Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds

"That's what we're doing with asteroids ['planetary archaeology']."

"We're excavating the leftovers from the construction site [of the solar system]."

Tom Statler, program scientist, NASA

 

"One of the surprising things about the Trojan population is that they are physically very different from one another but occupy a really small region of space."

"That diversity in that small region is telling us something important about the early evolution of the solar system."

"My hope will be to look at the current models of solar system formation -- including my own work -- and say: 'Nope, this is all wrong. It wasn't that simple, and we have to start again'."

Hal Levison, planetary scientist, principal investigator, Lucy mission, NASA 

NASA launches robotic archaeologist Lucy on 12-year mission to Trojan asteroids

NASA is interested in discovering primordial organic material on asteroids with the prospect that they may have seeded Earth with the chemical ingredients required for life to emerge, billions of years ago. A 12-year mission has been launched, to be powered by two giant solar arrays in the form of a probe to reach clusters of asteroids along the orbital path of Jupiter. The spacecraft has been named Lucy, as has the mission in recognition of the 3.2 million-year-old australopithecine skeleton discovered in 1974 in Ethiopia, a discovery that revealed secrets of human evolution.

Robotic Lucy's purpose is to reveal to astrophysicists the evolution of the solar system. The cluster of asteroids toward which Lucy is slated to reach in that ambitious project of archaeological revelations about the solar system's origins are called collectively the Trojan swarms, representing the unexplored regions of asteroids in the solar system. Lucy lifted off on her mission on October 16; a deep-space robotic archaeologist seeking to answer such pressing queries on the solar system origins; and how the planets reached their present orbits and how life could have emerged on Earth.

Lucy is slated after cruising through space for six years, to fly close to the seven Trojan asteroids through to 2033, through sun circuits to study the geology, composition, density and structure of the Trojans, small bodies in stable points along the orbit of the sun expressed by Jupiter. The concept of planetary formation thirty years ago was not what it is today. When then it was believed that a star formed in the center of a rotating disc of protoplanetary material to gradually condense and collect into eight planets in simple orbits.

Efforts by planetary scientist Hal Levison and others of his colleagues attempted to simulate the formation of the solar system, discovering repeated problems in their efforts -- finally resulting in the realization it was not possible to build Uranus and Neptune in their present orbits. Which led to the development by Dr. Levison and three other researchers of the Nice model of solar system evolution, suggesting the giant planets formed closer to the sun than current orbits would suggest. The increasingly eccentric orbits of the young Jupiter and Saturn destabilized, rearranging the solar system in the process.

 

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — NASA's newest asteroid probe, named Lucy, blasted off from Kennedy Space Center here in Florida to embark on a 12-year mission to study two different clusters of asteroids around Jupiter known as Trojans. These swarms represent the final unexplored regions of asteroids in the solar system.

 

The giant planets moved and headed outward, scattering small bodies of the solar system some of which became the Trojan swarms of asteroids about 4.6 billion years ago; a system of planets circling a sun-theory. Lucy's trajectory is meant to carry it further than any solar-powered spacecraft, powered by two giant solar arrays, moving at about 10 kilometers each second. Its sophisticated orbit of loop-the-loops across the solar system, circling the sun, taking gravity from Earth for propulsion to Jupiter's orbital path at the Lagrange 4 point.

 

From there, gravity will point it again around the sun to the Earth whose gravity again will hurl it outward to Lagrange 5 and back, a process designed to repeat itself infinitely; a trajectory driven by planet positions and gravity assists, to enable the spacecraft to continue on for conceivably hundreds of thousands of years. 

 

Lucy has been outfitted with a "time-capsule" of poetry, quotes and song lyrics; presumably inclusive of The Beatles' 'Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds' in celebration of the Ethiopian skull find named Lucy.

The hope and expectation is that at some time in the future, space-farers will come across Lucy, study its revelations and in the process make their own discoveries of life on Earth in the 21st Century.

 

The completed mission is meant to reveal the unexpected -- explaining how the solar system evolved.

Lucy is NASA’s first spacecraft to study Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids. NASA

Losing Daylight, Gaining SAD

Academic research shows that losing an hour of daylight can be linked to negative effects on both the mind and body, including disturbed sleep patterns, seasonal depression and obesity. (iStock)

"When we admitted the first cohort, it was in the summer-time, and they were really quite well."

"Some skeptical people said, 'Well, what will happen if they don't get depressed? You'll look pretty stupid. And I thought, well, that's OK, I'll take that chance. It's not such a bad thing to look stupid."

"[And then, on schedule the majority of the test subjects became depressed; people went] down [at different times reflecting their sensitivity to lack of light']. We  exposed them to light and it was really quite one of the most exciting things. ... It was, in some cases, very transformational."

"If you've got SAD [seasonal affective disorder] and COVID anxiety, it's just a double whammy."
"If people aren't operating at their best, they should be treated or they should be helped."

"It's an unfortunate term, because it's got a kind of Freudian feel about it -- 'Oh these people are neurotic, they're just complaining about nothing'."

Dr.Norman Rosenthal, professor of psychiatry, Georgetown University School of Medicine

"We don't know what the trigger is, and it may be different for different people."

"What makes this unique is that there are very few sub-types of depression that we know when they're going to come on [most frequently between November and December] and when they're going to get better."

"Certain hormone levels, certain basic building blocks of proteins -- these all shift with the seasons."

