In what could alter the course of the #COVID19Pandemic that is still creating mayhem across the world, Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday said the country has registered the world's first COVID-19 vaccine that "forms stable cell and antibody immunity".
"As far as I know, this morning for the first time in the world a vaccine against the novel coronavirus infection was registered," Putin was quoted as saying as he opened a meeting with the state officials.
Putin informed that one of his daughters tested the Russian COVID-19 vaccine on herself and she is feeling well.
The Russian President has two daughters—Maria, who was born in 1985, and Katerina, who was born in 1986.
"After the second shot, she had a slight fever again, and then everything was fine. She is feeling well and has a high [antibody] count," the President informed.
The number of global coronavirus cases has surpassed the 20 million-mark, while the worldwide death toll has increased to over 7,34,000, according to data released by the Johns Hopkins University.
Russia's coronavirus cases rose by 4,945 to 8,97,599 in the past 24 hours, but the new daily cases spike dropped below the 5,000-mark for the first time since April 23.
It is the fourth worst-hit nation by the pandemic after the US, Brazil and India.
Russia said on Monday that it was going ahead with its plan to register the world's first COVID-19 vaccine this week before it starts mass vaccination in October, despite safety concerns raised from several quarters, including @WHO.
On August 3, a "final medical examination" of participants in clinical trials of the vaccine took place at the Burdenko Main Military Clinical Hospital, the Russian Defence Ministry had earlier said in a statement.
The results clearly showed that all volunteers had a clear immune response resulting from vaccination, the ministry said, adding that there were no side effects or abnormalities in the work of the volunteers.
Russian Health Minister Mikhail Murashko had earlier said that clinical trials of the vaccine developed by the Gamaleya National Research Center for Epidemiology and Microbiology of the Russian Healthcare Ministry were over.
Meanwhile, of the six COVID-19 vaccine candidates that have reached the Phase 3 level according to the WHO, three are from China and the other three include the ones developed by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca, Moderna, and one jointly developed by Pfizer and BioNTech.
Russia is facing international scepticism due to its fast approach in developing the vaccine.
While searching for life in the Gulf of Mexico, researchers pulled out a new bizarre-looking species of isopod, whose head resembles the Darth Vader from Star Wars!
This new-found crustacean, named Bathonymus yucatanensis, has 14 legs and is around 26 cm long — approximately 25 times larger than its closest relative, the common woodlouse.
While these blonde creatures seem pretty scary, the "Vanilla Vaders" are, in fact, harmless to humans.
Their huge size is only due to deep-sea gigantism — a phenomenon wherein ocean dwellers grow bigger than their terrestrial relatives due to lack of sunlight.
This super-Earth is a rocky world, on which a year is equal to just 11 Earth days.
The short orbit is down to the red dwarfs being a lot smaller than the Sun that centres our solar system. But the smaller sizes also make their gravitational fields less expansive than the Sun's.
Therefore, Ross 508b revolves around its red dwarf at a distance of just 5 million km. Mercury, in comparison, is about 60 million km from the Sun.
The short distance between this super-Earth & its red dwarf begs the question: how could it possibly be habitable?
#Japan is making grand plans of creating interplanetary #trains and champagne flute-like glass habitats in its bid to send and host humans on the #Moon and #Mars!
An interplanetary transportation system dubbed the 'Hexatrack', which maintains a gravity of 1G during long-distance travel to mitigate the effects of prolonged exposure to low gravity, has been proposed by #Japanese researchers.
The #trains will also possess 'Hexacapsules', which are essentially hexagon-shaped capsules with a moving device in the middle.
In 2012, the almost-complete skeleton of a new kind of #dinosaur was found in the northern Patagonia region of #Argentina.
The dinosaur has been christened #Meraxes gigas. The generic epithet is an ode to a dragon in the #GameOfThrones series.
Standing at the height of 11 m (36 ft) and weighing roughly 4000 kgs, the #dinosaur sported several crests, bumps and horns on its skull, which lent it a menacing appearance.
But the highlight of the findings is that the dinosaur had teeny-tiny arms, just like the #Trex!
Dr Jose, along with an international research team from the US, UK and Australia, will be examining the Galactic Centre Cloud (GCC) — the central molecular zone of our Milky Way — in April 2023.
They have been allotted 27.3 hours over the access period of 12 months.