Brain Worms like the One in RFK, Jr.’s Head Are Actually a Global Problem

May 14, 2024

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Earlier this week, news broke that independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., claimed to have once had a dead worm in his brain. Kennedy had been experiencing memory loss and mental fog, and he originally suspected these symptoms might be caused by a brain tumor. Brain scans in 2010 showed a cyst that his doctors said contained remains of a parasite. The findings and other health issues were revealed in a New York Times article based on a review of a deposition for his 2012 divorce, as well as an interview the outlet conducted with him.

The revelation drew attention in the worlds of politics and parasitology. “I woke up to all kinds of messages from friends in parasitology,” says Shira Shafir, an epidemiologist and an associate adjunct professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, in response to the news.

The species of the purported parasite in Kennedy’s brain was never identified, and he did not know where he got infected. A spokesperson told media outlets on Wednesday that Kennedy had traveled extensively to Africa, South America, and Asia and likely contracted the parasite on one of the trips. Several parasites can affect the central nervous system and potentially create cysts in brain tissue. While relatively uncommon in the U.S., such infections can be devastating in many parts of the world. For example, the World Health Organization estimates there are between 2.56 million and 8.3 million people around the globe living with neurocysticercosis, a brain infection caused by the pork tapeworm Taenia solium. “It’s a really big deal in Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, India, and other parts of Asia. It’s a leading cause of acquired seizures,” says Clinton White, a parasitologist and infectious diseases professor at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. “Neurocysticercosis is a major disease, and it’s kind of funny [these are] the circumstances in which people are paying attention to it.”

Scientific American spoke with Shafir and White to discuss how parasitic worms may infect the brain, what symptoms they cause, and how infections are diagnosed and treated.

What are parasitic worms, and which ones can infect the brain?

SHAFIR: We generally don’t have adult worms that end up in the brain. What does end up in the brain are parasites in their earlier developmental stages, such as eggs or larvae—or, for lack of a better word, baby worms. So generally the parasitic infections that can impact the brain are those of pathogens in early developmental stages, which, for the most part, accidentally make it into the brain.

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan of an axial section through the brain of a 25-year-old patient, showing cysts (purple) from a tapeworm infection. Zephyr/Getty Images

Click the link below for the article:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-do-people-get-parasitic-brain-worms-like-the-one-rfk-jr-had/

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2 Timothy 3:2-6

May 13, 2024

Is history repeating…

2 Timothy 3:2-6

New Living Translation

²For people will love only themselves and their money. They will be boastful and proud, scoffing at God, disobedient to their parents, and ungrateful. They will consider nothing sacred. ³They will be unloving and unforgiving; they will slander others and have no self-control. They will be cruel and hate what is good. ⁴They will betray their friends, be reckless, be puffed up with pride, and love pleasure rather than God. ⁵They will act religious, but they will reject the power that could make them godly. Stay away from people like that!

⁶They are the kind who work their way into people’s homes and win the confidence of^[a] vulnerable women who are burdened with the guilt of sin and controlled by various desires.

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Donald Trump Isn’t Going to Be President

May 13, 2024

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Now that Donald Trump is just a few delegates away from the Republican nomination, conversation among commentators has turned to his electability and his “pivot” to the general election. The same pundits who ignored the polls to say Trump would lose the nomination now urge us to take his odds seriously. He’ll take on a more “presidential tone.” He’ll attack Hillary Clinton on all sides. He’ll be formidable. He might even win.

Or at least, that’s the argument.

But before we get there, we have to answer a simple question. How will Donald Trump improve on Mitt Romney’s campaign for president? What will he win that Romney lost?

Romney wasn’t a bad candidate. He ran a competent and largely professional campaign against an incumbent who presided over high unemployment and slow growth. No, Romney wasn’t favored, but he also had a better shot than most candidates who run against a sitting president. If you believe that Trump can win—absent an exogenous shock like a terrorist attack or recession—you need to show how he beats Romney. You need to move this from the realm of speculation and into the world as it exists.

The idea of Trump as a plausible winner is rooted in the same error that drove pundits to discount and dismiss him as late as the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries. Then, observers saw the polls—which accurately showed his appeal to a cross-section of Republican voters—but refused to believe them. It was unthinkable that a field of ostensibly talented candidates would fail to stop Trump before he gained traction.

