic potential moving forward, said the authors. Also, the emergence of yet another outbreak of human disease caused by a pathogen from a viral family formerly thought to be relatively benign underscores the perpetual challenge of emerging infectious diseases and the importance of sustained preparedness, the authors said. U.S. and Chinese medical institutions are working together to develop a vaccine against the novel coronavirus which has already caused 830 confirmed cases of pneumonia in China as of Thursday. The World Health Organization (WHO) said Thursday that it was "too early" to declare the outbreak of the novel coronavirus in China a public health emergency of international concern, while warning that the number of cases may rise as many about the virus remain unknown. Source: Xinhua/UNB AH