The upcoming fall and winter months are about to bring the usual crop of respiratory illnesses—influenza, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), and, of course, COVID. But this will be the first time since COVID vaccines were developed that many people in the U.S. will not have easy access to immunization against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes the disease, which has contributed to the deaths of more than 1.2 million Americans to date.
Public health experts had nervously tracked U.S. health agencies’ actions on vaccines in general and COVID vaccines in particular since February, when longtime antivaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., took the reins of the Department of Health and Human Services. Conflicting messaging and ambiguous guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration shook up the usual launch of annual vaccines.
“We typically have this very clear set of dominoes for a vaccine rollout: it’s smooth; it’s synchronized; it’s sequenced,” says Katelyn Jetelina, an epidemiologist and founder of the newsletter Your Local Epidemiologist. “But we have these missing or wobbling dominoes right now, and so the rest of the chain is backed up.”
On August 27, one of those dominoes fell when Kennedy announced in a post on X that the FDA had approved the updated COVID vaccines only for adults aged 65 or older and those with underlying health conditions that increase risk of severe infection. The decision leaves healthy children and adults without easy access; they may be limited to receiving vaccines at physicians’ offices instead of pharmacies, and health insurance might not cover the full cost for everyone.
Scientific American spoke with experts about what the public can expect in terms of COVID-19 vaccines this fall.
COVID Cases Are Rising Again
All signs suggest that COVID cases in the U.S. are ticking up. Wastewater surveillance showed moderate, high, and very high levels of SARS-CoV-2 in much of the nation, as of the week ending on August 9. Rates of positive COVID tests and emergency department visits were also up as of the week ending August 16. All three measurements are early indicators of increased viral prevalence.
Although COVID death rates are currently low, they will likely rise on a delay from those early indicators. Regardless, SARS-CoV-2 continues to take lives: More than 100 people in the U.S. have died of COVID every single week of this year, according to the CDC. Similarly, rates of new long COVID diagnoses have slowed since the early days of the pandemic, but new infections continue to trigger the lingering and disabling syndrome.
Assessing COVID’s current risks is a tricky balance, says David Higgins, a pediatrician and vaccine delivery specialist at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. “We are clearly in a different place than we were in 2020 and 2021, and that is a good thing,” he says. “At the same time, I think the fact that we are in such a different place can maybe lead some people to underappreciate that COVID is still causing harm for many people.”
What COVID Vaccines Are Available This Year?
Three manufacturers have produced COVID vaccines this year: Moderna and Pfizer have made mRNA vaccines, and Novavax has made a protein-based shot. The two mRNA manufacturers, at least, tailored their vaccines to the LP.8.1 variant, the version of the COVID-causing virus that was increasing in prevalence when vaccine scientists decided which version to target this year.
As of the week ending on August 9, a newer variant called XFG represented 65 percent of infections. XFG and LP.8.1 are both members of the JN.1 family, which arose at the end of 2023. Experts expect this year’s formula to shield against XFG, although the exact degree of protection is always difficult to predict at the beginning of the season.
Why Is COVID Vaccine Access Changing?
COVID vaccines go through two separate federal government procedures that determine who can access them and how they can do so. This year, neither process has gone particularly smoothly.
One system is the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), which makes recommendations for who should receive which vaccines. This procedure governs access because insurance companies must fully cover the costs of recommended vaccines, according to the Affordable Care Act.
Earlier this year, Kennedy removed all existing members from the panel and appointed new ones—a highly unusual and criticized move—shortly before the scheduled June meeting. At that gathering, the committee was supposed to decide on this year’s COVID vaccine recommendations, but the replacement members declined to vote. It’s unclear when ACIP will meet next. The CDC’s website references a meeting that will occur in August or September but notes “dates TBD”; the next formally scheduled meeting is slated for October 22.
The other system is the FDA’s labeling process, which recently decided on access for healthy children and adults. This influences how vaccines are given. Agency personnel inspect the vaccines, ensure they are safe, and outline prescribing guidelines for health care providers. This process matters because pharmacists are generally not allowed to administer vaccines outside of what the label permits—typically, only doctors can provide vaccines “off-label.”
