Month: December 2021

Rodent exercise also slows or halts aging-related declines in the animals’ brains, studies show, in part by strengthening specialized cells called microglia. Little understood until recently, microglial cells are now known to be the brain’s resident immune cells and hall monitors. They watch for signs of waning neuronal health and, when cells in decline are spotted, release neurochemicals that initiate an inflammatory response. Inflammation, in the short-term, helps to clear away the problem cells and any other biological debris. Afterward, the microglia release other chemical messages that calm the inflammation, keeping the brain healthy and tidy and the animal’s thinking intact. But as animals age, recent studies have found, their microglia can start to malfunction, initiating inflammat...

Every Dec. 1, the world commemorates those who have died from an AIDS-related illness. Known as World AIDS Day, it serves as a reminder that there has been an ongoing pandemic for the past 40 years, pre-dating Covid. The Covid vaccines were sequenced, developed and approved in the U.S. in record time, but that would not have been possible without decades of work by HIV researchers. "Almost everybody working on Covid vaccines comes from the HIV world," said Mitchell Warren, executive director of AVAC, a global advocacy group for HIV prevention. "Moderna had been working on mRNA-based HIV vaccine before SARS-CoV-2 was even known to exist." An HIV vaccine has eluded scientists for decades. The traditional thinking around vaccines is to mimic the body's natural immune response t...

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The state of the digital Covid vaccine card — the bar code that we store on our phones and present to businesses and venues as proof of inoculation — is chaotic. While some states, like California and New York, accept digital records as proof of vaccination to allow entry into restaurants and other businesses, states like Alabama, Arkansas and Florida have banned their use. That means anyone who plans to travel in the United States this holiday season has to research the policies at the destination. Yet it’s indisputable that a digital card is far more convenient than a physical record. For many, the thought of misplacing a paper record may induce great anxiety, so it’s nice to have our inoculation data on devices that we carry everywhere. And companies like Apple and Google have come up...