Fill 'Er Up

A team of Chinese researchers say they managed to convert actual lunar regolith samples into a source of rocket fuel and oxygen — a potential gamechanger for future space explorers hoping to make use of in-situ resources to fuel up for their return journey.

The researchers found that the lunar soil samples can act as a catalyst to convert carbon dioxide and water from astronauts' bodies and environment into methane and oxygen, as detailed in a paper published in the National Science Review.

"In situ resource utilization of lunar soil to achieve extraterrestrial fuel and oxygen production is vital for the human to carry out Moon exploitation missions," lead author Yujie Xiong said in a new statement about the work. "Considering that there are limited human resources at extraterrestrial sites, we proposed to employ the robotic system to perform the whole electrocatalytic CO2 conversion system setup."

That means we could have a much better shot at carrying out longer duration explorations of the lunar surface in the near future.

Set It, Forget It

According to the paper, which builds on previous research suggesting lunar soil can generate oxygen and fuel, this process can be completed using uncrewed systems, even in the absence of astronauts.

In an experiment, the team used samples from China's Chang'e-5 mission, which landed in Inner Mongolia back in December 2020 — the first lunar soil returned to Earth since 1976.

The Moon soil effectively acted as a catalyst, enabling the electrocatalytic conversion of carbon dioxide into methane and oxygen.

"No significant difference can be observed between the manned and unmanned systems, which further suggests the high possibility of imitating our proposed system in extraterrestrial sites and proves the feasibility of further optimizing catalyst recipes on the Moon," the researchers conclude in their paper.

Liquified

But there's one big hurdle to still overcome: liquifying carbon dioxide is anything but easy given the Moon's frosty atmosphere, as condensing the gas requires a significant amount of heat, as New Scientist reported earlier this year.

Still, it's a tantalizing prospect: an autonomous machine chugging away, pumping out oxygen and fuel for future visitors. But for now, it's not much more than a proof of concept.

READ MORE: Scientists investigate using lunar soils to sustainably supply oxygen and fuels on the moon [Science China Press]

More on lunar soil: Bad News! The Plants Grown in Moon Soil Turned Out Wretched

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Scientists Use Actual Lunar Soil Sample to Create Rocket Fuel

AI-lands in the Stream

Sorry, but not even Dolly Parton is sacred amid the encroachment of AI into art.

Holly Herndon, an avant garde pop musician, has released a cover of Dolly Parton's beloved and frequently covered hit single, "Jolene." Except it's not really Herndon singing, but her digital deepfake twin known as Holly+.

The music video features a 3D avatar of Holly+ frolicking in what looks like a decaying digital world.

And honestly, it's not bad — dare we say, almost kind of good? Herndon's rendition croons with a big, round sound, soaked in reverb and backed by a bouncy, acoustic riff and a chorus of plaintive wailing. And she has a nice voice. Or, well, Holly+ does. Maybe predictably indie-folk, but it's certainly an effective demonstration of AI with a hint of creative flair, or at least effective curation.

Checking the Boxes

But the performance is also a little unsettling. For one, the giant inhales between verses are too long to be real and are almost cajolingly dramatic. The vocals themselves are strangely even and, despite the somber tone affected by the AI, lack Parton's iconic vulnerability.

Overall, it feels like the AI is simply checking the boxes of what makes a good, swooning cover after listening to Jeff Buckley's "Hallelujah" a million times — which, to be fair, is a pretty good starting point.

Still, it'd be remiss to downplay what Herndon has managed to pull off here, and the criticisms mostly reflect the AI's limited capabilities more than her chops as a musician. The AI's seams are likely intentional, if her previous work is anything to go off of.

Either way, if you didn't know you were listening to an AI from the get-go, you'd probably be fooled. And that alone is striking.

The Digital Self

Despite AI's usually ominous implications for art, Herndon views her experiment as a "way for artists to take control of their digital selves," according to a statement on her website.

"Vocal deepfakes are here to stay," Herndon was quoted saying. "A balance needs to be found between protecting artists, and encouraging people to experiment with a new and exciting technology."

Whether Herndon's views are fatalistic or prudently pragmatic remains to be seen. But even if her intentions are meant to be good for artists, it's still worrying that an AI could pull off such a convincing performance.

More on AI music: AI That Generates Music from Prompts Should Probably Scare Musicians

The post This Deepfake AI Singing Dolly Parton's "Jolene" Is Worryingly Good appeared first on Futurism.

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This Deepfake AI Singing Dolly Parton's "Jolene" Is Worryingly Good

Now that Tesla CEO Elon Musk has taken over Twitter, the billionaire has been frantically shuffling through ambitious plans to turn the ailing social media platform into a revenue-driving business.

Case in point, according to internal email obtained by The Washington Post, Musk is plotting for Twitter to charge users to view videos posted by content creators and take a cut of the proceeds — a highly controversial idea that's already been met with internal skepticism.

The team of Twitter engineers has "identified the risk as high" in the email, citing "risks related to copyrighted content, creator/user trust issues, and legal compliance."

