Category: Tech

Approximately six million doses of Johnson and Johnson’s single-shot coronavirus vaccine are to be delivered to African Nations. The African Union decided to deliver 27 African nations who have paid for the shipment through the end of August.

African coronavirus envoy Strive Masiyiwa addressed the nation by saying 18 countries are finalizing loans from the World Bank and other global lenders before they make the payment. Delivery will be carried out at an average of 10 million a month from 2021 September. Which will gradually be increased to 20 million till January until the order is fulfilled by September next year. Masiyiwa further added that local production is the real answer and the balance of Africa’s vaccine requirements will come from donors including COVAX.

The countries have been eagerly waiting for this shipment as 29 countries currently are struggling with a severe third wave of the pandemic. Third-wave is stretching the capacity of the hospitals and causing oxygen and bed shortages in intensive care units. The African Union is targeting to vaccinate 60% of the continent’s population in a year. The signed deal with Johnson and Johnson will provide the doses in 18 months.

The two-dose vaccine given at four-week intervals is recommended based on a study on 3,732 participants. COVID-19 vaccine Moderna might become the second shot okayed for adolescent use in the European Union after regulators recommend them for 12 to 17 years old.

For people above 18, the use of Spikevax vaccine will be the same in adolescents. The European Medicines Agency said adding the shot can produce a comparable antibody response to that seen in 18-25 years old. It has been considered important to vaccinate children for reaching herd immunity in light of the highly contagious Delta Variant. In May, Moderna claimed that their vaccines are safe and very effective in teenagers.

Even though Covid-19 has developed mild symptoms or none in most children, they remain at risk of becoming seriously ill and can spread the virus. In May, Pfizer and German partner BioNTech approved their vaccine for teens. The regulators said teens will face common side effects as seen in older people after vaccination. The Committee of Medical Products for Human Use confirmed the overall safety profile of Spikevax in the adolescent study and outweigh the risk factors in children aged 12-17. Heart inflammation such as myocarditis and pericarditis have been listed as a possibility but a very rare side effect from the use of mRNA vaccines such as Moderna’s and Pfizer’s in adults.

China made its debut for the world’s fastest train in Qingdao. The Maglev bullet has been developed by state-owned China Railway Rolling Stock Corporation which can reach speeds of 600 kilometers per hour (373 miles per hour).

Maglev is an abbreviation of “Magnetic Levitation” and the train appears to be “floating”. The extreme electromagnetic force makes it look like it is gliding above the tracks. The prototype of the Maglev bullet train was revealed to the media in the year 2019 where China announced to create three hour transportation circles between major metropolitan areas.

The world’s most populous country believes that high-speed rail is a major priority for them which could connect more of its large cities by train to reduce the time and expenses. The average speed of trains in China runs at about 350 kph while airplanes fly at 800-900 kph. They needed this bullet to fill that critical middle space.

The drawback of maglev right now is the lack of completed track networks for bullets. Currently, they have only one working commercial line for use. It connects Shanghai’s Pudong Airport with the Longyang Road station. The 19 miles (30 km) journey takes around seven and a half minutes with the train’s top speed of 430 mph. Several other networks are under construction and will be ready soon.

In a widespread global outage of service on Thursday, many popular websites fell offline. India also got affected by this outage and delivery platforms like Zomato, Amazon, Paytm also faced downtime.

To reach some sites many visitors received DNS errors, which means their request could not reach the websites. Global platforms that got affected include Airbnb, UPS, HSBC bank, British Airways, and the PlayStation network used for online games. Akamai who is the provider of one of the popular DNS reported that it was an “emerging issue” with its Edge. Down Detector had also reported thousands of problems in the internet outage.

Asia One reported that Domain Name System(DNS), turns the human-readable web addresses we use, like BBC into the addresses that point to a computer server somewhere online. Previously there was a partial outage which was reported as some compromised services in different regions. The problem was soon resolved in Europe and the US but some Asian nations still faced that problem. Later the issue was resolved and services were working on normal operations.

Asia One News that that this was the second widespread outage in two months. Last month in June there was a similar outage where cloud computing provider Fatly had an interrupted service. This included a large number of high-profile websites.

On Wednesday, Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) said that five-member nations produced 75% vaccines of COVID-19. Only three-quarters of nations, China, India, Germany, The United States, and France gave the vaccines this year. Director-general aimed to expand the COVID-19 vaccine manufacturing to promote equitable access. According to AsiaOne, the discriminatory access to the vaccines came out as the root cause of the unequal recovery of the global economy. She states that vaccination of the developed economy is taking place at a rapid rate while the poorer countries are lagging.

1.1 billion vaccines were produced worldwide in the month of June but only 1.4% went to the African countries. The Africans account for 17% of the world population. Only 0.24% went to the low-income countries. This data even declined in the first half of July.

News Asia One reported that in developed countries, 94 out of 100 doses have been administered to every resident. Okonjo-lweala was concerned about only 20 million people, or 1.5 percent of the population is fully vaccinated compared to 42 percent of people in developed countries. Director-general even states that it is not acceptable by WTO for moral, practical, and economic reasons. She demands full transparency in the supply of vaccine deals.