The shooter who opened fire at a church on the south side of Minneapolis on Wednesday morning has been identified.
Law enforcement sources told the Associated Press that Robin Westman attacked the church, adjacent to Annunciation Catholic School, as school children were celebrating Mass at the start of the academic year. Westman once attended the school.
Authorities have confirmed that two children were killed and 17 others were injured, 14 of them children, two of whom are in critical condition. A witness from inside the church said the shooter “pepper-sprayed through the stained-glass windows into the building, 50 to 100 shots.”
Westman was initially described by authorities as “a man” in his early twenties, dressed all in black and armed with a rifle, a shotgun, and a pistol. However, court documents later revealed that in 2019, the shooter changed their name from Robert to Robin and that they identified as a woman.
No motive is known at this time, and Westman took their own life.
President Donald Trump has offered condolences to Minnesota Governor Tim Walz.
A distraught Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey rejected offers of “thoughts and prayers,” saying at a press conference: “You cannot put into words the gravity, tragedy, or absolute pain of the situation.”
What you need to know…
A shooting occurred at Annunciation Church and Catholic School in Minneapolis on Wednesday morning as schoolchildren were attending Mass to mark the start of the academic year.
The assailant, Robin Westman, formerly Robert, whose name was legally changed after identifying as a woman, opened fire from outside the church, using a rifle, shotgun, and pistol, to fire through the stained-glass windows after barricading some of the doors.
Two children, aged eight and ten, were killed in the attack, and 17 other individuals were injured, including 14 children, two of whom are in critical condition.
Recap: The victims
Here’s what we know about the victims of Wednesday’s tragic incident at a church, adjacent to Annunciation Catholic School.
Authorities said that two children, ages 8 and 10, were killed. Both were students at the Annunciation School.
In addition, fourteen other children were injured. They ranged in age between six and 15.
Three adult parishioners attending the mass at the time of the shooting were also injured, but survived, according to police.
Minneapolis Archbishop calls for end to gun violence, which are ‘far too commonplace’
In his statement, Archbishop Bernard A. Hebda called for an end to gun violence and the “horrific acts of violence” that he said were “far too commonplace.”
“That today’s tragedy occurred only a day after the tragic shooting near Cristo Rey High School increases the sadness about the pain and anger that is present in our communities,” Hebda said.
“We need an end to gun violence. Our community is rightfully outraged at such horrific acts of violence perpetrated against the vulnerable and innocent. They are far too commonplace.
“While we need to commit to working to prevent the recurrence of such tragedies, we also need to remind ourselves that we have a God of peace and of love, and that it is his love that we will need most as we strive to embrace those who are hurting so deeply.”
Minneapolis Archbishop releases statement following church shooting
Archbishop Bernard A. Hebda of the Archdiocese of St Paul and Minneapolis released the following statement in response to Wednesday’s tragedy.
“I am so grateful for the many promises of prayers that have been coming in from the Holy Father, Pope Leo, and from so many from all around the globe, all praying for the families of Annunciation Parish and School and for all who were impacted by this morning’s senseless violence.
“I beg for the continued prayers of all of the priests and faithful of this Archdiocese, as well for the prayers of all men and women of good will, that the healing that only God can bring will be poured out on all those who were present at this morning’s Mass and particularly for the affected families who are only now beginning to comprehend the trauma they sustained.
“We lift up the souls of those who lost their lives to our loving God through the intercession of Our Lady, Queen of Peace.”
The statement continued: “My heart is broken as I think about students, teachers, clergy, and parishioners and the horror they witnessed in a Church, a place where we should feel safe.
“Members of the Archdiocesan staff are working with the parish and school teams to make sure they have the support and resources they need at this time and beyond.”
What if we could control Earth’s climate like a thermostat?This video explores a wild but serious proposal to combat global warming—geoengineering. Learn how humanity might someday regulate the planet’s temperature to prevent ecological catastrophe.
.
.
.
Click the link belowfor the complete article (Sound On for video):
Long-term exposure to extreme heat events accelerates the body’s ageing process and increases vulnerabilities to health issues, finds a long-term study of 24,922 people in Taiwan.
