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As Merck and Pfizer prepare to report clinical trial results for experimental COVID-19 antiviral pills, rivals are lining up with what they hope will prove to be more potent and convenient oral treatments of their own.

Enanta Pharmaceuticals, Pardes Biosciences, Japan’s Shionogi and Novartis said they have designed antivirals that specifically target the coronavirus while aiming to avoid potential shortcomings such as the need for multiple pills per day or known safety issues.

Infectious disease experts stressed that preventing COVID-19 through wide use of vaccines remains the best way to control the pandemic. But they said the disease is here to stay and more convenient treatments are needed.

“We need to have oral alternatives for suppression of this virus. We have people who aren’t vaccinated getting sick, people whose vaccine protection is waning, and people who can’t get vaccinated,” said Dr. Robert Schooley, an infectious diseases professor at UC San Diego School of Medicine.

Pfizer and Merck, as well as partners Atea Pharmaceuticals and Roche AG have all said they could seek emergency approval for their COVID-19 antiviral pills this year.

Rivals are at least a year behind. Pardes began an early-stage trial last month, Shionogi plans to start large-scale clinical trials by year-end, Enanta aims to start human trials early next year and Novartis is still testing its pill in animals.

Enanta Chief Executive Jay Luly said re-purposing drugs originally developed for other viral infections is not an unreasonable approach. But it is not known how potent they will be against COVID-19 or how well they can target lung tissue, where the virus takes hold.

The risk is “if it’s not a great effort …you’ll end up losing time,” Luly said.

Antivirals are complex to develop because they must target the virus after it is already replicating inside human cells without damaging healthy cells. They also need to be given early to be most effective.

Currently, intravenous and injected antibodies are the only approved treatments for non-hospitalized COVID-19 patients.

An effective, convenient COVID-19 treatment could reach annual sales of over $10 billion, according to a recent Jefferies & Co estimate. Merck has a contract with the U.S. government that implies a price of $700 for a course of treatment with its antiviral molnupiravir.

SEARCH FOR AN EASY TREATMENT

Several classes of antiviral drugs are being explored. Polymerase inhibitors such as Atea’s drug – first developed for hepatitis C – aim to disrupt the ability of the coronavirus to make copies of itself. There are also protease inhibitors, like Pfizer’s pill, which are designed to block an enzyme the virus needs in order to multiply earlier in its lifecycle.

We are trying to halt the processes “that allow the virus to set up a replication factory,” said Uri Lopatin, CEO at Pardes, which is also developing a COVID-19 protease inhibitor.

Merck’s molnupiravir, developed with Ridgeback Therapeutics, was at one point envisioned as a flu drug and works by introducing errors into the genetic code of the virus.

“The broad spectrum activity of molnupiravir against RNA viruses, including other respiratory viruses, suggests that it should be a durable, useful molecule,” said Jay Grobler, who oversees infectious disease and vaccines at Merck.

Merck said data shows the drug is not capable of inducing genetic changes in human cells, but men in its trials have to abstain from heterosexual intercourse or agree to use contraception.

Until reproductive toxicology study results are available, “we don’t know if there’s any potential effect of drug on sperm,” said Merck research executive Nicholas Kartsonis.

Both molnupiravir and Pfizer’s pill are taken every 12 hours for five days. Pfizer’s drug must be combined with older antiviral ritonavir, which boosts the activity of protease inhibitors but can cause gastrointestinal side effects and interfere with other medications.

“It is a nuisance to add a drug you don’t need to have a drug you want to take be effective,” Schooley said.

Pfizer said a low dose of ritonavir will help its protease inhibitor remain in the body longer and at higher concentrations.

Enanta, which gets most of its revenue from a hepatitis C deal with AbbVie Inc, scanned its library of antiviral compounds early in 2020. It instead chose to design a new protease inhibitor that targets an enzyme vital to the ability of the coronavirus, and its variants, to replicate.

The drug will be tested at once daily dosing with no ritonavir boosting, Luly said.

Lopatin said Pardes is assessing once- and twice-a-day dosing and whether its drug needs to be combined with ritonavir. “We do not anticipate that we will need to use a booster,” he said.

Pardes received funding from Gilead Sciences, which gave up on an inhaled version of its remdesivir, an intravenous polymerase inhibitor approved for hospitalized COVID-19 patients.

Gilead is still working an oral remdesivir, which was also first developed for hepatitis C and is currently the only antiviral approved for treating COVID-19.

China’s Alibaba has begun offering payment services from Tencent’s WeChat on a number of its apps, after the government ordered major tech firms to stop blocking each other’s services and links.

Local tech blog 36Kr reported on Tuesday that users of Alibaba’s food delivery app Ele.me, luxury goods app Kaola and e-book app Shuqi can now purchase goods via WeChat Pay, one of China’s most popular online payment options.

Alibaba’s used-goods marketplace app Xianyu and supermarket app Freshippo have also applied for WeChat Pay integration, the tech blog said.

Alibaba confirmed the contents of the report to Reuters. Previously, the main way users could make payments on those apps was via Alipay, from Alibaba’s financial affiliate Ant Group.

Earlier this month, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said it had asked internet companies to end a long-standing practice of blocking each other’s links and services on their sites. Such practices prevented app users from seamlessly jumping to services between rival companies.

Days later, Tencent’s WeChat messaging app started allowing users to access links to rival platforms. Previously, it had not allowed users to click on links sent via chat to, for instance, product listings from Alibaba’s Taobao marketplace.

The changes come as authorities continue to tighten regulation in the internet sector.

In April, antitrust regulators fined Alibaba a record $2.75 billion for anti-competitive behaviour.

Google on Tuesday said deals with Android phone makers that landed it a record 4.3-billion-euro ($5 billion) antitrust fine boosted competition and rejected EU charges they were a carrot-and-stick tactic that stifled rivals.

