April 2020

Australia has been lucky. We’ve had time to consider our response to COVID-19, based on what was happening in other countries, before it hit us.

We implemented restrictions that are likely to have saved many from dying of COVID-19. Fewer than 100 have died so far, a fraction of the number initially projected.

At this pivotal moment, we need to think carefully about how best to protect ourselves going forward.

We need to consider whether the costs of continued restrictions to prevent transmission of COVID-19—costs that can be quantified in terms of human lives harmed and

Researchers at the RIKEN Center for Brian Science (CBS) in Japan have discovered a deficiency in the brains of people with schizophrenia that could lead to the development of new drug therapies. A postmortem comparison published in Schizophrenia Bulletin revealed that schizophrenia was associated with lower than normal levels of S1P, a type of fatty molecule found in the white matter of the brain. Preventing S1P degradation might therefore be a new direction for drug

Researchers at Aalto University and Turku PET Centre have developed a new method for simultaneous imaging brain activity from two people, allowing them to study social interaction.

In a recent study, the researchers scanned brain activity from 10 couples. Each couple spent 45 minutes inside the MRI scanner in physical contact with each other. The objective of the study was to examine how social contact activates the brain. The results were published in the theme issue “Social Interaction in

New research has revealed new insights into common asthma aerosol treatments to aid the drug’s future improvements which could benefit hundreds of millions of global sufferers.

Lung diseases such as asthma are a major global health burden, with an estimated 330 million asthma sufferers worldwide. The most effective treatments are through direct inhalation of medicine to the lungs. However, generating the aerosols for inhalation is a scientific challenge because of our limited knowledge of the microstructure of drug products before they are aerosolised.

In new research announced today University of Manchester-based scientists demonstrate how they have

Beijing has banned “uncivilised” behaviour such as not covering the mouth and nose when coughing or sneezing, the city government said Sunday, in a new set of regulations to improve public hygiene amid the coronavirus outbreak.

The laws aim to promote “civilised behaviour” and relate to combating the pandemic which has infected more than 82,000 in China alone.

Rulebreakers will be slapped with fines for offences including not wearing a mask in public when ill, the municipal government said on its website.

The laws also require public places to set up one metre distance markers and to provide communal chopsticks

Even as the confirmed U.S. death toll from coronavirus rose past 50,000, salons, spas and barbershops reopened Friday in Georgia and Oklahoma with a green light from their Republican governors, who eased lockdown orders despite health experts’ warnings.

Though limited in scope, and subject to social-distancing restrictions, the reopening marked a symbolic milestone in the debate