Category: Feature Stories

The EU Commission wants European households to use only one cable to charge cell phones, tablets and headphones in the future. The Brussels authority presented a legislative proposal on Thursday, according to which the charging sockets in electrical devices are to be standardized. The USB-C port, which many companies such as Samsung and Motorola already use, is to become the common standard. For Apple in particular, the standardization would be a nuisance. “European consumers have been annoyed long enough with incompatible chargers piling up in their drawers,” said EU Commission…

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At noon Wednesday, the six-billion mark of corona vaccine doses administered worldwide was cracked. Only three countries are not vaccinating at all so far.Six billion Corona vaccine doses have now been administered worldwide. The mark was reached at 11:30 a.m. Wednesday, according to AFP news agency statistics based on official data. Most vaccine doses administered in China, India and U.S.The vaccination pace has steadied, according to the report: It took 29 days to reach the sixth billion, with the fourth and fifth taking 30 and 26 days, respectively. Nearly 40…

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More than 100 years ago, the world was hit with the Spanish flu, a pandemic described by experts as the deadliest in human history – at least until now. The 1918 flu pandemic killed at least 50 million people worldwide, or 200 million in today’s global population, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The 1918 flu outbreak began in the spring with the transmission of the novel H1N1 virus from birds to humans and lasted about two years. According to the CDC, an estimated one-third of the…

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Starting tomorrow, the police are stepping up checks on the authenticity of “3-G” credentials. “We have detected close to 400 such fake documents in the last six months alone,” the Director General of Public Security, Franz Ruf, reported today. The checks, especially in the restaurant industry, are supported by health authorities. The probability of being caught is “very high in the future,” saidInterior Minister Karl Nehammer (ÖVP) at a press conference in Vienna. “This is not a trivial offense in our country.” It could also “mean that you will be…

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The validity of more than 100 million coronavirus vaccine doses worldwide will expire at the end of the year. If they are not redistributed quickly, the vaccine will go to waste, data analytics firm Airfinity warned today. More than 40 percent of those vaccine doses are in the EU, it said. Considering that most recipient countries need at least two months of shelf life from importation to conduct vaccination campaigns, 241 million vaccine doses are at risk of expiring unused. If those doses were distributed promptly, that, along with the…

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BioNTech and Pfizer are moving quickly to seek approval for their Covid-19 vaccine for use in children following positive trial results. In the pivotal trial involving five- to 11-year-olds, the vaccine was well tolerated and produced a strong immune response, both companies said Monday. The data will now be submitted to the European Medicines Agency (EMA), the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and other regulatory agencies worldwide. “After submission of the data, I expect the approval process to be completed about four weeks later, so the approval could be…

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Caffeine disturbs sleep, it is said again and again. Nevertheless, many like to drink an espresso after an extended dinner without lying awake all night afterwards. Others, on the other hand, can’t get any rest in the evening, even though it’s been hours since their last coffee. How can that be? Some people are extremely sensitive to caffeine, while others can drink cola, coffee and the like just before going to bed without any problems. Is caffeine really “poison” for sleep or is that only partly true? And how does…

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Covid-19 disease can be prevented by 95 percent through vaccination. This was emphasized to Ö1 by Viennese physician Christoph Wenisch, head of the infection department at the hospital Favoriten, who said that a vaccination could also prevent dramatic long-term consequences of an infection. Twelve percent of Corona intensive care patients who were able to work before the disease can no longer do so afterwards because of cognitive deficits. “The brain doesn’t work that way anymore.” They are incapacitated for life, Wenisch reported. “That’s where livelihoods are destroyed.” The lungs, as…

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The ominous seasonal effect of coronavirus infections is always on everyone’s lips during pandemics. This is strongly related to droplet transmission, which is generally more difficult in summer due to higher temperatures and more sunlight. Researchers from Vienna and Italy have now taken a close look at what happens to emitted droplets, which can act as SARS-CoV-2 virus carriers, in the environment. These proved to be surprisingly persistent. In the autumn, which is now beginning, the seasonal effect in the numbers of cases is already turning again to our disadvantage,…

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