Google was addressing the second day of a week-long hearing as it tries to get Europe’s second-highest court to annul the fine and a European Commission order to make it loosen its search engine grip on Android devices.

Lawyers for Google and the EU competition executive clashed over the company’s Mobile Application Distribution Agreements (MADAs) that require phone makers (OEMs) to pre-install the Google Search app and Chrome browser app in return for licensing Google Play for free.

“This licensing model is what attracted OEMs to the Android platform, and what enabled those OEMs to offer a consistent and high-quality user experience at the lowest possible price,” Google’s lawyer Alfonso Lamadrid told the General Court.

“People use Google because they choose to, not because they’re forced to,” he said.

Commission lawyer Carlos Urraca Caviedes rejected the argument, calling the deals and other restrictions Google’s carrot-and-stick policy towards phone makers.

“These helped Google ensured its competitors would not achieve critical mass to challenge its dominance,” he told the court.

He also said such deals were unnecessary in view of the market power of Google, the world’s most popular internet search engine, and its significant number of users.

Urraca Caviedes said what Google did “goes beyond what is necessary to develop and maintain the Android platform”.

A verdict may come next year. The case is T-604/18 Google vs European Commission.

According to WABetainfo, while WhatsApp already offers the ability to link its account with WhatsApp Web, Desktop, and Portal to some beta testers, it’s still developing an app for the iPad and the ability to link another phone with the same account.

WABetainfo says it’s not clear whether this feature will only be available for tablets, but for the time being, there is no evidence that the company will exclude mobile phones.

One of the things that people complain about the most about WhatsApp over Telegram is the lack of multi-device support, as you can log in to as many devices as you’d like. WhatsApp, on the other hand, is still restricted to one main device with an active internet connection.

The company is also working on another important feature, which is the ability to transfer chat history between iOS and Android devices and vice-versa.

There’s no official news regarding when WhatsApp will release multi-device support or multi-device 2.0, but the company is developing them and making progress.

HP’s ZBook lineup — which encompasses the lightweight ZBook Firefly, the affordable ZBook Power, the powerful ZBook Fury, and the best-of-all-worlds ZBook Studio brands — doesn’t attract a lot of attention. As a mobile workstation-class device, the ZBook Studio is not as flashy as most gaming laptops or as affordable as most “creator” laptops, but in many ways, it’s better than both.

In the parlance of the tech nerd, the HP ZBook Studio G8 is a “mobile workstation.” On the hardware side, that typically means that you’re getting a Xeon processor, error-correcting (ECC) RAM, and an A-series or Quadro graphics card, paired with some sort of reliability testing (MIL-SPEC or MIL-STD), software certifications from major developers like Adobe, and an extended warranty. All of this usually comes attached to a price so high you’ll get altitude sickness if you stare at it for too long.

We don’t normally review mobile workstations on PetaPixel because the price increase associated with things like ECC memory and an enterprise GPU doesn’t translate into a measurable performance gain for photo and video editing, but HP did something interesting with the ZBook Studio G8: the company sort of split the difference.

The Studio G8 doesn’t use ECC memory or an Intel Xeon CPU, and it can be configured with a normal GeForce RTX 30-series GPU, but it still comes with all the other workstation perks. In other words: it offers the same performance as a high-end gaming laptop and the same sleek, professional design as a high-end consumer laptop, with better build quality, guaranteed reliability, and a longer warranty than either of the other categories. As a result, it comes in a little cheaper than similar options from, say, the Dell Precision lineup.

That’s not to say it’s cheap. The model HP sent us for review still costs an eye-watering $4,400:

Even if you downgrade some of the components, you’re still going to spend a lot of money. We actually asked the folks at HP to send us “Good, Better, Best” configuration options that they would recommend, and the most affordable of the bunch will still run you almost $2,800:

But that’s not to say that the price isn’t justified, or at least justifiable. From design to usability to raw performance, this laptop is fantastic. It’s just important to set expectations from the get-go: We’re not talking about a budget laptop today. We’re not even talking about a semi-affordable laptop. We’re talking about a mobile workstation that charges a substantial premium in exchange for professional-grade reliability and guaranteed performance.

If paying a $1,000 premium for MIL-STD reliability testing, software certifications, and an extended warranty sounds crazy to you, then a mobile workstation is the wrong choice and there’s no reason to read on. However, if that sounds like a reasonable investment and you like the fact that HP isn’t forcing you to throw additional money away on certain enterprise-grade specs you don’t want or need, then read on, because the HP ZBook Studio G8 turns out to be an excellent laptop for creative professionals.

There are only a few laptops that can compete with the likes of Apple and Razer when it comes to chassis design, but the HP ZBook Studio G8 is right up there with the best. The magnesium-and-aluminum alloy chassis is as rigid as a tank, extremely thin, and carved into a sharp design language that I loved from the moment I set eyes on this laptop.

Build quality really is top-notch. HP’s workstation-grade “Z” devices all undergo MIL-STD-810 testing, ensuring a level of reliability that surpasses anything you can expect from a standard consumer laptop. The MIL-STD-810 standard includes a suite of tests that check for resistance against vibration, dust, sand, humidity, altitude, drops, temperature shock, and even a “Freeze/Thaw” test.

Adding to the laptop’s reliability quotient is a three-year warranty direct from the manufacturer, a perk that usually costs extra (if it’s available at all) when you buy a consumer laptop.

Crack the ZBook Studio G8 open, and you’ll reveal an excellent keyboard that combines a satisfying click with a good amount of travel, zero mush, and per-key RGB lighting that gives the laptop just a little bit of gaming flare. The lighting is controlled by HP’s “OMEN” dashboard, and it’s a fun touch on an otherwise very professional-looking laptop.

This is accompanied by a slick, glass-topped trackpad that provides a precise and extremely well-optimized experience that can compete with the best-of-the-best. Because the speaker grill is positioned above the keyboard, the trackpad isn’t quite as big as the ones you’ll find on the latest Apple and Dell computers, but it was plenty big enough for me.