Dr.Anthony Levitt, psychiatrist, chief, Hurvitz Brain Sciences Program, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, Toronto

Seasonal Affective Disorder   HelpGuide

 

Dr.Rosenthal, back in the winter of 1981 began a study ti determine the extent of a depression that would affect peoples' moods in the late fall months, when those affected tended to go to sleep earlier, sleep for longer periods and awaken later. By late afternoon their energy levels failed, they felt unmotivated, lethargic and depressed. People who travelled south reported mood improvement days after their arrival "and a deterioration in mood a few days after returning North again".

He was a pioneer in the study of a syndrome newly named as seasonal affective disorder (SAD). He worked out of the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda then and had his work cut out persuading colleagues of the legitimacy of the phenomenon. "Some made a joke out of it", he recalled. Forty years later, there are still skeptics, but the reality is that when clocks are turned back by an hour at 2 a.m. on November 7 with the end of daylight saving time, society in general reacts unhappily.

An event shown to correlate with seasonal depression onset.  Now, with COVID still bedeviling the globe, the situation has become more acute for many people. In the official psychiatry catalogue of mental illness SAD is recognized as a major depressive disorder, with its "seasonal pattern", as a sub-type of major depression. It has long been associated with a lack of environmental light; once people were submitted to supplemental light, their symptoms eased; "the more light, the better".

Unknown is what it is that causes the shift of critical biological molecules; length of day? amount of light exposure? Temperature; wind velocity; barometric pressure? Some people get by without getting SAD completely; they feel the effects but not severely, in "subsyndromal SAD", while others go into full-blown depression interfering with their ability to function adequately day to day. 

 

Ten percent of any population report SAD or subsyndromal SAD, but fewer than one percent meet the criteria for a "seasonal pattern of major depressive episodes", according to Dr.Raymond Lam, associate head, department of psychiatry, University of British Columbia. The symptoms of SAD are well enough recognized in the general public to encourage people to invest in SAD lamps (which filter out UV rays), and green and blue glow glasses.

Some scientists argue the theory behind SAD that major depression can be influenced by the seasons is rooted in "folk psychology", more than objective data. A Canadian study making use of data from Statistics Canada surveys from 1996 to 2013 amounting to over half a million Canadians, found the proportion of those reporting major depressive episodes in January to be 70 percent higher than in August.

Several hypotheses are current; one that shorter winter days impact on the body's internal clock to cause "chrono-biological" disturbances. Decreased exposure to daylight hours impairs the regulation of serotonin, dopamine and noradrenaline, the three major neurotransmitters that scientists believe to be disturbed in depression. Nighttime secretion of melatonin, the body's natural sleep hormone is disrupted by reduced light exposure, leaving people to waken feeling exhausted and drained rather than refreshed and rested.

So how does exposure to increased light from specialized light-emitting lamps work to relieve the symptoms of SAD? "The retina is being impacted by the extra light and signals are going back through neural connections to the hypothalamus and various nuclei that are connected to emotional centres in the brain", explains Dr.Rosenthal. What can be  helpful is regular morning walks, looking at the sky,  cognitive behavioural therapy, stress reduction and maintaining social activities.

Spiders Steering Clear of Spider-Predators

Jumping spider lounging on tree.  Getty Images

"Jumping spiders are absolutely amazing because they have this incredible eyesight. And they can see almost as good as we do, so they pay attention to detail."  

"There’s a lot of assessment of the risk in this moment, so they assess how big is that thing? How quick could it get to me?"

"And then also knowing that motion really triggers what jumping spiders perceive, like, moving away in this choppy fashion and really slowly maybe is also a strategy of not getting the attention from the predator."

Daniella Roessler, study lead researcher

 

According to a new study's analysis of spider reaction to the presence of other, predatory spiders, it is not only humans who react negatively to the presence of spiders. The instinct of survival informs spiders when one of their own species known to hunt and eat smaller spiders is around, and that the situation calls for speedy removal from the scene. Hastily extracting themselves from the presence of a hungry spider out to make a meal of a smaller spider is an exercise in survival.  

Published by the British Ecological Society in the journal Functional Ecology, the study looked at the behavioural responses of baby jumping spiders when confronted by predator and non-predator spiders -- with a view to identifying the test-subject spiders' predator-recognition instincts. In the study process Roessler and her research team placed before baby spiders a variety of objects to elicit responses. 

 

A spheroid 3D printed model was first to act as the experimental control. A 3D printed spider and an actual larger, dead spider matched in size, came next.

 

When confronted with a spider-like 3-D model, jumping spiders freeze and back away slowly, especially if the model has eyes.  Daniela Roessler

The jumping spider was placed under observation to determine whether its reaction would be based on its ability to detect which of the objects might cause a survival response, despite that the objects were stationery. The spiders' reactions were videoed, the first of which shows a baby spider seemingly assessing the black 3D spheroid model. Without hesitation, the spider scuttles over to the object, leaping it on the platform and clambering over the model, an obvious indication that fear of repercussions was not involved.

This changed when the baby spider was confronted by a 3D printed black spider, but this one fitted with frontal eye features, the presence of which caused the baby spider to freeze, move cautiously to the side and finally turn decisively away, leaping off in the opposite direction. Again, the same sphere, lacking frontal eye features provoked a more confident reaction in the baby spider, where it moved forward as though assessing the large object before it. Within seconds it turned in the opposite direction away from the object.

