Feb. 17, 2021

How History Predicts COVID-19’s Impact on Maritime Piracy, and What America Can do to Help

Minerva-funded researcher, Brandon Prins recent article discusses how previous financial crises have been followed by significant surges in maritime crime and that the economic impacts of the novel Coronavirus will likely do the same.

Feb. 3, 2021

The "Pandemic Textbook" Must Include Decision-Making

Minerva-funded researcher, Neil D. Shortland and Laurence Alison recent article discusses why good pandemic management requires goal-directed least-worst decision-making. As scientists who study decision-making early on, they realized that what the COVID-19 pandemic required was rapid "least-worst" goal-directed decision-making.

Jan. 21, 2021

Gender in the time of COVID-19: Evaluating national leadership and COVID-19 fatalities

This recent article by Minerva-funded researcher, Dr. Leah Windsor and colleagues explore the idea that women world leaders are doing better (i.e., fewer deaths in the countries they lead) than men world leaders. They show that in aggregate, women and men leaders do about the same - that women world leaders do not fare significantly better.

Nov. 24, 2020

Historical bias overlooks genes related to COVID-19

It is known that research into human genes is heavily skewed towards genes that have been widely studied for decades, including many genes that were being studied before the productive phase of the Human Genome Project. This means that the genes most frequently investigated by the research community tend to be only marginally more important to human physiology and disease than a random selection of genes.

Nov. 20, 2020

Test sensitivity is secondary to frequency and turnaround time for COVID-19 screening

The COVID-19 pandemic has created a public health crisis. Because SARS-CoV-2 can spread from individuals with pre-symptomatic, symptomatic, and asymptomatic infections, the re-opening of societies and the control of virus spread will be facilitated by robust population screening, for which virus testing will often be central. After infection, individuals undergo a period of incubation during which viral titers are usually too low to detect, followed by an exponential viral growth, leading to a peak viral load and infectiousness, and ending with declining viral levels and clearance.

Nov. 5, 2020

Terrorism in time of the pandemic: exploiting mayhem

Arie Kruglanski, a Minerva-funded researcher and colleagues’ international study was recently published in the peer-reviewed Global Security: Health, Science, and Policy. This article illustrates and discuss terrorism trends that have manifest during the COVID-19 pandemic and consider the threat these trends pose to the world’s security.

Sept. 2, 2020

Innovative biocontainment unit shows promise to protect healthcare workers

Researchers from UPMC and LUCI fellow, Dr. Cameron Good and colleagues from the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command’s Army Research Laboratory (CCDC-ARL) created an individual biocontainment unit, or IBU, to keep front line health care workers safe while they provide live-saving care. The device is described in a study published today in the Annals of Emergency Medicine.

Aug. 14, 2020

Research Exposes New Vulnerability for SARS-CoV-2

Northwestern University researchers including VBFF, Monica Olvera de la Cruz have uncovered a new vulnerability in the novel coronavirus’ infamous spike protein which highlights a relatively simple, potential treatment pathway.

Aug. 14, 2020

Coronavirus Misinformation is a Global Issue, But There Are Regional Differences

Minerva-funded researcher, Jacob Shapiro in collaboration with the Empirical Studies of Conflict Project and Microsoft Research began cataloguing COVID-19 misinformation to explore the evolution of specific COVID-19 narratives. Shapiro and colleagues identified a unique feature of COVID-19. Usually, misinformation is focused on specific regions and topics.

July 29, 2020

The Pandemic has Slashed Scientists’ Productivity

Dashun Wang, a Minerva-funded researcher along with nine other researchers disseminated a survey to U.S. and Europe-based researchers in mid-April and received roughly 4,5000 responses that revealed clear patterns around who is cutting back their research the most in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.