Port selection is solid, with only a little room for improvement. On the left side of the machine is an audio-combo jack, a USB Type-A port, and a Kensington lock; on the right side, you’ll find a sealable SD card slot, a Mini DisplayPort 1.4 port that’s connected directly to the GPU, and two Thunderbolt 4 ports that can carry 40Gbps of data, power, and a display signal.

My gripes are minimal. Mainly, I was annoyed that the Thunderbolt 4 ports are connected directly to the iGPU with no way to re-route that signal in the BIOS (this is according to HP). As a result, anyone using a high-end 4K external display will want to use the Mini DisplayPort for true 10-bit color or high refresh-rate gaming.

For that reason alone, I really wish that HP had included an HDMI 2.1 port in this configuration instead of the MiniDP port. None of the monitors I’ve ever reviewed came with a MiniDP to DP 1.4 cable in the box, wihch forces me to buy a new cable in order to get full performance out of the ASUS ProArt PA32UCG I was using when I reviewed this laptop and eliminates the option of using this as a “single-cable” setup with Thunderbolt providing data, display, and power.

Fortunately, the included display is more than good enough to do professional creative work. The model we’re testing includes a touch-enabled 4K AMOLED screen that was able to hit well over 100% sRGB, 99.9% DCI-P3, and 91.6% Adobe RGB with an excellent Delta E of less than 2 and a maximum brightness of ~400 nits.

If OLED isn’t your thing, the ZBook Studio G8 is also available with a 4K 120Hz “HP DreamColor” LCD display with an advertised peak brightness of 600 nits and 100% coverage of DCI-P3, or an even more affordable Full HD model that promises 100% coverage of sRGB.

It’s nice to see a manufacturer offer both a 4K LCD and a 4K OLED option with identical gamut coverage, as well as a more affordable (but still acceptable) Full HD option. If you’re sold on the peace of mind of a mobile workstation but hate the price tag it carries, the lower-end screen option opens the door to get creative with your configuration, especially if you plan to use an external display much of the time.

As for our 4K OLED unit, you can see the results from our DisplayCAL tests below:

If there’s a big downside to the high-res screen on our model it’s probably battery performance, which is decidedly middle of the road.

As with other high-performance notebooks, the ZBook Studio’s 83WHr battery can’t support the computer’s full 110W TDP (30W to the CPU, 80W to the GPU), and when you’re pushing the computer to its battery-powered performance limit, you can expect no more than about two hours of intense photo editing. In a more reasonable, battery saver or balanced mode, I was able to get about six hours of use for writing, occasional content consumption, and light photo editing, but don’t expect this laptop to compete with something that’s powered by AMD.

Overall, I found a lot to love and very little to complain about when it comes to the design and build quality of the ZBook Studio G8. It’s an excellent laptop that felt like a little piece of military equipment with just enough design flare. The excellent keyboard and trackpad, the professional-grade display, and the dual Thunderbolt 4 ports all make it a solid contender for serious creative work.

Given the extremely thin design, I was skeptical that the HP would be able to squeeze every ounce of performance out of its Core i9-11950H and NVIDIA RTX 3070. I was only kind of right. In most of our benchmarks, the ZBook couldn’t quite out-perform the latest Razer Blade 15 Advanced, which technically uses an ever-so-slightly slower Core i9-11900H, but the thinner ZBook Studio was still able to churn out top-shelf performance numbers.

Whether you’re running Photoshop, Lightroom, or Capture One, you can expect the Studio G8 to fly through most photo and video editing tasks with ease, all while staying remarkably quiet compared to some of the gaming laptops I’ve tested.

For our comparisons today, we’re showing the results from the HP side-by-side with the same tests run on an M1 iMac, an AMD-powered ASUS Zephyrus G14, and the aforementioned Blade 15 Advanced. Full specs below:

Lightroom Classic

In our standard import and export tests, the ZBook clocked in a tiny bit slower than the Razer Blade, but faster than our other test machines. As a reminder, these tests consist of importing 110 61-megapixel Sony a7R IV and 150 100-megapixel PhaseOne XF RAW files, generating 1:1 (Lightroom Classic) or 2560px (Capture One Pro) previews, applying a custom-made preset with heavy global edits, and then exporting those same files as 100% JPEGs and 16-bit TIFFs.

You can see the results for Lightroom Classic below:

Capture One Pro

The story is even better in Capture One, where the computer’s RTX 3070 finally gets to flex its muscle.

As we’ve mentioned in several of our past reviews, Lightroom does not use any sort of GPU acceleration during import or export, relying exclusively on the performance of your CPU and RAM to generate the numbers you see above. However, Capture One does take advantage of the GPU, so when it comes time to export the heavily-edited Sony a7R IV and Phase One XF variants in C1, the HP ZBook Studio G8 was able to close the gap with the Blade and trade blows at the top of the pack.

The results are essentially a wash between the three PCs, all of which benefit from NVIDIA RTX 30 series GPUs, with the M1 iMac falling way behind:

Photoshop

Finally, we ran our usual Photoshop test: Puget Systems‘ industry-standard PugetBench benchmark.

PugetBench assigns an Overall and four Category scores after timing a wide variety of tasks including basic stuff like loading, saving, and resizing a large .psd, GPU-accelerated filters like Smart Sharpen and Field Blur, and heavily RAM-dependent tasks like Photo Merge. As we have in the past, we ran version 0.8 of this particular benchmark, because it was the last version to include a Photo Merge test.

As you can see, the powerful GPU, 32GB of 3200MHz RAM, and the NVIDIA RTX 3070 GPU come together to put up impressive numbers in every category tested:

Performance Takeaways

There’s no questioning the HP ZBook Studio G8’s performance chops. Is it the most powerful laptop money can buy? Definitely not. HP’s own ZBook Fury lineup, the Alienware x17, and the Lenovo Legion 7i (to name a few) can all be configured with more powerful (and power-hungry) CPU/GPU combinations that would no-doubt outperform the ZBook Studio. However, it’s awesome to see this kind of performance across the board from such a thin device.