That’s what happened. If Trump had entered the race as an Icarus-type—a candidate who shoots to the top but withers under the heat—then by the fall, he was something different. He was a genuine presence in a crowded field with real support among Republican voters. No one bothered to stop him. Afraid of alienating Trump’s supporters, GOP leaders disarmed themselves; fearful of Trump’s attacks, Republican donors refused to fund a confrontation; complacent about his threat, Republican candidates focused on clearing their respective “lanes” rather than stopping the leader in the field. By the time Republican voters went to the ballot box, Trump had cultivated a following.

Donald Trump speaks to supporters and the media at Trump Tower in Manhattan following his victory in the Indiana primary on Tuesday. View Press/Getty Images

Click the link below for the article:

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2016/05/donald-trump-isnt-going-to-be-president.html

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Future Pandemics Will Have The Same Human Causes As Ancient Outbreaks

May 13, 2024

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The last pandemic was bad, but COVID-19 is only one of many infectious diseases that emerged since the turn of this century.

Since 2000, the world has experienced 15 novel Ebola epidemics, the global spread of a 1918-like influenza strain and major outbreaks of three new and unusually deadly coronavirus infections: SARS, MERS and, of course, COVID-19. Every year, researchers discover two or three entirely new pathogens: the viruses, bacteria and microparasites that sicken and kill people.

While some of these discoveries reflect better detection methods, genetic studies confirm that most of these pathogens are indeed new to the human species. Even more troubling, these diseases are appearing at an increasing rate.

Despite the novelty of these particular infectiprimarily ons, the primary factors that led to their emergence are quite ancient. Working in the field of anthropology, I have found that these are human factors: the ways we feed ourselves, the ways we live together, and the ways we treat one another. In a forthcoming book, “Emerging Infections: Three Epidemiological Transitions from Prehistory to the Present,” my colleagues and I examine how these same elements have influenced disease dynamics for thousands of years. Twenty-first century technologies have served only to magnify ancient challenges.

Neolithic Infections

The first major wave of newly emerging infections occurred with the start of the Neolithic revolution about 12,000 years ago, when people began shifting from foraging to farming as their primary means of subsistence.

Before then, human infections tended to be mild and chronic in nature, manageable burdens of long-term parasites that people carried around from place to place. But full-time agrarian living brought the kinds of acute and virulent infections that we are familiar with today. This global shift was humanity’s first epidemiological transition.

Nastasic/DigitalVision Vectors via Getty Images

Click the link below for the article:

https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/future-pandemics-will-have-the-same-human-causes-as-ancient-outbreaks?utm_source=pocket_discover_education

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How Bird Flu Caught the Dairy Industry Off Guard

May 12, 2024

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In the weeks since the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced a bird flu outbreak in dairy cows that had gone undiagnosed for months, bystanders have wondered why it took so long to identify. Experts say there are key scientific and political reasons why the dairy industry was caught off guard by the H5N1 avian influenza virus—and that understanding those factors will be vital to controlling the disease on dairy farms and preventing an outbreak in humans.

“The dairy industry has never had to deal with something like this before,” says Keith Poulsen, director of the Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory and a former dairy veterinarian. “This is probably going to be the most important outbreak in my professional career.”

After weeks of uncertainty—fueled by the unnerving revelation that the outbreak likely began last December and took months to recognize—the federal government is taking some action. The USDA has mandated testing for lactating cows that are being transported across state lines in the hopes of squashing the spread of the virus, which has so far been confirmed in 36 herds across nine states. One human case has been reported this year, but the infection was mild, and more than a month has passed with no new cases confirmed. Epidemiologists have called for more human testing to better monitor the situation, however. Meanwhile, Food and Drug Administration testing has shown that viral particles that were found in pasteurized milk were not infectious, suggesting little threat to consumers.

Authorities’ scramble to understand and control the situation is particularly concerning because scientists have long worried about the potential for an H5N1 strain to jump into humans and cause a pandemic. And bird flu has been devastating poultry farms around the world for years now. Veterinarians and epidemiologists have been on high alert since 2022, when a new strain began tearing through wild birds and even mammals, killing or forcing U.S. farmers to cull some 90 million domestic birds. How could it take months to notice the same virus was spreading in dairy cows?

One reason the outbreak went undetected for so long is that people thought it was unlikely that the virus would jump into cows. Avian influenza is, after all, most common in birds, whereas flus in general have been rare in cows. “The chances of it going from migratory birds to cows were so low,” Poulsen says. “And then it happened.”

