StringJunky

If the top topples, the lower parts have no chance. When Ghani fled, that was it. It seems to be his poor timing that has caused this situation unfolding worse than it needed to. My overall feeling is that not enough Afghani's are prepared to fight with the same conviction as the Taliban, so the end result is predictable. Is the lesson that we need to totally overrun a country, like the Allies did to Germany, in order to put into effect durable, peaceful change?

Luck and environmental selection pressure brings them into dominance, They can come from anywhere. Wherever there is a virion, a mutant can arise from its replication. They don't have to 'learn' to be resistant, derived from a series of external pressures, a perfectly resistant mutant can also just happen to be spontaneously generated... it got lucky.

Cheers guys

You think it will be persistent and ubiquitous, like flu and other common respiratory pathogens now? Is there too strains now? What factors tell you that herd immunity is off the table?

They are solutions conceived to fix a problem, which they then see if the data agrees.

It wouldn't be practical for domestic laundry and it's potentially dangerous in unfamiliar hands. You do have an immune system and microbiome to keep the little critters in check. A maximal aseptic strategy is not good for your long term health.... mental or physical.

Yes, chronic use can play hell with micro-memory, can lead to frequent distractions of thought and feeling ambivalent about things, causing indecision.

The forum software does not show names when one can plus or minus a post. If there was a like-only option, ala Facebook, then one would see the names. The mods felt showing the names of those who disapprove was not a good idea... IIRC

Putting @Sensei should alert him.

I'm reminded of Douglas Adams snippet in Salmon of Doubt:

`Generally, you don't just post a url. The url is added to a body of information at the end. Things get complicated with personal blogs and websites because many use their membership just to encourage traffic to them aka spammers.

People who identify in between genders, or spread across them, will probably have the hardest time because, even amongst some of their peers, they may be told to "make up their minds" which group they fall in.

Right, that could cause diffusion and desaturation of the viewed scene. If it's a phone, you could try shading the lens with your hand or something to cut off incoming side light, which gets scattered in the lens, softening the image. A neater solution would be a lens hood. They seem quite widely available. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Original-ULHmobile-Ultimate-Mobile-Phones/dp/B082VKFDDD

The first one probably used a polarizer.

Yes. We are genetically hard-wired to to sub-classify ad infinitum everything when describing our experience, so this idea is a natural extension of how we actually behave. Unfortunately, tradition is the counterforce to things changing as quick as we'd like.

Talking solely in terms of two sets of chromosomes is not describing things properly. For sport,I think we need a set of classes that are not based on gender, and compiling pertinent parameters suitable for each class. I think it reflects the continuum nature of gender differentiation

Transgender Laurel Hubbard NZ didn't beat the top cis-girls in the weightlifting in Tokyo.

The plasmablast response to SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccination is dominated by non-neutralizing antibodies and targets both the NTD and the RBD Fatima Amanat, Mahima Thapa, Tinting Lei, Shaza M. Sayed Ahmed, Daniel C. Adelsberg, Juan Manuel Carreno, Shirin Strohmeier, Aaron J. Schmitz, Sarah Zafar, View ORCID ProfileJulian Q Zhou, Willemijn Rijnink, Hala Alshammary, Nicholas Borcherding, Ana Gonzalez Reiche, Komal Srivastava, View ORCID ProfileEmilia Mia Sordillo, View ORCID ProfileHarm van Bakel, The Personalized Virology Initiative, Jackson S. Turner, Goran Bajic, Viviana Simon, View ORCID ProfileAli H. Ellebedy, Florian Krammer doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.03.07.21253098 This article is a preprint and has not been peer-reviewed [what does this mean?]. It reports new medical research that has yet to be evaluated and so should not be used to guide clinical practice. AbstractFull TextInfo/HistoryMetrics Preview PDF Summary In this study we profiled vaccine-induced polyclonal antibodies as well as plasmablast derived mAbs from individuals who received SARS-CoV-2 spike mRNA vaccine. Polyclonal antibody responses in vaccinees were robust and comparable to or exceeded those seen after natural infection. However, the ratio of binding to neutralizing antibodies after vaccination was greater than that after natural infection and, at the monoclonal level, we found that the majority of vaccine-induced antibodies did not have neutralizing activity. We also found a co-dominance of mAbs targeting the NTD and RBD of SARS-CoV-2 spike and an original antigenic-sin like backboost to seasonal human coronaviruses OC43 and HKU1. Neutralizing activity of NTD mAbs but not RBD mAbs against a clinical viral isolate carrying E484K as well as extensive changes in the NTD was abolished, suggesting that a proportion of vaccine induced RBD binding antibodies may provide substantial protection against viral variants carrying single E484K RBD mutations.

Legs will evolve to vestigial appendages. :)

I noticed an article on the BBC website that Spain has a very high level of faith and compliance with their medical institutions and vaccines.... shame it's not everywhere.

I'm waiting for 'Rollerball' or "Death Race 2000" to become a real game. Competing is evolutionarily progressive behaviour.

First time I saw one of them, probably 3 or 4, I thought my grandad said it was a 'giraffe excluder' and kept out giraffes! The joys of deafness. "How's a giraffe going to get under that little gap?"

The most efficient, I think, is to have the fire place projecting into the room where the metal roof is exposed above it. Much more high quality convected heat will pour into the room instead of predominantely radiant heat of a typical open fire. You'll find that the hot zone is not just local around the fire as well... it's all over.

Without warp speed they ain't gonna get far in space. The Pioneer/Voyager spacecraft are just on the edge of the solar system after nigh on 50 years... just another 3ish lyrs to the nearest star. This is the technology we have to go on.