In short, Musk is blazing ahead with his infamously ambitious timelines — a "move fast and break things" approach that could signify a tidal change for Twitter's historically sluggish approach to launching new features.

Musk has already made some big structural changes to Twitter, having fired high-up positions at the company and dissolved its board of directors.

The company will also likely be facing mass layoffs, according to The Washington Post.

The new feature detailed in the new email, which is being referred to as "Paywalled Video," allows creators to "enable the paywall once a video has been added to the tweet" and chose from a preset list of prices, ranging from $1 to $10.

"This will also give Twitter a revenue stream to reward content creators," Musk tweeted on Tuesday, adding that "creators need to make a living!"

But whether Twitter users will be willing to pay for stuff that was previously free remains anything but certain.

Musk has already announced that he is planning to charge $8 a month for Twitter users to stay verified, which has been met with derision.

The billionaire CEO is facing an uphill battle. Now that the company is private, he has to pay around $1 billion in annual interest payments, a result from his $44 buyout, according to the WaPo.

Compounding the trouble, Reuters reported last week that Twitter is bleeding some of its most active users.

Meanwhile, Musk's chaotic moves are likely to alienate advertisers, with the Interpublic Group, a massive inter-agency advertising group, recommending that its clients suspend all paid advertising for at least the week.

That doesn't bode well. It's not out of the question that a paywalled video feature may facilitate the monetization of pornographic content, which may end up scaring off advertisers even further — but Twitter's exact intentions for the feature are still unclear.

According to Reuters, around 13 percent of the site's content is currently marked not safe for work (NSFW).

It's part of Musk's attempt to shift revenue away from advertising on the platform. In a tweet last week, he promised advertisers that Twitter wouldn't become a "free-for-all hellscape."

But that hasn't stopped advertisers from already leaving in droves.

All in all, a paywalled video feature could mark a significant departure for Twitter, a platform still primarily known for short snippets of text.

For now, all we can do is watch.

READ MORE: Elon Musk’s Twitter is working on paid-video feature with ‘high’ risk [The Washington Post]

More on Twitter: Elon Musk Pleads With Stephen King to Pay for Blue Checkmark

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Twitter Working on Plan to Charge Users to Watch Videos

Astronomers are puzzled by the strange behavior of certain crooked clusters of stars, which appear to be violating our conventional understanding of gravity.

Massive clusters of stars usually are bound together in spirals at the center of galaxies. Some of these clusters fall under a category astrophysicists call open star clusters, which are created in a relatively short period of time as they ignite in a huge cloud of gas.

During this process, loose stars accumulate in a pair of "tidal tails," one of which is being pulled behind, while the other moves ahead.

"According to Newton’s laws of gravity, it’s a matter of chance in which of the tails a lost star ends up," Jan Pflamm-Altenburg of the University of Bonn in Germany, co-author of a new paper published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, in a statement. "So both tails should contain about the same number of stars."

But some of their recent observations seemingly defy conventional physics.

"However, in our work we were able to prove for the first time that this is not true," Pflamm-Altenburg added. "In the clusters we studied, the front tail always contains significantly more stars nearby to the cluster than the rear tail."

In fact, their new findings are far more in line with a different theory called "Modified Newtonian Dynamics" (MOND).

"Put simply, according to MOND, stars can leave a cluster through two different doors," Pavel Kroupa, Pflamm-Altenburg's colleague at the University of Bonn and lead author, explained in the statement. "One leads to the rear tidal tail, the other to the front."

"However, the first is much narrower than the second — so it’s less likely that a star will leave the cluster through it," he added. "Newton’s theory of gravity, on the other hand, predicts that both doors should be the same width."

The researchers' simulations, taking MOND into consideration, could explain a lot. For one, they suggest that open star clusters survive a much shorter period of time than what is expected from Newton's laws of physics.

"This explains a mystery that has been known for a long time," Kroupa explained. "Namely, star clusters in nearby galaxies seem to be disappearing faster than they should."

But not everybody agrees that Newton's laws should be replaced with MOND, something that could shake the foundations of physics.

"It’s somewhat promising, but it does not provide completely definitive evidence for MOND," University of Saint Andrews research fellow Indranil Banik told New Scientist. "This asymmetry does make more sense in MOND, but in any individual cluster there could be other effects that are causing it — it’s a bit unlikely that would happen in all of them, though."

The researchers are now trying to hone in on an even more accurate picture by stepping up the accuracy of their simulations, which could either support their MOND theory — or conclude that Newton was, in fact, correct the first time around.

More on star clusters: Something Is Ripping Apart the Nearest Star Cluster to Earth

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There's Something Strange About How These Stars Are Moving, Scientists Say

Advertisers are fleeing Twitter in droves now that Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has taken over control.

Ever since officially closing the $44 billion deal, Musk has been busy gutting the company's executive suite and dissolving its board. Senior executives, as well as Twitter's advertising chief Sarah Personette, have departed as well.

