A Promising Antiviral Is Being Tested for the Coronavirus—but Results Are Not Yet Out

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February 28, 2020

Dear Reader, I'm stepping in for Sunya Bhutta again. As we head into the weekend, we check in once more with the latest news on the coronavirus, which has infected some 82,000 people globally. Health editor Tanya Lewis took a look at the efforts to find a treatment for the disease, particularly the antivirals already used to target other illnesses.

Andrea Thompson, Associate Editor, Sustainability @AndreaTWeather

Medicine A Promising Antiviral Is Being Tested for the Coronavirus--but Results Are Not Yet Out The drug remdesivir is effective against many other viruses, and some experts are optimistic that it—or similar compounds—may work for the pathogen responsible for COVID-19 By Tanya Lewis

Evolution Ability to Take on Diverse Roles May Be Key to Which Animals Survive Mass Extinction An analysis spanning geologic history found that species able to occupy different ecological niches have a survival edge By Emily Willingham

Biology Decoding the Vaginal Microbiome The most detailed map of its kind catalogues the sequences of about a million bacterial, viral and fungal genes By Monique Brouillette

Behavior & Society An Alcoholic Parent Can Affect How a Child's Brain Switches Tasks Such children's neural circuits do not transition properly from an active state to a resting one By Jillian Kramer

Behavior & Society How I Broke the Cycle of Stress A technique called "goal diversification" turned out to be be surprisingly effective By Ashten Duncan

Behavior & Society The Intersected States of America Sometimes a union does not feel very united By Evelyn Lamb

FROM THE STORE Music and the Brain Neuroscientists have shown that music recruits nearly every area of the brain, fostering connections across different regions. In this eBook, we examine the latest imaging studies and discuss the effects of music on emotion, cognition, sensation and motor function. This includes an examination of the brain's anatomy when listening to or creating music, of music's relationship to learning math and language skills and of its role in promoting social connections and treating brain disorders and injuries.

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FROM THE ARCHIVE Call Them Quasars--for No Good Reason Originally published in December 1963 | February 2020

QUOTE OF THE DAY "The mistake generally made these days is to think that [just] any antiviral would be effective against [the coronavirus]. This is, of course, not true." Erik De Clercq, an emeritus professor of medicine at KU Leuven, Scientific American

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