Schools use 3D printers to make masks
East Lansing Public Schools is using 3D printers to make the much needed N-95 masks doctors say help protect those treating people with coronavirus.
The 3-D printers at MacDonald Middle School in East Lansing are going around the clock, making medical masks to help those fighting the coronavirus.
“I had no idea we would be able to produce masks from our 3D printers,” said East Lansing Public Schools Superintendent Dori Leyko.
Leyko said she was searching schools for medical supplies to donate, not realizing they could be made in the classrooms.
“It really opens our eyes to maybe what can be done with them and how they’re more than just a teaching tool, but what comes out of them is super relevant and useful to the community,” she said.
“If the students aren’t using it, we have the opportunity to put it into production and do something with it,” said ELPS Technology Director Christian Palasty.
The district’s 13 3D printers will be running 24 hours a day to make the masks, which takes four to six hours to make.
The masks will be donated to Sparrow Hospital. […]
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COVID-19 is not mutating quickly, new research shows
Currently, there is no known specific medicine to treat the novel coronavirus, but researchers in Italy suggest that the COVID-19 disease is slow to mutate, based on its genetic material.
This finding could aid in helping large swaths of people over an extended period of time once a specific cure is found.
The study, which was produced by two independent teams in the country, used “a new next-generation sequencing (NGS) research assay” from Thermo Fisher Scientific on Italian COVID-19 patients. The experts then compared them to a sample from the original outbreak to come up with their findings.
“Had we investigated other viruses we might have expected up to dozens of new mutations after so many infectious cycles in patients,” professor Stefano Menzo, head of Virology at Ancona University Hospital, said in a statement. “Our initial data show that this is a very stable RNA virus, with only five novel variants. A virus with a stable genome is good news for vaccine development because it indicates that the effectiveness of vaccines could be more consistent, possibly over many years.”
Dr. Maria Rosaria Capobianchi, head of the Virology Department, Lazzaro Spallanzani National Institute for Infectious Diseases, said the ability to run quick, multiple samples is important in the scientific community’s fight to stay ahead of the virus.
However, Capobianchi cautioned, “viral genomes are dynamic and these preliminary data need further analysis to determine the biological significance of the gene variants and to investigate the evolutionary path of the coronavirus.” […]
Fox News
World’s First Internationally Piloted Drone Delivery
[…]Yesterday, [24 March] Swoop Aero took a leading role in global health transformation. We became the first drone logistics company globally to operate a fleet of aircraft from outside the country of operation. We have deployed this capability in order to support the Malawian national government’s health system as they commence their response to the pandemic. With the backing of the College of Medicine and the Malawian Department of Civil Aviation, our ground operations teams, staffed by local Malawians that have been trained over the last few months, made this possible. There were no members of the Australian flight operations team present, as they have all returned to Australia to comply with the government’s strict travel restrictions. The goal of this remotely piloted operation is to support the government’s COVID-19 response following reports of an acceleration of reported cases across the country. It means that our local Malawian ground operations teams are not losing their jobs at a difficult time for the economy. In addition, at a time when normality has been suspended for most, this means that we can continue routine flight operations in our network, delivering essential healthcare supplies for pre-existing communicable diseases, such as HIV/AIDS, malaria and TB.
This unprecedented step forward in the aeromedical drone logistics sector is a testament to the incredible technology of the Swoop Aero system; and, the reality of being able to execute this safely is a testament to years of hard work in ensuring the system meets the highest aviation standards. The Swoop Aero Control Platform remains the primary interface for the coordination, management and automation of the physical aircraft. In addition to piloting the flights, the software also manages the coordinated efforts of local Malawian team members and Australian staff to conduct flights safely, in accordance with industry regulatory standards. The Control Platform ensures that all flights can be safely piloted from anywhere in the world to ensure the aircraft safely follows the correct flight route, with speed, precision and reliability, and thus, reaches the specified location on time to deliver essential supplies. Furthermore, this system gives Swoop Aero team members an ‘eye in the sky’, an Air Traffic Management platform, to oversee the local airspace and manage multiple flights at any one time, in order to safely achieve the best possible outcomes for the health system. . Our continued efforts in this challenging period will have sustained benefits for the Malawian population and have demonstrated the sustainability, longevity and adaptability of the network to operate in a host of challenging and unforeseen circumstances. […]
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