After all, Musk has been very clear about his disdain for advertising for years now.

The resulting uncertainty has advertisers spooked — major advertising holding company IPG has already advised clients to pull out temporarily — and the billionaire CEO is in serious damage mode.

Now, Reuters reports, Musk is spending most of this week meeting with advertisers in New York, trying to reassure them that Twitter won't turn into a "free-for-all hellscape."

According to one of Reuters' sources, the meetings have been "very productive" — but plenty of other marketers are far from satisfied.

Advertisers are reportedly grilling Musk over his plans to address the rampant misinformation being spread on the platform, a trend that Musk himself has been actively contributing to since the acquisition.

And if he's succeeding in ameliorating advertisers in private, he's antagonizing them publicly. On Wednesday, Musk posted a poll asking users whether advertisers should support either "freedom of speech," or "political 'correctness'" — a type of false dichotomy that echoes the rhetoric of far-right conspiracy theorists and conservative pundits.

"Those type of provocations are not helping to calm the waters," an unnamed media buyer told Reuters.

Some are going public with the same sentiment.

"Unless Elon hires new leaders committed to keeping this 'free' platform safe from hate speech, it's not a platform brands can/should advertise on," Allie Wassum, global media director for the Nike-owned shoe brand Jordan, wrote in a LinkedIn post.

So far, Musk's plans for the social media platform remain strikingly muddy. In addition to the behind-the-scenes advertising plays, he's also announced that users will have to pay to retain their verification badge, though he's engaged in a comically public negotiation as to what the cost might be.

He's also hinted that previously banned users — former US president Donald Trump chief among them — might eventually get a chance to return, but only once "we have a clear process for doing so, which will take at least a few more weeks."

The move was seen by many as a way to wait out the impending midterm elections. After all, Twitter has played a huge role in disseminating misinformation and swaying elections in the past.

While advertisers are running for the hills, to Musk advertising is clearly only a small part of the picture — even though historically, social giants like Twitter have struggled to diversify their revenue sources much beyond display ads.

Musk nodded to that reality in a vague open letter posted last week.

"Low relevancy ads are spam, but highly relevant ads are actually content!" he wrote in the note, addressed to "Twitter advertisers."

Big picture, Twitter's operations are in free fall right now and Musk has yet to provide advertisers with a cohesive plan to pick up the pieces.

While he's hinted at the creation of a new content moderation council made up of both "people from all viewpoints" and "wildly divergent views," advertisers are clearly going to be thinking twice about continuing their business with Twitter.

With or without advertising, Twitter's finances are reportedly in a very deep hole. The billions of dollars Musk had to borrow to finance his mega acquisition will cost Twitter around $1 billion a year in interest alone.

The company also wasn't anywhere near profitable before Musk took over, losing hundreds of millions of dollars in a single quarter.

Whether that picture will change any time soon is as unclear as ever, especially in the face of a wintry economy.

But, of course, Musk has proved his critics wrong before. So anything's possible.

READ MORE: Advertisers begin to grill Elon Musk over Twitter 'free-for-all' [Reuters]

More on the saga: Elon Musk Pulling Engineers From Tesla Autopilot to Work on Twitter

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Elon Musk Meeting With Advertisers, Begging Them Not to Leave Twitter

Chinese scientists are reportedly planning to send monkeys to its new Tiangong space station for experiments that will involve the animals mating and potentially reproducing, the South China Morning Post reports.

It's a fascinating and potentially controversial experiment that could have major implications for our efforts to colonize space: can mammals, let alone humans, successfully reproduce beyond the Earth?

According to the report, the experiment would take place in the station's largest capsule, called Wentian, inside two biological test cabinets that can be expanded.

After examining the behavior of smaller creatures, "some studies involving mice and macaques will be carried out to see how they grow or even reproduce in space," Zhang Lu, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, said during a speech posted to social media earlier this week, as quoted by the SCMP.

"These experiments will help improve our understanding of an organism’s adaptation to microgravity and other space environments," he added.

Some simpler organisms, including nematodes and Japanese rice fish, have been observed reproducing in space.

But more complex life forms have struggled. In 2014, a Russian experiment to see whether geckos could produce offspring in space failed when all the critters died.

And the failure rate for mammals, so far, has been total. Soviet Union scientists got mice to mate during a space flight in 1979, but none of them gave birth after being returned to Earth.

In other words, getting monkeys to reproduce on board a space station will be anything but easy. For one, just dealing with living creatures in space can pose immense challenges. The astronauts will "need to feed them and deal with the waste," Kehkooi Kee, a professor with the school of medicine at Tsinghua University, told the SCMP.

Then there's the fact that astronauts will have to keep the macaques happy and comfortable, something that experts say will be challenging since long term confinement in the spartan environments of space habitats could cause immense stress for the simians.

And even if astronauts successfully set the mood for the monkeys, the physics of sex in space are predicted to be challenging.