This is seriously impressive photo editing performance packed inside of a chassis that’s thinner than we previously thought possible for an Intel-based workstation.

If you can stomach the price, the HP ZBook Studio G8 is a phenomenal laptop for photo and video editors who want great performance paired with guaranteed reliability. That latter point really matters to working pros, who often opt for high-end gaming laptops with less-than-ideal build quality and lower-quality displays in order to achieve this kind of performance.

However, even when you understand the benefits, the Studio G8’s price is really hard to swallow. The variant I tested here costs about $1,000 more than you would spend on an (already expensive) Razer Blade 15 Advanced with basically the same core specs, a more powerful GPU, faster PCIe Gen 4 storage, and a next-gen OLED display that covers 100% of both DCI-P3 and AdobeRGB.

You really have to value those un-sexy mobile workstation perks if you’re going to justify that kind of price hike.

Pros

• Excellent performance
• Thin, light, rugged design
• Fantastic trackpad and keyboard
• Multiple color-accurate display options
• Solid port selection with two Thunderbolt 4 ports and an SD card slot
• MIL-STD-810 tested
• 3-year warranty included

Cons

• No HDMI port
• SSD is PCIe 3.0, not 4.0
• RAM is not upgradable
• Sky high price

I hate to spend so much time addressing a computer’s price since a lot more goes into judging the real-world value of a computer than the cost of its components, so in most cases, I’ll focus on performance and usability and leave the economic calculus to individual readers who have individual budgets and don’t give an individual damn whether I think a laptop is “reasonably priced.”

However, “mobile workstations” like the ZBook Studio G8 exist in a different economic reality, and it’s important to understand the benefits and drawbacks of that reality before you either a) spend way too much on a laptop you don’t need, or b) ignore features and benefits that could make the laptop worth every last penny.

For me, a well-built consumer laptop is reliable enough. I simply don’t use my computers hard enough to justify the price jump and there are some really fantastic options out there. But if you’re a professional photographer or video editor who needs a well-rounded, rock-solid machine that will go with you everywhere for the next three to five years, the HP ZBook Studio G8 is worth a very close look. It’s cheaper than many of its direct competitors in the workstation-class, gives you a wider variety of configurations to choose from, and it churns out better performance than we expected from something so sleek.

Several major laptop makers have a workstation brand that offers similar benefits to the ZBook Studio. The most popular are probably Lenovo’s ThinkPads and Dell’s Precision lineup. As I mentioned earlier, these laptops usually swap NVIDIA’s GeForce graphics for a mobile Quadro or A-series GPU, sometimes they use error-correcting “ECC” RAM, and often they include longer warranties, the aforementioned military-grade certifications, and displays that put an emphasis on color and/or battery life over speed and/or gaming performance.

For photographers, we’d recommend avoiding anything with ECC memory, an Intel Xeon processor, or an A-series/Quadro card, simply because these upgrades tend to increase the price significantly without adding much to real-world photo and even video editing performance. An 11th-gen Core i7 or Core i9 CPU, DDR4 RAM and a GeForce RTX 30 series GPU is just fine. Instead, if you’re interested in a mobile workstation, focus more on features like a solid manufacturer warranty, standardized reliability testing, and a killer LCD or OLED display with close-to-100% coverage of either AdobeRGB or DCI-P3.

Many of HP’s ZBook-branded laptops, Dell’s Precision laptops, and several of Lenovo’s ThinkPad models trade blows here in a variety of price brackets and configurations, depending on the kind of CPU, GPU, and display performance you need.

If you’re not interested in a mobile workstation, you can find similar performance and solid build quality for a lot less money by purchasing a high-quality consumer or gaming laptop like the Dell XPS 15/17, the Razer Blade 15 Advanced and Razer Blade 17, or the ASUS Zephyrus G14/G15 (just to name a few). You’ll get a lot more performance-bang-for-your-buck by going with a “consumer” or “creator” laptop vs a proper “mobile workstation,” just be aware of what you’re giving up.

Yes.

The caveats above apply, but other than a few minor gripes that I mention above, I cannot fault this laptop. For creatives, it’s a workhorse. The ZBook Studio G8 delivered a lot more “umph” than I expected from such a thin and light chassis while staying relatively quiet, it looks and feels great, and it offers a good variety of configuration options that help you dial in a ratio of price-to-performance that works for you.

It’s ultimately up to you to decide if the un-glamorous benefits of a mobile workstation are worth the inflated price tag. But if they are, then I have no qualms recommending this laptop.

Instagram is pausing work on a version for children younger than 13, called “Instagram Kids”, the Facebook-owned photo sharing app said on Monday.

Instagram Kids was touted to require parental permission to join, and provide ad-free, age-appropriate content, but US lawmakers and advocacy groups alike have urged the social media giant to drop its launch plans, citing safety concerns.

“We won’t stop pressuring Facebook until they permanently pull the plug,” said Josh Golin, executive director of Fairplay, an advocacy group focused on kids.

Instagram said in a blog post that building Instagram Kids was the right thing to do, but it was pausing the work and would continue building on its parental supervision tools.

“The reality is that kids are already online, and we believe that developing age-appropriate experiences designed specifically for them is far better for parents than where we are today,” it said.

The Wall Street Journal published a report earlier this month, focusing on data suggesting Instagram had a harmful effect on teenagers, particularly teen girls and that Facebook had made minimal efforts to address the issue. However, Facebook has said the report is inaccurate.

A Science channel has reported that the mystery surrounding the Bermuda Triangle may have been solved.

The region is located near North America and has seen the disappearance of countless aeroplanes and ships.

According to a report, a group of scientists from the University of Colorado in the United States observed and studied the weather images, taken via satellite, where they saw unusual clouds over the region.

They claimed that the clouds are acting as “air bombs.”

