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Links for 2022-05-10

  • “Hypercoagulation” as a potential long COVID sign

    Interesting Twitter thread discussing a potential treatment for long COVID — no interest in providing even the relevant _tests_ in the UK, so a British kid was brought to Germany to receive the treatment, and is now responding well. Here’s details on the specific biosigns:

    Her fluorescent microscopy showed very hyperactivated sticky platelets. Mine are on the right for comparison. She also had microclots and evidence of endothelial damage (but latter not severe). I believe she was the first UK child under 12 to have these tests done. The platelets and microclots show that her blood is ‘hypercoaguable’ – too sticky. These may be blocking up the very small blood vessels that allow oxygen into muscles and nerves, which could explain some of her symptoms.

    (tags: platelets microclots long-covid treatments hypercoagulation covid-19)

  • “The first Starlink war”

    Very interesting thread from Trent Telenko on how a Ukrainian GIS app, combined with Starlink internet access, has created 21st century artillery warfare and outflanked the Russia military:

    Ukraine’s ‘GIS Art for Artillery’ app combined with Starlink actually gives the Ukrainian military measurably better than US Military standard artillery command and control. The Ukraine War is the first Starlink War & the side with Starlink is beating the side without.
    This is pretty nuts. On the other hand, though, Starlink’s operational security is now critically important, and doubtless being heavily targeted by Russian hackers, and Ukraine’s tactics are reliant on the vagaries of Elon Musk… Source twitter thread: https://twitter.com/TrentTelenko/status/1523791050313433088

    (tags: starlink artillery internet gis elon-musk warfare tech gis-art)

  • Trino | Project Tardigrade delivers ETL at Trino speeds to early users

    This looks fantastic — Trino (nee Presto) adds some significant improvements for long-running and heavyweight query support.

    When your long-running queries experience a failure, they don’t have to start from scratch. When queries require more memory than currently available in the cluster they are still able to succeed. When multiple queries are submitted concurrently they are able to share resources in a fair way, and make steady progress.

    (tags: trino presto sql storage querying etl batch scheduling)

  • metabolically-led post-exertional symptoms in Long COVID

    Interesting thread from a Mount Sinai-based lab discussing the side effects of possible mitochondrial dysfunction and oxidative stress:

    Our cells use a very specific fuel source called ATP that is produced in a part of the cell called the mitochondria. Unfortunately, ATP also fuels the cellular activities of viruses. As such, when a virus enters our cells it quickly hijacks our mitochondria to fuel viral replication and other viral activities. In other words when you are infected by a virus like #COVID19, you are infected by a little energy thief: taking your hard-earned ATP and using it for its own purposes. Not only does this mean that the virus is proliferating on stolen energy (rude!) but it also means that your cells must perform their regular functions with far less energy. So this is where things get cyclical: we have hijacked mitochondria resulting in inefficient, “stressed“ cells. Our cells are producing energy “for two” now, but barely managing to function, leading to the overproduction of reactive oxygen species (ROS), which we can think of as the “exhaust fumes” of our mitochondria. ROS are bad characters – systemically, they can trigger inflammation and hypocapnia. Unfortunately, once the body is experiencing oxidative stress, the mere act of producing more energy starts to damage the mitochondria.

    (tags: mitochondria oxidative-stress long-covid covid-19 dysautonomia mcas inflammation)

  • SARS-CoV-2 Omicron Variant is as Deadly as Previous Waves After Adjusting for Vaccinations, Demographics, and Comorbidities

    The numbers are in; omicron was as severe as previous variants, it was just that people had been vaccinated. (preprint)

    (tags: omicron covid-19 severity vaccination diseases epidemiology)

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