Could Re-Engineered Red Blood Cells Help Us Combat Covid-19?

Parker Davis March 21, 2022

Researchers re-engineer red blood cells to trigger immune system against COVID-19 — ScienceDaily

From www.sciencedaily.com
2022-03-11 19:14:24

Excerpt:

Physicists, chemists and immunologists at McMaster University have teamed up to modify red blood cells to transport viral agents which can safely trigger the immune system to protect the body against SARS-CoV-2, creating a promising new vehicle for vaccine delivery.

Developing new strategies and vaccine technologies is critical for controlling the pandemic and preparing for future outbreaks as the coronavirus continues to evolve and mutate, say the researchers.

The new method, described in the journal PLOS ONE, is an entirely unique approach to vaccination. Red blood-cell membranes are embedded with SARS-CoV-2 spike proteins, which then form virus-like particles.

“We take red blood cells and remove everything from the inside. We then attach spike proteins to their outside to mimic a corona virus,” explains graduate student Isabella Passos-Gastaldo, a lead author on the paper.

The particles, shown to activate the immune system and produce antibodies in mice, are completely…

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Black Youth Handcuffed for Stealing Own Bike

Parker Davis March 3, 2022

A 12 year old boy was arrested, handcuffed, and informed he was going to be charged with battery and robbery for allegedly stealing a bike. The problem was the officer was dead wrong, and the child’s Mother wants to know what led to the suspicion and the arrest in the first place.

The boy is black. The police were led to approach the boy by unidentified kids who identified him as the assailant. The cops surrounded the boy and pulled him off the bike, leading him away from the crowd that had already gathered, wondering why this boy was being held for riding his own bike in the first place.

The answers the cops gave were not sufficient.

In the video, there are multiple police cars present. Multiple officers of multiple races and genders are arresting the boy, handcuffing him, and allegedly informing him he will be charged with battery and assault based on eyewitness testimony alone.

The questions are many, starting with why so many officers were involved in the arrest of a child for stealing a bike and punching a kid. The next question is why did these police not do a basic investigation before jumping to arresting a boy based on eyewitness testimony alone. The last question is whether this boy would have been arrested if everyone involved in this situation was white.

Black Youth Handcuffed for Stealing Own Bike

Black mother wants answers after 12-year-old son was handcuffed by Florida police ‘for riding his own bicycle’ – Raw Story

From www.rawstory.com
2022-03-03 15:27:21
Sky Palma
Excerpt:

A Florida mother wants to know why her son was handcuffed and put in the back of a police car last month.

Jamir Bradford, who is 12-year-old and Black, was accused of a stealing a bike and questioned by police, who put him in handcuffs. “He was arrested, handcuffed and charged with robbery and battery for riding his own bicycle,” Bradford’s mother Melani Brown said according to WESH 2. “He said ‘Mommy, when I seen the officer with his hand on his gun, I wanted to run.’ I said, ‘For what? You did nothing wrong.”

After police determined that Bradford was riding his own bike, he was released.

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Ford Electric and Ford Gas are in the Works

Parker Davis March 3, 2022

Ford is looking to create two nearly separate ‘businesses’ under one Ford label that would each focus on one type of automobile propulsion, gas turbine or electric. The biggest friction in the move could come from dealers, who might find their lives more complicated dealing with two separate ‘businesses,’ and might find themselves choosing between Ford Electric and Ford Gas.

Ford’s ‘radical’ move to split the company won’t come easy

From www.theverge.com
2022-03-02 21:17:01
Andrew J. Hawkins
Excerpt:

Ford’s decision to divide its business into two separate entities — one focused on electric vehicles and the other on gas-powered ones — may complicate the automaker’s efforts to recruit top-tier talent and could risk upsetting dealers already chafing under the shift to electrification, auto analysts and experts said Wednesday.

Ford also isn’t going so far as to spin off its EV divisions entirely as a separate business, as some major Wall Street banks advised. The automaker’s share price could suffer as a result. By keeping both divisions within the same company, Ford is entwining their fates. Ford Model E won’t succeed without the profits and efficiencies created under Ford Blue.

On Wednesday, Ford announced the creation of two separate entities: Ford Model E, focused on electric vehicles and advanced software projects; and Ford Blue, dedicated to the automaker’s much larger and profitable internal combustion engine vehicles. It’s a bold move — one analyst…

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Professor Fired for Protesting Anti-LGBT Polices Ignored by SCOTUS

Parker Davis March 2, 2022

Justices eye expansion of religious exemption to anti-bias law

From www.reuters.com
2022-02-28 18:04:00

Excerpt:

(Reuters) – Members of the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative wing on Monday signaled an interest in expanding an exemption for religious employers from anti-discrimination laws, but turned away a case raising the issue involving a social work professor at a Christian college in Massachusetts.

