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Missing immune cells may explain why COVID-19 vaccine protection quickly wanes | Science | AAAS

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Neither vaccinations nor immunity from infections seem to thwart SARS-CoV-2 for long. The frequency of new infections within a few months of a previous bout or a shot is one of COVID-19’s most vexing puzzles. Now, scientists have learned that a little-known type of immune cell in the bone marrow may play a major role in this failure.

The study, which appeared last month in Nature Medicine, found that people who received repeated doses of vaccine, and in some cases also became infected with SARS-CoV-2, largely failed to make special antibody-producing cells called long-lived plasma cells (LLPCs). “That’s really, really interesting,” says Mark Slifka, an immunologist at the Oregon Health & Science University who was not involved with the work. The study authors say their finding may indicate a way to make better COVID-19 vaccines: by altering how they present the spike surface protein of SARS-CoV-2 to a person’s immune cells.

Durability is an age-old bugaboo of vaccine designers. Some vaccines, particularly ones made from weakened versions of viruses, can protect people for decades, even life. Yet others lose effectiveness within months. “We really haven’t overcome this challenge,” says Akiko Iwasaki, a Yale University immunologist who is developing a nasal COVID-19 vaccine she hopes can be given often enough to get around the durability problem.

Just how long a shot can protect against SARS-CoV-2 is hard to assess because variants of the virus, able to evade existing immunity, frequently emerge. And new infections muddle attempts to assess vaccine durability because they provide a “boost” that keeps immunity from waning. Multiple immune actors also provide protection, including antibodies, T cells, and natural killer cells.

To get a clearer picture, the new study examined LLPCs, which are responsible for durable immunity to some other viruses. These cells, the offspring of B cells, primarily reside in the bone marrow. For some viruses, vaccination or infection generate LLPCs that can survive for decades, steadily producing “neutralizing antibodies” that can thwart new infections.

But not so with SARS-CoV-2, the new work indicates. Emory University immunologists Frances Eun-Hyung Lee, Doan Nguyen, and their colleagues enrolled 19 people who agreed to have their marrow aspirated, a procedure that carries little risk but can be painful because it means piercing bone.  All had received between two to five doses of messenger RNA (mRNA) COVID-19 vaccines—which code for SARS-CoV-2’s spike—during the preceding 3 years. Five reported having had COVID-19, as well. The study subjects had also been vaccinated recently against influenza and had booster shots for tetanus, a bacterial disease.

Lee and her colleagues found that nearly all participants had LLPCs in their bone marrow that secreted antibodies against tetanus and flu. But only one-third had plasma cells generating the same defense against SARS-CoV-2. Even in those subjects, just 0.1% of the antibodies generated by their LLPCs were specific for SARS-CoV-2, an order of magnitude less than for tetanus and flu. “The paper is very informative,” Iwasaki says.

An earlier study of bone marrow from 20 people who had been infected with SARS-CoV-2 but never vaccinated against it also found that they were “deficient” in LLPCs specific to SARS-CoV-2 compared with those for tetanus. The new results “were really consistent with what we found,” says Mohammad Sajadi of the University of Maryland School of Medicine, whose team reported the data in the 25 July issue of The Journal of Infectious Diseases. “The big question is why?”

SARS-CoV-2’s surface features may offer an answer, Lee and her co-authors say. LLPCs emerge after “naïve” B cells encounter a virus or a piece of it, such as the spike protein. As B cells mature, they make more refined antibodies that better bind to the invader. After the initial infection, memory B cells continue to patrol the blood and a subset differentiates into plasma cells. Some of those cells migrate to the bone marrow, which provides safe haven for their long-term antibody production.

B cells carry Y-shaped receptors that attach to viral surface proteins when they identify a pathogen. If both branches of the Y bind to the same pathogen proteins, they trigger a phenomenon called “cross-linking,” which spurs B cells to transform into LLPCs. But electron microscopy of SARS-CoV-2 shows its spikes are about 25 nanometers apart, too distant for a single B cell receptor to readily bind to two at once.