"Firstly, just staying in close contact with each other under zero gravity is hard," Adam Watkins, an associate professor of reproductive physiology at University of Nottingham, wrote in a 2020 open letter highlighted by the SCMP. "Secondly, as astronauts experience lower blood pressure while in space, maintaining erections and arousal are more problematic than here on Earth."

With its new space station in nearly full operation, China isn't shying away from asking some big questions — but whether these experiments will play out as expected is anything but certain.

READ MORE: Chinese scientists plan monkey reproduction experiment in space station [South China Morning Post]

More on sex in space: Scientists Say We Really Have to Talk About Boning in Space

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China Plans to Send Monkeys to Space Station to Have Sex With Each Other

Cat Burglar

Cats are known for not really minding their own business, getting their furry paws on just about anything they can.

And it turns out, this makes them effective vectors for DNA evidence, according to a study published last month in the journal Forensic Science International: Genetic Supplement Series.

Researchers collaborating with the Victoria Police Forensic Services Department in Australia found detectable human DNA in 80 percent of the samples collected from 20 pet cats, with 70 percent of the samples strong enough that they could be linked to a person of interest in a crime scene investigation.

"Collection of human DNA needs to become very important in crime scene investigations, but there is a lack of data on companion animals such as cats and dogs in their relationship to human DNA transfer," said study lead author Heidi Monkman, a forensic scientist at Flinders University, in a statement.

"These companion animals can be highly relevant in assessing the presence and activities of the inhabitants of the household, or any recent visitors to the scene."

Here Kitty

One possible takeaway is that cats — and other companion pets like dogs — could be harboring DNA that could help solve a case.

The bigger issue, though, is that pets could introduce foreign DNA that muddles a crime scene, possibly leading to an innocent person being implicated. A pet could be carrying the DNA of a complete stranger, or it might bring the DNA of its owner into a crime scene that they had nothing to do with.

Monkman's colleague and co-author of the paper, Maria Goray, is an experienced crime scene investigator and an expert in DNA transfer. She believes their findings could help clear up how pets might tamper a crime scene by carrying outside DNA.

"Are these DNA findings a result of a criminal activity or could they have been transferred and deposited at the scene via a pet?" Goray asked.

It's a question worth asking — especially because innocent people have been jailed off botched DNA science far too often.

More on DNA evidence: Cops Upload Image of Suspect Generated From DNA, Then Delete After Mass Criticism

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Cats May Be Tampering With Crime Scenes, Scientists Say

A team of neuroscientists at the University of Wisconsin claim to have found a way to control how high mice can get on a given amount of cocaine.

And don't worry — while that may sound like a particularly frivolous plot concocted by a team of evil scientists, the goal of the research is well-meaning.

The team, led by University of Wisconsin neuroscientist Santiago Cuesta, was investigating how the gut microbiome can influence how mice and humans react to ingesting the drug.

The research, detailed in a new paper published this week in the journal Cell Host & Microbe, sheds light on a vicious feedback loop that could explain cases of substance abuse disorders — and possibly lay the groundwork for future therapeutic treatments.

In a number of experiments on mice, the researchers found that cocaine was linked to the growth of common gut bacteria, which feed on glycine, a chemical that facilitates basic brain functions.

The lower the levels of glycine in the brain, the more the mice reacted to the cocaine, exhibiting abnormal behaviors.

To test the theory, the scientists injected the mice with a genetically modified amino acid which cannot break down glycine. As a result, the behavior of mice returned to normal levels.

In other words, the amino acid could curb cocaine addiction-like behaviors — at least in animal models.

"The gut bacteria are consuming all of the glycine and the levels are decreasing systemically and in the brain," said Vanessa Sperandio, senior author, and microbiologist from the University of Wisconsin, in a statement. "It seems changing glycine overall is impacting the glutamatergic synapses that make the animals more prone to develop addiction."

It's an unorthodox approach to treating addiction, but could be intriguing — if it works in people, that is.

"Usually, for neuroscience behaviors, people are not thinking about controlling the microbiota, and microbiota studies usually don't measure behaviors, but here we show they’re connected," Cuesta added. "Our microbiome can actually modulate psychiatric or brain-related behaviors."

In short, their research could lead to new ways of treating various psychiatric disorders such as substance use by adjusting the gut microbiome and not making changes to the brain chemistry.

"I think the bridging of these communities is what's going to move the field forward, advancing beyond correlations towards causations for the different types of psychiatric disorders," Sperandio argued.

READ MORE: How gut bacteria influence the effects of cocaine in mice [Cell Press]

More on addiction: Study: Magic Mushrooms Helped 83% of People Cut Excessive Drinking

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Scientists Found a Way to Control How High Mice Got on Cocaine

Jeff Bezos' former housekeeper is suing the Amazon founder for workplace discrimination that she says forced her to literally climb out out the window of his house to use the bathroom.

In the suit, filed this week in a Washington state court, the former housekeeper claimed that she and Bezos' other household staff were not provided with legally-mandated eating or restroom breaks, and that because there was no "readily accessible bathroom" for them to use, they had to clamber out a laundry room window to get to one.