It has been further mentioned that the wind speed can go above the 170 miles-per-hour mark and the waves can go over 45 ft. The report added that no ships or planes will be able to survive the wind force.

The Bermuda Triangle is unique as the clouds have straight edges.

The recent theory has laid the foundation for further investigation and research for solving the abnormalities surrounding the area.

Earlier, the wreckage of a coal ship that vanished in the Bermuda Triangle with 32 passengers onboard has been found by underwater explorers after nearly 100 years of its disappearance.

The steam-powered bulk carrier, SS Cotopaxi, set off for a journey from Charleston, South Carolina to Havana, Cuba and disappeared near Bermuda in 1925.

As usual, no one knew what happened to the ship or its crew as they were never found.

When one thinks of vampire bats, friendship and cooperation may not be among the qualities that come to mind for these blood-feasting creatures of the night. But maybe they should.

Scientists have provided a deeper understanding of social relationships among vampire bats, showing how those that have forged bonds akin to “friendships” with others will rendezvous with these buddies while foraging for a meal.

Researchers attached small devices to 50 vampire bats to track nighttime foraging in Panama, when these flying mammals drink blood from wounds they inflict upon cattle in pastures. The study involved female bats, known to have stronger social relationships than males.

Among the bats were 23 wild-born individuals that had been kept in captivity for about two years during related research into bat social behavior. Social bonds already had been observed among some of them. After being released back into the wild, the bats were found to often join a “friend” during foraging, possibly coordinating the hunt.

“Each bat maintains its own network of close cooperative social bonds,” said behavioral ecologist Gerald Carter of the Ohio State University and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, who led the research published in the journal PLoS Biology.

Social bonds among vampire bats as they roost in trees include grooming one another and regurgitating blood meals for hungry pals. The study showed that the social bonds formed in roosts extended into the hunt.

“This study opens up an exciting new window into the social lives of these animals,” Carter said.

The researchers suspect that the bats, while almost never departing on foraging forays with their “friends,” link up with them during the hunt – perhaps even recognizing one another’s vocalizations – for mutual benefit. They hypothesize the bats might exchange information about prey location or access to an open wound for feeding.

Vampire bats, which inhabit warmer regions of Latin America and boast wingspans of about 7 inches (18 cm), are the only mammals with a blood-only diet. They reside in colonies ranging from tens to thousands of individuals.

“People’s first reaction to vampire bats is usually, ‘Uh, scary.’ But once you tell them about their complex social lives, they are quite surprised that we can find such behavior that is somewhat similar to what humans do – and which one would maybe expect in primates – in bats,” said study co-author Simon Ripperger, a Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute post-doctoral researcher.

Ripperger called them “amazing creatures” for several reasons.

“Even besides their social lives, vampire bats are quite special: specializing in a diet of 100% blood is already quite rare among vertebrates,” Ripperger said. “They are amazing runners, which you wouldn’t expect in a bat. They have heat sensors in their snouts that help them find a spot to make a bite. They have a protein in their saliva that prevents blood from coagulation, which is actually being used in medical trials to help prevent blood clots in patients who suffered a stroke.”

The bats attack prey from the ground, using their sharp teeth to open a wound, lapping up blood with their tongues.

Carter said there is reason to fear vampire bats because they can transmit rabies to livestock and people.

“But I do think they are beautiful and interesting animals in their own right,” Carter added. “In this way they are a bit like grizzly bears, sharks, rats and venomous snakes: animals that might not help people in any way and might even endanger them, but should still be appreciated for their own sake.”

A small-scale clinical study of the combined use of the AstraZeneca and Sputnik Light vaccines against COVID-19 has shown strong antibody growth in a majority of the study’s participants, the Russian Direct Investment Fund said on Monday.

The data was collected from 20 people who took part in a 100-person study in Azerbaijan that began in February. They first received the AstraZeneca shot followed by the one-dose Russian-made Sputnik Light shot 29 days later, RDIF said.

“According to the results of the interim analysis, a fourfold or higher increase in neutralising antibodies to the spike protein (S-protein) of the SARS-CoV-2 was found in 85% of the volunteers on the 57th day of the study,” RDIF said.

Your Phone software by Microsoft, which serves as a bridge between Android devices and Windows 10, is all set to get a makeover for Windows 11.

While things do not seem to have changed dramatically like new functionality is on the cards in the short term, we know a bit into the app at Microsoft’s recent Surface event as it still reminds us of its existence.

Your Phone app, too, gets a new look as do the other apps updated for Windows 11, with softer set of colors and rounded corners. However, it’s in the interface where the real improvement lies.

If you go into the app right now, you’ll see separate sections for Notifications, Messages, Calls. Also, Apps if you own a supported Samsung device or a Surface Duo. With the new version, XDA Developers spotted that notifications now feature along the left-hand side of the app, with can respond directly from your desktop or laptop.

Other items to have been relocated are Messages, Photos, Apps and Calls that now appear at the top of the screen. The now little less cluttered look should make the app a bit more accessible to newcomers. Although, it can be a bit confusing to those who have got used to the current layout.

From this brief glimpse it’s encouraging to see that the app hasn’t been forgotten about even if it doesn’t get so many changes, and while it’s understandably not as impressive as the synergy between iPhones and Macs (where things like iMessage and Photos are always in perfect sync), it’s still useful for those that spread their working life across form factors.

And with Microsoft fully on board with Android, having waved the white flag on Windows Phone some time ago, a lot more people can benefit.

Is it necessary?

Many have reportedly said they installed the Your Phone software for Windows 10 upon release, but haven’t booted it up again since. Why? Because the stuff they thought they needed it for already has perfectly good systems in place.

But for some it will prove invaluable, and that — combined with the upcoming Android app support for Windows 11 — makes Microsoft’s OS a natural home for Android users.