When presented with multiple species of dead jumping spiders, the researchers made note of the baby spiders becoming more fearful of the species that appeared just as it did; the brown marpissa muscosa. It refused to approach any nearer the dead specimen; freezing, then slowly backing away...

Tarantula ... Photograph: Redmond Durrell/Alamy

Arthritis Causes Body Inflammation

"Early in the disease process, the body has resources to repair detrimental changes within an OA [osteoarthritis] joint."

"As the disease progresses, the body's repair system can no longer keep up with these processes, resulting in the tissue damage that is called osteoarthritis."

Osteoarthritis Research Society International (ORSI)

Arthritis

Arthritis is a common malady affecting an average twenty percent of any population, a generic term referring to over 200 diseases all characterized by the same symptoms: Inflammation in the joints and other connective tissue leading to pain and stiffness. It is a lifetime affliction that can affect anyone in any age group. The two broad categories of Arthritis are known as Osteoarthritis and Inflammatory Arthritis under which all other sub-groups fall.

The most common form is Osteoarthritis, afflicting more people than all other types of Arthritis in combination. According to the ORSI, the condition reflects the body's incapacity to repair damaged joint tissue, involving the wearing down of tissue and cartilage in affected areas of the body. Breakdown of tissue within the joints eventually leads to bones on either side of the joint abrading each other which causes bone spurs, swelling and pain which results in limiting mobility.

Rheumatoid Arthritis

Knees, hips, hands, feet or spine represent the most commonly affected areas, with Osteoarthritis being more common in women. Risk factors involved in developing these conditions include genetics and obesity. People over age 50 are most at risk of developing Osteoarthritis, but any age group can be vulnerable to its onset. Different people experience Osteoarthritis symptoms variously and study by X-ray of an affected area may not particularly correspond to the level of pain or discomfort experienced.

No cure exists for any category of Arthritis, although joint replacement surgery can be indicated to restore function in serious cases. Exercise and maintenance of a healthy weight can help in symptom relief. All other types of Arthritis are encompassed by Inflammatory Arthritis, categories whose causation is inflammation of the joint; instead of a joint's cartilage breakdown. Most forms of IA are classified as autoimmune diseases, the most common form of which is Rheumatoid Arthritis.

When the body's immune system starts to attack healthy tissue erroneously, causing inflammation, joint pain and limited mobility this is an expression of Rheumatoid Arthritis. RA can initiate in a few joints, then spread swiftly to other body parts if diagnosis and treatment fail to follow at an early enough stage in its progress. Inflammation that results from RA can in some instances, affect eyes lungs, heart or nerves.

Arthritis Foundation

 

Risk factors associated with the development of RA include sex (women being more susceptible), age, family history and hormonal changes. As well, a common risk factor associated with severe cases of RA is smoking. Many body parts can be affected by RA, with the inclusion of several organs where symptoms vary from case to case. Joint pain, swelling and stiffness represent common early symptoms of RA development.

Over a hundred forms of Inflammatory Arthritis exist, with Lupus and Gout two commonly recognized diseases falling under the IA umbrella, along with other common diseases, like:

• Rheumatoid Ankylosing Spondylitis (which affects the spine)
• Psoriatic Arthritis (typically affecting fingers)
• Juvenile Arthritis (which strikes young people)
• Infectious Arthritis (occurring as a result of an infection)
• Fibromyalgia

Arthritis Foundation

Frozen Shoulder: Inflammation -- COVID Connection

"From a biological standpoint there's some theories on how if you get COVID, then your body is sort of in a heightened inflammatory state and frozen shoulder fundamentally is an inflammation problem."

"The shoulder capsule -- it's a thin lining around the joint itself -- has to maintain a delicate balance between flexibility, pliability and also integrity. Once you get into this cascade of a little bit of inflammation or microtrauma that leads to more inflammation, that just sets off the whole cycle of adhesive capsulitis where the capsule, which is normally really thin like a piece of tissue paper almost, then becomes really thick and like cardboard, and that's how your shoulder gets tight and you lose range of motion." 

"[Many cases, however] just come out of nowhere."

Michael Fu, shoulder specialist, assistant attending orthopedic surgeon, Hospital for Special Surgery, New York

"Most people are (w)racking their brains to try to figure out what they did, and the reason that they can't figure anything out is for most people, they didn't do anything."

"[This] freezing [phase is] the worst place to be. Any time they try to reach past what their range of motion is, everyone describes it to me like a knife or an ice pick in their shoulders."

"It can be excruciating."

Julie Bishop, chief, division of shoulder surgery, Ohio State University Werner Medical Center

'Frozen shoulder (adhesive capsulitis) strikes roughly two to five percent of the general population, according to the American Physical Therapy Association. Some specialists in the field find they have seen increased cases among patients in the past year-and-a-half, a situation it was felt that may have a connection to the pandemic. No one actually claims knowledge of the exact causes, however.

 

The condition occurs frequently to people in their 40s to age 60; more commonly occurring in women than men. The prevalence of cases is seen among people with underlying health conditions that include diabetes -- most particularly those suffering from Type 1, once called juvenile diabetes; insulin-dependent diabetics and those with thyroid disorders, according to Dr.Bishop. She also suggests that minor injuries can precipitate immobilization for an extended period.

Pandemic-related factors, according to some theories, including infection with the coronavirus, may contribute to frozen shoulder. Italian researchers suggested that "both direct and indirect effects" of infection with COVID may be involved in frozen shoulder development, possibly through inflammation links the infection causes. Another possible cause that was noted was the condition could result from "the sedentary lifestyle forced on these patients by this disease".

