News You Can Use

A supercomputer may have cracked the COVID code:

Summit, the world’s second fastest supercomputer, ran around 2.5 billion correlation calculations across 17,000 genetic samples while comparing each of these samples to some 40,000 genes.

The genetic data mining research uncovered a “common pattern of gene activity in the lungs of symptomatic COVID-19 patients, which when compared to gene activity in healthy control populations revealed a mechanism that appears to be a key weapon in the coronavirus’s arsenal.”

What’s amazing is that there are already FDA-approved drugs that are out on the market.

Quarter crisis: On June 11, the Federal Reserve acknowledged that the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the “normal circulation patterns for US coin.” This has led to small businesses like laundromats witnessing a liquidity crisis as quarters become hard to find. Because these businesses were closed or operating minimally earlier in the year, they may have inadvertently disrupted the flow of coins.

This is called a low velocity of money in economic terms, and experts are hopeful that the situation will right itself once normal business operations resume.

Fall in coal usage: The global figures for coal-fired power capacity went down for the first time on record in the first half of 2020. As people stayed home as much as they could and commercial projects were put on hold, many coal plants closed in Europe and the US.

While new plants are opening in high-demand countries like China, demand is drying up slowly but surely. The United Nations has called for a moratorium on new coal plant builds by 2020 to help meet Paris climate agreement targets.