>Vaccinated individuals were older than unvaccinated individuals (mean [SD] age, 38.0 [11.8] years vs 37.1 [11.4] years), more frequently women (11 688 603 [51.3%] vs 2 876 039 [48.5%]) and had more cardiometabolic comorbidities (2 126 250 [9.3%] vs 464 596 [7.8%]).
This is interesting because of "supposed" cardiovascular effects of the vaccine that many folks were worried about. Even more confounding is the gender differences. You'd think skewing women would skew away from cardiovascular issues.
An alternate interpretation is that the at risk cardio unvaccinated died of COVID for some reason.
The increase in myocarditis from the vaccine is well-documented. (And very small.)
COVID causes myocarditis too (even for young people unlikely to die from COVID itself), at much higher rates. So you only need a 20% chance of contracting COVID for the vaccine to be net positive in the least obviously positive age group.
I am not a physician, but I expect that decades hence we will see the health effects of repeated Covid infections. I'm guessing specifically around cardio health and dementia risk.
Your cite reads to me like a statement on the available data, which is interesting in its own ways but can be corrected for when it's irrelevant to the hypothesis.
>Government actions that restrict the ability to privately own or make use of computational resources for lawful purposes, which infringes on citizens' fundamental rights to property and free expression, must be limited to those demonstrably necessary and narrowly tailored to fulfill a compelling government interest in public health or safety.
Exactly. I was hoping that this law would be the pushback to the overzealous prosecution of DeCSS, people who defeat DRM locks in order to lawfully back up the multimedia data that they already paid for, etc.
I also wonder what the impact of the law is on TPM chips on computers (restricting your ability to boot whatever OS you want), the locked-down iOS mobile app store, etc.
I admit I'm not knowledgeable about this law but as it's written it seems fairly meaningless to me, as it could be interpreted in many different ways, and the exclusion is a hole you could drive a metaphorical truck through.
I work in drug discovery (like for real, I have a DC under my belt, not hypothetical AI protein generation blah blah) and had the opposite experience reading it. We understand so little about most drugs. Dialing out selectivity for a closely related protein was one of the most fun and eye opening experiences of my career.
Of course we've thought of all these things. But it's typically fragmented, and oftentimes out of scope. One of the hardest parts of any R&D project is honestly just doing a literature search to the point of exhaustion.
I side with you. The more you know, the more you discover what you don’t know.
Every attempt to consider the extremely complex dynamics of human biology as a pure state machine, like with Pascal, deterministic of your know all the factors, is simplification and can safely be rejected as hypotheses.
Hormons, age, sex, weight, food, aging, sun, environmental, epigenetic changes, body composition, activity level, infections, medication all play a role, even galenic.
Put it this way: even in Pascal (especially in Pascal) you generally work in source code. You don't try to read the object code, and if you do, you generally might try to decompile or disassemble it. What you don't do -unless you're desperate- is try to understand what the program is doing by means of directly reading the hexdump (let alone actually printing it out in binary!)
Now imagine someone has written a Compiler that compiles something much more sophisticated into Pascal (some 'fourth generation language' (4GL) ) . Now you'd be working in that 4GL, not in Pascal. Looking at the Pascal source code here would be less useful. Best to look at the 4GL code.
Biology is a bit like that. It's technically deterministic all the way down (until we reach quantum effects, at least). But trying to explain why Aunt Betty sneezed by looking at the orbital hybridization state of carbon atoms might be a wee bit unuseful at times. Better to just hand her a handkerchief.
(And even this rule has exceptions: Abstractions can be leaky!)
Are there any new developments on the technical side of microscopy such as new materials or techniques? What journals or trade papers are reliable in researching this information?
How does one become a microscopist as a profession? It seems like a specialized field with a narrow entry point and a lot of hoops.
On the technical side, yes. The biggest new developments I can quickly think of are:
1) Cold field emission guns. The big challenge of an electron source is producing a coherent beam - that is a beam that comes off the tip one electron at a time, at the same location, the same angle, and with the same energy. The cooler the tip runs, the more coherent it tends to be. This has made a big difference and is just now widely commercially available.
