Thiago Carvalho @cyrilpedia@social.cleverlibre.org

In China there is a folktale about a husband who learns of his wife’s infidelity from a magpie. He gave his wife a mirror which could turn into a magpie to tell the man what she had been up to. Consequently mirrors often had the design of a magpie on their back.
#MythologyMonday #folklore

Hundreds of thousands rally in Germany against far-right deportation plans

> Hundreds of thousands joined rallies in Germany against the far-right AfD party again on Sunday, at the culmination of a week of protest that has seen demonstrators turn out in unusually large numbers across the country.

https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20240121-tens-of-thousands-rally-in-germany-for-second-day-of-protests-against-far-right-deportation-plans #Germany #farright

A model for predicting vaccine-related adverse events.

"A novel reactogenicity scoring framework accounting for the frequency and severity of local and systemic AEs was applied to the clinical data, and a machine learning approach was employed to predict the incidence of clinical AEs from the in vitro assay data. Biomarker analysis suggested that the relative levels of IL-1B, IL-6, IL-10, and CCL4 have higher predictive importance for AE risk."

https://journals.aai.org/jimmunol/article-abstract/doi/10.4049/jimmunol.2300185/266629/A-Predictive-Model-of-Vaccine-Reactogenicity-Using?redirectedFrom=fulltext

Ceramic chess set by @madparreira.bsky.social

#art #ceramics #stoneware #handmade #artgallery #pottery #chess #arts #artmastodon

https://madalenaparreira.com

'Drucker and his colleagues noticed a potential clue: receptors for GLP-1 are scarce in immune cells in many tissues in which the hormone and its mimics reduce inflammation, but are abundant in the brain. To test the nervous system’s role, Drucker’s team began by inducing system-wide inflammation in mice.'
#Immunology #Inflammation #Neuroimmunology #Metabolism

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00118-4

“As a surge of respiratory viruses, including COVID-19 and influenza, continue to spread across the United States, experts are warning it could lead to a rise in cardiovascular complications.”

https://abcnews.go.com/Health/americans-risk-heart-problems-covid-flu-spread-expert/story?id=106573809

The emergence of JN.1 is an evolutionary 'step change' in the COVID pandemic. Why is this significant?

“The sheer volume of infections occurring globally sets the scene for major viral evolution. SARS-CoV-2 continues to have a very high rate of mutation. Accordingly, JN.1 itself is already mutating and evolving quickly.”
#COVID19 #Science #MedMastodon
https://theconversation.com/the-emergence-of-jn-1-is-an-evolutionary-step-change-in-the-covid-pandemic-why-is-this-significant-220285

If our civilization collapses, extraterrestrial archeologists can look at this and be impressed. Three satellites following the Earth in an equilateral triangle, each 25 million kilometers from the other two. Each contains two gold cubes in free-fall. The satellites accelerate just enough so they don't get blown off course by the solar wind. The gold cubes feel nothing but gravity.

Lasers bounce between each cube and its partner in another satellite, measuring the distance between them to an accuracy of 20 picometers: less than the diameter of a helium atom! This lets the satellites detect gravitational waves - ripples in the curvature of spacetime - with very long wavelengths, and correspondingly low frequencies.

It should see so many binary white dwarfs, neutron stars and black holes in the Milky Way that these will be nothing but foreground noise. More excitingly, it should be able to see mergers of supermassive black holes as far as... the dawn of time, or whenever such black holes were first formed. (The farther you look, the older things you see.)

It may even be able to see the "gravitational background radiation", the thrumming vibrations in the fabric of spacetime left over from the Big Bang. This radiation was created before the hot gas in the Universe cooled down enough to become transparent to light. So it's older than the microwave background radiation, which is the oldest thing we see now.

It's called LISA - the Laser Interferometric Satellite Antenna. And we're in luck: ESA has just decided to launch it in 2034.

@cyrilpedia Thank you for sharing! David's work is beautiful and another important piece in the big puzzle of #NKcells in #cancer ...with the other big question: how does the #tumor keep NK cells out of it's #microenvironment ...? @gpollara @chfloudas

'Proactively seek out content or conversations relevant to you and your work, and reshare or respond to them. You may want to tag other users in order to reach out to or credit them for their work but do so considerately. We have found that tagging authors is more effective than tagging their institutions. Hashtags can also extend your reach but should be used sparingly to avoid making your text look cluttered and “spammy”.'

https://elifesciences.org/inside-elife/52a057d0/science-communication-seven-tips-for-discussing-preprints-on-social-media?utm_source=linkedin&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=organic

'Here, we use photo-labeling, combined with longitudinal transcriptomic and cellular analyses, to interrogate the fate of intratumoral NK cells. We reveal that NK cells rapidly lose effector functions and adopt a distinct phenotypic state with features associated with tissue residency.'
#Immunology #TumorImmunology #immunotherapy

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-44789-z

'There were several auguries that foreshadowed the development of totalitarianism. There were racism and imperialism, as we have seen. There were mobs and nationalism in France, pre-Nazi Germany, and Austria. Demagogues whipped up emotions across the continent and authoritarians promised to resolve things for ordinary people in Portugal, Hungary, and Poland. There was fascism in Spain and Italy, which was violent and nasty, but not the total attack on politics itself which came with totalitarian regimes. Across the globe, there were totalitarian movements that gathered up the moment’s dark discontent by giving the appearance of unstoppable momentum, but which could be stopped where there was sufficient political room for resistance.'

https://lithub.com/why-we-should-all-read-hannah-arendt-now/

'In April, 2020, a grassroots group, later called the Patient-Led Research Collaborative (P.L.R.C.), started surveying several hundred who remained sick for weeks after presumed covid infections. Their results, published in a Google Doc, became the first systematic study of patients with Long covid.'

https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-inquiry/what-would-it-mean-for-scientists-to-listen-to-patients

'We found that the positively selected sites of Spz4 in A. cerana correspond to the glycosyltransferases, which are involved in mucus layer formation and the physical defense system in insects [45,63]. Therefore, we speculate that the Spz4 gene in A. cerana has acquired new functions under positive selection, and affects honeybee immune response to E. faecalis.'

https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/journal.ppat.1011897#sec015