In world’s largest clinical trial for current COVID-19 treatments, drugs appear to have no effect12/18/2020  By Hannah Prensky
On October 15, the World Health Organization published a manuscript (not yet peer-reviewed) studying the efficacy of several drugs that have been repurposed to treat severe cases of COVID-19. During a public health emergency, the medical community can turn to previously approved drugs as a way to treat patients in a timely manner. The study demonstrated that Hydroxychloroquine, Remdesivir, Lopinavir/Ritonavir, and Interferon-β1a treatments have little to no effect on mortality or length of hospital stay with regard to COVID-19. These results indicate that the only current treatment options for patients hospitalized with COVID-19 are not effective at combating the virus.
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 By Boyuan Chen
In the popular perception of the century, the word “chemical” equates danger, cheapness, and human ignorance. While organic foods, all-natural products, non-GMO crops, and detox diets have become new trends for a healthy lifestyle, greenhouse gases, DDT, thalidomide, GMO, itai-itai disease, pesticides, and fertilizers are all instances of artificial disasters too vivid to forget.  Illustration by Zoe Heidenry By Eleanor Lin
With shortening days and cooling temperatures, a stunning show comes to temperate forests every autumn. The foliage of deciduous trees—those that lose their leaves—turns red, orange, yellow, and even purple before being cast off.  Illustration by Yi Qu By Ethan Y. Feng
If you’ve ever taken any sort of chemistry or physics class, then you’ve probably been taught the Second Law of Thermodynamics: the entropy of the universe always increases over time. But what is entropy? You have likely heard that entropy is a measure of “chaos” or “disorder.” But such definitions are vague and unquantifiable—how would one even measure an “amount of chaos”? Furthermore, when presenting the Second Law, professors presumably just told you to accept it as fact, with no explanation of why it is true, leaving curious minds unsatisfied. What the heck is entropy, and why does it increase? Concrete answers to these questions do exist, so this article aims to explain the real definition of entropy as well as provide an intuition for why the Second Law is true. |