Category hompeage

Scientists are working together to create a universal flu vaccination that can protect against multiple strains of the virus. On average, between 5-20% of Americans come down with the flu at least once a year. With this new vaccine, doctors are hoping that the vaccine will eliminate the necessity for the yearly flu shot.
The vaccine has been tested on mice, ferrets, and monkeys infected with different types of flu. The Guardian reports that so far, the vaccine seems to have worked, and many test subjects have seen reduced symptoms.
Current flu vaccinations target the top of a molecule known as haemagglutinin (HA.) Seasonal flu vaccines are designed to fight against specific strains of the virus that scientists believe will be the greatest threat. However, HA molecules are known to mutate quickly, rendering the vaccinations ineffective.
This is what happened to last winter’s flu vaccination, which was created in 2013. One of the most common circulating strains, known as H3N2, had a fast-paced mutation, making it difficult for the vaccination to do its job. The Independent reports that as a result, only 3% of those who were injected were protected from the virus, as opposed to the typical 50% rate.
The new vaccine, which is being studied by two separate research teams, targets the “stem” of the HA molecule, rather than the top. They believe that the HA stem is very similar across different strains of flu, and is less likely to mutate.
”This is an exciting development,” says Sarah Gilbert, a professor of vaccinology at Oxford University. “But the new vaccines now need to be tested in clinical trials to see how well they work in humans. This will be the next stage of research, which will take several years. So we are still some way from having better flu vaccines for humans.”
As of now, doctors estimate that it will take another three to five years to carry out further vaccination development before the vaccine can be tested on human volunteers.

The rise of sexually transmitted diseases (STD) within the United States is a huge cause for concern. Recent statistics report that there are 20 million new cases of STDs each year, originating from only eight strains of bacteria and viruses.

With this notable rise in STD prevalence, non-profit organizations like Planned Parenthood are becoming increasingly important, and health officials are doing everything they can to protect and educate the masses on the harmful effects of STDs.

But according to recent reports, humans aren’t the only species at risk of becoming infected by sexually transmitted diseases. It turns out that koalas, the cuddly, eucalyptus-munching tree bears, are the animal species most direly at risk.

According to MTV, koalas are catching chlamydia like crazy. The epidemic is so severe, in fact, that the world’s population of koalas is in danger.

Chlamydia is a sexually transmitted disease that spreads through sexual contact, and through birth. In humans, chlamydia can be successfully treated using antibiotics. But without the proper treatment, chlamydia can be a serious infection that can lead to serious complications such as infertility.

Because of this, The Verge reports that nearly half of the infected female koala population has been rendered infertile.

And for the female koalas with chlamydia who remain fertile, the infection is being spread to their offspring during suckling.

And koalas aren’t the only animals suffering. According to MTV no species is safe, from lady bugs to horses.

Unfortunately, there’s no means of proliferating education and preventative measures to species that just don’t speak English. If you’re a human, you can easily educate yourself or undergo preventative measures such as abstinence or the use of condoms.

Yet researchers are working hard to find means to preventing these diseases from spreading. For koalas, this would mean a chlamydia vaccine that would halt the transference of chlamydia from one animal to the next.

Any dedicated Shakespeare scholar will likely recognize the Bard’s mentions of thinking up “new-found methods and compounds strange” thanks to “invention in a noted weed” in Sonnet 76.

But to this day, few people probably suspected this “noted weed” referred to the most noted weed of all: marijuana.

Newly-published findings from South African researcher Francis Thackeray and his team from the University of the Witwatersrand show the results of analyzing 24 tobacco pipe fragments from Shakespeare’s hometown of Stratford-upon-Avon.

Eight of these pipes tested positive for cannabis residue; four of the cannabis-positive pipe fragments came from Shakespeare’s own garden.

According to the Seattle P-I, Thackeray’s team used an advanced, non-invasive testing technique called gas chromatography mass spectrometry to analyze the residue on these pipe fragments. The findings led the researchers to conclude that Shakespeare was, in fact, a marijuana user during his famed literary career.

Thackeray himself actually got the idea for his research after reading the references to a “noted weed” in Sonnet 76.

“I had actually begun the project by reading all of Shakespeare’s sonnets,” Thackeray added.

In addition to the marijuana traces, scientists also found “unquestionable” evidence of Peruvian cocaine on two pipes from the Stratford-upon-Avon area; however, neither of these pipes were found on Shakespeare’s property like the cannabis pipes were.

