Groundhog Day Redux

https://www.nj.com/news/2020/06/nj-schools-will-teach-climate-change-education-with-new-curriculum.html An article from the Star Ledger celebrating NJ's inclusion of climate change in the K-12 curriculum. The NJ student learning standards will require the teaching of climate education across 7 areas: 21st Century Life and Careers, Comprehensive Health and Physical Education, Science, Social Studies, Technology, Visual and Performing Arts, and World Languages.  (Phys. Ed? how? - blogitorial comment). According to a 2019 poll, more than 80% of American parents and nearly 90% of American teachers believed that climate change should be taught in schools. (Conclusion: the inclusion of climate teaching comes a little late.) This will be implemented starting September 2021).

https://theconversation.com/a-few-superspreaders-transmit-the-majority-of-coronavirus-cases-139950
 Article from The Conversation about  transmission of the coronavirus by the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics at Penn State. Recent studies contradict earlier ones that have shown that on average one infected person infects two to three other people. There is evidence of superspreader events in which one person infects about fourteen other people. In South Korea, around 40 people who attended a single church service were infected at the same time. A superspreader is probably a person whose immune system has trouble subduing the virus, according to the article. And, since over 50% of those harboring the virus, may be asymptomatic, these individuals will carry on with their daily activities, unaware that they may be infecting people. A person's behaviors also contribute to superspreading.  Researchers in Hong Kong examined a number of disease clusters by using contact tracing to track down everyone with whom individual COVID-19 patients had interacted. They identified multiple situations where a single person was responsible for as many as eight new infections-  highlighting the importance of rapidly isolating people when they test positive or show symptoms. Historical examples of superspreaders include Typhoid Mary, who in the early 20th century infected 51 people with typhoid through the food she prepared as a cook.

 

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/06/04/opinion/coronavirus-health-race-inequality.html

This is a NYT opinion based on a recent UCLA study about health justice and Covid-19. The first graphic goes through 6 health conditions: COPD, Diabetes, Asthma, High Blood Pressure, Obesity and Kidney Disease and shows that the poorest were more likely to suffer from one or more chronic conditions that would make them more vulnerable to worse outcomes from the coronavirus than the richest Americans, using data from 40 American cities. The second graphic uses census tracts to show that the 6 chronic health conditions are all more prevalent in poorer Americans with a plot of income versus disease prevalence, concluding that decades of systemic racism have left their mark on health inequality. Quoted from the study, “When our politics starts to work better for those left behind, then their health will improve.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/05/science/ocean-biology-larvaceans-lasers.html
This NYT article describes a new type of laser that allows us to visualize some strange organisms, including some which live at extremely high pressure in complete darkness. The DeepPIV imaging system contains a laser that scans through the animals, sending data to a  computer which reconstructs the organisms. The Nature publication of this work describes a large larvacean that secrete balloon-like mucus  feeding structures three feet long. This is the first time scientists have seen these organisms. More than 99% of the biosphere resides in the oceans; compared to land, the global ocean is unknown.

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/03/health/coronavirus-blood-type-genetics.html

This is a NYT article by Carl Zimmer reporting a study by European scientists in the Covid-19 Host Genetics Initiative showing links between severe Covid-19 and certain genetic variations, such as type A blood and a locus on chromosome 3, which has 6 genes on it, including one that encodes a protein known to interact with ACE2, the cellular receptor by which Covid-19 gains entry into the cell. This international effort includes a thousand researchers in 46 countries who are collecting DNA samples from people with the disease. Blood types may affect the disease, it is speculated, because the locus where the blood type gene is situated also contains a stretch of DNA that acts as an on-off switch for a gene producing a protein that ramps up the immune response.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/01/science/mass-extinctions-are-accelerating-scientists-report.html This is a NYT article describing research published by PNAS about the increase in the rate of human-caused mass extinctions. This loss in biodiversity, increasing at this rate, threatens vast ecosystems and the ecosystem services and substances they provide, including fresh water, pollination, and pest and disease control. The critical window, as the study reports, will close within 10 to 15 years, sooner than expected. 543 species were lost during the last 100, comparable losses normally take 10,000 years. Scientists used population data from for 29,400 terrestrial vertebrate species compiled by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and found that 1.7% of these are critically endangered and half of them have only 250 individuals. Losses of certain species will trigger a domino effect, ultimately threatening whole ecosystems.