There are typically several phases of frozen shoulder progression, initiated in the inflammatory phase characterized by pain. Pain and inflammation become more severe and then stiffness begins to occur as the quality of capsule tissue changes. When the inflammation subsides, sufferers enter the "frozen" or stiff phase where pain is absent but mobility has not been regained. Frozen shoulder, said Dr.Bishop, will eventually "thaw", stiffness disappears and the joint becomes normal.

According to Dr.Fu and other specialists -- when the condition is diagnosed in its inflammatory phase a cortisone injection into the joint can assist in reducing inflammation and pain, and people are then able to begin range-of-motion therapeutic exercises. Over-the-counter anti-inflammatory medications like Advil or Motrin can help as well in managing the inflammation stage.

Frozen Shoulder

• A frozen shoulder is one that has become stuck and limited in movement.
• Frozen shoulder is often caused by inflammation of the capsule, tissue surrounding the shoulder joint.
• Diagnosing frozen shoulder requires a physical examination and possible X-rays or additional tests to rule out other causes of symptoms.
• Physical therapy and anti-inflammatory medication are usually prescribed to treat frozen shoulder.
• Surgery is not usually indicated to treat frozen shoulder unless non-operative treatments have failed to improve range of motion and decrease pain

John Hopkins Medicine

Thin Edge of the Wedge

"[The study showed a small increased risk after vaccination.]" 

"However, these adverse events were dwarfed by the neurological disorders seen after testing positive for Covid."

"Guillain-Barre syndrome, myasthenia-like disease, subarachnoid haemorrhage, encephalitis, and Bell's palsy were all quite common, especially in the first two weeks after testing positive for Sars-Cov-2."

Professor Peter Openshaw, Imperial College London 

 

"There are risks clearly associated with the vaccine but there are more substantial risks associated with infection."

Aziz Sheikh, professor, primary care research and development, University of Edinburgh

 

"The really big message from this is these are very rare neurological events that might be associated with the vaccine."

"But there is overwhelming evidence of the effectiveness of the vaccine against serious illness."

"I also work as a GP and we want to make sure people are taking up the vaccine and booster jabs, and by doing that we will protect the health of the nation in the best way we can."

Professor Julia Hippisley-Cox, University of Oxford, United Kingdom

Rare neurological conditions may occur after Covid vaccination, but the risk is far higher in people who catch Covid, new research suggests.  Getty Images

While Britain used its own home-grown anti- COVID vaccine developed by researchers at Oxford University, the vaccine drew controversy and suspicion right from the word 'go' a year previously when

Europe in particular began to question its safety and efficacy, withdrawing its use altogether finally. A casual onlooker might be forgiven for thinking briefly that this was a bit of pay-back for Britain having the gall to leave the EU through Brexit. But there were legitimate issues seen with the vaccine, as for example its impact on the heart, and blood clots, albeit in rare instances particularly seen in some age groups.

 

Now Oxford University has completed a research project finding that Guillain-Barre syndrome episodes have been linked to the AstraZeneca vaccine. They found as well that Guillain-Barre can result as a complication from COVID-19; again in small numbers, but greater than what occurs as a result of inoculation with the vaccine. Guillain-Barre is a condition affecting the nerves, manifesting commonly as numbness and pain in hands and feet.

 

With no connection to the Oxford scientists who had created the vaccine, a group of academics from Oxford conducted some research, finding that for every ten million doses administered in Britain 38 cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome surfaced -- in comparison with a non-COVID, non-vaccine baseline. On the other hand, 145 excess cases per ten million people were seen to have occurred, after testing positive for COVID.

Data was extracted from over 30 million people in Britain, used to assess how people's chances of developing adverse neurological complications were, due to the vaccine, or/and the virus. An individual inoculated with AstraZeneca was found to be close to three times likelier to develop Guillain-Barre syndrome two to three weeks following inoculation -- in comparison with never receiving a vaccine dose.

If an individual was infected with COVID, the risk was found to be significantly higher, some five times as likely to develop the condition, within a month of testing positive. According to the research results, 15 to 21 days following the AstraZeneca dose, individuals can be 29 percent more at risk of Bell's palsy than normal. In contrast, within a month of testing positive for COVID, an individual becomes 34 percent more likely to develop Bell's palsy.

The study showed that following the first dose of vaccine, there were:

• 38 extra cases (compared to the baseline risk of getting the condition) of GBS for every 10 million adults having the Oxford-Astrazeneca vaccine
• 60 extra cases of haemorrhagic stroke (a bleed in the brain) for every 10 million adults having the Pfizer vaccine

For people who had a coronavirus infection on the other hand, there were approximately:

• 145 extra GBS cases per 10 million with a positive test
• 123 extra brain inflammation disorder cases like encephalitis meningitis and myelitis per 10 million people
• 163 extra cases of myasthenia-like disorders (immune conditions affecting the nerves and muscles) per 10 million people

A health worker prepares a dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine to be administered to a patient. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)

The Third Wave Pandemic in Europe

"There are two ways at this crossroads: vaccination or lockdown."

"Every day we face this challenge and this choice. I am totally against lockdown... because of the economy."

Ukraine's  President Volodymyr Zelensky

 

"Of course, not all that needed to be done was done for informing and explaining the inevitability and importance of vaccination." 