2) Narrow pole-piece gap. The sample on most TEMs sits sandwiched between two objective lenses that operate in tandem - these are typically called twin objectives. The upper one ensures the beam is parallel, which primarily results in uniform defocus (or focus if one so desires) across the image. The lower one is responsible for image formation and initial magnification (actually, all of your resolution essentially). The gap between them is responsible for your primary aberrations: spherical and chromatic. Reducing this gap reduces the total aberrations in the image.
I will side bar that the physics of a microscope are not really holding it back from what I'm doing - generating structures of biomolecules. Really, I'm more limited by the camera technology than anything, because the cameras simply aren't performant enough to dose the images to the level I'd like, to collect as many images as possible in as short a time as possible. Fundamentally, I tend to be limited by number of observations.
For the really cutting edge stuff...check out ptychography:
>How does one become a microscopist as a profession? It seems like a specialized field with a narrow entry point and a lot of hoops.
There are basically two routes for TEM - material science, or biochemistry. The way to become a microscopist for me was to show up at a University that had a grant for a microscope, but no one to operate it. :)
In general, universities operate TEM cores, frequently called bioimaging or something. (Structural biology if it's newer although that's just one application among many). Frequently there are positions for all education levels - bachelor's through PhD, depending on what one wants to do. Training is a mix of hands on (interfacing with complicated systems) and theoretical (physics and image formation). Typically the operators aren't the most theoretical, but have a lot of very niche practical knowledge you only get from being around broken microscopes.
A lot of replies that are mostly true, or somewhat true, or simply missing the real reasons.
There are two factors here:
1) Vaccine-derived immunity is a function of the individual's immune response, which in general, weakens significantly with age. It is not unrealistic for a vaccine to simply fail to elicit any response in someone old enough.
2) It is very, very difficult to recruit folks without HPV that are over 40 for a clinical trial. Most people of that age, who were never immunized, most likely have had it. This significantly convolutes the signal.
3) This is all especially confounded once something becomes "standard of care". Every year there are fewer and fewer people age 40+ with HPV.
For these reasons, the vaccine is currently officially ??? in people over 40. Most doctors will prescribe it anyways if you ask. It may or may not infer immunity. It almost certainly will not harm you.
I can confirm that this phone is perfect for it. Everything is there and usable if you truly need it, but I cannot wait to put the phone back in my pocket because of unpleasant it is to use.
I picked up one of these and have been having a number of issues, but have somehow managed to stick with it and my life is much improved as a result. Device usage has been much, much more intentional. I wouldn't say I'm cured of my scrolling addiction, but the time I spend scrolling has been relegated to just the latest hours of the night, and even then, significantly less.
The trick about this phone is that because it is full fat Android, everything is possible. But because it is low refresh rate black and white screen with a physical keyboard, everything is also a pain in the ass. Rather than hear a chat message notification and immediately get the urge to pull out my phone and engage, I actually now get slightly annoyed because typing out a proper response with proper grammar is going to be a pain in the ass.
The company is pretty lousy and doesn't communicate well. They have missed every single deadline they've ever set for themselves. The software is glitchy but usable (I have all the same issues mentioned in the article with the autocorrect, refresh settings, fingerprint, etc). All those things are fixable and hopefully do.
The phone itself is very weak hardware and the screen protector and case still haven't shipped. I had my phone in my back pocket and it did not survive that, I got two cracks along the edge and a slight bend. Still works though, but I have switched it to my front pocket.
Android Auto works great in both my vehicles, so maps/navigation are not an issue. Bitwarden works. Duo auth works. Banking apps work. Roon works. Podcasts work. Things that I need, that other dumb phones can't provide.
But the critical thing is, I am trying to avoid using the phone because it is just a pain in the ass to do things on. For this, honestly, I'd pay 10x the list price because it has given me so much of my life back. I actually had a mini crisis when I realized I was bored, with nothing to do in the evenings after work, because I had so much time back. (Don't worry, channeling that time into productive hobbies now).
