James' World 2

Hmmmm…

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Medicare Usage by State

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Covid is stil killing people…

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For the first time since the COVID vaccines became available in pharmacies in 2021, the average person in the U.S. can’t count on getting a free annual shot against a disease that has been the main or a contributing cause of death for more than 1.2 million people around the country, including nearly 12,000 to date this year.

“COVID’s not done with us,” says Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist at Brown University. “We have to keep using the tools that we have. It’s not like we get to forget about COVID.”

In recent weeks, the Department of Health and Human Services, led by prominent antivaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., has announced a barrage of measures that are likely to reduce COVID vaccine access, leading to a swirl of confusion about what will be available for the 2025–2026 season. HHS officials did not respond to a request for comment for this article.

Government officials appear to be limiting COVID shots to people who are aged 65 and older and to those who have certain preexisting health conditions—groups that have long been known to face a higher risk of developing severe COVID. Pregnant people and some children, meanwhile, appear to be explicitly excluded from access, despite plentiful evidence that vaccines are very safe and effective for them and that COVID infections can cause them significant harm.

Scientific American spoke with clinicians and public health experts about the latest COVID vaccine recommendations, what access may look like this fall, and how these policies might influence people’s vaccination choices and health.

What COVID vaccines will be manufactured this year?

Public health experts are monitoring a strain of the COVID-causing virus SARS-CoV-2 called NB.1.8.1, which was first detected early this year and last month became responsible for one in 10 COVID cases globally. So far, the new variant has mostly been reported in Asia and Europe. But it has also been picked up in airport surveillance in multiple U.S. states, says Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious disease physician and a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco.

The emergence of a new variant isn’t surprising, particularly at this time of year, Chin-Hong says. “It’s kind of acting like clockwork—maybe this might be the variant of the summer,” he adds. Still, NB.1.8.1 has led to concerns about a potential surge in cases, although Chin-Hong and other scientists don’t have any evidence so far that it causes more serious disease than other currently circulating strains.

“All of these new variants, they might be more transmissible, they might be more immune evasive, but I’ve seen no data whatsoever that suggests that they’re more pathogenic,” says Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan.

Within the U.S., a strain called LP.8.1 has been the most common one detected since March. Both NB.1.8.1 and LP.8.1 are among the alphabet soup of strains that descended from a key ancestor lineage called Omicron JN.1, which dominated U.S. cases by early 2024.

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Indian police say more than 200 bodies have been recovered after a plane crashed shortly after takeoff from Ahmedabad. Most of the 242 people on board were Indian or British. DW has the latest.

A Boeing 787 Dreamliner crashed shortly after takeoff from Ahmedabad, en route to London’s Gatwick Airport. Some 242 people were on board

Flight 171, including 169 Indians, 53 Britons, 7 Portuguese, and 1 Canadian

The cause of the crash has yet to be determined

Ahmedabad police have said more than 200 bodies have been recovered, and there appear to be no survivors. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the incident was ‘heartbreaking beyond words.’ The crash is the first fatal incident involving a Boeing 787 Dreamliner

Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner had strong safety record before Ahmedabad crash

The Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner, which crashed in Ahmedabad, is one the world’s most advanced aircraft.

Unlike Boeing’s 737 Max series, the Dreamliner has had a strong safety record, with no fatal accidents until Thursday’s crash, in which all 242 people on board died.

The plane that crashed in Ahmedabad is the smallest of three types of 787, and was delivered in 2014.

The 787 Dreamliner entered commercial service in 2011. Boeing has sold more than 2,500 787s, of which 47 were sold to Air India.

The plane can normally hold up to 248 passengers, while the larger 787-9 can carry up to 296 people, according to Boeing.

The 787 is powered by twin engines, which are supplied by American firm GE Aerospace or Rolls-Royce from the UK.

The engines on the plane that crashed were provided by GE. In a post on X, GE said it was “deeply saddened” by the incident, adding that the company is “prepared to support our customer and the investigation.”

While this is the first fatal incident involving a Dreamliner, there have been previous accidents.

In July 2013, an Ethiopian Airlines flight, which had no one on board, caught fire while on the ground at London’s Heathrow airport after a short-circuit.