"But at the same time, citizens of our country need to take a more responsible position and get vaccinated."

Dmitry Peskove, spokesman, President Vladimir Putin 

"[In] the UK the strategy has been very much focused on letting vaccinations do all the work. And I don't think that's going to be enough."

"[It's a dangerous strategy that relies on the unvaccinated, like children, getting infected to create a] level of overall population immunity from natural infection and vaccination."

"The problem with that, of course, is that it not only allows for some unacceptably high level of hospitalization and death, but also that it may not work." 

'[Western Europe won't] reach the crisis levels that we saw in the past -- with field hospitals being set up -- [because] vaccines have definitely changed the game and in that sense there should be a lot of reason for optimism."

Dr. Peter Drobac, global health expert, University of Oxford's Saïd Business School, England

 

"[Europe needs to not] sleepwalk [its way to lockdowns and deaths of last winter]."

"We don't know what the epidemic period will be in two months, three months' time...we are going to have to be a little cautious ... a little careful."

Mike Ryan, executive director, health emergencies program, WHO

A health care and nursing assistant stands in the Covid-19 intensive care unit at Essen University Hospital, Germany.

Eastern Europe is soon to surpass coronavirus cases totalling 20 million, even as the region is trying to come to grips with the worst outbreak since the start of the pandemic, as their efforts at inoculating their populations fall steadily behind. Eastern Europe can reluctantly boast the lowest vaccination numbers in the whole of Europe, fewer than half the population to date receiving a single dose of COVID-19 vaccination.

At the top of the region's vaccination rates Hungary counts 62 percent of its population with at least one dose, while Ukraine's population has received a mere 19 percent of a first dose, according to Our World in Data. With the steady rise of new infections, the region now averages over 83,700 new cases daily. With 4 percent of the world's population, Eastern Europe has approximately 20 percent of all new global cases.

 

People protest against Covid-19 restrictions in Bulgaria on October 20 as cases skyrocket in the region.

 

And as sad and sorry statistics go, there's more, with Russia, Ukraine and Romania reporting the most deaths in the world. The rises are driven in many countries across Europe not only by low inoculation rates, but increasing measures to allow social gathering indoors when restrictions were being lifted and now that winter is setting in, that rise in COVID-19 infections will only keep increasing.

While infections continue their steady rise, social reaction has seen many people in the region increasingly insecure, uncertain whether to continue being defiant about refusing vaccines, and at the other end of the spectrum feeling profound regret for not having agreed to vaccination. In various cities, protests have arisen against mandatory certificates that limit access to indoor public spaces to those who have been fully vaccinated.

In the European Union, the bloc average of distrust of health systems stands at 18 percent, but in the eastern sector it is one in three people in the EU's east that express no trust, according to a European Commission Eurobarometer poll. Russia has over 40 percent of all new cases in the entire region, 120 people testing positive every five minutes, placing the nation's health care system through great strain. 

 

There, 36 percent of the population has received one dose of vaccine. Leading the government to declare that the capital Moscow will shut down all businesses next week with the exclusion of essential stores, in hopes of stemming the disease spread.

Medics work in the intensive care unit for Covid-19 patients in Moscow's Sklifosovsky emergency hospital on October 20.

Pandemic Restraints Fallout

"Things were changing prior to COVID, big time, within the bra industry. What has happened alongside the pandemic is exploding interest in comfort, more flexible wires, softer fabrics and thinner fabrics."

"The bottom line is that all this fabric innovations mean you have a choice of softer, thinner and more comfortable fabrics We no longer have just two choices; thick padded or totally thin fabrics."

"If you take a look back at the last 100 years of bra manufacturing and design, it's easy to see how often styles change, as fashion does."

"There's a bra out there to meet everyone's needs, from super sexy to super sporty and everything in between."

Elisabeth Dale, founder, Breast Life 

"Intimate apparel used to serve as an item of clothing that was really worn for someone else. Now it's become a symbol of empowerment."

"It's about how it makes me feel versus how I look to you."

Kristen Classi-Zummo, apparel analyst, market research firm

"It used to be just cotton, but now Lycra, tricot, spandex, Spanette, latex and nylon are all blended together to achieve specific purposes."

"Higher spandex typically means more support and form will provide shaping."

Jene Luciani Sena, author, The Bra Book

And then there's another option. No bra. Freedom, comfort, truly 'relaxed fit'. "My body doesn't want me to strap it in for fashion's sake or because culture says I should. Nope. No more", was the expressed view of 51-year-old  Colorado life coach, Kate Chapman. "It's a delicious feeling". Well, it is for women who don't boast large breasts. For women who normally take D-size cups it's another ball game altogether. Unless they dress constantly in shapeless, large and wide garments like a MuuMuu and reconcile themselves to a tent-like appearance, they haven't the cultural/social freedom to go without.

 

Sales associate Rita King finds a specific size for a customer at Top Drawer Lingerie, a store in Uptown Park, on Thursday, June 3, 2021  Annie Mulligan, Houston Chronicle

Broadly speaking, however, the effect of the novel coronavirus pandemic has been to isolate people, to convince health and government authorities to instruct on the virtues of keeping people safe by transitioning to remote work, working from home in an effort to control the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that brought the social order and the world economy to an abrupt pause. Not going out to the office any longer and working from home? Dressing casually, what could be more comfortable than ditching that bra? Instant relief. 