Spike doesn’t just appear on the virus itself; it also protrudes from infected cells and cells stimulated by mRNA vaccines. Electron micrographs don’t show the proteins and their spacing, but immunologists suspect the SARS-CoV-2 molecules are widely spaced on these cells, as well. As a result, Lee and her co-authors suggest, B cells don’t become cross-linked, and LLPCs don’t develop.

Other kinds of vaccines might present spike more effectively. Slifka points to an approved vaccine against human papillomavirus, which consists of a “viruslike particle” (VLP) made from surface proteins of that pathogen. Those proteins self-assemble into something that resembles a soccer ball. “That’s a very rigid structure with great spacing and it induces incredibly durable antibody responses,” Slifka says.

Martin Bachmann, an immunologist at the University of Bern, has argued that VLPs for SAR-CoV-2 could space spike molecules more closely—about 5 nanometers apart—than the virus itself. “I am personally convinced that viruslike particles are the best platform,” says Bachmann, who published his proposal in a 2021 npj Vaccines paper.

Given the dominance of current shots, bringing a new one to market won’t be easy. Indeed, Medicago made a spike-based VLP vaccine for COVID-19 that regulators in Canada authorized for use in February 2022, but the company stopped making it a year later because it lacked a market and went out of business.

The Novavax COVID-19 vaccine approved in the United States and some other countries uses insect cells to produce spikes that link together and form “rosettes,” which might offer tighter spacing of the protein and therefore durability benefits, but Bachmann doubts the rosettes work as well as VLPs. “Such poorly organized structures are clearly inferior to highly organized surfaces,” he says. Lee would like to study the bone marrow of Novavax recipients for the long-lived plasma cells, “but there weren’t a large number, and it’s very hard to get patients to donate marrow,” she says.

Other COVID-19 vaccines in development use nanoparticles that display tightly spaced portions of spike. Neil King, a University of Washington biochemist whose team has developed one such COVID-19 vaccine now in human trials, says they do not have data on LLPCs or durability. “Spacing definitely matters, but it’s very difficult to set up controlled experiments,” King says.

Structural biologist Pamela Bjorkman at the California Institute of Technology, who has a similar nanoparticle COVID-19 vaccine in development, is more skeptical that spacing has a significant impact on vaccine’s durability. Influenza virus has tightly spaced surface proteins, she notes, and infection with it doesn’t lead to durable immunity.

Nguyen, however, thinks his team’s sobering findings require follow-up. “The bad news is the failure of SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccines themselves—with or without natural infections—to induce LLPCs in the bone marrow,” he says. “The good news is this failure itself provides a research opportunity to find a way to change the fate of short-lived vaccines.”

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sarcozona
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is it OK to have sex while working from home?

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This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.

A reader writes:

I am a stay-at-home mom of very young children. My husband works from home one day per week, occasionally two. When he works from home, he watches our baby while I take the older ones to and from school/preschool. Other than that, he works in our home office and I rarely see him for more than a few minutes at a time. My point is that he is definitely working when he works from home.

Except sometimes we have sex while the baby naps. I feel like this is fine! But we were laughing about it recently because, well, if someone left work to go have sex, I think we would all question their judgment. I can’t explain why I don’t think there’s anything unethical about this. Am I alone in that? It’s not like we can check with his boss to see if he’s fine with this. We can’t ask any of his coworkers if they do this too because then we’re just asking about people’s sex lives.

To be clear, I don’t really care even if his boss or colleagues did have a problem with it. It’s none of their business! Or is it? Because it’s during the work day? What are your thoughts on sex while working from home?

Oh.

Hmmm.

I don’t think you should be having sex during the work day. But in purely practical terms, I can’t argue that sex while working from home is all that different from doing laundry while working from home (and I never thought I would compare sex and laundry). The laundry standard is that if it only briefly takes you away from your work, you’re getting all your work done and done well, and you’re available when your team needs you, no one needs to know.

