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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 14, 2021 at 9:35am

CDC finds unvaccinated 11 times more likely to die of COVID

New U.S. studies released Friday show the COVID-19 vaccines remain highly effective against hospitalizations and death even as the extra-contagious delta variant swept the country.

One study tracked over 600,000 COVID-19 cases in 13 states from April through mid-July. As delta surged in early summer, those who were unvaccinated were 4.5 times more likely than the fully vaccinated to get infected, over 10 times more likely to be hospitalized and 11 times more likely to die, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Vaccination works! But ...

But as earlier data has shown, protection against coronavirus infection is slipping some: It was 91% in the spring but 78% in June and July, the study found.

So-called "breakthrough" cases in the fully vaccinated accounted for 14% of hospitalizations and 16% of deaths in June and July, about twice the percentage as earlier in the year.

An increase in those percentages isn't surprising: No one ever said the vaccines were perfect.

Source: Agence France-Presse

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-09-cdc-unvaccinated-die-covid.h...

https://researchnews.cc/news/8872/Covid-vaccines-hold-up-against-se...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 13, 2021 at 8:54am

Ancient marsupial ‘junk DNA’ might be useful after all, scientists say

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 13, 2021 at 8:13am

Black holes found to exert a pressure on their environment

Physicists have discovered that black holes exert a pressure on their environment, in a scientific first.

In 1974 Stephen Hawking made the seminal discovery that black holes emit thermal radiation. Previous to that, black holes were believed to be inert, the final stages of a dying heavy star.

Now scientists have shown that they are in fact even more complex thermodynamic systems, with not only a temperature but also a pressure.

 Quantum gravity  can lead to a pressure in black holes. This  finding that Schwarzschild black holes have a pressure as well as a temperature is more surprising. 

Xavier Calmet et al, Quantum gravitational corrections to the entropy of a Schwarzschild black hole, Physical Review D (2021). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevD.104.066012

https://phys.org/news/2021-09-black-holes-exert-pressure-environmen...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 13, 2021 at 7:58am

How Old Are Stars? An  Astrophysicist Unlocks the Secrets of Age-Dating

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 13, 2021 at 7:52am

Researchers  discover river of dust around the sun

A team of researchers has discovered a dusty mystery in a newly explored region around Earth’s sun.  They noticed a new and unexplained stream of microscopic particles that seemed to be spraying out from around the star.

Dust can come from asteroids and comets or can be left over from the original formation of the planets. It can show us how our solar system has formed and continues to evolve and even how other solar systems may be evolving.

There are two basic types of dust around the sun. Dust that is in bound orbits around the sun that will eventually spiral into the sun. Then there’s unbound dust that is flung away and out of the solar system.

No one had seen anything like this third type before—dust flying away from the sun usually spreads out in every direction. It doesn’t tend to cluster together like this one. 

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/PSJ/ac0bb9

https://researchnews.cc/news/8866/Researchers-led-by-undergraduate-...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 12, 2021 at 12:54pm

Moreover, because microneedles are a dry formulation, they allow drugs to maintain their activity even without storing them at the low temperatures required of many injectable vaccines. For example, one study has shown that a vaccine for influenza can be stable for six months at 25 °C and at least a few weeks at 40 °C if incorporated into microneedles. This is critical for ensuring vaccinations reach far-flung corners of the world that do not have the resources to maintain the cold chain. 

Another issue is vaccine wastage. For example, in some cases only a portion of the dose is used before a vaccine expires. It can also happen that healthcare personnel decide not to vaccinate a patient when there are not enough patients to use the whole vial. According to estimates, the wastage rates for 10-dose vials may be as high as 25 percent for liquid vaccines and 40 percent for freeze-dried vaccines. With microneedle patches, there is no wasted drug. And there are no needles that require special disposal procedures.

There are plenty of hurdles yet to be overcome. We need further clinical studies in human volunteers to demonstrate safety and efficacy of this vaccine approach, and the scale-up of production is still in its infancy. On a lab scale, usually we fill molds with the polymer solutions via vacuum or centrifugation. Once dried, the final formulation is demolded and secured to a backing. This is tedious and not practical for mass production.

Additionally, the majority of vaccinations are sterilized by filtering, which is not feasible for solid microneedle patches. While the solution may be sterilized before being placed in the molds, the final product will also need to undergo sterilization by some alternative technique not yet developed. 

The recent pandemic and the possibility of others is a wake-up call to focus on these challenges. In the last year and a half, several institutions and biotech companies announced preclinical studies for a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine utilizing microneedle patches. Big pharmaceutical companies will certainly step up and invest more over the coming years in microneedle-based products. Injections have been used for centuries, but the necessity for a worldwide immunization effort is a persuasive reason to try to move forward. 

https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/opinion-an-alternative-t...

part3

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 12, 2021 at 12:54pm

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 12, 2021 at 12:54pm

An Alternative to Injection

Research on microneedle patches for vaccine delivery has grown in popularity in recent years, due to their exceptional compliance and low invasiveness.