Little wonder there's been a drop in the sale of brassieres. The popularity of soft 'sports' bras has risen, as an alternative to the more pointed, structured architecture of the usual under-worn accoutrement of female attire. The obligatory, polite bra. The uncomfortable, stricturing brassiere. Women waking to the reality of pleasing themselves, ditching the intention to present a structured profile that exacts a fairly uncomfortable price on comfort.

 

They've experienced the freedom of being without a bra for well over a year, and it's been a huge hit. Some women will willingly revert to wearing a bra as they return to work in person in an office or shop setting. Others will be reluctant to, but feel that it is required of them. Others yet will devise alternatives new to the market and to satisfy convention by covering up their nipples to ensure that embarrassing shapes don't reveal their choice; stickies meant for that purpose come in handy.

"Some women have so thoroughly enjoyed not wearing a bra throughout this time working from home that they are telling clinicians that they are internally debating if they will ever go back to wearing one."

"Anecdotally, some women coming to the clinic share that it can be incredibly difficult finding a bra that works for them."

"This is a valid point — why should women return to wearing something that's uncomfortable, expensive no matter the price point, and a bit hit-and-miss with fabric options, lining, underwiring, padding, straps, presentation and long-lasting wear?"

Spokeswoman for Osteopathy Australia  

Many women have chosen to go without the restrictive item of clothing while working from home. (Unsplash: Mathilde Langevin)

Morbid Distaste Over Medical Advance in Xenografting...?

"...But then I thought, 'Well, why not use someone who is now dead due to brain death, and we know they're dead' -- that's absolutely clear. We could minimize the risk to the first human that we're really going to try to transplant."

"I asked our docs, could you learn from this? And they said, you're right. We could." 

"The family was very enthusiastic. I certainly would not want to be doing it without the family saying, 'This is something my loved one would want to do, and we fully support it."

"The answer is, they are really dead, and you can do experiments because we have the means artificially to keep major body organs and cells working even when the person has passed away."

Arthur Caplan, medical ethicist, NYU Langone Health, New York City

"If the public gets the impression that organ donation could lead to something like this, people may find this very disturbing."

"There are many people in our society that would not consider someone that is brain-dead and still with a heartbeat and perfusing and blood flowing as being completely dead."

"But I also see the potential is there to save a lot of lives if it were successful."

"Some people would say this is as disrespectful of the dead as anything can be and others would say it's not. I think the yuck factor -- I'm using a very unscientific term here -- would be quite high with the public."

Kerry Bowman, medical ethicist, Family and Community Medicine, University of Toronto

A genetically engineered pig kidney appears healthy during a transplant operation at NYU Langone in New York, US, in this undated handout photo. — Reuters

There are laws and regulations that cover ethics in medical practise in specific focus on the living. None exist of a similar nature to govern research on humans that apply to the brain-dead. People are urged to sign organ-donor cards, permitting their organs on death to be harvested and used for human organ transplant, a vital life-saving program that gives new meaning to 'saving a life'. But there are never sufficient numbers of volunteered organs to supply the urgent needs of people awaiting organ transplant and many die during that agonizing wait period.

The question being raised is whether those same people who so generously see their organs being used to extend the lives of other seriously ill people, could ever foresee and be comfortable with the prospect that their own dead body might be maintained in an organ-functioning state despite their having departed that body, for research and experimental purposes. Whether they might differentiate 'saving a life' with their organs used in desperate medical straits, or their entire body and its in situ organs being used to advance medical science.

In September at NYU Langone, surgeons incised the upper leg of a brain-dead woman to attach a pig kidney to her blood vessels. An experiment in the potential of using a genetically modified pig in lieu of a human organ to extend a life when a person's natural kidneys stop functioning. Transplanting an organ from another species -- even so a pig whose genetics are so close to that of humans -- would normally result in the body's immune system instantly rejecting the intruder organ and death would quickly follow.

In this case, the pig's genetic makeup had been altered to exclude a triggering sugar molecule, called alpha-gal to prevent rejection. It  took three days while the kidney was attached to the brain-dead subject's blood vessels where researchers had access to it outside the body, and no "hyper-acute" rejection occurred. Maintained on a ventilator for 54 hours, surgeons watching for symptoms of rejection. The kidney functioned like a normal human kidney, producing urine, cleansing blood.

 

A surgical team at the hospital in New York examined a pig kidney attached to the body of a brain-dead recipient for any signs of rejection.   Credit...Joe Carrotta/N.Y.U. Langone Health, via Associated Press

Dr.Caplan's theory that the use of a brain-dead body for a brief experiment in pig organ functionality transplanted into a human body without rejection resulting, which he discussed at length and intimately with surgeons at his medical facility proved a success. Dr.Caplan published a paper in 2019 with a colleague, who is an attorney and medical ethicist, along with other members of the NYU Medical Ethics Working Group on Research on the Recently Deceased.

Writing that the procedure "can seem frightening or abhorrent", raising complex ethical challenges "It is appropriate for experimentation to be done in humans due to the potential for cross-species complications, if they were to be studied in other animals." The understanding that for some people transplanting animal organs into people is not an agreeable prospect, aside from the fact that some people find it difficult to accept that brain death equals total body/brain death. 

Yet we eat pigs as part of our normal diets. We are what we eat. In consuming animals something of them is integrated within ourselves; we are sustained physically by ending their lives to continue ours. Materials derived from pigs have long been used in furthering human life, from the production of insulin to heart valve replacements, the choice of which can be pig tissues or carbon-material valves. Biological or mechanical heart valve replacement...