Microsoft Windows 11 will be released on October 5 as a free upgrade to Windows 10, but the rollout is going to be staggered, so don’t expect to see it on your screen immediately unless you buy a new device — such as Microsoft’s own Surface Pro 8, Surface Pro X, Surface Go 3 or the innovative new Surface Laptop Studio.

Another year is about to end in the next three months, which means there is another cycle of WhatsApp’s end of support for some Android smartphones and iPhones. After November 1, 2021, the messaging app will not work on some of the Android versions. 

WhatsApp is used to removing the support for specific Android versions. This is a common technique because developers always prefer to support the newest OS updates, and it’s hard to always support old versions. It’s the case of Android OS 4.0.4 and older versions: WhatsApp has announced that they will no longer support Android phones running those versions after a new WhatsApp beta for Android update.

What can you do to continue using WhatsApp on those versions? Unfortunately, you won’t be able to update WhatsApp after November 1, 2021, and your current WhatsApp update is going to expire after a certain date.

You need to switch to a new Android device on a supported Android version if your device is old, so be sure to back up your chat history. Note that WhatsApp is also going to support chat history migration from Android to iOS in a future update if you’re interested to switch to iPhone.

Using a virus that grows in black-eyed pea plants, nanoengineers at the University of California San Diego developed a new treatment that could keep metastatic cancers at bay from the lungs.

The treatment not only slowed tumor growth in the lungs of mice with either metastatic breast cancer or melanoma, it also prevented or drastically minimized the spread of these cancers to the lungs of healthy mice that were challenged with the disease.

The research was published Sept. 14 in the journal Advanced Science.

Cancer spread to the lungs is one of the most common forms of metastasis in various cancers. Once there, it is extremely deadly and difficult to treat.

Researchers at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering developed an experimental treatment that combats this spread. It involves a bodily injection of a plant virus called the cowpea mosaic virus. The virus is harmless to animals and humans, but it still registers as a foreign invader, thus triggering an immune response that could make the body more effective at fighting cancer.

The idea is to use the plant virus to help the body’s immune system recognize and destroy cancer cells in the lungs. The virus itself is not infectious in our bodies, but it has all these danger signals that alarm immune cells to go into attack mode and search for a pathogen, said Nicole Steinmetz, professor of nanoengineering at UC San Diego and director of the university’s Center for Nano-ImmunoEngineering.

To draw this immune response to lung tumors, Steinmetz’s lab engineered nanoparticles made from the cowpea mosaic virus to target a protein in the lungs. The protein, called S100A9, is expressed and secreted by immune cells that help fight infection in the lungs. And there is another reason that motivated Steinmetz’s team to target this protein: overexpression of S100A9 has been observed to play a role in tumor growth and spread.

“For our immunotherapy to work in the setting of lung metastasis, we need to target our nanoparticles to the lung,” said Steinmetz. “Therefore, we created these plant virus nanoparticles to home in on the lungs by making use of S100A9 as the target protein. Within the lung, the nanoparticles recruit immune cells so that the tumors don’t take.”

“Because these nanoparticles tend to localize in the lungs, they can change the tumor microenvironment there to become more adept at fighting off cancer — not just established tumors, but future tumors as well,” said Eric Chung, a bioengineering Ph.D. student in Steinmetz’s lab who is one of the co-first authors on the paper.

To make the nanoparticles, the researchers grew black-eyed pea plants in the lab, infected them with cowpea mosaic virus, and harvested the virus in the form of ball-shaped nanoparticles. They then attached S100A9-targeting molecules to the surfaces of the particles.

The researchers performed both prevention and treatment studies. In the prevention studies, they first injected the plant virus nanoparticles into the bloodstreams of healthy mice, and then later injected either triple negative breast cancer or melanoma cells in these mice. Treated mice showed a dramatic reduction in the cancers spreading to their lungs compared to untreated mice.

In the treatment studies, the researchers administered the nanoparticles to mice with metastatic tumor in their lungs. These mice exhibited smaller lung tumors and survived longer than untreated mice.

What’s remarkable about these results, the researchers point out, is that they show efficacy against extremely aggressive cancer cell lines. “So any change in survival or lung metastasis is pretty striking,” said Chung. “And the fact that we get the level of prevention that we do is really, really amazing.”

Steinmetz envisions that such a treatment could be especially helpful to patients after they have had a cancerous tumor removed. “It wouldn’t be meant as an injection that’s given to everyone to prevent lung tumors. Rather, it would be given to patients who are at high risk of their tumors growing back as a metastatic disease, which often manifests in the lung. This would offer their lungs protection against cancer metastasis,” she said.

Before the new treatment can reach that stage, the researchers need to do more detailed immunotoxicity and pharmacology studies. Future studies will also explore combining this with other treatments such as chemotherapy, checkpoint drugs or radiation.

Paper: “S100A9-Targeted Cowpea Mosaic Virus as a Prophylactic and Therapeutic Immunotherapy Against Metastatic Breast Cancer and Melanoma.” In addition to Young Hun (Eric) Chung, co-first authors of the study include Jooneon Park and Hui Cai. Nicole Steinmetz serves as the corresponding author of this work.

Materials scientists from Nanyang Technological University Singapore have found a way to prevent internal short-circuits, the main cause of fires in Li-ion batteries.

Billions of Li-ion batteries are produced annually for use in mobile phones, laptops, personal mobile devices, and the huge battery packs of electric vehicles and aircraft.

This global battery demand is set to grow, with electric vehicles alone requiring up to 2,700 GWh worth of Li-ion batteries a year by 2030, equivalent to some 225 billion mobile phone batteries.

Even with an estimated failure rate of less than one-in-a-million, in 2020 there were 26 power-assisted bicycle (PAB) fires and 42 cases of personal mobility device fires in Singapore.

In most Li-ion battery fires, the cause is due to a build-up of lithium deposits known as dendrites (tiny wire-like tendrils) that cross the separator between the positive (cathode) and negative (anode) electrodes of the battery when it is being charged, causing a short-circuit leading to an uncontrolled chemical fire.