In the complaint, lawyers for the ex-housekeeper, who is described as having worked for wealthy families for nearly 20 years, wrote that household staff were initially allowed to use a small bathroom in the security room of Bezos' main house, but "this soon stopped... because it was decided that housekeepers using the bathroom was a breach of security protocol."

The suit also alleges that housekeepers in the billionaire's employ "frequently developed Urinary Tract Infections" that they believed was related to not being able to use the bathroom when they needed to at work.

"There was no breakroom for the housekeepers," the complaint adds. "Even though Plaintiff worked 10, 12, and sometimes 14 hours a day, there was no designated area for her to sit down and rest."

The housekeeper — who, like almost all of her coworkers, is Latino — was allegedly not aware that she was entitled to breaks for lunch or rest, and was only able to have a lunch break when Bezos or his family were not on the premises, the lawsuit alleges.

The Washington Post owner has denied his former housekeeper's claims of discrimination through an attorney.

"We have investigated the claims, and they lack merit," Harry Korrell, a Bezos attorney, told Insider of the suit. "[The former employee] made over six figures annually and was the lead housekeeper."

He added that the former housekeeper "was responsible for her own break and meal times, and there were several bathrooms and breakrooms available to her and other staff."

"The evidence will show that [the former housekeeper] was terminated for performance reasons," he continued. "She initially demanded over $9M, and when the company refused, she decided to file this suit."

As the suit was just filed and may well end in a settlement, it'll likely be a long time, if ever, before we find out what really happened at Bezos' house — but if we do, it'll be a fascinating peek behind the curtain at the home life of one of the world's most powerful and wealthy men.

More on billionaires: Tesla Morale Low As Workers Still Don't Have Desks, Face Increased Attendance Surveillance

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Jeff Bezos' Housekeeper Says She Had to Climb Out the Window to Use the Bathroom

Latest Feud

Another day, another Elon Musk feud on Twitter — except now, he's the owner of the social network, and he's beefing with a sitting member of Congress.

The whole thing started innocently enough earlier this week, when firebrand Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY, and better known by her initials, "AOC") subtweeted the website's new owner.

"Lmao at a billionaire earnestly trying to sell people on the idea that 'free speech' is actually a $8/mo subscription plan," the New York Democratic Socialist tweeted in a post that, upon Futurism's perusal, appeared to load only half the time.

Sweat Equity

Not one to be shown up, Musk later posted a screenshot of an AOC-branded sweatshirt from the congressperson's website, with its $58 price tag circled and an emoji belying the billionaire's alleged affront at the price.

In response, Ocasio-Cortez said she was proud her sweatshirts were made by union labor, and that the proceeds from their sales were going to fund educational support for needy kids. She later dug in further, noting that her account was "conveniently" not working and joking that Musk couldn't buy his way "out of insecurity."

Yo @elonmusk while I have your attention, why should people pay $8 just for their app to get bricked when they say something you don’t like?

This is what my app has looked like ever since my tweet upset you yesterday. What’s good? Doesn’t seem very free speechy to me pic.twitter.com/e3hcZ7T9up

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) November 3, 2022

Bricked

To be clear, any suggestion that Musk personally had anything to do with any Twitter glitches on AOC's part would seem ludicrously petty. But then again, this is a guy who once hired a private detective to investigate a random critic.

Occam's razor, though, suggests that it was probably AOC's mega-viral tweet that broke the site's notoriously dodgy infrastructure. Of course, that's not a ringing endorsement of the site that Musk just acquired for the colossal sum of $44 billion.

More on Twitter: Twitter Working on Plan to Charge Users to Watch Videos

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AOC Says Her Twitter Account Broke After She Made Fun of Elon Musk

Observatory Offline

The Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) Observatory in Chile has been hit with a cyberattack that has taken its website offline and forced it to suspend all observations, authorities there said.

Even email services were limited in the aftermath, illustrating the broad impact of the hack.

Nested high up on a plateau in the Chilean Andes at over 16,000 feet above sea level, ALMA is one of the most powerful and advanced radio telescopes in the world. Notably, ALMA helped take the first image of a black hole in 2019, in a collaborative effort that linked radio observatories worldwide into forming the Event Horizon Telescope.

Thankfully, ALMA's impressive arsenal of 66 high-precision antennas, each nearly 40 feet in diameter, was not compromised, the observatory said, nor was any of the scientific data those instruments collected.

In High Places

What makes ALMA so invaluable is its specialty in observing the light of the cooler substances of the cosmos, namely gas and dust. That makes ALMA a prime candidate for documenting the fascinating formations of planets and stars when they first emerge amidst clouds of gas.

Since going fully operational in 2013, it's become the largest ground-based astronomical project in the world, according to the European Southern Observatory, ALMA's primary operators.

So ALMA going offline is a distressing development, especially to the thousands of astronomers worldwide that rely on its observations and the some 300 experts working onsite. Getting it up and running is obviously a top priority, but the observatory said in a followup tweet that "it is not yet possible to estimate a date for a return to regular activities."