I would highly highly highly recommend this if you want to spend less time on your phone but need certain functions a smartphone provides.
It started when I had my first kid and he wouldn't sleep and I would lay there awake all night just thinking of all the stressors in my life. I'd use the phone to distract myself. Then that gradually just turned into a crutch for all stress. That was pretty hard to stop.
I've tried a number of different things but nothing stuck. I've had this phone for a few months now and it has really done the trick.
This is a a microcosm of so much addiction, at least in my experience. Friction really matters in giving your mind a moment to pause and consider. I think adding friction by getting a less capable phone is a great technique, similarly to how I'd hide the candy/alcohol/TV remotes if folks in the house are addicted. It doesn't remove the opportunity, but it makes it tougher.
This happened for me as well. It adds insult to injury that lying awake, unable to sleep properly for months straight, doomscrolling (or just being online too much) further saps your mental health in an already drained and depressed state.
It's a pretty messed up negative feedback loop. If you find yourself in this state, audiobooks are a good alternative.
It's like candy - so tasty that you can't stop eating it until you're diabetic and obese. People will absolutely structure their diets to make them "worse" (less tasty) because they want, at a higher level than their taste buds want sugar, to stay healthy.
A trillion dollar industry exists to profit off of gluing eyeballs to screens. Making the device other than what this industry designed it to be is not self-sabotage, it's self-interested!
Read "Supernormal Stimuli" by Barrett for some other examples of this phenomenon.
Yep, exactly this. If I have anything with sugar in the house, it'll get consumed in 24-48h. The solution is to just not have anything with sugar in the house.
If I want to splurge with a chocolate or ice cream bar, I take a walk to my corner store and buy just one, and eat it right away. It's extremely cost inefficient compared to if I bought a gallon of ice cream from the store, but that's not what I'm optimizing for here.
I've been using an nfc card based thing called brick to add friction and halt doomscrolling.
Essentially I use my normal phone, but lock specific apps. To unlock those apps I must scan the nfc card I keep in my car. That means getting up and going outside.
That tiny bit of added friction has cut my screentime in half and made me more productive, and less stressed.
There are other devices like it now, for example Bloom.
Individuals are going up against corporations spending millions if not billions on R&D to figure out how to make their products “stickier” or habit forming. Can you blame people for pursuing more aggressive approaches to try and reset their habits?
Adding/reducing friction is a reliable way to change behaviour, and the companies know this too.
I dont save my card details to prefill, I don't use nfc payments and I keep a low balance in the transaction account my debit card, in order to be more intentional about my spending.
Apropos mixing bitterants, it's quite common to apply a bitter nail varnish to help people stop biting their nails. Not an addictive substance, but an addictive behavior.
>I'm not a scientist, but if you were to tell me "this trial shows that substance X is not harmful", I would think ideally it would give substance X to one group and a placebo to the other group. If not possible, it would look after the fact to see group A that received substance X compared to group B that didn't, large enough sample so it would be relatively controlled for extraneous variables. Seems like you would def want to compare the two groups, so what did this study actually do?
You cannot give a placebo vaccine once is it standard of care. No IRB is going to approve a placebo control group for a study (nor should they) on a vaccine that is already SoC. This is why we let actual scientists and doctors design the experiments, and not random HN readers. It would be incredibly unethical to give a placebo vaccine for tetanus. Think about what you are suggesting here. You are suggesting that children potentially die of entirely avoidable tetanus, for the sake of running an experiment. At the bare minimum, that is medical malpractice. I won't get into what it is at the other end of the spectrum, beyond this:
This is interesting because of "supposed" cardiovascular effects of the vaccine that many folks were worried about. Even more confounding is the gender differences. You'd think skewing women would skew away from cardiovascular issues.
An alternate interpretation is that the at risk cardio unvaccinated died of COVID for some reason.