covid-19
How the coronavirus pandemic is changing us
These stressful and unprecedented circumstances we are living in due to the current pandemic have a deep internal effect on us, which is altering who we are as individuals, our relationships with others, and how we perceive our place in society. Even our brain's hippocampus may have shrunk — but are these changes in our brains and behaviour short-term effects or could they change us and society more profoundly?
A scientist’s opinion: Interview with Professor Arie Kruglanski about our need for cognitive closure during COVID-19
Cognitive closure, a scientist’s opinion Interview with Arie Kruglanski, Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of Maryland, and co-founder and senior investigator at the National Center for the Study of Terrorism and the Response to Terrorism (START). How do our personal impressions, experiences and attitudes, related to the coronavirus pandemic, affect who we are ...
A scientist’s opinion: Interview with Professor Barbara J. Sahakian about brain changes during COVID-19
Changing brains, a scientist’s opinion Interview with Professor Barbara J. Sahakian, Professor of Clinical Neuropsychology at the University of Cambridge, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural and Clinical Neuroscience Institute, UK. How is the pandemic changing our brains, in situations when we haven’t contracted the virus itself? How is it impacting it both physically and psychologically, ...
A scientist’s opinion: Interview with Professor John Drury about changes in social identity during COVID-19
Social identity and collective behaviour in mass emergencies, a scientist’s opinion Interview with John Drury, Professor of Social Psychology and Director of Research and Knowledge Exchange in the School of Psychology at the University of Sussex, UK. How does our social identity change during mass emergencies and disasters, and in times of a pandemic such ...
ESMH Media Review – April 8, 2021
Climate change, Covid-19 & EU research funds: check out the ESMH selection of 24 science and tech news published in the last weeks on the web.
Prof. Wayne Koff : “AI can help us design better, safer and faster vaccines”
Wayne Koff, PhD, is the founding president and Chief Executive Officer of the Human Vaccines Project. Human Vaccines Project Prior to joining the Project, from 1999 to 2016, Koff served as Chief Scientific Officer and Senior Vice President of Research and Development at the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) in New York City, leading IAVI’s ...
Quality information given by experts is like a vaccine against falsehoods
Scientists and experts should be available to communicate with the media, or their spot will be taken by false experts. But providing more information to the audience can also have a negative side effect: overconfidence.
Professor Heidi Larson: “This is a key moment to build trust in countries and socio-economic groups with relatively low confidence in vaccines.”
For over a decade, Heidi Larson, Professor of Anthropology, Risk and Decision Science at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, has been leading global efforts to monitor public confidence in immunisation programmes. As COVID-19 vaccination programmes are rolled out across the EU, this is a key moment to build trust in countries and ...
Joana Gonçalves de Sá: “Mitigate the misinformation pandemic by ‘vaccinating’ the susceptible individuals first.”
Joana Gonçalves de Sá is an Invited Associate Professor at the Physics Department of Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa, and was the recipient of an ERC Starting Grant to study human behavior using the online spread of ’fake news’ as a model system. Disinformation and misinformation are not a new problem, so why did ...
A scientist’s opinion : Interview with Prof. András Falus about SARS-CoV-2 mutations
András Falus was born in 1947 in Budapest, Hungary and is a professor emeritus of Budapest’s Semmelweis University and a member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. His primary field of study is immunogenomics, allergy and onco-genomics. Most recently, his research has focused on histamine-related immunoregulation, non-coding DNA (e.g. microRNA) and microvesicles, a newly recognised ...