Monthly Archives: April 2022

If you are seeking a naturally lower calorie wine, look for dry wines with a lower ABV, such as Prosecco (brut or extra dry), dry Riesling, or Gamay. These wines typically fall on a spectrum of 80 to 120 calories per glass.

Q: Karen S. from Margate asks, Whats the difference between a natural wine and an organic wine?

A: Hi Karen! Natural wines and organic wines have a lot in common. Most significantly they share a concern for the earth and sustainable practices, but there are also several key differences.

To be certified organic by the USDA, a wine must be made without genetic engineering, and it must undergo a rigorous process of inspections and assessments. The grapes must be grown organically without synthetic fertilizers, and all other ingredients such as yeast and fining agents must be certified organic, as well. While sulfites are commonly added to wines as an additional preserving agent or to enhance flavor, organic wines cannot have added sulfites. Wines labeled as made with organic grapes have slightly less restrictions, but it is still a feat for winemakers to achieve this certification.

Natural wine, on the other hand, is not a legal certification. Rather, its a loose term that refers to wines made with little to no intervention by the winemaker. This means grapes are grown without the assistance of pesticides, grapes are handpicked, and juice is fermented into wine using only native yeasts. These yeasts occur naturally on the fruit, and winemakers allow fermentation to start spontaneously, rather than controlling fermentation with the addition of cultured yeasts. While natural wines wont necessary be certified organic, one could argue that they exemplify the most ancient, non-invasive method of winemaking.

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What you need to know about natural, organic and vegan wines - Atlantic City Weekly

We have been interested in the romantic life of the parasite Cryptosporidium for some time, says Boris Striepen, a scientist in Penns School of Veterinary Medicine.

Cryptosporidium is a leading cause of diarrheal disease in young children around the world. The intestinal parasite contributes to childhood mortality and causes malnutrition and stunting. How a parasite like this one reproduces and completes its life cycle has significant impact on child health.

Its the product of parasite sex, that is infectious agent here, a spore, that is transmitted by contaminated water, Striepen says. So, if you break its ability to have sex, you would break the cycle of transmission and infection.

In a new paper in PLOS Biology, Striepen and colleagues in his lab tread new ground in understanding how Cryptosporidium reproduces inside a host. Using an advanced imaging technique allowed the scientists to observe the entire lifecycle in the laboratory. They found the parasite completes three cycles of asexual replication and then directly switches to male and female sexual forms. Their observations refute an intermediate stage that was introduced in the 1970s and align well with the original description of physician and parasitologist Edward Tyzzer who discovered this pathogen more than a century ago.

What we have shown contradicts what you see in most textbooks today, including the description at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website, Striepen says. Its really a super simple lifecycle that is completed in a single host in three days and only has three characters: asexual cells, male cells, and female cells.

Other parasites, such as the malaria parasite Plasmodium, a cousin of Cryptosporidium, have more complicated and lengthy paths to follow an overall similar life cycle. While Crypto completes its lifecycle in one host, most malaria parasites move between two: a mosquito, where the parasites sexual reproduction occurs, and a human, where its asexual replication occurs.

Cryptosporidium is a great model to study parasite development; you can see analogous steps to what happens with the malarial parasite, but its much simpler because it all happens over only three days in one host, and we can observe it in simple cell cultures, Striepen says.

In earlier work on Cryptosporidium, Striepen and colleagues had found that sexual reproduction appeared necessary for the parasite to move from one host to infect another but also to sustain itself in a host during chronic infection. Blocking developmental progression and parasite sex thus presents itself as a strategy to cure or prevent infection.

Cryptosporidium is a minuscule single-cell parasite that invades and reproduces within the cells of the intestine of its hosts. To get a closer look at what was happening, the researchers developed a live-cell microscopic imaging technique to track the progression of the parasite through multiple days in cell cultures. Using genetic engineering they added a fluorescent label to the nucleus of each parasite, allowing them to observe the replication of the parasite in real time and to distinguish its different lifecycle stages.

