A federal judge in Texas on Thursday ordered the Food and Drug Administration to make public the data it relied on to license Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine, imposing a dramatically accelerated schedule that should result in the release of all information within about eight months. Reuters reports: That's roughly 75 years and four months faster than the FDA said it could take to complete a Freedom of Information Act request by a group of doctors and scientists seeking an estimated 450,000 pages of material about the vaccine. The court "concludes that this FOIA request is of paramount public importance," wrote U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman in Fort Worth, who was appointed to the bench by former President Donald Trump in 2019.

The FDA didn't dispute it had an obligation to make the information public but argued that its short-staffed FOIA office only had the bandwidth to review and release 500 pages a month. While Pittman recognized "the 'unduly burdensome' challenges that this FOIA request may present to the FDA," in his four-page order, he resoundingly rejected the agency's suggested schedule. Rather than producing 500 pages a month -- the FDA's proposed timeline -- he ordered the agency to turn over 55,000 a month. That means all the Pfizer vaccine data should be public by the end of the summer rather than, say, the year 2097. "Even if the FDA may not see it this way, I think Pittman did the agency -- and the country -- a big favor by expediting the document production," writes Reuters' Jenna Greene. "Making the information public as soon as possible may help assuage the concerns of vaccine skeptics and convince them the product is safe."

"Still, the FDA is likely to be hard-pressed to process 55,000 pages a month," Greene adds. "The office that reviews FOIA requests has just 10 employees, according to a declaration filed with the court by Suzann Burk, who heads the FDA's Division of Disclosure and Oversight Management. Burk said it takes eight minutes a page for a worker 'to perform a careful line-by-line, word-by-word review of all responsive records before producing them in response to a FOIA request.' [...] But as lawyers for the plaintiffs Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency pointed out in court papers (PDF), the FDA as of 2020 had 18,062 employees. Surely some can be dispatched to pitch in at the FOIA office."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: Shortly after coronavirus vaccines were rolled out about a year ago, women started reporting erratic menstrual cycles after receiving the shots. Some said their periods were late. Others reported heavier bleeding than usual or painful bleeding. Some postmenopausal women who hadn't had a period in years even said they had menstruated again. A study published on Thursday found that women's menstrual cycles did indeed change following vaccination against the coronavirus (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source). The authors reported that women who were inoculated had slightly longer menstrual cycles after receiving the vaccine than those who were not vaccinated.

Their periods themselves, which came almost a day later on average, were not prolonged, however, and the effect was transient, with cycle lengths bouncing back to normal within one or two months. For example, someone with a 28-day menstrual cycle that starts with seven days of bleeding would still begin with a seven-day period, but the cycle would last 29 days. The cycle ends when the next period starts and would revert to 28 days within a month or two. The delay was more pronounced in women who received both vaccine doses during the same menstrual cycle. These women had their periods two days later than usual, the researchers found. [...] One serious drawback of the study, which focused on U.S. residents, is that the sample is not nationally representative and cannot be generalized to the population at large. The data were provided by a company called Natural Cycles that makes an app to track fertility. Its users are more likely to be white and college educated than the U.S. population overall; they are also thinner than the average American woman -- weight can affect menstruation -- and do not use hormonal contraception. "I want to make sure we dissuade people from those untrue myths out there about fertility effects," said Dr. Hugh Taylor, the chair of the department of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences at Yale School of Medicine. "A cycle or two where periods are thrown off may be annoying, but it's not going to be harmful in a medical way."

With that said, postmenopausal women who experience vaginal bleeding or spotting, whether after vaccination or not, should be evaluated by a physician, says Dr. Taylor. It may be a sign they have a serious medical condition.

As snowstorms sweep the East Coast of the United States this week, transportation officials have deployed a go-to solution for keeping winter roads clear: salt. From a report: But while pouring tons of salt on roads makes winter driving safer, it also has damaging environmental and health consequences, according to a growing body of research. As snow and ice melt on roads, the salt washes into soil, lakes and streams, in some cases contaminating drinking water reservoirs and wells. It has killed or endangered wildlife in freshwater ecosystems, with high chloride levels toxic to fish, bugs and amphibians, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. "It's an issue that requires attention now," said Bill Hintz, an assistant professor in the environmental sciences department at the University of Toledo and the lead author of a recent research review published in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment.

