Australia’s health authorities said on Wednesday that they have found an Omicron lineage in a person who arrived in Queensland from South Africa. The new lineage found in the traveller has about half the gene variations of the original Omicron variant and cannot be detected with regular screening. The traveller arrived in the country last Saturday and tested positive for Covid 19. Queensland’s acting chief health officer Peter Aitken told reporters that the new lineage has enough characteristics for the authorities to be able to classify it as Omicron, but nothing about its severi
Finland has reported text messages of unknown origin that are spreading malware. These messages have malicious links, and Telia Co AB, the country’s second-biggest telecommunications operator, has intercepted hundreds of thousands of these messages. Teemu Makela, chief information security officer at Elisa Oyj, the largest telecoms operator, said that the malware attack is exceptional and very worrying, and quite a big amount of text messages are flying around. Most of the messages claim that the recipient has received a voicemail, asking them to open a link. Upon opening the link, An
Singapore is all set to build its third national supercomputer to expand research in Covid-19 and other healthcare areas. The new supercomputer will train artificial intelligence to predict a patient's future disease condition within hours. The past data of patients with specific diseases can be fed into the supercomputer to train the artificial intelligence. This will help in finding out drug combinations for treating Covid-19, while also predicting Covid in a patient. The National Supercomputing Centre Singapore (NSCC) and National University Health System (NUHS) finalised an agreement o
Researchers at the Department of Microbiology at The University of Hong Kong have succeeded in isolating Covid’s new Omicron variant from clinical specimens. This will help in developing vaccines against Omicron, which is swiftly spreading in some countries. Studies are still trying to find out if the vaccines already available in the market can protect against the new variant. Cases of the variant have been reported from Australia, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Britain, Israel, Netherlands and Hong Kong among other countries, and strict restrictions are being imposed again. So far, three cas
India, known for producing some of the world’s most well-known Chief Executive Officers, is celebrating the appointment of Parag Agarwal as Twitter’s new CEO. He succeeded Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, who stepped down from the position on Monday. The 37-year-old joined Twitter in 2011, and was promoted to the post of Chief Technology Officer after a few years in 2017. A graduate of the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Mumbai-born Agrawal has a PhD in computer science from Stanford University. Shortly after the announcement, Agrawal tweeted a note, saying he is excit
On Wednesday, the United States Food and Drug Administration authorized the COVID-19 vaccine for booster doses of the Moderna Inc and Johnson & Johnson. They also said that Americans can choose a shot of their own choice for their original inoculation as a booster. FDA CommissionerJanet Woodcock said in a statement, “The availability of these authorized boosters is important for continued protection against COVID-19 disease”. According to her, the data suggests the effectiveness of the vaccine may wane over time among some fully vaccinated people. This gives all three vaccines the
On Tuesday, the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physics was won by the scientists for their work that helps understand complex physical systems like Earth’s changing climate. The three scientists to grab the award are, Japanese-born American Syukuro Manabe, German Klaus Hasselmann, and Italian Giorgio Parisi. The decision was hailed by the U.N. Manabe, 90, and Hasselmann, 89, are jointly awarded half of the prize of 10 million Swedish crowns ($1.15 million), a sign of consensus surrounding human-caused global warming. Parisi is credited with the other half for discovering the "hidden rules" behind s
On Monday, American scientists David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian won the 2021 Nobel Prize of Medicine for the discovery of receptors in the skin that sense temperature and touch. It can touch and could pave the way for new painkillers. The Nobel Assembly at Sweden’s Karolinska Institute said that both of them individually carried out their work, which has helped them show how humans convert the physical impact from heat to touch into nerve impulses that allow us to “perceive and adapt to the world around us”. The journal further explained that this knowledge is being applied to crea
On Monday, the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) successfully tested a new version of Akash Surface to Air missile Akash Prime that intercepted and destroyed an unnamed ariel target, mimicking an enemy aircraft in Odisha Chandipur. Ashan Prime is equipped with an indigenous active RF (radio frequency) seeker for improved accuracy as compared to the existing Akash System. The new one also has few other improvements like more reliable performance under low-temperature environments at higher altitudes. For the current flight test, the modified ground system of the existing
On Wednesday, in the face of growing rivalry with China, the United States announced a new alliance with Australia and Britain. To strengthen military capabilities the alliance will include a new Australian nuclear submarine fleet and cruise missiles. The announcement of the alliance was made by US President Joe Biden, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, and his British counterpart Boris Johnson in a video meeting. France, which is negotiating a multibillion-dollar deal for conventional submarines with Australia is also pushed back. Biden and other leaders stressed that the submarine