The study, published today in Nature Climate Change, suggests that moderate increases in cumulative heatwave exposure increase a person’s biological age, to an extent comparable to regular smoking or alcohol consumption. The more extreme-heat events that people were exposed to, the more their organs aged. This is the latest study to show that extreme heat can have invisible effects on the human body and accelerate the biological clock.
Exposure to extreme heat, especially over long periods of time, strains organs and can be lethal, but “the fact that heatwaves age us is surprising”, says Paul Beggs, an environmental-health scientist at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, who was not involved in the research. “This study is a wake-up call that we are all vulnerable to the adverse impacts of climate change on our health. It reinforces calls for urgent and deep reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions,” he adds.
Accelerating ageing
Age isn’t just a result of time. Previous studies have linked a number of factors — including environmental and social stress, genetics and medical
interventions — to signs of ageing-related physiological changes. This puts people at a higher risk of cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes and dementia.
To study the long-term impacts of heatwaves on ageing, the researchers analysed data from medical examinations between 2008 and 2022. During that time, Taiwan experienced around 30 heatwaves, which the study defined as a period of elevated temperature over several days. The researchers used results from several medical tests, including assessments of liver, lung and kidney function, blood pressure and inflammation, to calculate biological age. They then compared biological age with the total cumulative temperature that participants were probably exposed to on the basis of their address in the two years before their medical visit.
The study found that the more extreme-heat events that people experienced, the faster they aged — for every extra 1.3 °C a participant was exposed to, around 0.023–0.031 years, on average, was added to their biological clock.
“While the number itself may look small, over time and across populations, this effect can have meaningful public-health implications,” says Cui Guo, an environmental epidemiologist at the University of Hong Kong, who led the study.
Manual workers and people living in rural areas experienced the largest health impacts, probably because these groups are less likely to have access to air conditioning. But there was an unexpected upside: the impact of heatwaves on ageing decreased over the 15-year study period. The reasons behind this heat adaptation are unclear, but improved access to cooling technology could play a part, Guo says.
Still, “the message is that heat makes you age a bit faster than you normally would, and that this is something you would like to avoid”, says Alexandra Schneider, an environmental epidemiologist at Helmholtz Munich in Germany, who was not involved in the study.
Rising heat
In 2023, research in Germany found that higher air temperatures were associated with more epigenetic markers of ageing. And a study in more than 3,600 older people in the United States similarly concluded, through analysing DNA markers, that extreme heat prematurely aged participants.
.
An elderly man is seen resting under a tree at Levico lake. With temperatures exceeding 45 degrees Celsius in many parts of Italy, and wildfires burning in France, Spain, and Portugal, Europe is under under alert as the heatwave grips the continent. Davide Bonaldo/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
As the Wall Street Journal reports that Donald Trump wants to quickly nominate a replacement for Lisa Cook, the Federal Reserve governor who is resisting his attempt to force her out, the president told reporters he has a favorite candidate.
Asked about possible replacements for Cook during his marathon televised cabinet meeting on Tuesday, Trump said: “We have some very good people for that position.”
“I think, maybe in my own mind, I have somebody that I like,” Trump added, before saying that he would also consult Scott Bessant, the treasury secretary, and Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary.
Trump appears to be considering the possibility of naming his economic adviser Stephen Miran to serve out the remainder of Cook’s term, which does not expire until 2038. Earlier this month, Trump nominated Miran to serve for a much shorter term, as a replacement for another member of the Fed’s board, Adriana Kugler, a Biden nominee who was due to be replaced in five months.
Cook has said that she will sue to keep her position as a governor of the independent central bank and her lawyer, Abbe Lowell, called Trump’s move to fire her “illegal”.
In May, when the supreme court’s conservative majority ruled that the president could fire members of other independent agencies without cause, they rejected the argument that allowing him to do so would also permit him to replace members of the Federal Reserve. The court’s order on the other agencies, the justices wrote, had no bearing on “the constitutionality of for-cause removal protections” for members of the central bank.