Several researchers, including ourselves, are working on a technology that aims to provide the advantages of injectable vaccines without the drawbacks—and without the traditional needle stick: microneedles. While the technology still has a long road to the clinic, having entered human trials less than 10 years ago, we believe this it is the future of vaccine delivery, and the ongoing pandemic has highlighted the need to accelerate its development.

Basically, an array of tiny needles measuring just hundreds of microns is attached to a backing, permitting bandage-like application. Drugs can be encapsulated within water-soluble microneedles that dissolve when the patch is placed on the skin, allowing the drug to be released. Importantly, the microneedles pierce the outermost layer of tissue to allow greater absorption of the drugs compared to creams or other kinds of medical patches such as nicotine patches, but they do not penetrate deep enough to stimulate pain receptors. The patch can be self-administered and is as easy and painless as taking a pill. 

The patch has its limitations. Being such a small medical device, for example, the maximum drug dose is less than 1 mg. But for treatments that do not require a high dosage, including vaccines (both antigen-based ones and nanoparticle ones, such as those used for mRNA vaccines against COVID-19), hormones, and drugs with elevated potency, microneedles are ideal. In addition to being user friendly, microneedles could elicit a more robust immunological response. 

Conventional vaccine injection bypasses the skin’s immune system and introduces the antigen into the muscle or subcutaneous tissue, thereby inducing a systemic immune response. Yet, the skin, our biggest organ, also has a superb immunogenicity capacity due to the presence of many antigen-presenting cells. By delivering antigens there, microneedles could capitalize on this local response to boost the protection provided by vaccines. Indeed, animal studies suggest that microneedles elicit higher antibody production and better cellular response.

part 1

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 12, 2021 at 12:38pm

Cannibalistic butterflies chow down on live caterpillars

For the first time, milkweed butterflies have been seen harassing, subduing and then slurping up the juices of caterpillars.

We generally think of butterflies s as beautiful, harmless, nectar-drinking insects. But new research carried out by the University of Sydney may change all that, as milkweed butterflies have been spotted scratching at caterpillars with their sharp claws to suck up their juices.

Milkweed butterflies are a group of butterflies in the Nymphalidae family, with one well-known species being the monarch butterfly.

As caterpillars, milkweed butterflies feed on toxic plants, using the chemicals as self-defence to make them unpalatable to birds and other predators. When the caterpillars turn into butterflies, they retain these toxins and advertise that they are poisonous with their bright colours.

Male butterflies will also use these toxic substances to produce mating pheromones. In order to boost their supplies of these love drugs, they’ll seek out extra sources of the chemicals.

Generally, they get these through plants, but in North Sulawesi, Indonesia, they have developed a taste for caterpillars – and they don’t care whether they are alive or dead.

“This is the first time the behaviour has been reported.

https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ecy.3532

https://www.sciencefocus.com/news/cannibalistic-butterflies-chow-do...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 11, 2021 at 12:02pm

Animals shape shifting as climate warms

Some animals are "shape-shifting" and have developed bigger tails, beaks and ears to regulate their body temperatures as the planet warms, according to a new study. From Australian parrots to European rabbits, researchers found evidence that a host of warm-blooded animals have evolved bigger body parts, which could allow them to lose body heat more effectively. Climate change is heaping "a whole lot of pressure" on animals. It's high time we recognised that animals also have to adapt to these changes, but this is occurring over a far shorter timescale than would have occurred through most of evolutionary time. The study, published on recently  in the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution, reviewed previous research "where climatic warming is a potential hidden explanatory variable for the occurrence of shape-shifting" and found trends particularly noticeable in birds.

The Australian parrot, for example, had shown an average 4-10 percent increase in the size of its bill since 1871 and the authors said this positively correlated with the summer temperature each year.

Other birds, like North American dark-eyed juncos, thrushes and Galapagos finches also saw bill size increases.

Meanwhile, the wings of the great roundleaf bat grew, the European rabbit developed bigger ears, while the tails and legs of masked shrews were found to be larger.

Shape-shifting does not mean that animals are coping with climate change and that all is 'fine'. It just means they are evolving to survive it -- but we're not sure what the other ecological consequences of these changes are, or indeed that all species are capable of changing and surviving.

It's well known that animals use their appendages to regulate their internal temperature. African elephants, for example, pump warm blood to their large ears, which they then flap to disperse heat.

The beaks of birds perform a similar function – blood flow can be diverted to the bill when the bird is hot. This heat-dispersing function shows the beak is warmer than the rest of the body. All this means there are advantages to bigger appendages in warmer environments.

warm-blooded animals – also known as endotherms – tended to have smaller appendages while those in warmer climates tend to have larger ones.

This pattern became known as Allen's rule, which has since been supported by studies of birds  and mammals.

Biological patterns such as Allen's rule can also help make predictions about how animals will evolve as the climate warms.

https://www.cell.com/trends/ecology-evolution/fulltext/S0169-5347(21)00197-X?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS016953472100197X%3Fshowall%3Dtrue

https://researchnews.cc/news/8818/Animals--shape-shifting--as-clima...

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