Saturday, December 6

LIFESTYLE

The Complicated Legacy Of The Pilgrims Is Finally Coming To Light 400 Years After They Landed In Plymouth
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LIFESTYLE

The Complicated Legacy Of The Pilgrims Is Finally Coming To Light 400 Years After They Landed In Plymouth

The 400th anniversary of the Pilgrims’ voyage to Plymouth will be celebrated on both sides of the Atlantic with a “remembrance ceremony” with state and local officials and a museum exhibit in Plymouth, England. IBM has even outfitted a replica of the Mayflower with an AI navigating system that will allow the ship to trace the course of the original journey without any humans on board. Plimoth Plantation, in Plymouth, Mass., is a living museum that’s a replica of the original settlement, which existed for 70 years. Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA Yet as a scholar of early 17th-century New England, I’ve always been puzzled by the glory heaped on the Pilgrims and their settlement in Plymouth. Native Americans had met Europeans in scores of places before 1620, so yet another encounter was hardly...
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CRISPR can help combat the troubling immune response against gene therapy
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LIFESTYLE

CRISPR can help combat the troubling immune response against gene therapy

One of the major challenges facing gene therapy - a way to treat disease by replacing a patient’s defective genes with healthy ones - is that it is difficult to safely deliver therapeutic genes to patients without the immune system destroying the gene, and the vehicle carrying it, which can trigger life-threatening widespread inflammation. Three decades ago researchers thought that gene therapy would be the ultimate treatment for genetically inherited diseases like hemophilia, sickle cell anemia and genetic diseases of metabolism. But the technology couldn’t dodge the immune response. Since then, researchers have been looking for ways to perfect the technology and control immune responses to the gene or the vehicle. However, many of the strategies tested so far have not been completely s...
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Herd immunity won’t solve America’s COVID-19 problem
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LIFESTYLE

Herd immunity won’t solve America’s COVID-19 problem

After months battling the COVID-19 pandemic, the idea of “herd immunity” is back in the news. This has been stoked by reports about the White House’s new pandemic advisor, Scott Altas, who has argued in favor of ending social isolation measures and simply allowing healthy people to get infected. The idea is that the virus wouldn’t spread as quickly once enough people became immune. But trying to reach herd immunity without a vaccine would be a disastrous pandemic response strategy. As mathematics and computer science professors, we think it is important to understand what herd immunity actually is, when it’s a viable strategy and why, without a vaccine, it cannot reduce deaths and illnesses from the current pandemic. What is herd immunity? Epidemiologists define the herd immunity thresho...
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Reopening elementary schools carries less COVID-19 risk than high schools – but that doesn’t guarantee safety
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LIFESTYLE

Reopening elementary schools carries less COVID-19 risk than high schools – but that doesn’t guarantee safety

While only a fraction of the country’s 50 million public school kids headed back to school in-person this month, many have already found themselves back at home. Within two weeks of opening, multiple states reported school-based COVID-19 outbreaks, and thousands of students and school staff have been quarantined following possible exposure to SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19. Many of these districts are in areas with high community spread of COVID-19, and some didn’t enforce social distancing or require face masks. Our team of infectious disease epidemiologists collected data in the San Francisco Bay Area and ran computer simulations to examine how school closures and reopenings can affect the spread of COVID-19. What we learned points to three key strategies for minimi...
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African Americans have long defied white supremacy and celebrated Black culture in public spaces
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LIFESTYLE

African Americans have long defied white supremacy and celebrated Black culture in public spaces

From Richmond to New York City to Seattle, anti-racist activists are getting results as Confederate monuments are coming down by the dozens. In Richmond, Virginia, protesters have changed the story of Lee Circle, home to a 130-year-old monument to Confederate General Robert E. Lee. It’s now a new community space where graffiti, music and projected images turn the statue of Lee from a monument to white supremacy into a backdrop proclaiming that Black Lives Matter. This isn’t a new phenomenon. I’m a historian of celebrations and protests after the Civil War. And in my research, I have found that long before Confederate monuments occupied city squares, African Americans used those same public spaces to celebrate their history. But those African American memorial cultures have often been o...
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A Student’s Perspective on Finding Hope, Love, Justice, and Common Humanity
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LIFESTYLE