“The Federal Reserve is a uniquely structured, quasi-private entity that follows in the distinct historical tradition of the First and Second Banks of the United States,” the conservative justices wrote.
.
Donald Trump during the cabinet meeting on Tuesday. Photograph: Aaron Schwartz/Pool/Aaron Schwartz – Pool/CNP/Shutterstock
As President Trump posed triumphantly for photos with police officers, government agents, and members of the National Guard in Southeast Washington last week, lawyers across town in federal court grappled with his new brand of justice.
The stream of defendants who shuffled through a federal courtroom on Thursday afternoon illustrated the new ways in which laws are being enforced in the nation’s capital after the president’s takeover of the city’s police. They were appearing before a magistrate judge on charges that would typically be handled at the local court level, if they were filed at all.
One man had been arrested over an open container of alcohol. Another had been charged with threatening the president after delivering a drunken outburst following his arrest on vandalism. And one defendant’s gun case so alarmed prosecutors that they intend to drop the case.
Mr. Trump has cast his crackdown on crime as a success, and suggested on Friday that it was a blueprint he would seek to apply to other cities, including Chicago. To defense lawyers and even some prosecutors, though, many of the cases that have landed in court have raised concerns that the takeover seems intended to artificially inflate its effect because government lawyers have been instructed to file the most serious federal charges, no matter how minor the incident.
One of the recipients of Mr. Trump’s show of force was Mark Bigelow, 28, a part-time delivery driver for Amazon.
After midnight on Aug. 19, Mr. Bigelow was sitting in the middle row of a van parked on a street in Northeast Washington with its doors open, according to court papers. Two other men were in the front when a full complement of law enforcement officials — from the Metropolitan Police Department, the F.B.I., the Drug Enforcement Administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service — stopped and saw what appeared to be an open container of alcohol in the front seat.
As law enforcement questioned and searched the two other passengers, Mr. Bigelow left the van and started to walk away, until other agents stopped him, according to the charging document. Peering into the van, an officer spotted “a second cup containing an alcoholic beverage in the middle row seat,” at which point Mr. Bigelow was arrested on charges of possession of an open container, a misdemeanor.
As he was placed in a vehicle, the handcuffed Mr. Bigelow became belligerent, twisting his body and yelling, “Get off me! Y’all too little, bro!” at an ICE agent, according to a court filing, which described how Mr. Bigelow made “physical contact” by kicking an agent in the hand and another in the leg.
As a result, Mr. Bigelow was charged with assaulting, resisting or impeding a federal officer, an offense that carries a maximum sentence of eight years in prison.
The charges follow a directive by the U.S. attorney, Jeanine Pirro, to prosecutors to charge the most serious crimes possible in each case and to do so in federal court, where sentences tend to run much longer.
A federal public defender representing Mr. Bigelow, Elizabeth Mullin, told the U.S. magistrate judge, Moxila A. Upadhyaya, that he would never have been arrested, let alone charged with a federal felony, but for the president’s crackdown. “He was caught up in this federal occupation of D.C.,” she said. “This was a case created by federal law enforcement.”
Next up was Torez Riley, 37, who was arrested at a Trader Joe’s grocery store for what the police said was possession of two handguns in his bag.
Mr. Riley’s case has been a point of contention inside the U.S. attorney’s office, where a number of prosecutors concluded that officers unlawfully searched Mr. Riley when they stopped him, violating the Fourth Amendment, according to people familiar with the case who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
Before Mr. Trump’s crackdown, prosecutors in Ms. Pirro’s office would have been likely to dismiss a case like Mr. Riley’s after an initial review of the facts of the arrest, according to the people, who were familiar with the instructions.
.
Law enforcement officials searching a car after a traffic stop in Washington last week. President Donald Trump has cast his crackdown on crime as a success, and suggested on Friday that it was a blueprint he would seek to apply to other cities, including Chicago.Credit…Eric Lee for The New York Times
Just two months after reports warily noted that new world screwworms, flesh-eating parasites that are notorious for killing livestock, pets, and other animals, hadn’t “made it back into the U.S. yet,” they have—in the form of the country’s first human infection from the current outbreak in Central America. Screwworm larvae hitched a ride inside a person who had recently been to El Salvador, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.