The court declined to review a decision from Massachusetts’s state supreme court that said the professor, Margaret DeWeese-Boyd, could sue Gordon College for allegedly denying her a promotion because she criticized the school’s anti-LGBT policies.

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court found that DeWeese-Boyd did not teach religion, lead students in prayer or deliver sermons, distinguishing her from other workers who courts have found to qualify for the so-called “ministerial exception” from anti-discrimination laws.

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Spinning Electrons Could Power Your Future Computer

Parker Davis March 2, 2022

Researchers at Goethe University Frankfurt have made a breakthrough discovery identifying a rare earth material that could be an ideal candidate to become a spinning electron information processing center. The processor of the future could be powered by a rare earth material whose spinning electrons would process data at exponentially faster times than conventional CPU’s can accomplish.

The technology is relatively new in development, still mostly in the theory rather than application stage of development, but these latest results break down some key barriers, making this technology much more potentially applicable within a few years.

Innovative crystals for future computer electronics — ScienceDaily

From www.sciencedaily.com
2022-02-28 18:12:06

Excerpt:

While modern computers are already very fast, they also consume vast amounts of electricity. For some years now a new technology has been much talked about, which although it is still in its infancy could one day revolutionise computer technology — spintronics. The word is a portmanteau meaning “spin” and “electronics,” because with these components electrons no longer flow through computer chips, but the spin of the electrons serves as the information carrier. A team of researchers with staff from Goethe University Frankfurt has now identified materials that have surprisingly fast properties for spintronics. The results have been published in the specialist magazine “Nature Materials.”

….The problem in the development of spintronic materials is that perfectly designed crystals are required for such components as the smallest discrepancies immediately have a negative impact on the overall magnetic order in the material. This is where the expertise in Frankfurt came into play. “The rare earths melt at about 1000 degrees Celsius, but the rhodium that is also needed for the crystal does not melt until about 2000 degrees Celsius,” says Krellner. “This is why customary crystallisation methods do not function here.”

Instead the scientists used hot indium as a solvent. The rare earths, as well as the rhodium and silicon that are required, dissolve in this at about 1500 degrees Celsius. The graphite crucible was kept at this temperature for about a week and then gently cooled. As a result the desired crystals grew in the form of thin disks with an edge length of two to three millimetres. These were then studied by the team with the aid of X-rays produced on the Berlin synchrotron BESSY II and on the Swiss Light Source of the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland.

“The most important finding is that in the crystals which we have grown the rare-earth atoms react magnetically with one another very quickly and that the strength of these reactions can be specifically adjusted through the choice of atoms,” says Krellner. This opens up the path for further optimisation — ultimately spintronics is still purely fundamental research and years away from the production of commercial components.

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Silicon War Powers?

Parker Davis March 2, 2022

With Silicon Valley and other big tech companies seeming to mostly be choosing Ukraine over Russia in their recently-started war, nation-states of the world are learning lessons that might not be the kind Silicon Valley would like them to learn.

Tech is making it known that neutrality in war is not something nation states can count on tech for sustaining. In the Ukraine War, Silicon Valley is finding itself choosing to block this agent but not that agent, is choosing to take this government on as a client but not this government.

All of the nation-states of the world are paying close attention to what tech can do, in general, to affect the outcome of war, but also, they are paying close attention to the type of power tech can have in impeding your nation-states war efforts should you find yourself outside the club.

These actions by tech, or Silicon Valley in large part, but hardly exclusively, are sending signals to nation states that will continue to accelerate the process of the nationalization of social media and the internet in general. The cost for relying on obs (one big system) solutions is a potential loss of sovereignty as a nation-state altogether should the enemy that is invading you is in with the Silicon Valley crowd.

Tech Companies Help Defend Ukraine Against Cyberattacks

From www.nytimes.com
2022-03-01 00:50:58

Excerpt:

WASHINGTON — Last Wednesday, a few hours before Russian tanks began rolling into Ukraine, alarms went off inside Microsoft’s Threat Intelligence Center, warning of a never-before-seen piece of “wiper” malware that appeared aimed at the country’s government ministries and financial institutions.

Within three hours, Microsoft threw itself into the middle of a ground war in Europe — from 5,500 miles away. The threat center, north of Seattle, had been on high alert, and it quickly picked apart the malware, named it “FoxBlade” and notified Ukraine’s top cyberdefense authority. Within three hours, Microsoft’s virus detection systems had been updated to block the code, which erases — “wipes” — data on computers in a network.

Then Tom Burt, the senior Microsoft executive who oversees the company’s effort to counter major cyberattacks, contacted Anne Neuberger, the White House’s deputy national security adviser for cyber- and emerging technologies. Ms….