Vladimir Zapletin/Getty Images

Click the link below for the article:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-bird-flu-caught-the-dairy-industry-off-guard/

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Men punching random women in NYC: A desperate last gasp of the male rage fueling MAGA

May 12, 2024

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Men are punching random women on the streets of New York City. As usual with these kinds of diffuse and chaotic stories, there’s much that is unknown, including how often this is happening, how many people are involved, or whether it’s at all coordinated. But what we do know is already alarming. CNN reports that dozens of women have discussed being victims on social media, and formally interviewed six of them. NBC News reports there have been at least 3 arrests. CBS News reports that NYPD released images last week of a fourth man wanted for allegedly punching a woman in Union Square. Even reality TV star Bethany Frankel says she’s been victimized.

Women report being assaulted by men of different races and ages. Still, across the different stories, a couple of similarities pop out: The alleged victims are mostly young and pretty, and most of them say they were minding their own business when they were attacked. Some were on their phones or reading on tablets. Others were speaking to friends or daydreaming. Whatever they were doing, they were just living their lives, and that, it seems, is what enraged their assailants.

The alleged victims are mostly young and pretty, and most of them say they were minding their own business when they were attacked.

Whatever the scale of this problem eventually turns out to be, it’s not surprising that these stories have gone viral and captured the public’s imagination. While it rarely turns to violence, most women who spend much time walking around in public have experience with men who berate them for paying attention to something other than the man who is now, often out of nowhere, spewing invectives. In our modern era, that often manifests with men who are infuriated at women for looking at their phones. But I’m old enough to remember when I would get yelled at for reading books in public.

Whatever the excuse the angry man concocts, the impetus is always the same: The eyes of a woman are directed at someone or something that is not him, and he is indignant over it. So he will make sure she has no choice but to look at him, either by getting in her face or — in these alarming New York cases — punching her. If he cannot capture her adoring gaze, well, he will make her stare at him in fear.

These stories resonate, as well, because the nation is having a moment of increasingly unhinged male fury at women for daring to have lives that are centered around something other than catering to a man’s every whim. Unleashed by Donald Trump and the MAGA movement, there’s an upswell of loud male entitlement shouting at us from every corner.

People eat in a restaurant sidewalk shed on Mott Street in Little Italy in New York City. (Gary Hershorn/Getty Images)

Click the link below for the article:

https://www.salon.com/2024/04/08/men-punching-random-women-in-nyc-a-desperate-last-gasp-of-the-male-rage-fueling-maga/?utm_source=pocket_discover_health

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Happy Mother’s Day Sentiments 2024

May 12, 2024

The second and third sentiments are from ‘WeAllWeGot~Family First’, they are great!

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Hydrogen-Powered Airplanes Face 5 Big Challenges

May 11, 2024

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CLIMATEWIRE | BRUSSELS — The best way to cut greenhouse gas emissions from flying is to fly less — but that’s a nonstarter for the industry and millions of passengers.

Instead, the sector is hunting for a tech fix that would allow airplanes to keep flying while polluting less — and one idea is to use hydrogen. But there are big questions over whether this is a workable solution.

Here are five challenges facing hydrogen-powered aviation.

1. Sourcing clean hydrogen won’t be easy

Hydrogen can be very clean or very dirty — it all depends on how it’s produced.

Most hydrogen on the market today is so-called gray hydrogen, made by splitting natural gas — which emits a lot of CO2. Blue hydrogen captures those greenhouse gases, but it costs more and there are worries about where to store CO2. The rarest, and most expensive, is green hydrogen, made by using renewable power to split water.

“Hydrogen planes will only be as sustainable as the energy that powers them,” said Carlos López de la Osa, aviation manager with green group Transport & Environment (T&E).

“Most hydrogen for transportation is not zero emission today. It’s not green hydrogen,” said Val Miftakhov, CEO of ZeroAvia, a British-American manufacturer that aims to deliver its first hydrogen-electric aircraft with 40 to 80 seats by 2027.

2. Hydrogen could cut aircraft range

Hydrogen is the lightest element, but it has a much lower energy density than kerosene, meaning aircraft powered by it instead of fossil fuels would actually weigh more.

Anna Berkut/Alamy Stock Photo

Click the link below for the article:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/hydrogen-powered-airplanes-face-5-big-challenges/

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