The patient, a resident of Maryland, has been treated, and the threat to other people is low. “A human coming back with [larvae] is generally not going to lead to an outbreak because those humans are going to go get treated,” says veterinary entomologist Sonja L. Swiger of Texas A&M University. “These larvae are horrible. They eat your body, literally.”
The real danger is to livestock. The new world screwworm has been spreading steadily northward from Central America, mainly by traveling in infected animals, and poses a major threat to the U.S. meat industry. Last week, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., determined that the advancing parasite signaled a “significant potential for a public health emergency” that could threaten national security, according to an HHS notice.
What is a screwworm?
Screwworms are the larvae of the fly Cochliomyia hominivorax, which lays up to 300 of them at a time inside open wounds or tender parts, such as the mouth, of warm-blooded animals. Once they hatch, the larvae corkscrew their way through living flesh as they consume it, causing extreme pain or, if left untreated, even death. After three to seven days, the larvae fall to the ground and burrow into the soil to pupate, transforming into flies. A female fly mates only once and carries around the sperm to lay about 3,000 eggs in her lifespan of up to 30 days.
How are screwworm infestations treated?
The best treatment is avoidance. Because the flies are attracted to open wounds—even something tiny such as a tick bite, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention—people should cover all wounds, especially when sleeping outdoors, working near cattle or traveling in infected areas. Although the adult flies aren’t known to be in the U.S. yet, they are in southern Mexico.
If you suspect you have been attacked or infected, see a physician right away. The worms may be visible in the wounds. Each individual organism must be carefully extracted, which may require surgery. Currently, there are no drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration for treating screwworm infestations.
Kennedy did declare, however, that the FDA can fast-track approval processes for antiparasitic drugs to be used in animals with screwworm infestations. (No cases from the current outbreak have been detected in animals in the U.S.) The FDA’s Center for Veterinary Medicine is now working with makers of animal drugs to identify promising medications. Veterinarians may also use drugs that are approved for other uses to treat screwworm infestations.
.
Screw-worm fly (Cochliomyia hominivorax) larvae use their sharp mandibles to dig into and eat away the living tissue of warm-blooded animals, including humans. Philippe Psaila/Science Source
Sight words, writing his full name, addition, and subtraction — there’s a lot I know my 4-year-old son, Cooper, will learn at school this year. And because he truly loves to learn, I know he’ll nail it all. When he decided he wanted to write his numbers, we spent hours over one weekend practicing until he could scribble every digit almost as neatly as my own. When the kindergartners in his class of 3- to 5-year-olds began learning to read, he asked me for nights on end to teach him, too. I have no doubt he’ll gobble up every lesson his teacher gives him this year. But it’s not his academics I’m most excited for him to master.
You see, my little guy is exactly like me when I was his age: introverted, terrified of conflict, and at times cripplingly risk-averse. I’ve been prone to anxiety my entire life, afraid to put my face underwater when learning to swim or to ever take my training wheels off. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I learned to stand up for myself, and if we’re being honest, it still takes a major slight to prompt it. I see all of that same hesitation in my son. As the person who never learned to ride a bike or swim underwater, the grown woman who still feels a burning unease inside while struggling to speak up, I want to do everything in my power to change his trajectory.
Cooper has always been shy, and he isn’t one to stand up for himself or say anything to another kid who wrongs him (in the way little kids can “wrong” one another — snatching a toy, wiping a booger on his arm, you know). We’ve always told him the same thing: “Use your words and tell them no. If they don’t listen, ask your teacher for help.” For years, my husband and I have repeated the same refrain, until his first year in Montessori school.
In true toddler fashion, he wasn’t a fan of trying new foods, so I was elated when Cooper asked to eat lunch from the cafeteria on Fridays when they serve chicken nuggets or pizza. Then one day, on the drive home from school, I asked how his lunch was… and somebody had stolen his chicken nuggets. So, I messaged his teacher to let her know, and she assured me she knew the likely culprit and would sit that student with the kindergarten girls who she knew would give him hell.