As of now, there's no information available on who the hackers were, or exactly how they conducted the attack. Their motivations, too, remain a mystery.

More on ALMA: Astronomers Think They Found the Youngest Planet in the Galaxy

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Hackers Just Took Down One of the World's Most Advanced Telescopes

Droning On

Someone thinks it's a great idea to fly 500 drones over New York City to create a huge ad in the sky on Thursday evening. Because New Yorkers certainly don't have any historical reason to mistrust unknown aircraft over their skyline, right?

As Gothamist reports, the drone swarm is part of a "surreal takeover of New York City’s skyline" on behalf of — we shit you not — the mobile game Candy Crush.

Fernanda Romano, Candy Crush's chief marketing officer, told Gothamist that the stunt will "turn the sky into the largest screen on the planet" using the small, light-up drones.

Though this is not the first time the Manhattan skyline has been used as ad space — that distinction goes to the National Basketball Association and State Farm, which did a similar stunt this summer during the NBA draft — local lawmakers are ticked off about it nonetheless.

"I think it’s outrageous to be spoiling our city’s skyline for private profit," Brad Hoylman, a state senator that represents Manhattan's West Side in the NY Legislature, told the local news site. "It’s offensive to New Yorkers, to our local laws, to public safety, and to wildlife."

Freak Out

Indeed, as the NYC Audubon Society noted in a tweet, the Candy Crush crapshoot "could disrupt the flight patterns of thousands of birds flying through NYC, leading to collisions with buildings" as they migrate.

Beyond the harm this will do to birds and the annoyance it will undoubtedly cause the famously-grumpy people of New York, this stunt is also going down with very little warning, considering that Gothamist is one of the only news outlets even reporting on it ahead of time.

While most viewers will hopefully be able to figure out what's going on pretty quickly, the concept of seeing unknown aircraft above the skyline is a little too reminiscent of 9/11 for comfort — and if Candy Crush took that into consideration, they haven't let on.

So here's hoping this event shocks and awes Thursday night city-goers in a good way, and not in the way that makes them panic.

More drone warfare: Russia Accused of Pelting Ukraine Capital With "Kamikaze" Drones

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Huge Drone Swarm to Form Giant Advertisement Over NYC Skyline

Spaceplane Buddy

After launching into orbit roughly three months ago, China's top-secret spaceplane has released a mysterious object, which is now circling the Earth behind it, SpaceNews reports.

There's very little we know about China's "reusable experimental spacecraft," except that it launched atop a Long March 2F rocket back in August. We don't know its purpose, what it looks like, or what cargo it was carrying during launch — but it's an intriguing development, nonetheless, for China's reusable launch platform.

Mysterious Object

The object was released between October 24 and October 31, according to tracking data being analyzed by the US Space Force's 18th pace Defense Squadron.

We can only hazard a guess as to what the mysterious object's purpose is. According to Harvard astronomer and space tracker Jonathan McDowell, it "may be a service module, possibly indicating an upcoming deorbit burn."

Based on the size and weight of payloads Long March rockets usually carry, China's mysterious spaceplane is likely similar to the Air Force's X-37B spaceplane, which is similarly shrouded in mystery and currently on its sixth mission.

We also don't know when the Chinese model will make its return back to Earth, but given recent activity at the Lop Nur base in Xinjiang suggests, it may land there in the near future, according to the report.

It's a puzzling new development for China's secretive spacecraft — but it does raise the possibility of a renewed interest in spaceplanes, a potentially affordable and reusable way to launch payloads into orbit.

More on the spaceplane: China Launches Mysterious "Reusable Test" Spacecraft

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Chinese Spaceplane Releases Mystery Object Into Orbit

Spying @ Home

Ever since the COVID-19 pandemic drove a wave of working from home, companies have been relentless in their efforts to digitally police and spy on remote employees by using what's known as "bossware." That's the pejorative name for software that tracks the websites an employee visits, screenshots their computer screens, and even records their faces and voices.

And now, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), an agency of the federal government, is looking to intervene.

"Close, constant surveillance and management through electronic means threaten employees' basic ability to exercise their rights," said NLRB general counsel Jennifer Abruzzo, in a Monday memo. "I plan to urge the Board to apply the Act to protect employees, to the greatest extent possible, from intrusive or abusive electronic monitoring and automated management practices."

Undoing Unions

In particular, Abruzzo is worried about how bossware could infringe on workers' rights to unionize. It's not hard to imagine how such invasive surveillance could be used to bust unionization. Even if the technology isn't explicitly deployed to impede organization efforts, the ominous presence of the surveillance on its own can be a looming deterrent, which Abruzzo argues is illegal.

And now is the perfect moment for the NLRB to step in. The use and abuse of worker surveillance tech in general — not just bossware — has been "growing by the minute," Mark Gaston Pearce, executive director of the Workers' Rights Institute at Georgetown Law School, told CBS.

