Advances in COVID-19 mRNA vaccine development | Signal Transduction and Targeted Therapy

Source: Advances in COVID-19 mRNA vaccine development | Signal Transduction and Targeted Therapy

Filosofia bunului gust

ore de drum

Langres, 2018

Au pornit din această urbe, ambițioși pe drumul cunoașterii, filosoful iluminist Denis Diderot, autorul primei Enciclopedii,

și fotograful Girault de Prangey, pasionat călător care a oferit lumiiprimele imagini din Orient la început de secol 19.

Tolănit pe culmea unui deal, lesne de parcurs, orășelul își desfășoară străzile sinuoase și cei patru kilometri de metereze ale castelului, pe care se intercalează șase turnuri și șapte porți majestuoase.

Între secolele 14 și 17, fortăreața a jucat un rol defensiv major. Astăzi, de pe promenada circulară poți cuprinde cu privirea întinderea vastă de unde izvorăsc Sena și Marna.

Secretul cel mai bine păstrat al ținutului este faimoasa brânză regională Langres,

fabricată după metode ancestrale pe o arie restrânsă, doar în două ferme din apropiere, care își împart piața mondială și dețin drepturi exclusive asupra procesului de fabricație.

De obicei, francezii servesc platoul cu brânzeturi la sfârșitul ospățului, dar acest sortiment de…

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Neue Aktion: Patente auf Saatgut stoppen! … New action: stop patents on seeds!

Stella, oh, Stella

Die Vielfalt an Nutzpflanzen ist eine der wichtigsten Grundlagen unserer Nahrungsmittelsicherheit. Sie ist das Ergebnis züchterischer Arbeit, die Menschen auf der ganzen Welt seit Jahrtausenden leisten. Doch laut Schätzungen der Vereinten Nationen ist diese wertvolle Vielfalt seit Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts um etwa 75 Prozent zurückgegangen. Ein Grund für diesen dramatischen Verlust ist die Konzentrierung des Saatgutmarktes auf einige wenige Agrarkonzerne. Und mit Hilfe von Patenten auf Pflanzen bauen Bayer, Syngenta und Co. ihre Marktmacht immer weiter aus.

Ändern könnten das die Vertragsstaaten des Europäischen Patentamts (EPA). Gemeinsam mit mehr als 50 Organisationen aus 14 Ländern wollen wir mit einer neuen Aktion erreichen, dass sie Patenten auf Saatgut endlich einen Riegel vorschieben. Machen auch Sie mit und schreiben Sie jetzt dem in Deutschland zuständigen Bundesjustizminister Dr. Marco Buschmann (FDP).

In den letzten Jahren konnten wir mit unseren Protesten wichtige Etappensiege im Kampf gegen Patente auf konventionell gezüchtete Pflanzen…

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Cheap indoor lights could wipe out COVID and flu viruses in 5 minutes – Study Finds

The technology uses a special ultraviolet light called far-UVC that has a lower range of wavelengths for disinfection. Ceiling lamps using far-UVC light could be a highly effective tool in protecting public health. Due to the way ultraviolet light kills microbes, viruses and bacteria cannot develop resistance as they do with vaccines and drug treatments. Source: Cheap indoor lights could wipe out COVID and flu viruses in 5 minutes – Study Finds

How Fridays for Future keeps the climate relevant as other crises rage | Environment | All topics from climate change to conservation | DW | 25.03.2022

“We are often asked if now is the time for a climate strike. After all, there are other crises, like the Putin one, to tackle.”

With these words, German activist Elisa Bas addressed reporters ahead of Friday for Future’s tenth global strike on March 25.

For the past two years, the youth-led climate movement has not only been organizing around COVID-19 measures ⁠— which limited its trademark demonstrations ⁠— but also around a barrage of headlines. The pandemic, the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan and the war in Ukraine have dominated the news cycle for months and even years on end.

