tingilinde

better coronavirus vaccines

What we have now is estimated to have saved about 20 million lives.  But the virus mutates and better vaccines, along with trust in public health and better ventilation.  Here's a look at what's possible.  

a tip of the hat to Sukie

 

911 calls and wearables

There's a hole in the usage model for Apple watches.

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As of September, these devices have come equipped with technology meant to detect car crashes and alert 911 dispatchers. It is a more sensitive upgrade to software on Apple devices, now several years old, that can detect when a user falls and then dial for help. But the latest innovation appears to send the device into overdrive: It keeps mistaking skiers, and some other fitness enthusiasts, for car-wreck victims.

Lately, emergency call centers in some ski regions have been inundated with inadvertent, automated calls, dozens or more a week. Phone operators often must put other calls, including real emergencies, on hold to clarify whether the latest siren has been prompted by a human at risk or an overzealous device.

“My whole day is managing crash notifications,” said Trina Dummer, interim director of Summit County’s emergency services, which received 185 such calls in the week from Jan. 13 to Jan. 22. (In winters past, the typical call volume on a busy day was roughly half that.) Ms. Dummer said that the onslaught was threatening to desensitize dispatchers and divert limited resources from true emergencies.

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lowering the risk of new epidemics

Studying fruit bats.

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That’s why Montana State University immunologist Agnieszka Rynda-Apple plans to bring the Jamaican fruit bats to Bozeman this winter to start a breeding colony and accelerate her lab’s work as part of a team of 70 researchers in seven countries. The group, called BatOneHealth — founded by Plowright — hopes to find ways to predict where the next deadly virus might make the leap from bats to people.

“We’re collaborating on the question of why bats are such a fantastic vector,” said Rynda-Apple. “We’re trying to understand what is it about their immune systems that makes them retain the virus, and what is the situation in which they shed the virus.”

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for that exotic hobby

amateur radio astronomy

life on snowball earth

How did life make it though the frigid period from 720 to 580 My ago?

Life must have been pretty tough.

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Planet Earth used to be something like a cross between a deep freeze and a car crusher. During vast stretches of the planet’s history, everything from pole to pole was squashed beneath a blanket of ice a kilometer or more thick. Scientists call this snowball Earth.

Some early animals managed to endure this frigid era from roughly 720 to 580 million years ago, but they had their work cut out for them. Despite their valiant successes, the repeated expansion and contraction of giant ice sheets pulverized the hardy extremophiles’ remains leaving almost no trace of them in the fossil record and scientists with little to no idea of how they managed to survive.

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strange new york weather

The Mount Washington weather station offers some of the  if not the most, extreme weather in the continental US.

From Friday evening as the cold front moved in,

 

 

 

 

harvard is shutting down one of their most important projects

Joan Donovan's Technology and Social Change Project does seriously good work.  So Harvard's shutting it down before the 2024 election. Joan is one of the best in the country in the field.

She's ruffled feathers of a few large donors with some very honest work, but surely Harvard's above that.

 

 

 

 

how americans see religion

At least in one poll.  Some sects did well, others terribly.. and a nit .. atheism isn't a religion.  

Not a terribly solid poll, but the results aren't terribly surprising.

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The poll asked 1,000 respondents whether they viewed a random sample of 17 of the 35 religions or groups very favorably, somewhat favorably, neither favorably nor unfavorably, somewhat unfavorably, or very unfavorably; respondents also could select "not sure" instead of any of these. To produce a net score for each religion or group, we subtracted the share who said they view each one unfavorably from the share who said they view it favorably.

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on the current republican party

An essay by Jill Filipovic.

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Nichols writes that “Another way these young men express their sexual insecurity is to seek heroic redemption by imagining themselves as the defenders of helpless women against sexual threats from other men.” This language of condescending protection animates so much of right-wing politics, from abortion bans Republicans claim are to protect women (from predatory doctors, from themselves) to attacks on transgender people using the bathroom or playing sports (to protect women and girls) to book bans (to protect children from “groomers” or just liberal ideas).

Of course the young men who pick up guns and enact mass violence are not the same as the men who simply vote Republican. But so much of what today’s Republican Party stokes in its base — resentment over race and immigration and changing gender roles; a sense of entitlement to resources and power; the narcissism of being cast as the only Real Americans — shows up, dangerously magnified, in these dangerous young men.

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Of course there are other connections, but much of this rings true.

 

 

and the children will lead

At least some