Jeff Bezos, the second billionaire to ride his own spaceship in less than a week, soared into space Tuesday on his rocket company’s inaugural voyage with passengers on board. The Amazon CEO was accompanied by the select few people- an entourage that included his brother, an 18-year-old Dutch teen, and an 82-year-old Texas aeronautics pioneer – the youngest and oldest people to ever fly in space.

Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket, named for America’s first astronaut, launched from West Texas on the 52nd anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. This is a date chosen by Bezos for its historical significance. Even though Richard Branson of Virgin Galactic pushed forward his own mission from New Mexico in the battle for space tourist revenues, he stuck to it and surpassed him to orbit by nine days.

Bezos’ capsule was totally automated, and the remarkable journey required no official employees on board.

Blue Origin climbed to a height of around 66 miles (106 kilometers). This was way more than 10 miles (16 kilometers) higher than Branson’s July 11 ride. To propel the capsule far enough, the 60-foot (18-meter) booster sped to Mach 3, before detaching and landed upright. Mach 3 is three times the speed of sound.

Wally Funk has been the world’s oldest woman to travel into space, 60 years after being denied the privilege.

For Funk, it was all about achieving one goal: being one of the first female astronauts. Notwithstanding being under the age of 24, the aviation genius got a break in 1961 when she became the youngest of the Mercury 13 women. This was a group of women who completed testing to prove that women could compete for NASA’s astronaut corps.

At a time when women were deliberately prohibited from many aspects of life, she got the top aeronautics ratings in college, became a professionally certified pilot, and was the first female civilian flight teacher at a U.S. military facility.

Funk’s dreams of flying into space were never realized since she was a woman. However, Funk, 82, traveled to the edge of space with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos aboard a rocket and capsule designed by his personal spaceflight business, Blue Origin.

Funk, who is accustomed to making history, became the oldest astronaut in history when she appeared from the ship after landing with a broad grin and arms outstretched, a look of sheer joy on her face.

The richest man on the planet, business tycoon Jeff Bezos, to take on the edge of space in two days. The founder of Blue Origin is due to be a part of the all-civilian crew for a planned 11-minute ride to the edge of space. It is scheduled to launch from a West Texas site.

AsiaOne stated that the mission is expected to kick off on Tuesday at 8 am ET if weather permits. This history will be live-streamed and will have a running live blog with updates. Bezos will be accompanied by his brother Mark Bezos, trailblazing octogenarian woman aviator Wallu Fink and a person who paid $28mn for a spot aboard the spacecraft.

New Shepard is an 18.3-meters-tall, fully autonomous rocket-and-capsule combo which cannot be piloted from inside the spacecraft, as mentioned by news Asia one. It is a suborbital rocket that launches in a vertical position like a traditional rocket launch. The flight will take the passengers to about 62miles up (100Km) which will later return by parachute. The position is designed to speed up the aerial launch to 2,200 miles per hour in space. It will be completely different from Virgin Galactic’s rocket plane of fellow rival Richard Branson. This extraterrestrial journey will take place exactly after 9 days of the Bransons trip.

The recent study shows that the level of antibody present in infected patients is much higher after the single dose of the Sputnik V Covid vaccine as compared to participants with no history of infection.

As per the News Asia One, Sputnik V vaccine is produced using the combination of two adenoviruses. Adenoviruses are common viruses that can cause a realm of illness with symptoms like fever, sore throat, and cold. Sputnik V’s two doses are 92% effective against covid-19 infection.

On 289 health workers a research was carried out on one and two shots in Argentina. All the volunteers after three weeks of the second dose generated virus-specific immunoglobulin G (IgG) antibodies with no prior infection. It is the most common type of antibody found in the blood. However, 94% of volunteers after receiving their first dose developed IgG antibodies against the virus. Whereas 90% of the volunteers showed neutralizing antibodies which directly interferes with the capability of viruses to infect cells. After a single dose, the high antibody level in naive participants suggests the benefit of delaying the second dose.

For the previously infected volunteers, the second dose does not increase the production of neutralizing antibodies.

British Business Magnate Sir Richard Branson flew high above New Mexico in the United States in the passenger rocket plane, which his company tried to build for the last 17 years. This symbolic milestone venture was a fully crewed test flight to space. The 70-year-old Virgin group’s founder soared more than 50miles above sea level. 100Km above the sea level is the widely accepted boundary of space which is known as the Kármán line.

Branson’s own winged rocket ship was his boldest adventure yet and beat fellow billionaire Jeff Bezos on 11th July. He experienced the curvature of the Earth and three to four minutes of weightlessness after which he glided back home safely to a runway landing. After John Glenn (77) flew on the shuttle in 1998 Branson became the second septuagenarian to depart for space.

This history was witnessed by his wife, children and grandchildren along with other 500 people. SpaceX’s Elon Musk also arrived in Mexico to witness the flight and wished him “Godspeed!”. The billionaire Elon Musk is Branson’s Chief rival in the space-tourism race.

VVS Unity, a twin-fuselage carrier jet dubbed VMS Eve which was named after Branson’s late mother, was a gleaming white space plane that took off from Spaceport America, a state-owned facility near the town of Truth or Consequences.