So I suppose it depends on whether those things are true. Is this a lengthy encounter or a brief one? Is he doing well at his job? Does he return to his desk to find people were trying to reach him while he was otherwise occupied or do people find him appropriately accessible?

If the sex doesn’t add up to any more time away than, say, a couple of coffee breaks and chats in the office kitchen, I can’t give you any good reason why it’s more improper. Obviously it’s improper if people know about it, but it’s the knowing that would be far more improper than the act itself.

And of course, if it’s his lunch break, that’s his own time and you may get it on with impunity.

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sarcozona
18 hours ago
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“I don’t think you should be having sex during the work day.”

I officially don’t trust ask a manager anymore
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hannahdraper
24 days ago
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‘Everything is dead’: Ukraine rushes to stem ecocide after river poisoning

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Serhiy Kraskov picked up a twig and poked at a small fish floating in the Desna River. “It’s a roach. It died recently. You can tell because its eyes are clear and not blurry,” he said. Hundreds of other fish had washed up nearby on the river’s green willow-fringed banks. A large pike lay in the mud. Nearby, in a patch of yellow lilies, was a motionless carp. “Everything is dead, starting from the tiniest minnow to the biggest catfish,” Kraskov added mournfully.

Kraskov is the mayor of the village of Slabyn, in Ukraine’s northern Chernihiv region. The rustic settlement – population 520 – escaped the worst of Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion. But the war arrived last week in a new and horrible form. Ukrainian officials say the Russians deliberately poisoned the Seym River, which flows into the Desna. The Desna connects with a reservoir in the Kyiv region and a water supply used by millions.

A toxic slick was detected on 17 August coming from the Russian border village of Tyotkino. According to Kyiv, chemical waste from a sugar factory had been dumped in vast quantities into the Seym. It included ammonia, magnesium and other poisonous nitrates. At the time, fierce fighting was going on in the surrounding area. Ukraine’s armed forces had launched a surprise incursion into Russia and had seized territory in Kursk oblast.

The pollution crossed the international border just over a mile away and made its way into Ukraine’s Sumy region. The Seym’s natural ecosystem crashed. Fish, molluscs and crayfish were asphyxiated as oxygen levels fell to near zero. Settlements along the river reported mass die-offs. Kraskov got a call from the authorities warning him a disaster was coming his way. He spotted the first dead fish on 11 September. “There were a few of them in the middle of the river,” he said.

He returned the following weekend to find the Desna’s banks clogged with rotting fish, stretching out from the shore for three metres into the water. Volunteers wearing rubber boots, masks and protective gloves shovelled the fish into sacks. They found a metre-long catfish. “The stench was terrible. You could scarcely breathe. The river was quiet. Nothing moved apart from a few frogs,” Kraskov said. A tractor took the sacks to an abattoir that used to belong to the village’s Soviet-era collective farm. They were buried in a pit.

Serhiy Zhuk, the head of Chernihiv’s ecology inspectorate, described what had happened as an act of Russian ecocide. “The Desna was one of our cleanest rivers. It’s a very big catastrophe,” he said. Zhuk traced the slick’s route on a map pinned to his office wall: a looping multi-week journey along the Seym and Desna. “More than 650km is polluted. Not a single organism survived. This is unprecedented. It’s Europe’s first completely dead river,” he said.

In his view, the Kremlin was waging total war of a kind not seen since the last century. Vladimir Putin’s desire to eradicate Ukraine extended to the natural world, he suggested. “They are sending rockets through the air, burning our forests and threatening to blow us up with nuclear bombs. You can rebuild a bridge or a school. It takes longer, unfortunately, for wildlife to recover.”