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Sperm have to wiggle vigorously to reach an egg, and that motion is key to a clever new fertility test. The technique, tested with bull semen and detailed in Advanced Materials Interfaces, harnesses physics to make fertility testing easier and more cost-effective—and, if it works for human sperm, too, it might eventually help people tackle some conception issues from home.

“Fifty percent of families are facing a big challenge in terms of addressing fertility,” says Sushanta Mitra, a mechanical engineer at the University of Waterloo and co-author of the recent study. “Our aim is to democratize that process.”

Current laboratory tests for male fertility involve examining a semen sample under a microscope. Experts check the sperm cells’ liveliness, which is considered a good proxy for fertility because the gametes need to quickly swim more than 1,000 times their body length to reach an egg. But these lab tests can be expensive and time-consuming. Meanwhile, at-home tests tend to be less accurate because they often only detect the presence of certain proteins in sperm rather than assessing how the cells move.

The newly described method uses basic physics to measure sperm activity without costly equipment. The researchers placed droplets of bull semen at the end of a flexible plastic strip suspended next to a water-resistant surface. Next, they moved the surface toward the drop until it made contact and then moved it back to its original position. They measured how strongly each semen droplet stuck to the surface, via weak hydrogen bonds, as it was pulled away. If many highly active sperm were wiggling around inside the fluid, the hydrogen bonds broke more quickly, disrupting the drop’s surface adhesion and making it break away earlier; the livelier the sperm, the less sticky the drop. “It’s exciting to be able to come up with a way to quantify sperm mobility at home,” says Stanford University urologist Tony Chen, who was not involved in the study.

Mitra and his team hope to develop this technique into a cheaper, easier and more accurate home fertility test. “There is a lot of stigma around male fertility,” Mitra says. Easier private testing could encourage people to evaluate semen quality more often, allowing them to check in while making lifestyle adjustments to perk up lethargic sperm, such as quitting smoking or reducing alcohol use. Such tests could also potentially be useful for breeding livestock.

The researchers’ next steps will be to standardize the tests and obtain benchmarks for different types of sperm, including human and bovine. Chen says clinical trials that evaluate droplets from many different patients will also be necessary to ensure the tests work with samples that have varying pH levels, white blood cell counts, and fructose concentrations. “There’s more than just sperm in semen,” he says.

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As immigration raids continued across the country, a curfew went into effect Tuesday night in Los Angeles, the epicenter of protests that spread coast to coast against the detention and removal of suspected undocumented migrants.

Mayor Karen Bass said the curfew, which begins at 8 p.m. and expires at 6 a.m. for an undetermined length of time, was necessary to quell unrest. “If you drive through downtown L.A., the graffiti is everywhere and has caused significant damages,” Bass said, adding that 29 businesses were looted Monday night alone.

Activists had also gathered in New York, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Atlanta, and elsewhere, rebuking the Trump administration’s tough stance against migrants and its aggressive round-up efforts, which Democratic leaders in California have criticized as contributing to a sense of fear across communities. 

NBC News has counted at least 25 rallies and demonstrations coast to coast since Monday. Some involved only a few dozen people, while others attracted thousands.

The protests took place as federal immigration raids continued nationwide Tuesday, including a “targeted enforcement operation” in Los Angeles, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, as well as a raid at a meat processing facility in Omaha, Nebraska.

ICE posted a photo on X showing a person wearing military fatigues alongside federal agents, one with “DEA” emblazoned on his vest, standing near a handcuffed person, and a military Humvee painted in camouflage parked next to them. The arrest happened in Los Angeles, ICE said.

In Omaha, two businesses were targeted for federal immigration enforcement operations, local officials said. Mayor John Ewing Jr.’s office said federal agents arrested 80 people at Glenn Valley Foods and Lala Dairy.

Cellphone video of the scene at Glenn Valley Foods showed agents in green uniforms, camouflage clothing and plainclothes appearing to detain several workers, hands cuffed, in the facility’s lunchroom, where a motto was painted on a wall: “Together we achieve more.”

Chad Hartmann, a spokesperson for Glenn Valley Foods, said in a statement that federal agents searched the company’s facility “for persons believed to be using fraudulent documents to gain employment.”

He said that the company strives to operate within the law, that it is cooperating with agents and that it “is not being charged with any crime.”

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