Those who used this cocaine were probably consuming a product that had few, if any, similarities to the cocaine we know today, the stimulating effects of which can last anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour. USA Today reports that this cocaine likely came to England after Sir Francis Drake’s return from his 1597 visit to Peru.

Given the experimental nature of Elizabethan medicine, it’s not surprising to learn that 17th-century Englishmen and women used drugs like marijuana and cocaine. For Shakespeare, it’s entirely possible that he enjoyed marijuana for its mind-stimulating properties, which would undoubtedly have helped his creativity, Thackeray explained.

“We were delighted to find indications of cannabis,” Thackeray said. “We can’t be sure that the pipes which we analyzed were those of Shakespeare, but they were from his garden, and they were dated to the early 17th century.”

When most people purchase a home security system, they expect to get just that: security.

However, a new scam is targeting these very homeowners nationwide, threatening to take away the security they seek.

According to a July 30 WCPO article, police departments across the country, along with the home security company ADT, have reported an upswing in these scams — and thousands of Americans will have been victimized by the end of the year.

Scammers go door to door, telling the homeowner they’re there to upgrade the home’s security system, claiming they work for the security company.

“They’re knocking on our customers’ doors, saying they are either with ADT or saying other lies like ADT went out of business, or that their company bought ADT,” said David Bleisch, ADT’s corporate attorney.

If their plan works, the scammers are able to convince the homeowner to make a deposit — or even a multi-year contract — with an alarm company that may not even exist, only to never be heard from again. In other cases, scammers will actually tamper with the existing security system and dismantle its alarm to make a later break-in possible, Consumer Reports reported.

It’s an especially concerning trend, considering the fact that 41% of Americans now say they would prefer to purchase a brand new home over an existing one — and a good deal of these people will be outfitting their new homes with security systems.

And when the highest number of household break-ins take place in July and August, it’s especially important to be vigilant against potential home security scams.

Bleisch advised homeowners to never let someone into their house until the individual reveals his or her name and employer, and then to call one’s security company to verify the person’s identity. If the company representative doesn’t know the person at the door, it may well be a scammer.

“Before you let them into the house, make sure you know who you are dealing with,” Bleisch said.

For parts of the country, summer means figuring out how to keep up with rapid grass growth without mowing the lawn every single weekend (grass should never be cut by more than a third in a single mowing). But that’s not the problem in California.

In the midst of a crippling drought, authorities in the state have adopted even more restrictions on turf intended to cut water usage. New office buildings will be allowed to have virtually no grass, and new homes may have only a quarter of the total lot’s acreage covered in grass (exceptions will be made for new construction that uses recycled toilet or shower water for landscaping). Rocks, shrubs and less thirsty plants, such as jasmine, are encouraged instead.

Some people say that even these steps don’t go far enough, and that the entire concept of emerald lawns in the Golden State must be abandoned. “We are a state prone to drought that should move away from the ideal of every home having a lawn that is watered with precious drinking water,” Tracy Quinn, a policy analyst for the Natural Resources Defense Council, told NBC San Diego this month.

Disagreements over lawn watering — and seeming inequality in enforcement of restrictions on lawn watering — have even led to ugly confrontations among neighbors.

One such outburst took place on online bulletin board Nextdoor this month when Michael Feliciano of Curtis Park (a Sacramento neighborhood) began criticizing two of his neighbors for planting new sod, also asserting that several others couldn’t possibly be keeping their lawns as green as they were while also complying with city water restrictions.

“The possibility that we could run out of water is very real, and yet, there are those among us who seem to believe that they are entitled to ignore water restrictions, in the name of their beloved green lawns,” he wrote.

Fellow residents soon responded, generating almost 150 replies in just a few days. Some quite literally defended their turf, while others seconded Feliciano’s comments and further castigated people with green lawns.

This so-called lawn shaming isn’t an isolated incident, either. As of July 15, neighbor reports and city patrols in Sacramento had lodged 26% more complaints about water violations than they had at the same time last year.

We’re all well aware of the many ways our personal data can be collected on the Internet, and how big data keeps a record of nearly all our preferences and tastes.

But what if the same kind of data gathering processes could be performed on the very genetic fiber of your being?

As the concept of biobanks has rapidly spread throughout the last several years, concerns over the ethics of collecting the DNA of millions of people and using them for commercial benefit have arisen as well. Despite the supposed anonymity of a biobank’s DNA samples, it’s been shown that these samples might not be so anonymous after all.