"Employers are embracing technology because technology helps them run a more efficient business," Gaston explained. "… What comes with that is monitoring a lot of things that employers have no business doing."

Overbearing Overlord

In some ways, surveillance tech like bossware can be worse than having a nosy, actual human boss. Generally speaking, in a physical workplace employees have an understanding of how much privacy they have (unless they work at a place like Amazon or Walmart, that is).

But when bossware spies on you, who knows how much information an employer could be gathering — or even when they're looking in. And if it surveils an employee's personal computer, which more often than not contains plenty of personal information that a boss has no business seeing, that's especially invasive.

Which is why Abruzzo is pushing to require employers to disclose exactly how much they're tracking.

It's a stern message from the NLRB, but at the end of the day, it's just a memo. We'll have to wait and see how enforcing it pans out.

More on surveillance: Casinos to Use Facial Recognition to Keep "Problem Gamblers" Away

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US Gov to Crack Down on "Bossware" That Spies On Employees' Computers

You know that "research" going around saying humans are going to evolve to have hunchbacks and claws because of the way we use our smartphones? Though our posture could certainly use some work, you'll be glad to know that it's just lazy spam intended to juice search engine results.

Let's back up. Today the Daily Mail published a viral story about "how humans may look in the year 3000." Among its predictions: hunched backs, clawed hands, a second eyelid, a thicker skull and a smaller brain.

Sure, that's fascinating! The only problem? The Mail's only source is a post published a year ago by the renowned scientists at... uh... TollFreeForwarding.com, a site that sells, as its name suggests, virtual phone numbers.

If the idea that phone salespeople are purporting to be making predictions about human evolution didn't tip you off, this "research" doesn't seem very scientific at all. Instead, it more closely resembles what it actually is — a blog post written by some poor grunt, intended to get backlinks from sites like the Mail that'll juice TollFreeForwarding's position in search engine results.

To get those delicious backlinks, the top minds at TollFreeForwarding leveraged renders of a "future human" by a 3D model artist. The result of these efforts is "Mindy," a creepy-looking hunchback in black skinny jeans (which is how you can tell she's from a different era).

Grotesque model reveals what humans could look like in the year 3000 due to our reliance on technology

Full story: https://t.co/vQzyMZPNBv pic.twitter.com/vqBuYOBrcg

— Daily Mail Online (@MailOnline) November 3, 2022

"To fully realize the impact everyday tech has on us, we sourced scientific research and expert opinion on the subject," the TollFreeForwarding post reads, "before working with a 3D designer to create a future human whose body has physically changed due to consistent use of smartphones, laptops, and other tech."

Its sources, though, are dubious. Its authority on spinal development, for instance, is a "health and wellness expert" at a site that sells massage lotion. His highest academic achievement? A business degree.

We could go on and on about TollFreeForwarding's dismal sourcing — some of which looks suspiciously like even more SEO spam for entirely different clients — but you get the idea.

It's probably not surprising that the this gambit for clicks took off among dingbats on Twitter. What is somewhat disappointing is that it ended up on StudyFinds, a generally reliable blog about academic research. This time, though, for inscrutable reasons it treated this egregious SEO spam as a legitimate scientific study.

The site's readers, though, were quick to call it out, leading to a comically enormous editor's note appended to the story.

"Our content is intended to stir debate and conversation, and we always encourage our readers to discuss why or why not they agree with the findings," it reads in part. "If you heavily disagree with a report — please debunk to your delight in the comments below."

You heard them! Get debunking, people.

More conspiracy theories: If You Think Joe Rogan Is Credible, This Bizarre Clip of Him Yelling at a Scientist Will Probably Change Your Mind

The post That "Research" About How Smartphones Are Causing Deformed Human Bodies Is SEO Spam, You Idiots appeared first on Futurism.

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That "Research" About How Smartphones Are Causing Deformed Human Bodies Is SEO Spam, You Idiots

It means we have environmental sampling data that can place the spillover event precisely in the southwestern corner of the Huanan market, and genetic testing of virus samples from the first patients to give us a date: around November 18, 2019, for the introduction of Lineage B, with Lineage A following a week or so later. After that, though, the trail runs cold.

The researchers know which animals were being sold in the market in late 2019, and which ones were susceptible to coronaviruses, but they dont have the smoking gun. They dont have samples from animals that had the virus. Thats what theyd like to have, and theyd like to be able to trace those animals back to the farms from which they came and see whether people in those farms had been exposed to the virus or viruses, says Jonathan Stoye, a virologist at the Francis Crick Institute in the UK, who was not involved in the research.

Thats unlikely to be possible. There are theories on how infected animals may have reached the market: Wuhan is in Hubei province, and to the west of the region there are caves that are home to horseshoe bats, close to farms that once housed millions of raccoon dogs and civets. The most likely course of events is something like: A bat infected with a novel coronavirus flies over a farm where animals are being reared for meat. It poops, and viral particles infect one of the animals below, sparking an unseen wave of infections at the farm. Maybe the virus crosses over to the farmworkers but fizzles out because theres not enough population density to sustain a human epidemic. Days or weeks later, in November 2019, some of the infected animals are shipped to the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, where theyre sold at stalls in the southwestern corner. The virus crosses over to humans at least eight times, maybe more. The majority of those infections fizzle out without spreading to anyone else, but two take hold, start to spread. Not long after that, dozens of people in the area start to come down with a mysterious viral pneumonia.