To prevent such battery fires, NTU scientists invented a patent-pending “anti-short layer” that can be easily added inside a Li-ion battery, preventing any future short-circuits from occurring during the charging process.

This concept is akin to adding a slice of cheese to a hamburger’s meat patty in between the buns, thus the new “anti-short layer” can be rapidly adopted in current battery manufacturing.

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Microsoft will begin rolling out Windows 11 on October 5.  However, the company has finalised the new version and released it to its Release Preview channel.

You can switch to the Release Preview in Windows 10 and get the free Windows 11 upgrade early.

Here’s how you can get the free Windows 11 upgrade:

• First you need to see if your PC is compatible with Windows 11 using Microsoft’s PC Health App (download here).
• If your PC is compatible, you will have to register as a Windows Insider at Microsoft’s site to get the upgrade early.
• On the existing 10 PC, go to Settings > Update & Security > Windows Insider Program

• Click the “Get Started” button and link the Microsoft account you used to sign up to be a Windows Insider
• Select the Release Preview ring when asked to pick your Insider settings
• Agree to Microsoft terms and then reboot your computer
• Go to Settings > Update & Security, and you will see a new banner with the option update to Windows 11
• Download and install option and follow the prompts to get the new operating system early

After upgrading to Windows 11, you can then go to Settings > Windows Update and select “Stop getting preview builds” to unenroll from the preview updates for Windows 11 and remain on the final version.

The developers of the PUBG mobile survival gaming franchise are reportedly availing Unreal Engine 5 for its upcoming instalment.

It is no secret that the sequel of the acclaimed is in development. The project rumoured to be titled PUBG 2, is expected to be released next year provided there are no obstacles in the team’s way.

The company, as of this moment, has not announced the release date and title for the project.

A Twitter user by the name of PlayerIGN has come up with rumours about the upcoming PlayerUnknown’s Battleground sequel.

He shared a picture of the job opening advertisement in which PUBG Corporation is hiring a technical animator and a technical art director for an “announced project”.

NEW UE5 PUBG game:

PUBG Amsterdam's hiring to build a new AAA Unreal Engine 5 "UNANNOUNCED PROJECT" game.

A PUBG2 project upgrading to UE5 was discussed a few months ago via internal sources.

Also from diff recent leak at Nvidia, we know there's a WIP Krafton game called "X1." pic.twitter.com/oQKuyN3NQ1

— PlayerIGN (@PlayerIGN) September 22, 2021

Art Director, Game Director and Producers to execute a AAA realisation of the project with Unreal Engine 5,” the advertisement read.

Read More: PUBG Mobile reports 1 billion accumulated downloads since launch

The job advertisement is pretty much summing up that the PUBG Corporation will now be using Unreal Engine 5 instead of its predecessor. Krafton is yet to make it official.

Unreal Engine will be allowing the developers to include better graphics, high-tech performances and allows the company to provide content that will make the player’s money and value worthwhile.

How do you help someone with their leg bitten off by a shark? Groundbreaking research by an Australian medic-surfer has uncovered a simple way to stop bleeding and save lives.

Find the middle point between the hip and the genitals, make a fist and push as hard as you can.

Shark attacks are rare but on the increase Down Under, due in large part to more people being in the water.

So surfer and Australian National University medical school dean Nicholas Taylor set out to discover how to reduce fatalities in the event of an attack.

Many fatal shark bites occur around the legs, leaving the victim to bleed to death despite making it back to shore.

In a study published by Emergency Medicine Australasia, Taylor found that a simple technique to compress the femoral artery was much more effective in stopping bleeding than traditionally-used tourniquets.

His study showed that by making a fist and pressing down on the artery around 89.7% of blood flow was stopped, versus 43.8% using a surfboard leash as a make-shift tourniquet.

The technique worked equally well with the patient wearing a wetsuit and without.

“I knew from my background in emergency medicine if people have massive bleeding from their leg, you can push very hard on the femoral artery and you can pretty much cut the entire blood flow of the leg that way,” he said in a statement released by the university on Friday.

“It is easy to do and easy to remember — push hard between the hip and the bits and you could save a life.”

Taylor hopes the technique will become widely known among Australia’s roughly half a million surfers, for whom shark encounters are less uncommon.

“I want posters at beaches. I want to get it out in the surf community. I want people to know that if someone gets bitten you can pull out the patient, push as hard as you can in this midpoint spot and it can stop almost all of the blood flow,” he said.

The post How do you help someone with their leg bitten off by a shark? appeared first on ARY NEWS.

ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Imran Khan has launched the Digital Media Development Program and said that information technology (IT) is a big opportunity for the youth, ARY News reported on Friday.

PM Imran Khan, while addressing the launching ceremony of the Digital Media Development Program in Islamabad today, urged the youth not to underestimate themselves and asked to always set big targets for them.



The premier said that he was happy to see the launching of the Digital Media Development Program for Pakistani youth. He said that the world is going towards digital media and youth were now becoming billionaires in the modern era.

He urged people to make collective efforts for the development of the country instead of prioritising personal benefits. The ideology of the creation of Pakistan was to form an Islamic welfare state and an Islamic state would never bow head at any cost.

Imran Khan said that the past rulers had forced the nationals to bow heads before the big powers, however, the current government wants to make the country a dignified and self-sufficient state.

“For the first time, every citizen is possessing its own health insurance card for getting free medical facilities in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP). Even in the developed countries like the United States (US), every citizen doesn’t have health insurance facility.”

“We have to make Pakistan a true Islamic welfare state. A society cannot get developed without the supremacy of law and justice. Our government is making efforts to establish the supremacy of law and justice in the country.”

Digital Media Development Program, a flagship initiative as per the vision of PM Imran Khan is launched by Digital Media Wing, Ministry of Information & Broadcasting in collaboration with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) focusing on the development and growth of the Digital Media Ecosystem of Pakistan.