As the contamination approached, Zhuk ordered the closure of Zolotyi Bank, the central beach in Chernihiv. A ban was imposed on fishing, swimming, and on using the river to water cattle or gardens. Scientists took samples, testing every 15-20km and bringing glass vials back to a laboratory. The results were hair-raising. In the city of Baturyn, a one-time Cossack capital on the Seym, oxygen content dipped to zero on 29 August. The next day it was 0.1 mg/dm³. At least 4 mg/dm³ is needed for fish to breathe.

Zhuk said it would take years for the river to recover. There was little prospect of this happening while fighting in Russia’s Kursk oblast continued, he said. Ukraine’s armed forces have blown up bridges over the Seym, adding fuel and debris to an already noxious mix. Around Chernihiv, local helpers – some in boats – collected about 44 tonnes of dead fish. “That’s what we recovered. There’s a lot more inside the river and on the bottom,” Zhuk said.

Emergency teams have used compressors to pump oxygen into the Desna, to give the remaining fish a better chance of survival. Recent rains dispersed some toxins. Zhuk was optimistic these measures would be enough to save Kyiv from the worst of the pollution. But he admitted the situation was grim. “There is a difference between a natural and man-made disaster. This was a diversionary act. Russia’s ecological genocide won’t stop until the war stops,” he said.

At the central beach, Olha Rudenko and her boyfriend Roman Svichkar strolled along the golden sands. A sign in red letters warned “Do not bathe”. “This is a huge eco-tragedy. The river smells weird,” Olha remarked. She noted that last year Russian troops blew up the Khakovka reservoir in Ukraine’s southern Kherson province, flooding villages and killing people and fish. “This is Russia again, 100%,” she said. “We used to drink water from the tap and buy fish from the market. Now we can’t.”

Svitlana Hrynchuk, Ukraine’s minister for environmental protection, said water consumption in Kyiv remained safe. Various special measures had been taken to get rid of the nitrates, she said, with 120 tonnes of cleaning agents imported and nets strung across the Desna to catch dead fish. In the Kyiv region, none had turned up. Additionally, water was routinely purified before it was extracted for household use, she said, adding: “We don’t have a fish plague.”

Hrynchuk said this latest episode was part of a dismal pattern. Russian troops had destroyed national parks in occupied areas, killed animals and mined thousands of hectares of forest. Explosions had caused wildfires, a problem exacerbated by recent hot weather. “Ukraine is fighting for its future. That future has to include nature. We need clean water, clean air, woods, everything,” she said. “We have a beautiful country. We have to save and protect it.”

She said the river was a part of Ukrainian culture. In 1956, the Soviet film-maker Oleksandr Dovzhenko published a novel called The Enchanted Desna. Reminiscing about his childhood, he wrote: “It would be long past sunset and the large catfish would leap in the Desna under the stars as we listened agog till we dozed off in the fragrant hay under the oaks. Grandpa regarded the tench as the best fish of all. He scooped them right out of the water with his bare hands like a Chinese magician.”

Back at Slabyn, Kraskov said that before he became village mayor he worked at Chornobyl nuclear power station. He was involved in the construction of a concrete sarcophagus designed to contain radiation from the reactor, which blew up in 1986. “I know how to bury dangerous substances,” he said wryly. “I also know how bureaucracy works. That’s why we acted quickly with the dead fish.” He continued: “If something goes wrong, officials like to find a scapegoat. So you better do everything correctly. Our life is like this.”

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sarcozona
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Ex UW-La Crosse chancellor stripped of tenured position - WPR

WPR
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Former University of Wisconsin-La Crosse Chancellor Joe Gow was fired Friday from his tenured teaching position in a unanimous Board of Regents vote.

Gow was terminated from his chancellorship last December after pornographic videos he created and distributed came to light. But he remained employed by the university as a tenured faculty member.

Immediately after the vote, Gow said he plans to file a lawsuit.

“Sadly, the Regent’s decision today also violates their own commitment to academic freedom and freedom of expression,” Gow said. “We might as well take down that famous plaque on the front of Bascom Hall, because the people who fired me today aren’t a Board of Regents. They’re a board of hypocrites. They have zero credibility on free speech and expression.”

