Science Blogs (316)

...who goes to the auto mechanic, inquiring about what's RIGHT in the car? It's everywhere, often justified, in trying to improve the world. As when I rant on American HS public school teachers, and those for on line ESL English to unsuspecting foreigners, holding nary a bit of certification much less talent for the craft. Excepting perhaps occasionally being driven to wax pseudo-edudite, with forced, VERY forced, usages, not least of which silly similes and metaphors.
And other admitted pathetic human wannabee failures in life. But I do digress.
Western medicine has worked under similar restraints, and biases, with rare exceptions. Apropos C-19, we can consider the whole field, where formal indices, VERY formal, for well being have long been in play. Cardiac/circulatory fitness, blood sugar levels, pulmonary diffusion, and intelligence.
But how about a focus on immune competence? Dozens of named non-fittness situations for this complex multifaceted system are used daily.. Severe combined Immunodeficiency syndromes, various B and T cell low number disorders, and complement and cytokine inadequacies. Hell, even when there are surpluses, as with auto immune conditions, they all get characterized as bad. What gives, Peebles?
Recall, in ancient times, practitioners of Traditional Chinese Medicine (Herbals/Acupuncture) only got paid when the customers were HEALTHY. It got worse if you failed as the emperor's doc. OUCH!
If they can give our last affirmative action, VERY affirmative, POTUS that coveted liberal Nobel prize, for nothing---after months in office, why not the VIERK, and his hottie intern laden Institute for the same?
You heard it here first, the Vierk Institutet Index for Immune Health. VIIIH---sort of has a nice ring to it, NO? Whereby, guided by all the pathology noted above, each of us can be so place into our own little boxes of health and well being. And tests, and even screening protocols, exist for such, in time becoming streamlined and cost effective.
It could range from zero to 100, in combined VIERK units of immune health. Honoring the age a few of us hope to reach. VERY few.
It would have lots of utility, as with us intrepid volunteers, leading AA groups in jails, and cutting spuds at soup kitchens, where there's no shortage of C-19 affected clients, and exposures. And many other clinical and public health preventive uses. As I again spread about, VERY about, my many virtues, in rank digression.
My many fans here, VERY many, who wish to nominate me, please do so using the abbreviation for the index, and the name of the research lab. Please don't misspell VIERK!
A year of free good cigars, Parisian perfume and NZ chardonnay, to whomever gets my name up there first.
You can trust us, we in thoroughly honest scientific endeavor. We are not like all those others.

Hi all
So slowly but surely I believe in the climate changes not a drop of rain for about 3 weeks and between 30 and 38 degrees Celsius unusual for my country and city

...No, in this blog, I don't mean CS scammers. God bless their hearts.
Also called immune globulin's, the humoural adaptive immune system, and other names, in humans and most higher mammals, these interesting molecules, forming about a half dozen major classes, are formed by liver/lymphatic tissues, from two pairs of nearly identical subcomponents. Covalently bonded.
But in the alpacas, lamas, and other such animals, (Dromedaries?), it seems their antibodies are formed from only one protein chain. WTF?
There may be adaptive biological defensive benefits to this strikingly different arrangement. Perhaps more than mere economies of biochemistry. And immune systems do vary a good deal in other classes of animals, some allegedly having only more simple innate systems, that do not learn and remember previous invaders, for more rapid secondary exposure protection. As in our awesome adaptive systems. Sharks and cousins don't seem the worse for it.
So what? Well, everyone and her grandmother are furiously at work trying to develop a vaccine against C-19. Researches in beautiful, value wine country, optical telescope heaven, former Commie, hottie laden Chile,--- are at work using these much more simple biochemical moieties for such. This is now a third approach to vaccine development. To be added to traditional approaches, using RNA and usual lab immunology.
Science rocks. An international lab where one of our talented and beautiful twins works as a paid, VERY paid,research intern, is on the front line here. Plum beyond my half century old edumacation.
Speaking of talented teachers, she's now one of mine. I met a few of her US public school STEM and Language teachers, and some were first class. Helped her and sis to Valedictorian status.
Appele falle ikke langst fra stemme. Modesty is also one of my better talents.

...there's a little something in the old naughty hottie oven? Might even be a nice topic for some hottie grad student working on that PhD, at the prestigious Vierk Institutet for the Study of Syndromes of Cognition and Behaviors.
All such hottie students must meet with the director thrice weekly. Meetings are only in the love nest at the top of one of the old 30 +meter evergreens, on the vast Vierk Estate. But do I ever digress.
So, All my adopted dogs and kitties seem to have eaten grass, of only certain types, to induce vomiting, whenever they seem to have a tummy upset. Often after eating a big real indigestible Yummy soup bone, or such.
Bravo did so again just this AM. What's up? Vet's I've asked are clueless.