A Student’s Perspective on Finding Hope, Love, Justice, and Common Humanity

Marching in a steady stream of people shouting familiar slogans through face masks, some of them awkwardly trying to socially distance, my first protest was fairly different from anything I’d have imagined before 2020. That didn’t make it any less powerful. The speeches given by religious and local Black community leaders, united after the police killing of George Floyd, drew in the hundreds of passionate, chanting protesters who were occupying City Hall and stunned them into mournful silence. Nor did it make it any less necessary. Mapping Police Violence data found that Black people in America are not only 3 times more likely to be killed by police than White people, they are also 1.3 times more likely to be killed while unarmed, culminating this year with the tragic deaths of George Flo...
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A smart second skin gets all the power it needs from sweat
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LIFESTYLE

A smart second skin gets all the power it needs from sweat

The big idea Skin is the largest organ of the human body. It conveys a lot of information, including temperature, pressure, pleasure and pain. Electronic skin (e-skin) mimics the properties of biological skin. Recently developed e-skins are capable of wirelessly monitoring physiological signals. They could play a crucial role in the next generation of robotics and medical devices. My lab at Caltech is interested in studying human biology and monitoring human health by using advanced bioelectronic devices. The e-skin we have developed not only analyzes the chemical and molecular composition of human sweat, it’s fully powered by chemicals in sweat. Why it matters Existing e-skins and wearable devices primarily focus on monitoring physiological parameters like heart rate and can’t assess hea...
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Insider trading by members of Congress may be difficult to prove
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LIFESTYLE

Insider trading by members of Congress may be difficult to prove

Recent allegations regarding stock trading by members of Congress in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic have raised calls for the investigation of these politicians for illegal “insider trading.” But successfully prosecuting such cases will be very difficult. Even federal judges struggle with writing clear instructions to lay jurors in insider trading cases. Often, verdicts are reversed on appeal due to errors in explaining complicated legal terms. There are two different provisions of law that could apply to the trading activity of senators and congressional staff. Members of Congress and staff could run afoul of either or both of these laws. But proving a violation and convicting them is not likely. Stock Act and securities law The first provision is a rule known as Rule 10(b)(5) afte...
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Pregnant in a time of coronavirus – the changing risks and what you need to know
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LIFESTYLE

Pregnant in a time of coronavirus – the changing risks and what you need to know

“So, being pregnant and delivering in a pandemic … what’s that gonna look like?” That question, sent to me by a colleague who is both a registered nurse and an expectant mother, stopped me in my tracks. As an OB-GYN physician, I naturally focus on the science of health care. Her email reminded me of the uncertainty expectant mothers now face as health risks and the health care system around them change amid this coronavirus pandemic. While knowledge about the new coronavirus disease, COVID-19, is rapidly evolving and there are still many unknowns, medical groups and studies are starting to provide advice and answers to questions many expecting families are asking. Do pregnant women face greater risk from COVID-19? So far, the data on COVID-19 does not suggest pregnant women are at higher...
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12 productive things you can do to feel better about being stuck at home
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LIFESTYLE

12 productive things you can do to feel better about being stuck at home

Now that the coronavirus has sent workers and students home, closed businesses and canceled events, it’s going to be important to create new routines and find meaningful ways to spend our long days at home. The following organizing tasks are simple and will help you structure your day and create a small sense of control. Order picture frames and albums: Do you have a stack of photos you have been meaning to put in frames or photo albums? If so, take a few minutes online to find options that will work for you, and place the order. Depending on how long social distancing lasts, you may even have time to put those photos into the frames and albums. Send notes: Write those thank-you cards that you have had on your to-do list for the past few months. If you don’t have any thank-you notes to s...
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