What they saw was the parasites count to three, says Striepen. Rather than responding to environmental cues, the parasites followed a rigid built-in plan. After infecting a culture, the parasite underwent three cycles of asexual reproduction. Each cycle took about 12 hours, during which the parasite established a home within the host cell and replicated itself resulting in eight new infectious parasites. Those were then released to infect surrounding host cells.

After these three waves of amplification, their fate changes abruptly, and they turn into either male or female gametes, or sex cells, in a process that also took about 12 hours. Tracking individual parasites and their offspring the researchers found no evidence for a specialized intermediate form assumed by many textbooks, demonstrating direct development.

Interestingly, the parasite appeared pre-committed to their future fate and carried that plan from one host cell into the next in a way not yet understood.

The researchers were intrigued to see that male and females arise from the infectious forms released from the same asexual parasites. One of the really interesting aspects of sexual identity here is that it is not inherited and hard-wired in the genome but much more fluid, Striepen says. Theres an asexual cell that divides itself into genetically identical clones, and then those clones somehow become male or female on the fly, resulting in dramatically different cell shape and behavior.

Future research will focus on the molecular mechanism of commitment to understand how this life cycle is programmed into the parasites biology. Understanding the life cycle of Cryptosporidium is critical in thinking about how to create a vaccine or therapy for the disease, Striepen says.

How cells make decisions and execute developmental plans is one of the most fundamental questions in biology. Cryptosporidium offers a tractable system to better understand this mechanism in parasites. Hopefully we can gain insights that contribute to the understanding of cryptosporidiosis and malaria and lead the way to new urgently needed interventions for these important diseases.

Boris Striepen is the Mark Whittier and Lila Griswold Allam Professor of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine.

Striepens coauthors were lab members Elizabeth D. English, Amandine Gurin, and Jayesh Tandel.

The study was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health to Striepen and a postdoctoral fellowship from the European Molecular Biology Organisation to Gurin.

Original post:
Revising the lifecycle of an important human parasite | Penn Today - Penn Today

22nd Century Group, Inc

BUFFALO, N.Y., April 14, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- 22nd Century Group, Inc. (Nasdaq: XXII), a leading agricultural biotechnology company focused on tobacco harm reduction, reduced nicotine tobacco, and improving health and wellness through modern plant science, will host a live webcast on Thursday, May 5, 2022, at 10:00 AM ET to discuss its 2022 first quarter results. 22nd Century will report the Companys first quarter 2022 results in a press release at 6:00 AM ET the same day.

During the webcast, James A. Mish, chief executive officer; Michael Zercher, chief operating officer; and Richard Fitzgerald, chief financial officer, will review financial results and discuss progress made in each of the Companys three franchises.

Following prepared remarks by management and slide presentation, the Company will host a Q&A session, during which management will accept questions from interested analysts. Investors, shareholders, and members of the media will also have the opportunity to pose questions to management by submitting questions through the interactive webcast during the event.

The live and archived webcast, interactive Q&A and slide presentation will be accessible on the Events web page in the Company's Investor Relations section of the website, at http://www.xxiicentury.com/investors/events. Please access the website at least 15 minutes prior to the start of the webcast to register and, if necessary, download and install any required software.

About 22nd Century Group, Inc.22nd Century Group, Inc. (Nasdaq: XXII) is a leading agricultural biotechnology company focused on tobacco harm reduction, reduced nicotine tobacco and improving health and wellness through plant science. With dozens of patents allowing it to control nicotine biosynthesis in the tobacco plant, the Company has developed proprietary reduced nicotine content (RNC) tobacco plants and cigarettes, which have become the cornerstone of the FDAs Comprehensive Plan to address the widespread death and disease caused by smoking. The Company received the first and only FDA MRTP authorization of a combustible cigarette in December 2021. In tobacco, hemp/cannabis, and hop plants, 22nd Century uses modern plant breeding technologies, including genetic engineering, gene-editing, and molecular breeding to deliver solutions for the life science and consumer products industries by creating new, proprietary plants with optimized alkaloid and flavonoid profiles as well as improved yields and valuable agronomic traits.

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Learn more at xxiicentury.com, on Twitter, on LinkedIn, and on YouTube.