"There's plenty of scientific evidence to suggest that freshwater ecosystems are being contaminated by salt from the use of things like road salt beyond the concentration which is safe for freshwater organisms and for human consumption," Dr. Hintz said. Salt has been used to de-ice roads in the United States since the 1930s, and its use across the country has tripled in the past 50 years, Dr. Hintz said. More than 20 million metric tons of salt are poured on U.S. roads each winter, according to an estimate by the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in New York, and the environmental costs are growing. Still, little has been done to address the environmental impact of road salt because it is cheap and effective, said Victoria Kelly, the environmental programming manager at the Cary Institute. By lowering the freezing temperature of water, salt prevents snow from turning to ice and melts ice that is already there.

New submitter nuckfuts writes: Canada's Minister of Health is signalling that provinces may make vaccines mandatory in the coming months as the only way to deal with surging COVID-19 caseloads. It will be up to individual provinces to decide. Alberta's Premier Jason Kenny as already stated that Alberta will not make vaccines mandatory. Some European countries, such as Austria and Greece, have moved in that direction already as infection rates hit record highs and vaccination campaigns stall. Greeks over the age of 60 who are not yet vaccinated are now subject to monthly fines of 100 euros ($140 Cdn). Austria, which has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the European Union, is looking at fining unvaccinated Austrians more than 7,000 euros ($9,880). Slovakia, meanwhile, is offering payments of 600 euros ($844) to encourage people to get their shots.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Weighing 80-100kg and sporting long straight horns, white spots on its face and large facial scent glands, the saola does not sound like an animal that would be hard to spot. But it was not until 1992 that this elusive creature was discovered, becoming the first large mammal new to science in more than 50 years. Nicknamed the "Asian unicorn," the saola continues to be elusive. They have never been seen by a biologist in the wild and have been camera-trapped only a handful of times. There are reports of villagers trying to keep them in captivity but they have died after a few weeks, probably due to the wrong diet. It was during a survey of wildlife in the remote Vu Quang nature reserve, a 212 square mile forested area of north central Vietnam, in 1992, that biologist Do Tuoc came across two skulls and a pair of trophy horns belonging to an unknown animal.

Twenty more specimens, including a complete skin, were subsequently collected and, in 1993, laboratory tests revealed the animal to be not only a new species, but an entirely new genus in the bovid family, which includes cattle, sheep, goats and antelopes. Initially named Vu Quang Ox, the animal was later called saola (Pseudoryx nghetinhensis) -- meaning "spindle horns," the arms or posts (sao) of a spinning wheel (la) according to Lao-speaking ethnic groups in Laos and neighbouring Vietnam. The discovery was hailed as one of the most spectacular zoological discoveries of the 20th century but less than 30 years later the saola population is believed to have declined massively due to commercial wildlife poaching, which has exploded in Vietnam since 1994. Even though the saola is not directly targeted by poachers, intensive commercial snaring that supplies animals for use in traditional Asian medicine or as bushmeat serves as the primary threat.

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University developed a mathematical model to understand why popular baby names keep on changing, and it "points to a tug-of-war between the need to stand out in the crowd and the need to fit in with the pack," reports Phys.Org. "The motives to conform and to be unique interact to produce complex dynamics when people observe each other in a social network." The research has been published in the journal Psychological Review. From the report: Mathematically speaking, the desire to fit in would drive behavior toward the mean, or average, in the group while the desire to stand out would drive behavior away from the mode, or most common occurrence, in the group. "Put them together and they still lead to equilibrium," [said Russell Golman, associate professor in the Social and Decision Sciences Department at CMU]. To break out of the equilibrium conundrum, Golman and his team added social networks to the mix. According to Golman, that means communities, neighbors, colleagues, clubs, or other social groups, not necessarily social media. "It was surprising that social networks could make such a big difference," said Golman. "We modeled the dynamics with a lot of different networks, and not converging to equilibrium is actually pretty typical."

