Almost all existing vaccines work against bacteria and viruses, there are currently no vaccines against fungi anywhere in the world, and there is just one type of vaccine – the anti-malarial one – against parasites. Parasites often have sophisticated ways of evading a host’s immune system. They adapt to their hosts during complex life cycles, involving several developmental stages. “Each one of those stages, either in an animal or a human host, has different proteins that are expressed in the different life stages. And that makes it more complicated to identify what the targets could be of the parasite for development of a vaccine,” says O’Brien.

This life cycle complexity is one of the reasons that parasites aren’t always easy to culture in a laboratory. In other words, it can be tough to simply produce more of them under controlled conditions, at the right stage of development, for research purposes. Possibilities including cultivating parasites in research animals or in a laboratory, rather than in their usual hosts.

They are also much more genetically diverse, and usually affect lower income countries. But various vaccines for different parasites hold promise. And some of the vaccines’ technology might work on eventual HIV vaccines, too.

It also means most of Florida is going to be exported to other states. I don’t think anyone (including FL) wants that.

Respect for marriage act was good, but I want to see Biden and congressional democrats (and moderate republicans) do more to protect Americans from losing their rights. That means human rights should have precedence over religious rights. I’ll be voting for dems this election for this and other reasons. We need to keep our democracy too.

Thank you!

The skies over Washington State.

He did a lot of good work. I also feel happy knowing that we actually found the particle physically while he was still alive. That has got to be satisfying. Rest easy, Higgs. ❤️

Probably not much more than Christmas, mayyyybe easter?

Christmas evening mass. It’s like the superbowl of church.

Hmm, you shouldn’t be straining. Metamucil and plenty of water can help without lots of pushing. I find that making smoothies with berries, unflavored yogurt, spinach, and milk helps too.

I’d start looking at stuff like meetup.com, fun clubs in your area (climbing, gardening, aquariums, biking), and particularly singles adventure clubs. They are out there, and they are really fun. Not dating. Just making friends.

One night it will be swing dancing, the next week whitewater rafting. You get to choose what you like! They rented one of our chartered boats for a 4th of July out on the water when I used to bartend in college. Lots of cute men and women, generally 30s and 40s. They really seemed to be enjoying it :)

The warfighter wouldn’t be able to save the plane, but it would be able to scuttle it with missiles if the idiot was actually trying to hijack and crash the plane like 9/11.

Hindsight is 20/20, but if thousands died because someone in intelligence brushed off a social media post as joke, there would be a ton of justifiably angry people.

The dude is an idiot either way, though, lol.

While it’s possible, it also would mean Snapchat is sending updates every few hours. I can almost guarantee the wifi is being intercepted at airports and that DRTboxes are deployed instead of full cell towers to also sniff traffic.

Or it could be both. Regardless, making poorly timed terrorist jokes at an airport is generally bad form.

If you haven’t watched The Big Short, you should. Michael Lewis breaks it down nicely. He does really good books and movies that show the rot and corruption that we need to root out with regulations and better funding.

I’m just waiting for an ancient poxvirus to infect an Alaskan or Russian miner and have him bring it back to his antivaxxer wife before they go to Disney World with ancient smallpox-ridden kids. Like the Floodship crashing into Earth in Halo 3. We’d have to glass the entire area.

As far as I’ve read, no. They have a fraught relationship because of the Russian pogroms of jews awhile back. But Israel is also unable to get away from them as Russia still has a Jewish population that they have no qualms abusing if their relationship goes south. It’s why the Israelis aren’t giving stuff like iron Dome launchers and rockets to the Ukrainians, because they know Russia will start punishing Russian jews for it.

When reaching RSF checkpoints women and men were separated, harassed, searched, robbed, and physically assaulted. RSF and allied militias indiscriminately shot hundreds of people in the legs to prevent them from fleeing," the monitors said.

Complex financial networks established by RSF before and during the war enabled it to acquire weapons, pay salaries, fund media campaigns, lobby, and buy the support of other political and armed groups," wrote the monitors, adding that the RSF used proceeds from its pre-war gold business to create a network of as many as 50 companies in several industries. Since the war started “most of the gold which was previously exported to UAE, was now smuggled to Egypt,” the monitors said.

Jesus.

Nobody wants to own Russia either. As our eloquent former president said, it’s a ‘shithole country’ with few redeeming qualities. But Russia might have a lot to gain in terms of plunder and valuable land in a war with more geographically blessed neighboring countries. Particularly ones with warm water ports. It’s good to keep the fight up. Plus, unlike some countries, Ukraine really does want to be a sovereign country with a vibrant democracy. And it has the balls to go for the gold, too.

Squirrels are pretty high in cholesterol.

China boned itself so hard with the one child policy that they are either going to have to do a great leap forward, import a bunch of people under an immigration policy, or go to war. I suspect it will be the last one. They have way too many old people, too few young women, and a ton of guys (but still not as much as the older folks). It’s gonna cause a massive problem as they are well below replacement rate, there are few women, and a ton of their working class is gonna retire with nobody to support them in the next 20- 30 years or so.

Generally, immigration keeps a country stable, but they don’t really have much immigration.

Mellvar posted a bunch, but ones like immigration and naturalization are huge, as the process for becoming a citizen- especially while of working age- is huge. Having your husband or wife by your side and not limited to trips across the border once a month is really nice.