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking StatementsExcept for historical information, all of the statements, expectations, and assumptions contained in this press release are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements typically contain terms such as anticipate, believe, consider, continue, could, estimate, expect, explore, foresee, goal, guidance, intend, likely, may, plan, potential, predict, preliminary, probable, project, promising, seek, should, will, would, and similar expressions. Actual results might differ materially from those explicit or implicit in forward-looking statements. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially are set forth in Risk Factors in the Companys Annual Report on Form 10-K filed on March 11, 2021. All information provided in this release is as of the date hereof, and the Company assumes no obligation to and does not intend to update these forward-looking statements, except as required by law.

Investor Relations & Media Contact:Mei Kuo22nd Century Group, Inc.Director, Communications & Investor RelationsT: 716-300-1221mkuo@xxiicentury.com

Darrow Associates Investor RelationsMatt KrepsT: 214-597-8200mkreps@darrowir.com

Read more here:
22nd Century Group (Nasdaq: XXII) to Announce First Quarter 2022 Results on May 5, 2022 - Yahoo Finance

Synthetic biology is a novel area of research that is the amalgamation of multiple disciplines such as molecular biology, biotechnology, biophysics and genetic engineering among others. There are chiefly two approaches used in synthetic biology namely, top down approach and bottom up approach. Top-down approach involves the re-design and fabrication of existing biological systems for producing synthetic products. Bottom-up approach involves designing and construction of de novo biological systems or devices that do not exist in nature. An impending need to understand the functioning of genetic elements, cells and biological processes has led to the emergence of synthetic biology. Synthetic biology products are used across many industries, including pharmaceutical & diagnostics, energy, bioplastics and environment.

World synthetic biology market was valued at $ 5,245.7 million in 2015, growing at a CAGR of 23% during the forecast period. Assistance from government and private organizations, rising number of synthetic biology research entities and declining cost of DNA sequencing & synthesizing are the major factors driving the market growth.

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Market Statistics:

The file offers market sizing and forecast throughout 5 primary currencies USD, EUR GBP, JPY, and AUD. It helps corporation leaders make higher choices when foreign money change records are available with ease. In this report, the years 2020 and 2021 are regarded as historic years, 2020 as the base year, 2021 as the estimated year, and years from 2022 to 2030 are viewed as the forecast period.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services report that US healthcare expenditures grew by 4.6% to US$ 3.8 trillion in 2019, or US$ 11,582 per person, and accounted for 17.7% of GDP. Also, the federal government accounted for 29.0% of the total health expenditures, followed by households (28.4%). State and local governments accounted for 16.1% of total health care expenditures, while other private revenues accounted for 7.5%.

This study aims to define market sizes and forecast the values for different segments and countries in the coming eight years. The study aims to include qualitative and quantitative perspectives about the industry within the regions and countries covered in the report. The report also outlines the significant factors, such as driving factors and challenges, that will determine the markets future growth.

On the contrary, bio-safety & bio-security issues, would hinder the market growth. The issues related to the misuse of synthetic biology or possibilities of accidental release of pathogens into free atmosphere would remain as a key challenge worldwide. However, rising demand for bio-fuels, growing awareness in emerging economies and rising R&D investments for synthetic drugs and vaccines would offer lucrative opportunities in the market.

Based on geography, the market is segmented across North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific and LAMEA regions. In 2015, Europe was the leading geography in terms of revenue generation followed by North America. Further, Europe would continue to maintain its lead position through 2020 owing to constant support from European government and private organizations, establishment of small start-ups and investment by leading companies especially in the biofuel segment. Asia Pacific is projected as the fastest growing market owing to increasing number of research entities.The report provides a comprehensive analysis of the leading companies operating in the world synthetic biology market.

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Key companies profiled in the report are Thermo Fischer Scientific, GenScript, DNA2.0, Integrated DNA technologies, Eurofins Scientific, Inc., Origene technologies, Scientific genomics Inc. Editas Medicine, Inc., Pareto Biotechnologies, Blue heron, TeselaGen, Twist biosciences, Syntrox Inc., and others.