To test their new model, CMU Ph.D. student Erin Bugbee turned to the large database of baby names managed by the Social Security Administration for the last century. If baby names settled into an equilibrium, the most popular name would always be the most popular. That is not what happened.

As the popularity of one name, say Emily, peaks, parents may decide to forgo that name and pick a similar one, like Emma. By following this strategy, they are instilling in their new daughter a name that is socially acceptable by its similarity to the popular name but will allow her to stand out in the crowd by putting a unique twist on her identity. Many parents may be thinking the same thing and the number of little girls named Emily will decline while those named Emma will increase. The study concludes that understanding social psychology and social network structure are both critical to explain the emergence of complex, unpredictable cultural trends.

"For the first time, astronomers were able to observe the death throes of a red supergiant star in real time," writes Slashdot reader quonset from a report via CNN. "The fortuitous event came about when astronomers were first alerted in the summer of 2020 by a release of bright radiation detected by the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy Pan-STARRS telescope on Maui's Haleakal. Then, In the fall, astronomers witnessed a supernova form in the same spot." From the report: Before they go out in a blaze of glory, some stars experience violent eruptions or release glowing hot layers of gas. Until astronomers witnessed this event, they believed that red supergiants were relatively quiet before exploding into a supernova or collapsing into a dense neutron star. Instead, scientists watched the star self-destruct in dramatic fashion before collapsing in a type II supernova. This star death is the rapid collapse and violent explosion of a massive star after it has burned through the hydrogen, helium and other elements in its core. All that remains is the star's iron, but iron can't fuse so the star will run out of energy. When that happens, the iron collapses and causes the supernova. A study detailing these findings published Thursday in The Astrophysical Journal.

"It's like watching a ticking time bomb," said senior study author Raffaella Margutti, an associate professor of astronomy and astrophysics at UC Berkeley, in a statement. "We've never confirmed such violent activity in a dying red supergiant star where we see it produce such a luminous emission, then collapse and combust, until now." Some of these massive stars likely experience consequential internal changes that cause the tumultuous release of gas before they die, the finding has shown.

sciencehabit shares a report from Science.org: It takes a lot of science to stop a fire. To prevent homes and workplaces from going up in smoke, manufacturers have added flame retardants to plastic, wood, and steel building materials for decades. But such additives can be toxic, expensive, and sometimes ineffective. Now, researchers in Australia and China have come up with a new flame retardant that, when exposed to extreme heat, forms a ceramic layer akin to hardened lava, squelching the flames before they spread. "This is very good work," says David Schiraldi, a chemist at Case Western Reserve University, who has developed other flame retardants. He notes that the ceramic's starting materials aren't particularly expensive or toxic, making it more likely to see widespread use. "[This] could impact public safety in the long run."

[The researchers] used three components. First, they created a mixture of several metal oxide powders -- including oxides of aluminum, silicon, calcium, and sodium. That mix begins to melt at about 350C (below the temperature of most flames), forming a glasslike sheet. Next, the researchers added tiny flakes of boron nitride, which flow easily and help fill any spaces between the metal oxides as the glass forms. Finally, they added a fire-retardant polymer, which they described in ACS Nano in 2021. The polymer acts as a binder to glue the rest of the mixture to whatever it's coating. That mix dissolved in water into a milky-white solution, which they then sprayed on a variety of surfaces, including rigid foam insulation, wood, and steel. After it dried, they blasted each coated material for 30 seconds with an 1100C butane torch. In each case, the coating melted into a viscous liquid, covering the material in a continuous glassy sheet.

When heated by the torch, coating spewed out nonflammable gases, such as carbon dioxide. As it did, it became more dense and formed a uniform, noncombustible char layer, which blocked flames from spreading to the materials underneath. The novel flame retardant protected rigid polymer foam -- the kind used to insulate homes -- better than more than a dozen commonly used retardants, the researchers report today in Matter. The new coating also excelled at protecting wood and steel. If sprayed on building materials during construction, the new coating could prevent disasters like the 2017 Grenfell Tower fire in London, where 72 people died, the researchers say.