According to Science magazine, President Obama recently unveiled a plan to establish a massive national biobank that will store the medical records and genetic information of as many as 1 million Americans. As plans move forward with this biobank, the question stands: does the U.S. government have the right to use its citizens’ genetic codes as it will?

The Pacific Standard has reported that none of the 18 federal laws designed to protect the privacy of individuals and their genetic data don’t actually apply to samples of blood, tissue or other biological material. This means that the millions of genetic samples stored in biobanks can all be traced back to a name, race, zip code, address — even a facial image or set of fingerprints.

“In the worst-case scenarios, those samples and data could be used for research purposes that might offend participants or, in the wrong hands, be used to discriminate against them or their families,” the Pacific-Standard report explained.

At the same time, however, the benefits that biobanks can offer a population shouldn’t be discredited. Biobanks allow for the development of precision medicine, which would remove the guess-work of modern medicine and allow for more simplified and effective drugs and treatments.

Even more significant is the ways in which biobanks can expand treatment possibilities for patients with cancer. Cancerous tissue, when stored in biobanks, can be tested to determine the best drug with which to treat it.

And with the number of tissue samples stored in U.S. biobanks estimated at around 300 million at the start of the new millennium — and growing by an incredible two million each year — it’s unlikely that biobanks are going to fade out of existence anytime soon.

In a recent question-and-answer session on Facebook, Hillary Clinton shared just how much work it takes for women to get ready in the morning.

The former Secretary of State and current Democratic presidential front-runner responded to a female Facebook user who asked about her morning routine.

“Every morning, as my boyfriend zips out the door and I spent 30+ minutes getting ready, I wonder about how the ‘hair and makeup’ tax affects other women,” Facebook user Libby Britain asked Clinton. “As a young professional woman, I’d genuinely love to hear about how you manage getting ready each morning.”

Clinton, who has spent a good portion of her career as a widely-known public figure, agreed that the ‘hair and makeup’ tax is a real problem.

“Amen, sister — you’re preaching to the choir,” she wrote. “It’s a daily challenge. I do the best I can — and as you may have noticed, some days are better than others!”

Despite her lighthearted tone, her answer is indicative of a problem that has troubled Clinton for several years — that women, no matter their age or rank in government, always seem to be scrutinized for their looks. It’s hardly surprising, for example, that the average American woman will have approximately 104 different hairstyles over the course of her life.

Clinton has a long history of pointing out the unequal experiences she’s had as a woman in politics. In 2010, during a town-hall meeting with students in Kyrgyzstan, a moderator asked her if she had any favorite fashion designers. Her response was appropriately barbed: “Would you ever ask a man that question?”

However, despite speaking out against some pretty evident gender inequalities, some still believe Clinton answered too many of the easy questions — and too little of the tough ones — during her question-and-answer session.

“Clinton ignored hundreds of tougher questions,” wrote Chuck Ross of the Daily Caller. “She did not answer the Daily Caller’s inquiry about whether she believes that “All lives matter” is a problematic statement. She also did not answer when asked for the specific date that she decided to scrub her personal email server.”

Still, it’s hard to find fault with Clinton’s ideas about ending gender inequality, especially when comparing her views with those of other presidential hopefuls.

“There is a gender card being played in this campaign,” Clinton wrote in one of her responses. “It’s played every time Republicans vote against giving women equal pay, deny families access to affordable child care or family leave, refuse to let women make decisions about their health or have access to free contraception.”

America’s consumption of air conditioning is at an all-time high, leading some energy experts to cast doubt on the prudence of using A/C all the time — as well as the reasons why Americans can’t get enough of it.

The New York Times reports that energy experts are wrestling over the issue, with many claiming that the most challenging problem isn’t technical but cultural.

“Being able to make people feel cold in the summer is a sign of power and prestige,” said Richard de Dear, director of the Indoor Environmental Quality Laboratory at University of Sydney, Australia. He claims the problem of over-reliance on A/C is just as prominent in Australia as it is in the United States — about 87% of American households have air conditioning — and that it’s even worse in the Middle East and Asia.

One reason why A/C is so prevalent is that it’s common practice for tenants of commercial real estate to demand “chilling capacities” in their lease agreements to bolster their prestige for their customers. In the retail world, for example, high-end stores such as Bergdorf Goodman, Neiman Marcus, and Saks Fifth Avenue are generally kept cooler than stores such as Target, Walmart, and Old Navy (although, sufficient to say, they’re all kept noticeably chilled).

