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REXBURG, Idaho (NEXSTAR) – Officials at Brigham Young University’s Idaho campus are warning students that intentionally contracting COVID-19 is grounds for possible permanent dismissal, according to a statement on the school’s website. “BYU-Idaho is deeply troubled by accounts of individuals who have intentionally exposed themselves or others to COVID-19, with the hope of getting the disease and being paid for plasma that contains COVID-19 antibodies,” according to the statement. The university warned on Sept. 25 that it might have to close the campus if the school failed to stay under coronavirus thresholds laid out by Eastern Idaho Public Health. That...

Dozens of major hospitals across the U.S. are grappling with whether to ignore a federal decision allowing broader emergency use of blood plasma from recovered COVID patients to treat the disease in favor of dedicating their resources to a gold-standard clinical trial that could help settle the science for good. As many as 45 hospitals from coast to coast have expressed interest in collaborating on a randomized, controlled clinical trial sponsored by Vanderbilt University Medical Center, said principal investigator Dr. Todd Rice. Officials at some hospitals said they are considering committing only to the clinical trial — and either avoiding...

It’s just the flu, bro. Apparently there is a blood plasma treatment that involves taking antibody rich blood plasma from recovered CV patients and putting it in sick patients. Trump authorizes it’s use as of tonight, I believe. Since Trump authorizes it you can be sure that the media will give it the same treatment that it gave hydroxychloriquine. They will repeatedly say how dangerous it is no matter how safe it is. Blood transfusions and blood plasma don’t sound dangerous to me. People get them all the time. That idiot on CNN, Joe Scarborough will probably have the best...

President Donald Trump announced on Aug. 23 the emergency authorization of convalescent plasma to treat the CCP virus. “I’m pleased to make a truly historic announcement … that will save thousands of lives,” Trump said, describing it as a “breakthrough in a fight” against the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus. Trump announced that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) made an emergency-use authorization of convalescent plasma for the virus, saying it is “safe and very effective.” He said the treatment will reduce mortality from the virus by about 35 percent. Convalescent plasma treatments use blood from COVID-19 patients who have...

WASHINGTON (AP) — After expressing frustration at the slow pace of approval for coronavirus treatments, President Donald Trump was set to announce on Sunday the emergency authorization of convalescent plasma for COVID-19 patients. The announcement will come after days of White House officials suggesting there were politically motivated delays by the Food and Drug Administration in approving a vaccine and therapeutics for the disease that has upended Trump’s reelection chances. On the eve of the Republican National Convention, Trump was set to issue the emergency order — which would make it easier for some patients to obtain the treatment —...

F.D.A.’s Emergency Approval of Blood Plasma Is Now on HoldGovernment health leaders including Dr. Francis S. Collins and Dr. Anthony S. Fauci urged caution last week, citing weak data from the country’s largest plasma study. WASHINGTON — Last week, just as the Food and Drug Administration was preparing to issue an emergency authorization for blood plasma as a Covid-19 treatment, a group of top federal health officials including Dr. Francis S. Collins and Dr. Anthony S. Fauci intervened, arguing that emerging data on the treatment was too weak, according to two senior administration officials. The authorization is on hold for...

Explanation: The hydrogen in your body, present in every molecule of water, came from the Big Bang. There are no other appreciable sources of hydrogen in the universe. The carbon in your body was made by nuclear fusion in the interior of stars, as was the oxygen. Much of the iron in your body was made during supernovas of stars that occurred long ago and far away. The gold in your jewelry was likely made from neutron stars during collisions that may have been visible as short-duration gamma-ray bursts or gravitational wave events. Elements like phosphorus and copper are present...

The most comprehensive national study to date has found that convalescent plasma appears to be safe to use on COVID-19 patients, a promising development in the race to find a treatment for the deadly virus. But the study didn't determine whether the treatment works. A team of more than 5,000 doctors from over 2,000 hospitals and laboratories have been testing the experimental therapy, which involves transfusing the antibody-rich blood serum of recovered COVID-19 patients into people who are battling the illness. Of the 5,000 seriously ill patients who received blood plasma transfusions for the study, fewer than 1 percent experienced...

If he didn’t have the test results to prove it, David Herrmann never would have known he had the coronavirus. Last month, Herrmann, 54, visited his doctor for a regular check-up after returning to San Antonio from a ski trip to Crested Butte, Colo., with his family. Because he’d traveled to an area where the virus was spreading, his doctor ordered a test, and within days, it came back positive. But his only symptoms were a brief loss of taste and smell, and a passing fever that never broke 100 degrees. Herrmann knows others with COVID-19 aren’t as fortunate. So...

U.S. hospitals desperate to help very sick patients with COVID-19, the highly contagious respiratory disease caused by the new coronavirus, are trying a treatment first used in the 1890s that relies on blood plasma donated by recovered patients. People who survive an infectious disease like COVID-19 are generally left with blood containing antibodies, or proteins made by the body's immune system to fight off a virus. The blood component that carries the antibodies can be collected and given to newly infected patients - it is known as "convalescent plasma." More than 275,000 Americans have tested positive for COVID-19, and epidemiologists...