Then she shared her insights: Cooper hadn’t said a word to anyone about it. It rang true for me that not only did my little shy guy not feel confident standing up for himself, but he also wasn’t sure how to ask for help, or when it was warranted. Maybe this is just being 3 or 4, but I’d seen all our friends’ children be ready and willing to speak up, bicker, and even throw hands if necessary. I imagine he feels a lot like I did in the face of conflict: dwarfed, intimidated, and just wanting it to end more than wanting it to be made right.
His teacher assured me it was fine for him to bring any conflicts to her until he got older and a little more confident, and said we should instruct him to do just that. And there I had it — something really life-changing his teacher could help me get across to him that my husband and I just haven’t been able to communicate the right way yet.
I had seen all the fruits of her labor throughout the school year: the easy way our son began counting to 200 by ones, fives, and tens, the songs about friendship he’d sing to himself as he played, and the confidence to get up on stage and perform a traditional Mexican hat dance with his classmates for the school’s heritage night (yes, it was precious). It hadn’t yet occurred to me that his teacher was also willing to coach him through some equally important life lessons, like how to work out a conflict with his classmates, speak up, or ask for help.
We’re lucky that at our son’s Montessori school, they have the same teacher from ages 3 to 5. His teacher, already well-versed in his strengths and hurdles, has two more years with him. He grew so much in his first year, and I could never have imagined how much he would learn. I know that when he walks out of his second year in her classroom, he’ll be unrecognizable in more new and wonderful ways. Maybe he’ll have neater handwriting, color entirely inside the lines, or even be starting to read. But honestly, my biggest hope is that he’ll know it’s OK to ask for help, say no, and talk to his friends about hard things. Knowing we’ll get to watch the slow bloom of his confidence, to me, is just as much a part of the magic of a new school year.
.
Navigating friendships, asking for help, not knowing what you’re getting for lunch and eating it anyway… this stuff matters, too. by Katie McPherson
Shortly after 10 a.m. on Monday, when an Israeli military strike hit the facade of a hospital building in southern Gaza, emergency responders who were already nearby rushed to the scene. So did journalists.
But just minutes later, according to witnesses, hospital officials, and video footage that captured the immediate aftermath of that first blast, a second strike hit the same part of the hospital, enveloping it in a thick cloud of smoke and dust.
Once the air cleared, the full extent of the horror at Nasser Hospital was revealed.
Four Palestinian journalists had been killed on the spot, and a fifth would later die of his wounds. At least 15 more people were killed, including members of the medical staff, rescue workers, and patients, according to the Gazan health ministry. Dozens more were injured, it said.
The Israeli military provided no immediate explanation for the attack, one of the deadliest for members of the news media, who have already died in unusually high numbers covering the war. The five journalists had worked for news outlets that included Reuters, The Associated Press, and Al Jazeera, according to their employers.
The military acknowledged carrying out a strike in the area of Nasser Hospital, without saying what the target was. In a statement, it said that it regretted “any harm to uninvolved individuals” and that its chief of staff had ordered an immediate inquiry.
The office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who generally casts civilian deaths in Gaza as a regrettable but unavoidable part of war, suggested that those on Monday were the result of a military blunder.
“Israel deeply regrets the tragic mishap that occurred today at the Nasser Hospital,” the office said in a statement. It went on to say that “Israel values the work of journalists, medical staff, and all civilians.”
But the rare expressions of regret did little to assuage the growing swell of local and international outrage.
Even before Monday, the war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas had been one of the deadliest conflicts anywhere for journalists, with almost 200 killed since the fighting began, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.
The Israeli government has barred international journalists from entering Gaza to freely report on the war. That has left much of the world relying on local Palestinian journalists, reporting amid bombardment and widespread hunger, to understand the situation in the enclave.
“The killing of journalists in Gaza should shock the world — not into stunned silence — but into action, demanding accountability and justice,” the spokeswoman for the United Nations human rights office, Ravina Shamdasani, said in a statement issued after the strikes.
In a joint letter sent by The A.P. and Reuters to Israeli officials later Monday, the agencies said they had found the Israeli military’s “willingness and ability to investigate itself in past incidents to rarely result in clarity and action.”