Key Benefits

This report provides an extensive analysis of the current and emerging market trends and dynamics in the world synthetic biology market.The report provides a detailed analysis of the current market and estimations during 20142020, which would enable the stakeholders to capitalize on the prevailing market opportunities.The synthetic biology market scenario has been comprehensively analyzed in accordance to key geographical regions.The key market players operating in the market have been profiled in the report, and their strategies have been thoroughly analyzed to understand the competitive outlook of the market.Competitive intelligence highlights the business practices followed by leading market players across geographies.SWOT analysis enables to study the internal environment of the leading companies for strategy formulation

KEY MARKET SEGMENTS:

The world Synthetic Biology market is segmented as:

By Products

Synthetic DNASynthetic oligosSynthetic genesSoftware toolsChassis organismsSynthetic clonesSynthetic cells

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By Technology

Nucleotide synthesis and sequencingBioinformaticsMicrofluidicsGenetic engineering

By Application

Pharmaceuticals and diagnosticsChemicalsBiofuelsBioplasticsOthers (Environment, agriculture & aquaculture)

By Geography

North AmericaEuropeAsia PacificLAMEA

Table of Content:

Key Questions Answered in the Market Report

How did the COVID-19 pandemic impact the adoption of by various pharmaceutical and life sciences companies? What is the outlook for the impact market during the forecast period 2021-2030? What are the key trends influencing the impact market? How will they influence the market in short-, mid-, and long-term duration? What is the end user perception toward? How is the patent landscape for pharmaceutical quality? Which country/cluster witnessed the highest patent filing from January 2014-June 2021? What are the key factors impacting the impact market? What will be their impact in short-, mid-, and long-term duration? What are the key opportunities areas in the impact market? What is their potential in short-, mid-, and long-term duration? What are the key strategies adopted by companies in the impact market? What are the key application areas of the impact market? Which application is expected to hold the highest growth potential during the forecast period 2021-2030? What is the preferred deployment model for the impact? What is the growth potential of various deployment models present in the market? Who are the key end users of pharmaceutical quality? What is their respective share in the impact market? Which regional market is expected to hold the highest growth potential in the impact market during the forecast period 2021-2030? Which are the key players in the impact market?

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Synthetic Biology Market Present Scenario on Growth Analysis Along with Key Industry Players - Taiwan News

This is an edition of Up for Debate, a newsletter by Conor Friedersdorf. On Wednesdays, he rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Soon after, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.

Last week I asked readers, What worries you most about the direction of the country? For Adam, the answer is rooted in a perception that were underestimating what is at stake when we act:

The thing I worry about the most is breaking unfixable things. I think the modern era, especially defined by the GOP (but also by the far left), is more about performance than production. Our leaders dont seem to care about fixing problems, or even proposing solutions, just popularity contests, scoring points, and seeing how far they can push the envelope to stay in power. This didnt used to worry me as much. While Congress was always a procrastinator, they tended to get their homework done on time.

But I fear in the next few years, something will break that cant be fixed. Republicans are telling us theyre going to try to steal the next election. Democrats seem to be jamming their heads in the sand to avoid the issue and hope that two centuries of rule-following will save us. It wont. The more America breaks, the more other nations will step in to fill the void. What if the dollar ceases to be the world reserve currency? Most Americans cant comprehend the benefits we gain from this status, or the economic and lifestyle pain well suffer if it goes away. Once its gone, its gone. Theres no going back. What if a debt ceiling fight takes us over the edge? That might be all it takes. And can anyone tell me with a straight face they trust the leaders in Congress as responsible stewards of the country to NOT take us over that cliff? Damn the consequences?

Congress has gotten used to passes and do-overs. But there are things that will break us, will fundamentally alter life as we know it, well below the apocalyptic threats of climate change or nuclear war, but a new era of real, actual, American decline (not the made up American decline BS used in election ads). And were so polarized, so used to choosing and accepting less than we deserve in our leaders, I fear well lower the bar and accept it.

B. laments the abandonment of rationalism:

As a healthcare provider recommending COVID vaccination to skeptical patients, we are now educated by the CDC and our medical organizations that the best way to do this is, dont try to convince them using facts. In a nutshell this is an example of what worries me the most. The abandonment of any effort to make difficult decisions using rationalism.