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Bionic Eye Gives Sheep the Gift of Sight

Parker Davis February 17, 2022

Bionic Eyes Give Sheep Sight, Heading to Humans Next

From futurism.com
2022-02-14 22:14:26
Victor Tangermann
Excerpt:

The BBC reports that a team of Australian researchers gave a small flock of sheep “exceptionally sharp eyesight” — at least for sheep — using bionic eyes surgically implanted behind their retinas.

The idea behind the wooly experiment was to make sure the implants didn’t cause undesirable side effects. Now, the team from the University of Sydney and the University of New South Wales say they’ve filed paperwork to start human trials — a striking step toward the type of bionic eyesight we’ve glimpsed in Star Trek via the character Geordi La Forge…..

The device, dubbed Phoenix 99, works by wirelessly relaying a camera feed from a small camera attached to a pair of sunglasses in the form of electric signals directly to the wearer’s retinas, according to the BBC‘s reporting. These signals then get processed by the optical nerve and sent into the brain.

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Pro-Lifers Move to Support Pregant Mothers and Babies

Parker Davis February 17, 2022

Pro-Life Group to Help Moms, Babies Born If Roe v. Wade Is Overturned

From www.dailysignal.com
2022-02-15 21:18:14
Mary Margaret Olohan
Excerpt:

The pro-life Susan B. Anthony List is preparing to provide care for all the additional babies that will be born if the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion nationwide.

“When the Supreme Court releases its hold on abortion policymaking, we will show the world that we are ready and willing to empower women and promote life,” Lynn Fitch, Mississippi’s pro-life attorney general, said in a statement.

The Susan B. Anthony List announced Monday that it is launching a campaign in partnership with Fitch that will benefit a slew of pro-life pregnancy centers across Missisippi.

The state has more than 30 pro-life pregnancy centers, according to a Susan B. Anthony List press release, centers which have served more than 12,000 people and provided almost $2 million in resources in 2019 alone, according to an impact report conducted by the Susan B. Anthony List’s research arm, the Charlotte Lozier…

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Dems Hope Gas Tax Holiday Will Hide Bidenflation

Parker Davis February 17, 2022

Democrats float gas tax holiday to provide inflationary relief

From www.theblaze.com
2022-02-15 21:10:00
Chris Pandolfo
Excerpt:

President Joe Biden and congressional Democrats are reportedly considering a federal gas tax holiday to relieve Americans feeling inflationary pain at the pump.

A bill offered by Sens. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) and Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) would suspend the 18.4 cents per gallon gas tax through Jan. 1, 2023. The Democrats say this temporary measure is needed to provide economic relief to families nationwide.

“This bill will lower gas prices by suspending the federal gas tax through the end of the year to help Arizona families struggling with high costs for everything from gas to groceries,” Kelly said in a statement last week after introducing the bill.

“This legislation is about making sure that we get Granite Staters relief at the gas pump. People are feeling a real pinch on everyday goods, and we must do more to help address rising costs, particularly the price of gas,” Hassan added. “We need to continue to think creatively about how we can find new ways to bring down costs, and…

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States Move to Overcome Biden’s Ivermectin Blocking

Parker Davis February 15, 2022

All of the members of the Biden apparatus appear to be making every effort they can to prevent the spreading of the use of Ivermectin as an effective treatment for people who contract the Covid-19 virus. The FDA has yet to approve a perfectly safe drug for use as a therapeutic treatment for the covid virus while it gives emergency approval to experimental MRNA vaccines.

The states, however, are finding ways to create opportunities for doctors to be able to treat patients with Ivermectin, as more and more data comes out that supports the effectiveness of the drug as a treatment. It’s not a silver bullet miracle cure. It doesn’t work for everyone, but it does work for most people, and more and more doctors have been sharing their data to support these claims.

States Finding Ways to Support Ivermectin Treatment for COVID-19

From legalinsurrection.com
2022-02-14 20:00:39
Leslie Eastman
Excerpt:

Now it appears some states are making it easier for doctors to utilize the drug, which had been widely and safely used in humans to treat parasites before being smeared as a mere “horse dewormer.” Oklahoma Attorney General John O’Connor says his office does not plan to discipline doctors for prescribing certain medications, including ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, to treat covid.

While approved ivermectin to treat animals and people for some parasites, lice and skin issues, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration hasn’t approved it for COVID-19. O’Connor said in a news release that his office finds no legal basis for a state medical licensure board to discipline a licensed physician for prescribing a drug for the off-label purpose of treating a patient with COVID-19.

The Oklahoma attorney general said he stands behind doctors who believe ivermectin is in their patients’ best interest.

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