The European Space Agency will soon send JUICE, or the JUpiter ICy moons Explorer on a mission to scout out Jupiter and three of its 79 moons: Europa, Callisto, and Ganymede. From a report: Scheduled to launch in April 2023, JUICE will blast off from an Ariane 5 rocket before embarking on a 7.6-year journey to reach the gas giant. Broken up by multiple gravitational assists -- or pushes that help adjust a spacecraft's speed and trajectory -- from Venus and Earth, the explorer will carry some of the most powerful remote sensing and geophysical instruments ever flown to the outer solar system.

Last month, a 1:18 scale model of JUICE was employed at the ESA's testing center in the Netherlands to try out one of the instruments, RIME, also known as the Radar For Icy Moons Exploration. RIME will use ice-penetrating radar and a 52-foot-long antennae to map the subsurface structure of these moons, up to about 5.6 miles down. To test, the model was placed in a chamber lined with metal walls that blocked incoming radio signals and black, spiky foam coating that absorbed internal radio signals, or outgoing transmissions. This dichotomy helped the JUICE team simulate both the vast emptiness of space and the challenges the craft could run into during the mission.

The number of new COVID cases more than tripled over the past two weeks, shattering records all across the U.S. From a report: The Omicron variant appears to be significantly milder than its predecessors, and it's not leading to as much serious illness. But sky-high case counts are still a warning sign, especially in areas whose health care systems are already stretched thin. The U.S. is now averaging nearly 550,000 new cases per day -- a 225% increase over the past two weeks, and by far the highest levels of the entire pandemic. That's likely an undercount, as many people are testing themselves at home. In previous waves, a sharp increase in cases would translate into a similar increase in hospitalizations, and then deaths. Omicron, however, appears to cause severe illness at a much lower rate.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Science.org: Astronomers have long thought it takes millions of years for the seeds of stars like the Sun to come together. Clouds of mostly hydrogen gas coalesce under gravity into prestellar cores dense enough to collapse and spark nuclear fusion, while magnetic forces hold matter in place and slow down the process. But observations using the world's largest radio telescope are casting doubt on this long gestational period. Researchers have zoomed in on a prestellar core in a giant gas cloud -- a nursery for hundreds of baby stars -- and found the tiny embryo may be forming 10 times faster than thought, thanks to weak magnetic fields. "If this is proven to be the case in other gas clouds, it will be revolutionary for the star formation community," says Paola Caselli from the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, who was not involved with the research.

Studying star birth and the tug of war between gravity and magnetic forces has been a challenge because the magnetic fields can be 100,000 times weaker than Earth's. The only direct way to detect them comes from a phenomenon called the Zeeman effect, in which the magnetic fields cause so-called spectral lines to split in a way that depends on the strength of the field. These spectral lines are bright or dark patterns where atoms or molecules emit or absorb specific wavelengths of light. For gas clouds, the Zeeman splitting occurs in radio wavelengths, so radio telescopes are needed. And the dishes must be big in order to zoom in on a small region of space and reveal such a subtle effect. Previously, researchers had used Puerto Rico's Arecibo radio telescope -- which collapsed in 2020 -- to study Lynds 1544, a relatively isolated stellar embryo within the Taurus Molecular Cloud, just 450 light-years away from Earth. They measured the magnetic fields in the wispy layers of gas far out from the core, where magnetic forces dominated over gravity. They also analyzed the stronger fields inside the core, where gravity nevertheless dominated because the core is 10,000 times denser than the outer layer, says Richard Crutcher, a radio astronomer at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. What was missing was an examination of the intermediate region between the core and the outer layer. That has now come into focus with a new tracer of the Zeeman effect -- a particular hydrogen absorption line -- detected by the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST), a giant dish built inside a natural basin in southwestern China.