Gow was referring to a 130-year-old plaque on the UW-Madison campus that proclaims: “Whatever may be the limitations which trammel inquiry elsewhere, we believe that the great state University of Wisconsin should ever encourage that continual and fearless sifting and winnowing by which alone the truth shall be found.”

The board voted to “dismiss with cause,” essentially stripping Gow from his teaching position after meeting in closed session for about 30 minutes. They did not make any further comments.

Since he lost his chancellorship, Gow has continued to collect a salary of $91,915 as a tenured professor. The university has placed him on leave and has not assigned him to teach any courses since he was fired as chancellor.

During a disciplinary hearing Sept. 20, Gow’s attorney Mark Leitner warned that UW would violate Gow’s free speech rights if the system punished him for controversial content that he created on his personal time.

Gow and his wife, Carmen Wilson, appeared in multiple pornographic videos, which they’ve shared to publicly-available sites.

They’ve also published two books using pseudonyms about their experiences in the adult film industry, and they’ve created a YouTube channel “Sexy Healthy Cooking,” in which they interview adult film starts and discuss vegan cooking.

The couple said Friday they continue to hear from former students and community members expressing support.

“People are very afraid at the prospect of Joe losing his tenure,” Wilson said. “That’s a slippery slope. What else can people revoke their tenure for, you know, this just starts a very scary new world for tenured faculty members.”

In July, a UW-La Crosse faculty committee voted 5-0 to recommend that Gow’s tenure be revoked for “unethical conduct.” James Beeby, the new chancellor leading UW-La Crosse, later concurred with that recommendation.

In a statement, FIRE Faculty Legal Defense Counsel Zach Greenberg said Gow’s termination is a “major blow to academic freedom and faculty free speech rights.”

“We’re disappointed UW caved to donors and politicians by throwing a tenured professor under the bus,” Greenberg said.

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sarcozona
19 hours ago
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This is definitely not something a professor should lose a job over
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acdha
14 days ago
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Men Harassed A Woman In A Driverless Waymo, Trapping Her In Traffic

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Men Harassed A Woman In A Driverless Waymo, Trapping Her In Traffic

A woman was stuck in a self-driving Waymo vehicle that was stopped by two men who harassed her, asked for her number, and prevented the car from moving forward by standing in its way. 

In a video she posted to X, Amina—who was trying to get to a hair appointment in San Francisco—recorded a man standing in front of the autonomous Waymo vehicle while she sat in the passenger seat. She yelled at him to move out of the way so the car could continue, but he and another man kept blocking the car’s path, preventing it from going anywhere. 

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sarcozona
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hannahdraper
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Twenty Great American Dishes

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I was a bit skeptical when I first opened this CNN list of twenty great American dishes, but I gotta say, other than missing anything with Hatch green chile, this is about as perfect of a list as you can come up with. You’ve got super basic comfort foods, like PB&J. And honestly, is that not a great dish? It’s a perfect dish for what it is! You’ve got big conceptual types of food like BBQ, which exists in about 20 different ways. I happen to love fried okra. The Cobb salad is a perfect choice, even if it’s something I rarely order, but why not include it? Fry bread is a Native obscurity that exists all over the place in the Southwest and is delicious; including an obscurity like this that also adds to the diversity of the offerings and includes Indigenous food is great. Burgers? Apple pie? All you need is mom. Poke, God bless Hawaiian food, that’s all I gotta say. I don’t personally care for grits too much, but of course it defines a whole reason of the country. I’m not sure that I knew spaghetti and meatballs was an American dish and I wish the story had gone into this a bit, but yum.

Like, there are things I might include instead of some of these, but there’s certainly not a bad choice in here.

Thoughts from the peanut gallery?

The post Twenty Great American Dishes appeared first on Lawyers, Guns & Money.

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sarcozona
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