The circumstances of the attack, in the southern city of Khan Younis, were not immediately clear, and the military did not specify if the strikes had been carried out by missiles, tank fire, or drones.
But Israel’s conduct in the war has prompted international censure of the soaring civilian death toll as well as Israeli restrictions on the entrance of aid. Parts of Gaza are now experiencing famine, according to a global group of experts backed by the United Nations.
More than 60,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, according to health officials there. Their tally does not distinguish between combatants and civilians, but it includes about 18,000 children and minors. The Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, that ignited the war killed around 1,200 people, with about 250 others taken as hostages to Gaza.
Some of Israel’s attacks on journalists have been intentional. A strike that killed several journalists in Gaza earlier this month was aimed at Anas al-Sharif, a reporter with Al Jazeera, the Qatari-based network. Israel accused him of being a Hamas operative. Al Jazeera rejected that assertion.
On Monday, after one of its cameramen was killed, the network, which has frequently clashed with Israel, accused the Israeli military of killing its reporters as part of a “systematic campaign to silence the truth.”
Last year, a New York Times investigation found that, since the start of the war, the Israeli military had also significantly loosened safeguards meant to protect civilians.
.
Two Israeli strikes hit a hospital in southern Gaza on Monday, killing five Palestinian journalists and at least 15 other people, according to local health officials.CreditCredit…Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
A brain-imaging study of people with amputated arms has upended a long-standing belief: that the brain’s map of the body reorganizes itself to compensate for missing body parts.
Previous research had suggested that neurons in the brain region holding this internal map, called the primary somatosensory cortex, would grow into the neighbouring area of the cortex that previously sensed the limb.
But the latest findings, published in Nature Neuroscience on 21 August, reveal that the primary somatosensory cortex stays remarkably constant even years after arm amputation. The study refutes foundational knowledge in the field of neuroscience that losing a limb results in a drastic reorganization of this region, the authors say.
“Pretty much every neuroscientist has learnt through their textbook that the brain has the capacity for reorganization, and this is demonstrated through studies on amputees,” says study senior author Tamar Makin, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Cambridge, UK. But “textbooks can be wrong”, she adds. “We shouldn’t take anything for granted, especially when it comes to brain research.”
The discovery could lead to the development of better prosthetic devices, or improved treatments for pain in ‘phantom limbs’ — when people continue to sense the amputated limb. It could also help scientists working to restore sensation in people who have had amputations.
Mapping cortical plasticity
Study first author Hunter Schone, a neuroscientist at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania, says that previous reports from some people with amputations had led him and his colleagues to doubt the idea that the brain’s map of the body is reorganized after amputation. These maps are responsible for processing sensory information, such as touch or temperature, at specific body regions. “They would say: ‘I can still feel the limb, I can still move individual fingers of a hand I haven’t had for decades,’” Schone says.
To investigate this contradiction, the researchers followed three people who were due to undergo amputation of one of their arms. The team used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to map the cortical representations of the body before the surgery, and then after the amputation for up to five years. It is the first study to do this.
Before their amputations, participants performed various movements, such as tapping their fingers, pursing their lips, and flexing their toes while inside an fMRI scanner that measured the activity in different parts of the brain. This allowed the researchers to create a cortical ‘map’ showing which regions sensed the hand. To test the idea that neighbouring neurons redistribute in the cortex after amputation, they also made maps of the adjacent cortical area — in this case, the part that processes sensations from the lips. The participants repeated this exercise several times after their amputation, tapping “with their phantom fingers”, says Schone.
.
The brain’s map of the body in the primary somatosensory cortex remains unchanged after amputation. Zephyr/Science Source
Film and Writing Festival for Comedy. Showcasing best of comedy short films at the FEEDBACK Film Festival. Plus, showcasing best of comedy novels, short stories, poems, screenplays (TV, short, feature) at the festival performed by professional actors.
Aleksandr Zubkov/Getty Images
.
Navigating friendships, asking for help, not knowing what you’re getting for lunch and eating it anyway… this stuff matters, too. by Katie McPherson 
James' World 2 