So instead of approaching these decisions by using as much science, math, and reason as we have availableand acknowledging that almost all difficult decisions need to be made using incomplete informationweve now moved to a faith-based system. We choose a source of information like a cable news network or a minister or a politician or an internet community. And then just believe whatever they say rather than trusting institutions, fact-checking, and content experts. When both sides do that, there is no room for either compromise or getting anyone to agree that they might be wrong (now or in the past). We are thus left with no ability to address complicated, difficult issues like climate change, budget deficits, entitlement programs, or healthcare reform.

Jill is thinking about income inequality:

I am particularly interested right now in the debate spawned by Matthew Stewarts The Birth of a New American Aristocracy, the 9.9%, who own more wealth than all other Americans put together, and are perpetuating wealth inequality like never before. I am surprised to find myself in this class, and pondering how to get more clarity about the nature of the problem that our emergence as a class represents, and what can be done about this.

Matt worries that we dont invest more in the quality of education for all:

If we want to stay a leading force in the world, we should prioritize having the best educated population. Right now it seems like we are being forced into an absurd debate over preventing kids from being groomed or indoctrinated. Its an argument against activity thats not occurring, doing damage to the teaching field, school boards, and the overall effectiveness of education. We could be spending time and resources to give young generations the best education available, but we arent. Its going to haunt our country and inhibit our ability to progress as a competitive economy.

What makes me optimistic is to see the independent thought of the younger Gen Z population. They seem to understand social media and information in a different way that I hope allows them to identify mis/disinformation more naturally than older generations. They have skills and talents which will allow them to be successful in new ways. Millennials are uniquely well educated as a generation and will offer a lot of value as leaders. I look forward to a world more generally controlled by Millennials and Gen Z.

Tony believes that were doomed by the attack on truth that he perceives:

When I was a student in the late 90s and early aughts at Evangelical colleges, we were terrified of postmodernism. Perhaps ironically, we now find ourselves in a cultural moment foretold by those Evangelicals, but for different reasons and with many of them on the other side of truth. The fact that charlatans and pathological liars are allowed unfettered access to airwaves and social media is disastrous. It works for an anarchic state perhaps but not for a functioning republic. What we are seeing now is the nightmare underbelly of democracy that the Founders tried to prevent by implementing certain checks and balances. I see no evidence that this experiment is leading in a direction other than failure.

L. has concerns about excessive questioning of everything, but finds hope at work:

Im a middle school educator, teaching social studies in the Bronx. What troubles me is the denigration of institutions. I dont just mean government. We as a society have questioned and doubted so much (on both the left AND the right) that the familiar groundings of societyfamily, education, commercebecome objects of constant suspicion.

Social media is a huge culprit in this: any medium that makes a fool an instant expert is a conduit for anarchy. However, I found hope in my classroom. We were discussing the difficult legacy of the Declaration of Independence. 41 slave owners were among the 56 signers of a document that stated all men are created equal. I asked if the flaws of these men invalidated the ideas in the document (an idea that gets wide circulation in critical studies). One by one, my students disagreed. They all said basically the same thing: the ideas are too important to throw away. They are ideas worth fighting for, ideas that should be what we as Americans should work towards every day. I almost cried.

Sophia fears an environment that is increasingly efficient, polluted, ugly, controlled, tamed, tracked; a culture in which children and adults are increasingly afraid, lonely, and anxious despite objective safety; and a culture in which people die after years of slow deterioration of mind and body, while she finds hope in genetic engineering; an explosion of beautiful art in the form of writing, television, movies, and fashion; an end to farm animal exploitation through the invention of lab grown meat; and assisted suicide legislation and more good death culture.

Read: 14 reader views on sexuality and gender in the classroom

Like other readers, Isaac worries about social medias effect on society:

Social media as it exists today degrades human experience. I am fairly young but I dont use it. I believe the epidemics of anxiety, loneliness, and depression that are wrecking my generation are due in large part to the commercialization of social interaction. These platforms exploit human weakness and our tendency to believe things that we agree with, intensify in-group out-group thinking, and turn truth into a political football.