Epic Pig Valve Replacement (Abbott Laboratories)

Infectious Diseases Season

"[The hospital had seen a] significant surge [in RSV numbers including children coming into emergency, requiring admission]."

"I wouldn't say we are overwhelmed, but we are seeing a significant number of cases and a lot earlier than we usually expect."

"[A vaccine to protect everyone from RSV would be the] holy grail [for preventing severe illness]."

Dr.Charles Hui, head of infectious diseases, CHEO (Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario)

"[RSV] doesn't have the drama [of COVID-19 [but the disease's burden is significant in the population]."

"I wouldn't wish it on anybody. If we did have a vaccine, that would be a good thing."

"We are going to see more and more outbreaks of respiratory infections. We can control these, and vaccines are tools that work."

"We will all be better off for it."

Dr.Bill Cameron, infectious-disease specialist, senior scientist, The Ottawa Hospital

 

Respiratory synctial virus (RSV) is an annual visitor, a common respiratory virus. The virus this year is appearing earlier, hitting harder than has always been experienced according to international reports. And it's highly likely that its earlier appearance as well as its more virulent status owes something to another virus; COVID-19. Because of the advent of the pandemic, last year COVID-responsive public health measures had the effect of reducing mobility and that resulted in a significant decrease in the appearance and spread of other viral illnesses.

This fall, that situation has changed, hospitals admitting children for medical care are being swamped with unusual numbers of RSV cases, the most common cause of children admitted to hospital during their first year of life. But serious RSV cases are not confined to infants and children. Another critically-impacted demographic is at the other end of life's trajectory; the frail elderly. Worldwide, roughly 2.7 million people die annually from RSV-associated illnesses.

 

Customarily, the expectation is through experience that the viral illness hits hardest between November and March. This year international health experts have issued warning that the RSV infections would begin earlier than usual simply because so little of it occurred last year so that children missed the exposure enabling them to build resistance to it. As well, pregnant mothers had no opportunity to pass antibodies to their babies, thus increasing the pool of highly susceptible children. 

 

Protective shot of antibodies Getty Images

Leading out from these early warnings is the prospect of pediatric hospitals facing strain associated with an unaccustomed and unexpected surge in critical cases at a time when they are already struggling to manage serious cases of COVID-19. High-risk children under two years of age in Canada; those born prematurely, with congenital heart issues or requiring oxygen, are treated monthly with monoclonal antibodies in prevention of RSV. This year that treatment was required to begin earlier than usual.

 

As a proactive treatment whose efficacy has been proven, the highest-risk children are being well looked after, but medical experts speak of the need for a vaccine to prevent everyone from the onset of RSV for the larger goal of preventing severe illness. A clinical trial for an RSV vaccine developed by GlaxoSmithKline is ongoing in Ottawa headed by Dr.Cameron, where researchers are recruiting volunteers to take part.

 

Most people infected with RSV will experience only minor symptoms or none at all. But RSV can become a serious lower-tract respiratory illness that can turn deadly for the most vulnerable. Symptoms can begin its course, similar to those of a cold or flu. In more serious cases symptoms can include fever coughing, wheezing and a depressed appetite. Crowded living conditions are perfect to enhance the spread of such viral infections. 

 

Children that get sickest with RSV can often be treated with oxygen and most get better in a few days (Credit: Getty Images)

 

Solution for Organ Transplant Shortages

"We observed a kidney that basically functioned like a human kidney transplant, that appeared to be compatible in as much as it did all the things that a normal human kidney would do."

"It functioned normally, and did not appear to be undergoing rejection."

"The traditional paradigm that someone has to die for someone else to live is never going to keep up."

"I certainly understand the concern and what I would say is that currently about 40% of patients who are waiting for a transplant die before they receive one."

"We use pigs as a source of food, we use pigs for medicinal uses - for valves, for medication. I think it's not that different." 

Dr.Robert Montgomery, transplant surgeon, New York University Langone Health medical centre

The surgery took a couple of hours   NYU Langone

"Animal to human transplantation has been something that we have studied for decades now, and it's really interesting to see this group take that step forward."

"Just because we can doesn't mean we should. I think the community at large needs to answer these questions."  

Dr Maryam Khosravi, kidney and intensive care doctor, National Health Service, U.K.

 

"There is still some way to go before transplants of this kind become an everyday reality."

"While researchers and clinicians continue to do our best to improve the chances for transplant patients, we still need everyone to make their organ donation decision and let their family know what they want to happen if organ donation becomes a possibility." 

National Health Service spokesperson, U.K.

Another milestone has been achieved in prolonging human life. To the present, complications that result from organ transplants when the body's natural instinct is to reject the presence of a foreign body, was to place an organ recipient on organ-rejection drugs for the rest of their lives. And as with any drug formulation there are risks inherent in their use; for some medications the risks are routine and minimal, for others they can be more serious. In the case of organ-rejection drugs they include side effects such as high blood pressure, weight gain, opportunistic infections and increased cancer risk.

Dr.Montgomery, who led the experiment with the transplanted pig kidney at New York City's NYU Langone Health facility, is  himself a transplant recipient, that of a heart transplant. As such, he is deeply involved in organ transplantation as a medical professional and as an individual who suffered grave medical problems leading to this most difficult and fraught of all organ transplants.