We need stop thinking about maximizing the next quarterly dividend and massive tax cuts
and start investing in our future.



I expect most of this CS crowd won't bother listening to this Ted Talk - to any Ted Talk.
Then again maybe some of you will.

Eager sky watchers are turning to the heavens as Comet NEOWISE, one of the brightest comets in a generation, starts climbing ever higher among the evening stars.

A majority of comets fly through the solar system invisible to humans, usually too small and dim to be seen with the naked eye. The last frozen ice ball that gave us a big show was Hale-Bopp, a comet that was visible for nearly 18 months around its closest approach to Earth in 1997.

Officially designated C/2020 F3, Comet NEOWISE was discovered on March 27 and had until this week been visible only to committed comet viewers willing to wake up in the early pre-dawn hours. But on Monday, NEOWISE tipped into the post-sunset sky and has even been spotted by people living near city centers with all the light pollution.

“It’s the first time in 23 years that this is possible,” said Federica Spoto, an astronomer at the Harvard & Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. “You can watch it from your backyard and you don’t need a telescope.”

Tis a pity science and scientists are considered a poor investment, because there are a lot of good ideas happening out there every day.



I choose not to defend this blog entry from Troll attacks. I have better things to do with my time. (have at it Vier)

....I'm checking on where he obtained his MD-PhD. Twin doctorates, but who's counting? I do digress.
So, your fat little illiterate GNOMOID dwarf, is listening on shortwave to the darkie, VERY darkie, African World Service, of the venerable, ueber leftie BBC, only to behold an interesting story. One of their many usually Trump hating, VERY hating, presentations on the C-19 CHINA virus. And just what do I behold? Au contraire, friends, all.
First, a little tedious scientific background. Recall, that Sweden, God bless all those curvaceous/delicious little blondie tartie backsides, is really the only country largely to have avoided various lock-down procedures, notably also in their schools. And they paid for it, with death rates, mostly at care homes, over 5 times as great as in other Blondie Tartie heavens. And sadly, no evidence, yet, of reliable herd immunity. We know little of the human population response to this novel agent.
But, this news report interviewed several Svenske Biostatisticians and lowly Epidemiologists, who said that the school children were none the worse for the courageous, COUNTRY WIDE, clinical epidemiological, natural, enormous, experimental trial.
Sooooooo,as all you highly edumacated CS number crunching medical experts will know, such evidence is the dream of every clued researcher. We like to call these naturalistic-population wide-trials. Alas, try getting one approved by any medical trials ethics committee. How we resent those snooty, arrogant folks, many who have never used a stethescope, or examined a chest film. But perhaps I'll stop this little sub-rant right here.
Now then, I wish this was BBC TV, and not radio. Why? To see the dejected faces and slumped postures, on the ueber liberal studio, staff when they learned that the science behind the call of our Brilliant and Dazzling President Trump was, scientifically, not too shabby.
Like the faces/slinked over stances, of the TV pols and pundits after midnight, last election. When Hilary had to call our awesome hero to concede. Much to their credit, the BBC kept the spin under wraps. No easy task for those with TD-HD Syndromes.
Now, recall the well documented near TOTAL incompetence of the staff and administrations at US government schools, compared with the star quality staffs in northern Europe. So, as we say in these fields, using such data to generalize results, technically speaking, comes with risks.
But one more promise to be kept. And you know what else always gets written here next, folks.
Ah, to gloat is human. To be correct, divine.

...Half way through my second go around on Prof. Sean Carroll's DVD from the Great Courses on the topic. Pretty mind blowing. Only getting a dilettante's level of understanding, but well worth it. Plus lots on cosmology, relativity and particle physics along the way. Check it out.

On Sunday, June 21, the annular solar eclipse will be visible. Unfortunately, it will be visible in Pakistan, India, China and parts of Africa with a partial eclipse in parts of Eastern Europe and Northern Australia.

This type of solar eclipse occurs when a new moon is near its farthest point from Earth (called its apogee), forming a straight line with the Earth and the sun. This event occurs once a year.

So, if you are in the area affected and want to witness this phenomena, wear proper eye protection and you will see the rim of the sun around the moon creating the 'Ring of Fire' effect.

Hopefully, I can catch this event on a streaming source like YouTube from the comfort of my home!