HHS Secretary told members of Congress on Tuesday that wearables are "a way of people can take control over their own health." Have you ever noticed how a spilled cup of coffee leaves behind a telltale brown ring? While those stains might be annoying, the science behind them, known as the coffee ring effect, has sparked innovations in health technology. UC Berkeley researchers recently turned this everyday phenomenon into a breakthrough medical test, making rapid and reliable disease detection as easy as brewing your morning coffee. Curious how a simple coffee stain could inspire cutting-edge diagnostics and revolutionize at-home testing?

Rapid COVID-19 tests can generate false-negative results because they aren't that sensitive, according to a medical expert. Rapid COVID-19 tests, or antigen tests, appear positive if they detect a certain amount of coronavirus -- also known as viral load -- from a sample taken from a person's body, according to BuzzFeed News. Dr. Emily Landon, an infectious disease expert, said that the window when viral load is at its peak can vary from person to person and can range from three days to more than a week as people's systems clear the virus at their own pace. Due to this, it may either take some time for an infected person's result to turn positive or never appear positive if they miss this window or collect their test sample incorrectly, among other things, according to Landon, who is also an associate professor of medicine at the University of Chicago Medicine. "Rapid tests are definitely not like a pregnancy test where it's going to be positive as long as it's been a few weeks after someone missed a period. It's only going to pick it up when you're at peak infectiousness, and they're almost never false positive," the doctor explained.

You probably know at this point in the pandemic that if you test positive on a rapid test (and you've used the test correctly–you've got to swab pretty hard!) that the odds are overwhelming that you have COVID and are infectious. You have, no doubt, been warned that a negative result on a rapid test should be taken with a grain of salt, especially if you've been exposed to the virus or you have symptoms. And you might have heard two terms about tests thrown around: sensitivity and specificity, particularly if you've been trying to get a grip on exactly how accurate rapid tests are. As a mathematician, I think knowing a bit more about how sensitivity and specificity are calculated can help you better understand why a positive result should be headed--and a negative test should be read with some caution. The high specificity and rapid BinaxNOW antigen test turnaround time facilitate earlier isolation of infectious persons.

New rules allowing travellers returning to England to take lateral flow tests instead of more expensive PCR tests will come into force on 24 October, in time for many families returning from half-term breaks. The government says NHS tests cannot be used for overseas travel but fully vaccinated passengers arriving in England from that date will be able to order tests from approved providers and upload photos of results for verification. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have previously aligned with policy in England.

The NBA isn't going to have much of an offseason. The league is preparing to start the 2020–21 season on Dec. 22, just two months after the Los Angeles Lakers left the Orlando bubble as champions. But the bubble is no more. Teams will be playing games in their normal arenas, and the NBA sent a memo to its 30 organizations with an outline of protocols for hosting reduced-capacity crowds. The NBA has sent its 30 teams a memo with protocols for eligible markets to host fans, requiring people within 30 feet of court to register negative coronavirus test two days prior to game or rapid test on day of game, sources tell @TheAthleticNBA @Stadium.

And yet rapid tests like the Abbott test have led to reports among the general population of false negatives (reports that you don't have the virus when you really do). That means some people may have been unknowingly spreading the virus to others. The White House outbreak is a very good illustration of the limitations of rapid testing. But it should not deter us from the strategy entirely--we just need to use the technology properly. No test is 100% accurate, but the gold standard for diagnosing covid-19 is a PCR test.

MADRID – Some political leaders are hailing a potential breakthrough in the fight against COVID-19: simple pin-prick blood tests or nasal swabs that can determine within minutes if someone has, or previously had, the virus. The tests could reveal the true extent of the outbreak and help separate the healthy from the sick. But some scientists have challenged their accuracy. Hopes are hanging on two types of quick tests: antigen tests that use a nose or throat swab to look for the virus, and antibody tests that look in the blood for evidence someone had the virus and recovered. The tests are in short supply, and some of them are considered unreliable.

Dyspnoea, shortness of breath and coughing are just a few of the potential symptoms of asthma. Those affected suffer sudden attacks of bronchial constriction. Identifying the disease quickly is crucial, as that is the only way as to lower the threat of asthma attacks, which can even be fatal. It is particularly important to identify the disease early in children in order to quickly intervene and alleviate the symptoms. However, diagnosing children is more complicated and tedious than diagnosing adults.