Now, for the first time in medical history, a human has received a pig kidney, the surgery resulting in no immediate rejection by the immune system of the recipient as might otherwise have occurred. And the reason was that the kidney came from a pig with altered genes whose tissues no longer contained a molecule known to trigger near-immediate rejection. This procedure signals a major advance in transplantation, one that is expected in time to aid in alleviating a shortage of human transplant organs.

The kidney was transplanted into an individual whose family gave its consent to the experiment to take place just efore she was to be taken off life support in view of her brain-dead condition. She was known to have kidney dysfunction, so as a candidate became a perfect choice. The new kidney was attached for three days to her blood vessels, maintained outside her body, allowing access to it for the researchers involved in the experiment..

Transplant surgeon Dr.Montgomery spoke of test results of the function of the transplanted kidney as that it "looked pretty normal". Functioning so that it made "the amount of urine that you would expect" from a transplanted human kidney, with no evidence of the vigorous, early rejection accompanying the process with unmodified pig kidneys transplanted into non-human primates. Abnormal creatinine levels, indicating poor kidney function, returned to normal following the transplant.

People in need of organ transplants die when no organs to suit their life-or-death needs are available. There is over 100,000 people in the U.S. awaiting organ transplants; of that number over 90,000 await a kidney, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing, where wait times are listed for a kidney at an average of three to five years. The potential for the use of animal organs for transplants has been worked on by researchers for decades. Prevention of immediate rejection by the human body has been a deterrent to their use.

The research team of which Dr.Montgomery was head, theorized that should the pig gene for a carbohydrate triggering rejection -- a glycan sugar molecule called alpha-gal -- be removed, that might solve the rejection problem. United Therapeutics Corp's Revivicor unit developed the genetically altered pig called GalSafe, which was then approved by the U.S. Food and Drug administration for use as food for people with meat allergy, and a potential source of human therapeutics.

The team behind the surgery   NYU Langone

Fighting Malaria

"Like many who work in public health, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, I have been waiting my whole career for a malaria vaccine. And even longer than that; I suffered from severe malaria when I was ten."

"Inspired by my own experience with malaria and the disparities I have seen in treatment, I founded a non-profit, Speak Up Africa, ten years ago to champion solutions developed in Africa to address public health challenges facing the continent."

"Malaria is at the top of the list, as it has arguably the greatest impact on African nations' economic and social development."

Yacine Djibo, founder, executive director, Speak Up Africa, Dakar, Senegal

WHO Africa

The first vaccine meant as a complementary tool for use in children living in at-risk geographies has been endorsed by the World Health Organization. Hailed as "historic", by the WHO and health experts globally, this is a milestone in the fight against global malaria. While wealthy nations have eliminated the threat of malaria, it is a disease that succeeds in killing some 400,000 people annually, most of those deaths taking place in Africa, targeting African children. 

While the new vaccine, Mosquirix, has a relatively low efficacy rate in prevention of roughly 30 percent of severe malaria cases, it does not present as a miracle solution to the dread disease. On the other hand, some relief is better than none, and future prospects of newer, more effective malaria vaccines are likelier to surface now that the first of the vaccines has seen the light of day rating WHO approval. 

Teams of local health workers are now required in increased numbers to enable swift response to cases, increasing access and administration of the new tool. The new vaccine fills in a needed gap, however imperfectly. Proof of concept has been revealed by the creation of the new vaccine which introduces the ushering in of a next generation of potentially more efficacious malaria vaccines that will be more effective through the use of technologies such as mRNA, used for the leading COVID-19 vaccines.

 

Malaria is spread by mosquitoes Bruce MacQueen/Alamy

The entire array of measures to combat malaria must be in play alongside the new malaria vaccine, boosting its effectiveness with complementary measures such as mosquito nets, antimalarial drugs, and indoor spraying of houses. Access to epidemiological data to comprehend where it is that populations are most at risk for infections, where insecticide and drug resistance occur and which tools are most effective in local communities is another weapon against malaria.

Investment in additional malaria vaccines already being worked on in laboratories around the world is certain to be spurred by this initial vaccine now being rolled out as an additional therapeutic resistance against malarial spread. Tools such as genomic surveillance to ensure that medical communities stay on top of growing drug and insecticide resistance, is yet another critical measure in the goal of better control of the malarial Plasmodium parasite. 

A baby receives a dose of the RTS,S vaccine for malaria in Cape Coast, Ghana. Credit: Cristina Aldehuela/AFP/Getty

The COVID-19 vaccine producer BioNTech is considering Senegal as a potential manufacturing hub for future mRNA vaccines, not only against COVID-19, but for malaria and tuberculosis as well. These are the continent's worse killers, alongside H.I.V./AIDs. Malaria is a life-threatening disease caused by parasites that are transmitted to people through the bites of infected female Anopheles mosquitoes. It is preventable and curable.

In 2019, there were an estimated 229 million cases of malaria worldwide.

The estimated number of malaria deaths stood at 409 000 in 2019.

Children aged under 5 years are the most vulnerable group affected by malaria; in 2019, they accounted for 67% (274 000) of all malaria deaths worldwide.

The WHO African Region carries a disproportionately high share of the global malaria burden. In 2019, the region was home to 94% of malaria cases and deaths.

Total funding for malaria control and elimination reached an estimated US$ 3 billion in 2019. Contributions from governments of endemic countries amounted to US$ 900 million, representing 31% of total funding.   World Health Organization



McGill Office for Science and Society