Filter made from a tree branch cleans contaminated water – UPI.com

Sapwood from nonflowering trees, like pine and ginkgo, feature straw-like interconnected membranes that filter bubbles from water and sap -- which scientists used to make a water filter. Photo by N.R. Fuller, Sayo Studio “Because the raw materials are widely available and the fabrication processes are simple, one could imagine involving communities in procuring, fabricating, and distributing xylem filters,” Rohit Karnik told MIT News. “For places where the only option has been to drink unfiltered water, we expect xylem filters would improve health, and make water drinkable,” said Karnik, a professor of mechanical engineering at MIT. While developing their prototype, researchers ran into two problems. RELATED Many household drinking water filters fail to totally remove PFAS The xylem sieves dry out easily in storage, sticking to the walls of the filter and slowing water filtration. The sieves also gum up after being used multiple times. Researchers were able to solve the problem by soaking the sapwood cross-sections in warm water and then dipping them in ethanol. After being allowed to dry, the filters proved much more durable. In real-world tests around the MIT campus, the filters removed 99 percent of bacteria contaminants such as E. coli and rotavirus, matching the performance of commercial filters.

Source: Filter made from a tree branch cleans contaminated water – UPI.com

Misleading Facts Fuel COVID-19 Misinformation, Evade Social Media Moderation : NPR

By just about any metric, it’s clear stories linking deaths to vaccines have spread in such a way that wildly overstates real numbers. Among the more than 85 million people in the U.S. who have now received at least one vaccination shot, less than .0018% of shot recipients have died sometime afterward. Even that small number includes people who were vaccinated while also suffering from other health conditions. Whether they have a vaccine or not, roughly 8,000 people die in the U.S. every day. And as more people get vaccinated, more vaccinated people will continue to die from unrelated causes, which the pharmaceutical company Pfizer alluded to in a statement earlier this year. “It is important to note that serious adverse events, including deaths that are unrelated to the vaccine, are unfortunately likely to occur at a similar rate as they would in the general population,” the statement said. But UNC-Chapel Hill’s Freelon said when it comes to conspiratorial thinking, stats and nuance often don’t matter as much as tragic stories. “This is something that we see repeatedly with human cognition,” Freelon said. “It’s the emphasis on the breathless anecdote and then the discounting of statistics that are much more representative.”

Source: Misleading Facts Fuel COVID-19 Misinformation, Evade Social Media Moderation : NPR

NYC Will Set Up Vaccination Centers For Broadway Workers, With Hopes To Raise Curtains This Fall – Gothamist

Over the next four weeks, New York City plans to set up COVID-19 vaccination sites specifically for Broadway theater workers, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced at a press briefing on Thursday, adding that he hopes to reach off-Broadway workers as well.

“We have to get the theater community ready for the fall,” de Blasio said. “By the time we get there, the world will be better.”

A mobile vaccination unit will also be deployed to accelerate the process, the mayor said.

Source: NYC Will Set Up Vaccination Centers For Broadway Workers, With Hopes To Raise Curtains This Fall – Gothamist

Medicare For All

In Saner Thought

By now most of us have hard about the proposal of Medicare For All, henceforth to be known as M4A, but in case you have been up the ass of some local cowardly politician then I can help you understand….

 
 
We have been fighting this pandemic for over a year and I feel that M4A could have been a positive influence on that fight if only it had been in place….

A new report released Tuesday morning by consumer advocacy group Public Citizen makes the case that the United States’ fragmented for-profit healthcare system hampered the nation’s coronavirus response “at every turn,” resulting in millions of Covid-19 infections and hundreds of thousands of deaths that likely would have been prevented under a Medicare for All system.

Titled Unprepared for Covid-19: How the Pandemic Makes the Case for Medicare for All, the white paper builds off…

View original post 738 more words

I Am A Dreamer

yaskhan

I am a dreamer-
Floating in the celestial
Between your world and mine:
Only to return to poetry

We meet on the notes of a violin
In the sepia of memory
Where the ink washes out my tears;

In the fragility
Of my breath
Your fragrant laughter rakes my navel
Fleeting in the drifting daylight

Catching my eye, a golden shimmering rhythm spinning with a dream

We create syllables
In the hues of blossoms
Trace of the nib
On virgin white
The color of my verse
In the rush of our touch .

View original post

Home Front – Hard to keep the good times rollin’

Pacific Paratrooper

[ This post was originally a guest post I wrote for Judy Guion @ Greatest Generation Lessons.  Being as times are rough these days, I thought a bit of comparison with what our parents and grandparents went through was in order. ]

Columnist Marquis Childs said after Pearl Harbor: “Nothing will ever be the same.”  Thirty-five years later he added: “It never has and never will be.”

We need to remember that in 1941 as much as 40% of U.S. families lived below the poverty level, approximately 8 million worked for less than minimum wage and another 8 million were unemployed.  The median income was about $2,000 per year.  The government, in virtually fighting two separate wars, entered into civilian lives by raising taxes, rationing, controlling prices and allotting jobs.

Once the war began, truck convoys became commonplace and train depots burst into arenas of activity.  The movement was not…

View original post 842 more words