Another reason for the massive intake of A/C in the developed world is that many businesses believe the misconception that workers are more productive in cooler temperatures. Research indicates the opposite. A recent study has shown that workers tend to be less productive, and make more mistakes, when the indoor air temperature is 68 to 72 degrees Fahrenheit, as opposed to 74 to 76 degrees. Other studies have shown that in general, colder temperatures can make people feel “untrusting, uncommunicative and unfriendly.”

Nisha Charkoudian, a physiologist with the U.S. Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine in Natick, Massachusetts, says that subconsciously, people relate coldness with vulnerability, stress, and discomfort.

“It’s left over from a time when it was dangerous to have that kind of change in temperature,” Charkoudian said.

On July 11th, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump lambasted the United States government and Mexico for their immigration and trade policies, accusing the latter of intentionally sending criminals — including drug dealers, murderers, and rapists — across the border to “wreak havoc on our population.”

The Associated Press reports that the billionaire real estate mogul and television personality spoke in front of a libertarian gathering known as FreedomFest in Las Vegas. Gathered inside the Planet Hollywood ballroom on the Las Vegas Strip, the audience watched Trump deliver excoriating indictments against Mexico, accusing its government of “killing us at the border and…killing us on trade.”

Though he claims that he “respect[s] Mexico greatly as a country,” Trump repeated his earlier charges that Mexico was bringing its “worst” to the U.S. and it was openly flouting American law.

“The problem we have is their leaders are much sharper than ours,” he said.

In order to confront illegal immigration, Trump proposed to build a fence across the entire U.S.-Mexican border, something that made the audience groan. And according to azcentral.com, he reiterated in a speech he delivered in Phoenix later that day his desire to build a barrier along the 2,000 mile border.

“I would build a great wall. And nobody builds walls better than me, believe me,” he said. “And I’ll build them very inexpensively. I will build a great great wall on our southern border and I’ll have Mexico pay for that wall.”

He did not address how he would compel the Mexican government to pay for the wall or, barring that, how he would produce enough funding to complete such a project, which would rival the Great Wall of China it its length and scope.

The figures are staggering. The U.S. Customs and Border Protection spent approximately $2.4 billion between 2006 and 2009 on building 670 miles of border fence, which has largely been ineffective in keeping undocumented aliens out.

Still, the demand for fencing remains strong in the U.S. By 2018, the fencing industry is predicted to expand by 7% annually, to garner $9 billion in revenue, and to build a total of 875 million linear feet in fencing.

Kids these days just don’t know how to manage their money, right?

Actually, it might be the adults who are having the most difficulty keeping their finances in check — in fact, according to a new survey by Allianz Life Insurance Company of North America, Generation X (ages 35 to 48) actually thinks that high credit card debt is a normal aspect of covering finances.

Financial Adviser reports that 76% of Gen Xers began opening credit cards between the ages of 18 and 24, while only 68% of Baby Boomers (ages 49 to 67) did so.

36% of Gen Xers reportedly have at least $5,000 in credit card debt, and 25% admitted that they have more than $10,000 — which isn’t surprising, considering that in 2012, the average American home had two credit cards (and nearly a third of all households had at least four credit cards).

And even though Baby Boomers seem to manage their debt a bit better than the younger generation of adults, it seems that neither generation feels confident managing finances without the help of a credit card;USA Today reported that 48% of the Gen Xers and Baby Boomers in the Allianz survey stated that credit cards “now function as a financial survival tool.”

Millennials, on the other hand — that tricky group of young adults between the ages of 18 and 34 — have stayed far away from credit cards when possible. U.S. News and World Report recently stated that more than one-third of 20-year-olds have never had a credit card, and that the majority of Millennials are “skeptical” of Wall Street.

Rather than handing their bills and taxes over to a financial adviser, Millennials are more likely to do their own research on the stock market and to manage their own money using low-cost mobile apps.

Most of these young adults were just entering the job market when the Great Recession hit, so they know how important it is to spend money and stimulate the economy — but they also seem to have a more positive outlook than Gen Xers and Baby Boomers when it comes to managing debt.

Many consumers in older generations, however, witnessed their savings and retirement plans completely drain out when the stock market tanked; with so much taken away so quickly, perhaps it’s hard not to adopt a pessimistic attitude.