What worries me is that these platforms will remain central to all forms of public discourse, and that Americans will find it impossible to act as one people. We face numerous existential challenges. We cannot surmount them without a shared set of facts and values. I think that it is possible to create beneficial social mediathere are values to connectionbut that is not what we have today and unless there is a recognition that these businesses are sucking our attention dry at the expense of the things that matter most (love, compassion, truth, reason) we are going to be unable to surmount our challenges and I think we will be in an increasingly isolated, atomized, and alienating culture.

What gives me hope is this: America is a strong country. We have spent the last decade at least with no clear enemy, no clear purpose, and a pervasive need to self doubt and eat our own. If we play to our strengths, recognize the incredible gift of our democracy, our geography, and our people, then we could accomplish almost anything.

Errol fears that we are too pessimistic:

I worry that were entering a world of overcorrection.

I love this country, where you can break free of the worst and incorporate the best of the culture youve come from. That is one of the best ideas a society has ever had. But now mixing cultures is cultural appropriation and a bad thing. Weve allowed the most immigrants ever in the history of any government, yet weve somehow become the border wall country. Im not saying we are without serious problems, but we do do good and have a rich positive history as well. We invented airplanes and movies. We landed on the moon! These are pretty remarkable progressive steps for the species. The world is worse without the US in it, and while we can and should do better, it would be nice to acknowledge the good once in a while and to take a break from the constant negativity.

Martin worries about the degradation of local control:

My concern is that so many individuals, especially those in the current political class, are forgetting that we are a Federal Republic with a principles-based constitution underpinned by a liberal (in the classic, not political, sense) set of values. I guess you can ask, why does this matter?

In a Federal Republic a significant portion of decision-making can be pushed to local communities. What is unfortunate is that each time there is conflict between various layers of government our politicians in one party or the other seem to want to aggregate power farther from the citizenry. Over the past 20 years we have watched both California and Texas push for nationalization of their legislative priorities followed by the cry for states rights as soon the Federal government changed hands. And in both cases we have watched as these states have mandated behavior at the county, city and even school board level in conflict with local desires. As long as the principles enshrined in the 14th amendment ( nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws) are met, federalism allows for a multitude of laboratories in which to innovate and learn. Just as none of us really think technological innovation should occur only in one location, we should not believe that of political innovation.

Michael is so worried that he has thought about where else he might move:

I am frankly terrified about the direction of the country. I have never felt this pessimistic about where we are heading. It appears we are in an endlessly polarized environment where there is no unity and little or no concern for anyone who is not in our tribe. As someone who has been a liberal democrat all my life, and has mostly, but not always, lived in the northeast US, I appreciate that to some extent I live in a bubble surrounded by like-minded people. But many of us pay attention to current events and my concern is shared by many. I just had lunch with a close friend yesterday, and we were talking about what other countries might be a more hospitable, less stressful place to live. I have had more than a few sleepless nights thinking about this.

What am I optimistic about? One thing that I find both reassuring and perhaps a source of optimism is that my three adult children seem far less troubled than I am. They are busy with careers, relationships, house hunting, etc. Maybe as someone who is semi-retired, I just have too much time to think about things. It is almost as if the best case scenario is that as the federal government becomes less empowered (due to the originalism of the Supreme Court), states will evolve separately and perhaps people will gravitate to states that are more welcoming to them. We would no longer be a united country (I think that train has left the station anyway), we would be in more of a cold civil war. The enormous downside of that, of course, would be a fractured response to International events. It appears we are headed toward a more conflictual world stage and having a fractured and ineffectual US would certainly not help.

For Eric, theres nothing to be pessimistic about but pessimism itself:

I actually dont worry that much about the direction of the country, but I do worry about issues with the country. The thing that worries me most is the popularization of the end-of-the-world framework, often seen in a religious context, being applied to American democracy. This concerns me, because, right now, this type of pessimism is broadly and simultaneously permeating both the left and the right. I cant think of a precedent for this. There are always fatalistic pockets of society, but American fatalism appears to have gone mainstream. Democracy is just an idea. It exists solely in our collective imagination. If enough of us stop believing its a good idea, then it wont withstand an organized assault.

This is a serious problem. But, as I said, Im not that worried. Weve been through divisive times before. We survived an actual bloody Civil War over the right to own humans, so weve fought it out over the most serious issue. I think its a strong precedent for success. And were seeing tons of participation in the allegedly rigged process, from both sides.