But much of the movement has decided it needs to integrate other emergencies into its activism instead of vying for attention.

Source: How Fridays for Future keeps the climate relevant as other crises rage | Environment | All topics from climate change to conservation | DW | 25.03.2022

Covid Cases Are Up in NYC Schools. So Why Are Masks Off? – The New York Times

Over the course of the past two weeks, Covid positivity rates have ticked upward in New York City. But case rates among students have surpassed those in the general population (13.3 per 100,000 versus 9.6 citywide, for a seven-day period ending on March 22), figures the city’s Department of Education did not address when I reached out to ask about them. Some schools have had significant jumps. Hunter elementary school ended the week of March 12 with four cases; the week of March 19, there were 24.

One complaint advocates of continued masking have had is with the availability of data on Covid cases coming from the city’s education department, which offers a daily tracker some find insufficiently comprehensive. One group, Parents for Responsive Equitable Safe Schools, set out to scrape data regularly and deliver a broad view. What their figures reveal is an increase in the total number of Covid cases in New York City schools this academic year, which jumps from 135,977 cases on March 7 to just under 137,900 cases on March 23, a notable increase over the previous two-week period.

Even if most children have not fallen especially sick since the repeal of masking rules, consequences remain. Given that students need to isolate for five days when they test positive, the rise in cases means that hundreds of children are kept out of school after two years of what are obviously significant academic losses resulting from reduced or nonexistent in-person learning. What they have instead is “asynchronous” learning at home.

New KFF Analysis Finds That the U.S. Government Does Not Currently Have Enough Vaccine Doses to Fully Cover Every American with a 4th Dose | KFF (Me: Too soon, too many lives at stake to drop the ball now!)

With funding for additional COVID-19 support at a stalemate in Congress, a new KFF analysis looks at potential scenarios that United States might face if a 4th COVID-19 vaccine dose is recommended to the public. The analysis finds that the U.S. government does not have enough funding to purchase vaccine doses remaining to fully cover the population under any of the predicted scenarios.

If 4th doses are authorized and recommended for all ages, there will be a deficit of almost half a billion doses to cover everyone, including fully vaccinating those not yet up to date with their vaccinations. If 4th doses are provided only to people ages 65 and older, the deficit would be 162.5 million doses with the current supply.

Source: New KFF Analysis Finds That the U.S. Government Does Not Currently Have Enough Vaccine Doses to Fully Cover Every American with a 4th Dose | KFF

One month later Twenty-eight snapshots that capture Russia’s destructive war against Ukraine — Meduza

Russian tanks

A woman with a child cries in the corridor of a hospital in Mariupol. Her second child died during the shelling of the city.
Evgeniy Maloletka / AP / Scanpix / LETA

Source: One month later Twenty-eight snapshots that capture Russia’s destructive war against Ukraine — Meduza

‘We’ll all go back when the regime falls’ How Tbilisi become a hub for Russian political emigrants — Meduza

After years of participating in various opposition movements, Dubovsky knew he had to leave the country. His girlfriend, Alina Savelieva, went with him. On February 24, when the Russian army invaded Ukraine, Dubrovsky, who was by then fully settled in Ukraine, offered assistance to people fleeing the regime. “My fellow countrymen, if you decide to leave Russia and you manage to end up in Georgia, know that I’m always ready to help by taking several people into my home. My resources are limited, but I can definitely give you a place to sleep and something to eat,” he wrote on Twitter on February 24. Since then, according to Dubovsky, he’s helped accommodate 56 Russians.

“I’ve even run out of friends of friends. There’s far from enough housing. One girl came with no education and no work experience, just 200 dollars in her pocket and a toad in a jar. I called a Georgian friend who owns a hotel, he called his friend, and that friend had a relative with another hotel. They gave the girl a bed, a small salary, and an administrative job,” he tells me.

Source: ‘We’ll all go back when the regime falls’ How Tbilisi become a hub for Russian political emigrants — Meduza