Tiffany Pinckney remembers the fear when COVID-19 stole her breath. So when she recovered, the New York City mother became one of the country’s first survivors to donate her blood to help treat other seriously ill patients. “It is definitely overwhelming to know that in my blood, there may be answers,” Pinckney told The Associated Press. Doctors around the world are dusting off a century-old treatmentfor infections: Infusions of blood plasma teeming with immune molecules that helped survivors beat the new coronavirus. There’s no proof it will work. But former patients in Houston and New York were early donors, and...

The Food and Drug Administration on Thursday authorized its first emergency use coronavirus serology test, opening the way for a possible treatment for COVID-19, which has infected some 1 million worldwide and killed more than 51,000. The test will determine if a person has been infected. The test was developed by Cellex Inc. and involves a blood draw done at a certified lab. It can provide results in 15 minutes. “Based on the totality of scientific evidence available to FDA, it is reasonable to believe that your product may be effective in diagnosing COVID-19,” FDA chief scientist Denise M. Hinton...

Hoping to stem the toll of the state’s surging coronavirus outbreak, New York health officials plan to begin collecting plasma from people who have recovered and injecting the antibody-rich fluid into patients still fighting the virus. Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced the plans during a news briefing Monday. The treatment, known as convalescent plasma, dates back centuries and was used during the flu epidemic of 1918 — in an era before modern vaccines and antiviral drugs. Some experts say the treatment, although somewhat primitive, might be the best hope for combating the coronavirus until more sophisticated therapies can be developed, which...

the predecessor to the U.S. Air Force's iconic SR-71 Blackbird ... also incorporated then-state-of-the-art features to reduce its radar cross-section. These included a combination of a stealthy overall shape and radar-evading structures, as well as the use of composites in its construction, and the incorporation of radar absorbing materials on its skin. A far less known, but still a key component of the Skunk Works plan to make the A-12 harder to spot on radar involved a cesium-laced fuel additive to dramatically reduce the radar signature of the plane's massive engine exhausts and afterburner plumes by creating an ionizing cloud...

A shortage of a versatile medicine used to treat immune disorders and other diseases has forced U.S. hospitals and infusion clinics to suspend treatment for many patients. The medicine, immune globulin, contains antibodies harvested from plasma, a component of blood. The injected product helps people with compromised immune systems fight off infections, and treats certain muscle and nerve disorders. The drug’s shortage increases the risk of infection for patients and the amount of pain they are suffering, doctors say.

15,000 to 11,000 years ago Earth experienced a series of climatic fluctuations... there was a short cold spell, known as the Younger Dryas, before the final warming and... end of the last ice age. Based on Greenland ice core data, the Younger Dryas began... 10,900 B.C., and its ending... circa 9700 B.C. and may have occurred within an incredible three years... I once hypothesized that comets were responsible. A comet hitting the land or a shallow ocean, or exploding above the land's surface, scattering dust and debris into the atmosphere, would cause global cooling... This pattern fits well with the...

In November 2016, astronomers watched a young star some 1,500 light-years away from Earth belch out an explosion of plasma and radiation that was roughly 10 billion times more powerful than any flare ever seen leaving Earth's sun. This sudden stellar eruption may be the most luminous known flare ever released by a young star — and it could help scientists better understand the still-murky process of star formation. "Observing flares around the youngest stars is new territory and it is giving us key insights into the physical conditions of these systems," Steve Mairs, an astronomer and lead author of the study, said...

That's a big deal, because it could lead to much smaller and cheaper particle accelerators than the ones we currently rely on. Right now, if you want to install a Large Hadron Collider (LHC) particle accelerator in your back garden, you need a concrete tunnel about 27 kilometres (nearly 17 miles) long and US$5 billion in spare change. But this new experiment uses something known as plasma wakefield acceleration – and it takes up just 10 metres or 33 feet of space. The team behind the Advanced Proton Driven Plasma Wakefield Acceleration Experiment (AWAKE) at CERN in Geneva has been...

Scientists say the 'skyglows' represent an entirely new celestial phenomenon Scientists began studying mysterious ribbons of light dubbed 'Steve' in 2016 While they were thought to be auroras, study shows they form differently Experts now say they're a distinct phenomenon that was previously unknown Mysterious purple and white ribbons of light seen dancing across the sky may represent a never-before-identified type of ‘skyglow.’ While amateur photographers have been documenting the phenomenon for decades, scientists only began to study it back in 2016. Initial research suggested the lights, which have come to be known as STEVE, may be a type of...

There's a sort of radio wave that bangs its way around Earth, knocking around electrons in the plasma fields of loose ions surrounding our planet and sending strange tones to radio detectors. It's called a "whistler." And now, scientists have observed bursts like this in more detail than ever before. Whistlers, typically created during certain lightning strikes, usually travel along Earth's magnetic-field lines. Humans first detected them more than a century ago, thanks to their ability to make a "whistling" sound (really more like a ghostly recording of laser blasts in a "Star Wars" movie) when picked up by a...