Were living through the first time in human history when we all hear the thoughts of anybody who wants to speak their thoughts out loud. And a lot of people (but not all) seem to want to speak. But sometimes we forget that talk is cheap. People say all kinds of things that they dont mean, especially from behind a keyboard, especially if theyre anonymous. There are people who say abhorrent things that they actually believe. But there are a lot of people who speak incredibly flippantly about all sorts of stuff who, when push-comes-to-shove, would be forced to admit they dont mean it. Just think of the tough guy talk some people use behind their keyboards, who are actually sad, pathetic wimps.

The freedom to say things inconsequentially via social media has dovetailed with the desire for attention and a perverse incentive structure that rewards extreme speech, so a lot of people appear disenchanted with American democracy, but theyre living their best lives thanks to it. Now, it may be the case that the insincere language reaches such a fever pitch that coming generations internalize it without realizing how performative it is, and then we could be screwed. But I think humans will adapt to a world with social media and will find solutions to the malaligned incentive structure. People will continue realizing that American democracy, for all its flaws, is still pretty awesome, and well keep improving it.

Thanks for your contributions. I read every one that you send. See you Wednesday.

More here:
12 Reader Views on Where America Is Going Wrong - The Atlantic

Jonathan Dordick, PhD, from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and other collaborators from Rensselaer and Albany Medical College have been awarded $500,000 from the New York State Biodefense Commercialization Fund to engage in research for the development of a Pentosan Polysulfate (PPS)-based nasal spray to block COVID-19.

Despite advances in both therapeutics and vaccines for COVID-19, there remains a critical need to develop a simple, easy to use, and highly effective prophylactic to prevent transmission and serious illness as a result of infection with SARS-CoV-2, saidDordick, institute professor of chemical/biological engineering at Rensselaer, and co-director of the Heparin Applied Research Center (HARC). Since the virus uses the nasal passages as a first line of infection, an ideal approach is to use a safe and effective nasal spray. We have shown that pentosan polysulfate (PPS), an FDA-approved drug for an entirely different indication, shows strong binding to SARS-CoV-2, thereby neutralizing the virus.

Our goal now is to incorporate PPS into a nasal spray formulation to block SARS-CoV-2 infection either pre- or post-exposure. Moreover, a similar mechanism of infection is used by a number of viruses, including other coronaviruses and some common cold viruses, and thus the PPS-based nasal spray could be useful against other respiratory infections.

Dordick is the principal investigator (PI) of the project and will lead the research. He has expertise in human cell culture and high-throughput screening, SARS-CoV-2 pseudovirus preparation and screening, drug discovery, and toxicology. He has founded four companies, including three in drug discovery, and he will be responsible for project oversight.

Despite the success of vaccines to prevent COVID-19 infection and reduce severity of breakthrough infections, there remains a notable resistance to vaccination, and waning immunity offered by vaccines against emerging variants may necessitate new generations of vaccines. There has been success in advancing therapeutics, such as dexamethasone, remdesivir, molnupiravir, paxlovid, and monoclonal antibodies.

None of the vaccines and therapeutics provide for a combined prophylactic/early-stage therapeutic that can be administered at home and is broadly applicable to other respiratory infections. Therefore, new agents are urgently needed for prophylaxis/early-stage treatment of COVID-19.

Home or physicians office use is expected to have a high degree of public acceptance and will help to address outbreaks of COVID-19, particularly as new variants emerge, and we enter the endemic phase of the disease. A prophylactic nasal spray to prevent COVID-19 infection could be used pre- or post-exposure and could be used daily by persons who are unable to be vaccinated due to medical reasons.

Individuals in healthcare, transportation, and food services are particularly vulnerable to SARS-CoV-2 and would benefit from use of a prophylactic nasal spray.

Researchers say they expect the PPS nasal spray to be useful against future infectious disease threats and that the impact of the spray is likely to extend well beyond the current COVID-19 pandemic.

See original here:
Nasal Spray Research to Combat COVID-19 and Other Respiratory Infections Awarded Grant - Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News