More to follow ……………….

The post PM Imran Khan launches Digital Media Development Program appeared first on ARY NEWS.

Twitter will now allow people to tip their favorite content creators with bitcoin and will also launch a fund to pay some users who host audio chat rooms on its Spaces feature, the company said on Thursday.

The company also said it will test new ways to help users have a safer experience on Twitter, such as warning when people are entering a “heated” conversation, or letting them leave tweet threads they no longer want to be part of.

The product announcements are the latest in Twitter’s effort to compete with rival platforms like Facebook and Alphabet Inc’s YouTube for popular content creators with large followings, and turn around its image as a site where polarized discussions can fester online.

Twitter users globally on iOS devices can now send and receive digital payments, which was previously limited to a small group of testers.

“We believe we can continue to incentivize the types of conversations that people want to see,” said Esther Crawford, product lead for creator monetization at Twitter, in a briefing with reporters.

The San Francisco-based company added it is exploring how to allow users to filter out certain words they do not want to see in the replies to their tweets, which could be used to stop name-calling or abusive speech.

About Bitcoin

Created following the 2008 global financial crisis, bitcoin initially promoted a libertarian ideal and aspired to overthrow traditional monetary and financial institutions such as central banks.

The founding white paper, published on October 31, 2008, was penned by Satoshi Nakamoto, a pseudonym whose identity remains unknown.

The eight-page document included the key goal of processing online payments between two parties without passing via a financial institution.

A first block of 50 bitcoins was created in January 2009, which has risen to 18.8 million units currently in circulation.

No more than 21 million can be created, helping bitcoin’s price to trade way above its rivals.

Thousands of other cryptocurrencies have meanwhile since been created, led by the likes of ethereum, ripple and tether.

There are two ways to get hold of bitcoin. Historically, individuals have “mined” for it by using computers to solve complex mathematical puzzles.

But as bitcoin’s price soared, so did the number of miners, reducing the chances of accessing units this way.

Mining also requires huge amounts of energy, meaning the cost of accessing a bitcoin can exceed the gain, not withstanding the environmental impact amid global efforts to tackle climate change.

The alternative way is to buy a whole or fractions of bitcoin on an exchange platform using traditional currencies.

Purchased funds are held in protected virtual wallets, but with hacks still possible, some investors have decided to hold portfolios offline.

The post Twitter will allow people to tip their favorite content creators with bitcoin appeared first on ARY NEWS.

Sinovac’s COVID-19 vaccine is highly effective against serious illness, although rival shots from Pfizer/BioNTech and AstraZeneca showed better protection rates, a large real world study from Malaysia showed.

The latest data is a boost to the Chinese firm, whose COVID-19 vaccine has been under growing scrutiny over its effectiveness following reports of infections among healthcare workers fully immunized with the Sinovac shot in Indonesia and Thailand.

The study, conducted by the Malaysian government, found that 0.011% of about 7.2 million recipients of the Sinovac shot required treatment in intensive care units (ICU) for COVID-19 infections, health officials told reporters on Thursday.

By contrast, 0.002% of about 6.5 million recipients of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine needed ICU treatment for COVID-19 infections, while 0.001% of 744,958 recipients of the AstraZeneca shot required similar treatment.

Kalaiarasu Peariasamy, a director at the Institute for Clinical Research that conducted the study along with a national COVID-19 taskforce, said vaccinations – regardless of the brand – have reduced the risk of admission to intensive care by 83% and lowered the risk of death by 88% based on a smaller study involving about 1.26 million people.

“The breakthrough rate for intensive care unit admission is extremely low,” he said, adding overall ICU admissions among fully vaccinated individuals stood at 0.0066%.

Mortality rate of the fully vaccinated people was also low at 0.01% and the majority of them were either above 60 years of age or with comorbidities.

There were differences in the demographics of the recipients of the three vaccines and it could have resulted in the different results, Kalaiarasu said.

Many of AstraZeneca recipients were in the “mid-adulthood age”, while the Pfizer and Sinovac shots were “very much for the vulnerable population,” he said.

AstraZeneca recipients also accounted for a much smaller proportion of the study, which involved about 14.5 million fully vaccinated individuals and conducted for more than five months since April 1.

In July, Malaysia said it will stop administering the Sinovac vaccine once its supplies end, as it has a sufficient number of other vaccines for its programme.

The Sinovac vaccine has been widely used in several countries including China, Indonesia, Thailand and Brazil, and the company said earlier this month it had supplied 1.8 billion doses at home and abroad.

Malaysia has fully vaccinated 58.7% of its 32 million population and gave at least one dose to 68.8%.

The post Sinovac’s COVID-19 vaccine highly effective against serious illness: study appeared first on ARY NEWS.

CanSinoBIO’s single-dose COVID-19 vaccine, given at a lower dosage than that for adults, is safe and triggers an immune response in children aged 6-17, results from a small trial showed.

Researchers decided to lower the dosage after a few participants developed fever and headaches graded at level 2 severity – the second-lowest of four levels. In children, the lower dose triggered higher antibody levels than the dosage approved for use in adults in China, according to the peer-reviewed finding from a mid-stage trial.

The trial recruited 150 children and around 300 adults.

The results also showed that children given one lower dose had a stronger antibody response than adults who were given a booster shot 56 days after the first dose.

But the antibody readings did not show to what extent the vaccine can offer protection against COVID-19, researchers from a Chinese disease control agency, CanSinoBIO and other Chinese institutes cautioned in a paper.

CanSinoBIO’s vaccine has not yet got the greenlight for children. China has approved two vaccines, developed by Sinovac and Sinopharm, for use in children from the age of three but vaccinations have yet to begin for those under 12.

The paper said the booster shot for CanSinoBIO’s vaccine improved antibody responses in participants of different age groups, especially for older adults.

But cellular responses, another important part of human immune system, were not boosted by the second shot and researchers said a wider interval than 56 days should be considered.

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