In a study published today in Nature, researchers report a magnetic field strength of 4 microgauss -- no stronger than in the outer layer. "If the standard theory worked, the magnetic field needs to be much stronger to resist a 100-fold increase in cloud density. That didn't happen," says Di Li, the chief scientist of FAST who led the study. "The paper basically says that gravity wins in the cloud: That's where stars start to form, not in the dense core," Caselli adds. "That's a very big statement." The finding implies that a gas cloud could evolve into a stellar embryo 10 times quicker than previously thought, says lead author Tao-Chung Ching of the Chinese Academy of Sciences's National Astronomical Observatories. Li says he wants to study other molecular clouds to see whether the lessons from Lynds 1544 apply more generally.

New submitter GFS666 shares a report from Live Science: We may soon be able to test one of Stephen Hawking's most controversial theories, new research suggests. In the 1970s, Hawking proposed that dark matter, the invisible substance that makes up most matter in the cosmos, may be made of black holes formed in the earliest moments of the Big Bang. Now, three astronomers have developed a theory that explains not only the existence of dark matter, but also the appearance of the largest black holes in the universe. "What I find personally super exciting about this idea is how it elegantly unifies the two really challenging problems that I work on -- that of probing the nature of dark matter and the formation and growth of black holes -- and resolves them in one fell swoop," study co-author Priyamvada Natarajan, an astrophysicist at Yale University, said in a statement. What's more, several new instruments -- including the James Webb Space Telescope that just launched -- could produce data needed to finally assess Hawking's famous notion.

In the latest research, Natarajan, Nico Cappelluti at the University of Miami and Gunther Hasinger at the European Space Agency took a deep dive into the theory of primordial black holes, exploring how they might explain the dark matter and possibly resolve other cosmological challenges. To pass current observational tests, primordial black holes have to be within a certain mass range. In the new work, the researchers assumed that the primordial black holes had a mass of around 1.4 times the mass of the sun. They constructed a model of the universe that replaced all the dark matter with these fairly light black holes, and then they looked for observational clues that could validate (or rule out) the model.

The team found that primordial black holes could play a major role in the universe by seeding the first stars, the first galaxies and the first supermassive black holes (SMBHs). Observations indicate that stars, galaxies and SMBHs appear very quickly in cosmological history, perhaps too quickly to be accounted for by the processes of formation and growth that we observe in the present-day universe. "Primordial black holes, if they do exist, could well be the seeds from which all supermassive black holes form, including the one at the center of the Milky Way," Natarajan said. And the theory is simple and doesn't require a zoo of new particles to explain dark matter. "Our study shows that without introducing new particles or new physics, we can solve mysteries of modern cosmology from the nature of dark matter itself to the origin of supermassive black holes," Cappelluti said in the statement. The model could be tested relatively soon, the report says. "The James Webb Space Telescope, which launched Christmas Day after years of delays, is specifically designed to answer questions about the origins of stars and galaxies. And the next generation of gravitational wave detectors, especially the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA), is poised to reveal much more about black holes, including primordial ones if they exist."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: China's Covid-19 health code system that strictly governs people's movements crashed in Xi'an this week, worsening conditions in the locked-down city where the country's worst outbreak since Wuhan has been unfolding. The crash has complicated efforts to weed out cases through mass testing, created hurdles for people seeking care at hospitals and led to the suspension of a top official, the latest among a slew of bureaucrats to be punished as Beijing fumes over the situation.

Liu Jun, head of Xi'an's big-data bureau, was temporarily dismissed over performance failures, the municipal Communist Party Committee said in a statement. While the committee didn't explicitly lay out the reason behind its decision, it came after Xi'an's health code system -- which is under Liu's purview and tracks individuals' movements and vaccination status -- broke down on Tuesday. The system crash meant that locals were unable to access their Covid infection status after Xi'an embarked on a new widespread round of nucleic acid tests, according to a media report. The provincial government said in a statement later that the system was temporarily paralyzed due to overwhelming traffic, and being fixed. It had also experienced technical issues in December. A pregnant women in Xi'an reportedly lost her baby after being refused entry to a hospital because she "couldn't show she was infection-free via the health code app," reports Bloomberg.

