ACTUALITÉS

This 14-Year-Old’s Discovery Could Lead to a Cure for COVID-19

With no clear end in sight to the pandemic, there is an urgent need for a cure to COVID-19. As scientists around the world work to develop possible vaccines, one 14-year-old girl from Texas has made a new discovery that could lead to a potential treatment. On Wednesday, Anika Chebrolu from Frisco, Texas was named the winner of the 3M Young Scientist Challenge after discovering a molecule that can selectively bind to the spike protein of the SARS-COV-2 virus, which causes COVID-19. The competition opened in December 2019 and invited students in grades five to eight to find a unique solution to an everyday problem. Anika won $25,000, a special destination trip, and the title of “America’s Top Young Scientist” for her achievement. Her discovery could lead to important developments in COVID-19 research. By binding to the spike protein in the coronavirus, the molecule she found can potentially prevent virus entry into the host cell, and can be used in creating a potential drug to cure COVID-19. Anika used in-silico methodology — methods and experiments that make use of computers — to screen millions of small molecules. She originally planned for her project to focus on the influenza virus, but pivoted once COVID-19 hit and she realized the severity of the pandemic. Anika was in eighth grade when she submitted the project. She told CNN that she hopes to work with other scientists and researchers to develop her discovery into an actual cure for the virus. At the moment, the World Health Organization (WHO) is tracking over 170 candidate vaccines around the world. However, since many of them are still in early development, the effectiveness of these vaccines are still unknown. Vaccines go through multiple stages of testing and experts predict that a vaccine will only be available to the…

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ACTUALITÉS

This Indian Couple Had a Baby Just To Save Their Terminally Ill Son

India has 40 million carriers of thalassemia. 100,000 out of that die before they turn 20 due to lack of access to treatment. Photo via Unsplash Sahdev Singh Solanki, a resident of Ahmedabad, the largest city in the western Indian state of Gujarat, remembers the last seven years very clearly. “Our lives only revolved around our son,” the 37-year-old government employee, told VICE News. Solanki’s son, Abhijeet, is seven years old. He was born with thalassemia major, a genetic disorder which leads to low haemoglobin count in the blood. One life-saving treatment is constant blood transfusions.  Up until February this year, Abhijeet had received up to 80 blood transfusions since he was born. “This is a genetic disorder, and of a rare kind. It has no straight treatment,” said Solanki. “We mostly got blood transfusions through donors and blood banks, just to maintain his routine life.”  The other option—and a life-altering one—was a bone marrow transplant. The family’s bone marrow, including that of Abhijeet’s older sister, did not match. In 2017, Solanki came across the “saviour sibling” experiment—a baby created to be a donor of organs, bone marrow or cells to the elder sibling.  “Without the bone marrow transplant, the son’s life expectancy, even with the blood transfusions, was 25-30 years,” Manish Banker, medical director at Nova IVF Fertility in Ahmedabad, told VICE News. Three years ago, when the Solankis approached Banker for what they call India’s first “saviour sibling” treatment, Banker came on board.  “This is the first such instance in India,” said Banker.  India has 40 million carriers of thalassemia, out of which 100,000 die before they turn 20 due to lack of access to treatment. Thalassemia major is the most severe form of the disease, which occurs when a child inherits two mutated genes, one from each parent….

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ACTUALITÉS

How Climate Change and COVID-19 Threaten the Livelihoods of Filipino Seaweed Farmers

Life for farmers is never easy. For those who tend their crops at sea, it can be even more capricious, especially as a warming planet leads to higher ocean temperatures, more volatile weather patterns, and more frequent and severe storms. In the Philippines, seaweed farmers such as couple Gerlyn and Ronnie Villasino know first-hand what that’s like. “Our farm has survived typhoons many times,” said Gerlyn, who lives with her husband on Ilin Island, off the southern tip of Occidental Mindoro province. “But on Dec. 25 last year, when our seaweed crop was ready to harvest, Typhoon Phanfone came and our seaweed beds were washed out to sea.” The Villasinos were not alone. Their small community of Inasakan was devastated. Homes were destroyed. Boats were wrecked. Thousands of meters of ropes, to which the farmers attach their crops, were swept away. In a matter of two days, seaside communities lost their main source of livelihood, said 22-year-old Marielle Ramos, a volunteer for the Philippine Red Cross Society on Ilin Island. The problem is that seaweed farmers — like many land-based farmers — borrow money at the beginning of each season to buy seedlings. Normally, when  a crop is harvested, it’s brought to shore, cleaned, and dried under the sun on large wooden racks. Once dry, farmers clean them again and then package in a large sack, which they bring to the southern Mindoro city of San Jose. There, wholesale dried seaweed fetches roughly PHP300 ($6) per kilo. But when harvests are washed away, farmers not only lose income, they also go into debt. The COVID-19 pandemic only made things worse. It interrupted the fishing and tending of crops at various times. Markets shut down, transport and trade were impeded, and prices tanked. Just before the pandemic hit, Gerlyn turned to…

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