Thiago Carvalho @cyrilpedia@social.cleverlibre.org

On Cormac's adventures in Santa Fe

'There was no question that a lot of extremely impressive scientific research had come out of the Institute, in domains ranging from particle physics to ecology and immunology. But despite an enormous amount of intellectual and financial effort, it didn’t appear to me that SFI had made much progress on its ostensible raison d’être: elucidating the fundamental principles of complexity in nature and society. And I was troubled by the number of SFI donors and trustees who were not merely wealthy—as donors and trustees often are—but vocally libertarian in their outlook. Two years before I arrived, SFI received a multimillion-dollar grant from the John Templeton Foundation, an important bankroller of free-market and religious-conservative causes, for research in pursuit of a “general theory of complexity.” That set off some alarm bells.'

https://thebaffler.com/latest/reenchanted-science-baker

'In an 822-patient clinical trial published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, Xu’s antiviral, VV116, appeared just as effective as Paxlovid at easing patient’s symptoms. Newly diagnosed patients who took VV116 recovered after a median of 4 days, compared with 5 days for Paxlovid, though experts caution that the study was not large enough to say one was better than the other.'

#Antiviral #COVID #COVID19

https://www.statnews.com/2022/12/28/chinese-developed-alternative-to-paxlovid/

The latest episode of the EMBO Podcast #EMBOPodcast is out 🎧

I spoke with Roger Reddel & Tracy Bryan at Sydney's Children's Medical Research Institute about their classic 1995 @embojournal paper describing #telomerase independent #telomere lengthening in immortalised cell lines. It challenged conventional wisdom at the time - and it was Bryan's PhD project, quite a way to get started in science.

@miguelgf provided some perspective on the work and its enduring significance and editor @HVodermaier explained #EMBOJournal's interest in studies with striking findings that may not provide a full mechanistic description.

You can listen to "ALTernative immortality" at the link below or on your preferred podcast app. Special thanks to Igor Jukic & audio producer extraordinaire @marcoantonio

https://www.embo.org/podcasts/alternative-immortality/

"Zombie fly. A parasitic fungus erupts from the body of a fly in the Tambopata National Reserve in Peru. Evolutionary biologist Roberto García Roa captured the shot, which won this year’s BMC Ecology and Evolution image competition. The spores of the ‘zombie’ fungus infiltrate the fly’s exoskeleton and brain and compel it to migrate to a location that is more favourable for the fungus’s growth.

Credit: Roberto García-Roa (CC BY 4.0)"

https://www.nature.com/immersive/d41586-022-04372-2/index.html

'He has argued repeatedly that the ban is about much more than “Maus,” which details his parents’ experience during the Holocaust, depicting Jews as mice and Nazis as cats. To Spiegelman, the decision to remove “Maus” from schools reflects a more insidious campaign to sanitize disturbing chapters of history, under the guise of “protecting” children.
“They want a kinder, gentler, fuzzier Holocaust,” he said.'

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/27/books/art-spiegelman-maus-breakdowns.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=Books

'China’s elites are stockpiling supplies of #Paxlovid, Pfizer’s Covid-19 antiviral drug, and giving it away to curry favour with business associates as an unprecedented Covid wave sweeps the country, leaving hospitals stripped of resources and ordinary people struggling to access medication.'

#COVID #COVID19
https://www.ft.com/content/0687def9-585f-41e4-922b-aabdee7d77bb