"A video posted Tuesday showing what appeared to be a woman bleeding on the sidewalk outside a hospital in Xi'an's Gaoxin district was trending on Weibo. Similar complaints and criticisms were seen elsewhere on Chinese social media as patients failed to get timely treatment at hospitals already overwhelmed by the virus."

InfiniteZero shares a report from Live Science: China's Tianwen-1 spacecraft at Mars pulled a big New Year's surprise with stunning new images captured by a small camera that flew free of the orbiter to snap epic selfies above the Red Planet. The new images published by the China National Space Administration show Tianwen-1 above Mars' north pole, with its solar arrays and antennas on display, as well as a partial closeup of the orbiter and a view of the Red Planet's northern ice cap. The views give an unprecedented view of a spacecraft in orbit around another planet, showing the golden body of Tianwen-1, the silver high-gain antenna for communications, solar arrays and science antennae. A closeup shows the spacecraft's radar antenna parallel to the solar array.

New research from the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology, & Neuroscience (IoPPN) at King's College London, in partnership with COMPASS Pathways, has established that psilocybin can be safely administered at doses of either 10mg or 25mg to up to six participants simultaneously. King's College London reports: The research, published in The Journal of Psychopharmacology, is an essential first step in demonstrating the safety and feasibility of psilocybin -- a psychedelic drug isolated from the Psilocybe mushroom -- for use within controlled settings alongside talking therapy as a potential treatment for a range of mental health conditions, including treatment-resistant depression (TRD) and PTSD. Current treatment options for these conditions are ineffective or partially effective for many people, resulting in a significant unmet need. Early research has indicated a potential for psilocybin therapy to treat these groups, but no trials have been undertaken at the scale needed for regulatory approval to make the therapy available.

The trial is the first of its kind to thoroughly investigate the simultaneous administration of psilocybin. 89 healthy participants with no recent (within 1 year) use of psilocybin were recruited. 60 individuals were randomly picked to receive either a 10mg or 25mg dose of psilocybin in a controlled environment. In addition, all participants were provided with one-to-one support from trained psychotherapists. The remaining 29 participants acted as the control group and received a placebo, also with psychological support. Participants were closely monitored for six to eight hours following administration of psilocybin and then followed up for 12 weeks. During this time, they were assessed for a number of possible changes, including sustained attention, memory, and planning, as well as their ability to process emotions. Throughout the study, there were no instances of anyone withdrawing from the study due to an adverse event, and no consistent trends to suggest that either of the psilocybin doses had any short- or long-term detrimental effects on participants.

"On Tuesday morning, all five layers of the James Webb Space Telescope were fully locked into place," writes Slashdot reader quonset. The BBC reports: There were many who doubted the wisdom of a design that included so many motors, gears, pulleys and cables. But years of testing on full-scale and sub-scale models paid dividends as controllers first separated the shield's different layers and then tensioned them. The fifth and final membrane was locked into place at 16:58 GMT. "The unfurling and securing of the sun shield is part of what NASA refers to as '29 days on the edge,' writes quonset, citing an article from CNN. "During the 29 days, Webb will set up shop, unfurling its giant gold mirror and the protective tennis court-size sunshield. This process involves thousands of parts that must function harmoniously, in the right sequence. Fortunately, each step can be controlled from the ground in case there are issues."

"The next step is the unboxing of the mirror which had to be folded to fit inside the nose cone of the rocket for launch. If all goes well, by the end of the weekend, the mirror will be in place and ready for testing before full operations begin."

