Man tests positive for Covid for 14 months straight
When Muzaffer Kayasan first caught Covid-19, he thought he was destined to die, as he was already suffering from leukaemia.
Fourteen months and 78 straight positive tests later, he is still alive – and still battling to shake off the infection.
Mr Kayasan, 56, has Turkey’s longest recorded continuous Covid-19 infection, doctors say, possibly due to a weakened immune system from the cancer.
Despite being in and out of hospital since November 2020, his spirits have been high.
“I guess this is the female version of Covid – she has been obsessed with me,” Mr Kayasan joked as he found out that his latest PCR test was, yet again, positive.
Coronavirus patients with immunosuppression are at risk of prolonged infection with severe acute respiratory syndrome, according to a study published last year in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Elephant tusk DNA sleuthing reveals ivory trafficking networks
DNA testing on seized ivory shipments that reveals family ties among African elephants killed for their tusks is helping to identify poaching areas and trafficking networks at the centre of an illegal trade that continues to devastate the population of Earth’s largest land animal.
Researchers said they conducted DNA tests on 4,320 elephant tusks from 49 ivory seizures, totalling 111 tons in 12 African nations from 2002 to 2019.
The results could help crack the transnational criminal organisations behind the trafficking and strengthen prosecutions.
“These transnational criminal organisations we’re trying to get – they are the key,” said University of Washington biologist Samuel Wasser, lead author of the study published in the journal Nature Human Behaviour.
Most ivory is exported in large consignments – up to ten tonnes each – shipped as marine cargo and concealed among legal exports crossing oceans on container ships.
The DNA testing matched two tusks from the same elephant or, more often, tusks from close relatives found in separate containers for shipment in the same port.
Study claims pharmaceutical drugs polluting rivers worldwide
Potentially toxic levels of pharmaceutical drugs have been found in a quarter of river locations examined across the world, a study has found.
Researchers from around the world surveyed more than 1,000 sites on 258 rivers, from the Thames in London to the Brazilian Amazon and rivers in major cities such as Delhi, New York and Guangzhou.
The assessment measured the presence of 61 pharmaceuticals, including some compounds also linked to lifestyles such as caffeine, and whether they were above levels where they could have an effect on the environment.
The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, warns that pollution of the world’s rivers by medicinal chemicals is a global problem.