The World Health Organization said a coronavirus variant found in France hasn't become much of a threat since it was first identified in November. From a report: The variant "has been on our radar," Abdi Mahamud, a WHO incident manager on Covid, said at a press briefing in Geneva on Tuesday. "That virus had a lot of chances to pick up." The variant was identified in 12 people in the southern Alps around the same time that omicron was discovered in South Africa last year. The latter mutation has since traveled the globe and kindled record levels of contagion, unlike the French one that researchers at the IHU Mediterranee Infection -- helmed by scientist Didier Raoult -- nicknamed IHU. The first patient identified with the variant was vaccinated and had just returned from Cameroon, IHU researchers wrote in a paper published on the medRxiv server in late December where they first drew attention to the atypical mutations.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from New Atlas: A new COVID-19 vaccine, developed by researchers from the Texas Children's Hospital and Baylor College of Medicine, is being offered patent-free to vaccine manufacturers across the world. Human trials have shown the vaccine to be safe and effective, with India already authorizing its use as production ramps up to over 100 million doses per month. The vaccine has been named Corbevax and it is based on a traditional protein-based technology that has been safely used for decades. Like other COVID-19 vaccines, Corbevax focuses on the coronavirus spike protein, but instead of using mRNA to direct our cells to produce those spike proteins internally it delivers lab-grown spike proteins to the body. The researchers took the gene that codes for the spike protein and engineered yeast to produce it. These proteins are collected, purified, and combined with an adjuvant to enhance immune responses. This exact method has been used to produce the hepatitis B vaccine for years.

In late 2020 the US research team developing the vaccine joined forces with India-based pharma company Biological E to begin clinical trials and establish manufacturing capacity. Across 2021 those clinical trials included several thousand participants and ultimately found Corbevax to be safe and effective at generating robust immune responses to SARS-CoV-2. The trial data was compared to an already approved vaccine called Covishield (the Indian-made version of Astrazeneca's well-known COVID-19 vaccine). Corbevax generated significantly fewer adverse effects than Covishield and produced superior immune responses. Neutralizing antibody responses to Corbevax indicate the vaccine should be at least 80 percent effective at preventing symptomatic COVID-19 from the Delta variant. Specific data against the Omicron variant is expected soon but it is hypothesized to be at least as effective as most currently available vaccines. Perhaps the most important feature of this new vaccine is the fact it has been developed as a patent-free product that can be easily manufactured by vaccine-producers around the world. The project has been described as "gift to the world" by researcher Peter Hotez. "India is the first country to issue emergency authorization to Corbevax and Biological E reportedly has 150 million doses ready to go, with production capacity set for 100 million doses per month from February," reports New Atlas.

According to data from Johns Hopkins University, more than 1 million people in the U.S. were diagnosed with COVID-19 on Monday. Bloomberg reports: The highly mutated variant drove U.S. cases to a record, the most -- by a large margin -- that any country has ever reported. Monday's number is almost double the previous record of about 590,000 set just four days ago in the U.S., which itself was a doubling from the prior week. It is also more than twice the case count seen anywhere else at any time since the pandemic began more than two years ago. The highest number outside the U.S. came during India's delta surge, when more than 414,000 people were diagnosed on May 7, 2021.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Scientific American: Human sexual activity affects cognitive function, health, happiness and overall quality of life -- and, yes, there is also the matter of reproduction. The huge range of benefits is one reason researchers have become alarmed at declines in sexual activity around the world, from Japan to Europe to Australia. A recent study evaluating what is happening in the U.S. has added to the pile of evidence, showing declines from 2009 to 2018 in all forms of partnered sexual activity, including penile-vaginal intercourse, anal sex and partnered masturbation. The findings show that adolescents report less solo masturbation as well.

The decreases "aren't trivial," as the authors wrote in the study, published on November 19 in Archives of Sexual Behavior. Between 2009 and 2018, the proportion of adolescents reporting no sexual activity, either alone or with partners, rose from 28.8 percent to 44.2 percent among young men and from 49.5 percent in 2009 to 74 percent among young women. The researchers obtained the self-reported information from the National Survey of Sexual Health and Behavior and used responses from 4,155 people in 2009 and 4,547 people in 2018. These respondents to the confidential survey ranged in age from 14 to 49 years. The study itself did not probe the reasons for this trend. Scientific American spoke with the study's authors, Debby Herbenick and Tsung-chieh (Jane) Fu, about underlying factors that might explain these changes. Among the young, the researchers say social media, gaming and "rough sex" may contribute to this trend. The grief, health challenges, job loss and financial strain of the pandemic can all influence sexual interest and sex drive, too.