But the animal or animals that carried coronavirus are almost certainly long dead: shipped off and sold for meat, or killed in one of the mass culls that took place in early 2020 as the Chinese authorities clamped down on the live animal trade. It is very possible that we will never have that sample, that we may have missed our opportunity, says Worobey.

But there are still leads to follow: tracing the supply chains for the stalls in the southwestern corner of Huanan market and finding out which farms supplied them; poring over the paperwork from the culls to find out where the animals from that farm were buried; exhuming the animals and sequencing their DNA to look for remnants of a coronavirus that looks almost identical to SARS-CoV-2.

It will need patient work and international cooperation in a difficult environmentbut it could be the only way to stop the next pandemic. These things are not impossible, Worobey says. So lets look at all the options. Lets connect every single possible dot that we can.

Image updated on 8/4/22 at 11:17AM PST to include the Wuhan Huanan Wholesale Seafood Market.

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The Origins of Covid-19 Are More Complicated Than Once Thought - WIRED

By the time a cell senses that its been infected by a virus, it generally knows it is doomed. Soon, it will be busted up by the bodys immunological patrol or detonated by the invader itself. So the moribund cell plays its trump card: It bleats out microscopic shrieks that danger is nigh.

These intercellular messages, ferried about by molecules called interferons, serve as a warning signal to nearby cellsYou are about to be infected; its time for you to set up an antiviral state, says Juliet Morrison, an immunologist at UC Riverside. Recipient cells start battening down the hatches, switching on hundreds of genes that help them pump out suites of defensive proteins. Strong, punchy interferon responses are essential to early viral control, acting as a first line of defense that comes online within minutes or hours, says Mario Santiago, an immunologist at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. At their best, interferons can contain the infection so quickly that the rest of the immune system hardly needs to get involved.

Viruses, of course, arent content to let that happen. Pretty much all of them, SARS-CoV-2 included, are darn good at impairing interferon signaling, or finding their way around the virus-blocking shields that cells raise after heeding those molecular calls. And as new coronavirus variants arise, they may be steadily improving their ability to resist interferons punchmaking it easier, perhaps, for the microbes to spread within and between bodies, or spark more serious disease.

Read: How long can the coronavirus keep reinfecting us?

This development may sound kind of familiar: As the coronavirus has evolved, one of its main moves has been to repeatedly dodge the antibodies that vaccines and past infections raise. But theres a key difference. Although antibodies are powerful, most are able to recognize and latch onto only a super-specific sliver of a single pathogens physique. Interferons, meanwhile, are the ultimate generalists, a set of catch-all burglar alarms. Even if the body has never seen a particular pathogen before and no relevant antibodies are present, cells will make interferons as soon as they realize a virus is aroundany and all viruses, says Eleanor Fish, an immunologist at the University of Toronto. It doesnt matter what the virus is, it doesnt matter where it comes in.

Once warned, interferon-ized cells leap into action. They will reinforce their exteriors; sharpen molecular scissors that can hack the microbe to bits, should it get inside; and conjure up sticky substances that can stop the viruss progeny from exiting. All that buys the immune system time to rouse, again with interferons help, more precise fighters, such as B cells and T cells.

But this system isnt foolproof. Some viruses will cloak their innards from cellular sensors, so the relevant alarm wires never get tripped. Others destroy the gears that get the interferon system cranking, so the warning signals never get sent. Particularly resilient viruses may not even mind if interferon messages go out, because theyre able to steel themselves against the many defenses that the molecules marshal in other cells. Strategies such as these are pretty much ubiquitous because theyre so crucial to pathogen success. I defy you to identify any virus that doesnt have in its genome factors to block the interferon response, Fish told me.

This, from our perspective, is not ideal. Derail these early responses, and theres a domino effect, says Vineet Menachery, a coronavirologist at the University of Texas Medical Branch. More cells get infected; antibody and T-cell responses hang back, even as viral particles continue to spread. Eventually, the body may get wise and try to catch up. But by then, it may be too late. The brunt of viral replication might be over, leaving the immune frenzy to misdirect much of its havoc onto our own tissues instead.

Interferons, then, can make or break a hosts fate. Researchers have found that people whose interferons are weak or laggy after catching the coronavirus are far more likely to get very seriously sick. Others experience similar problems when their immune system churns out misguided antibodies that attack and destroy interferons as they try to ferry messages among cells. Interferons also play a very dramatic role in counteracting the viruses that cause dengue and yellow fever. Those pathogens are rapidly wrangled by rodent interferons and never make those animals sick, Morrison told me. In people, though, the microbes have cooked up ways to muffle the moleculesa big reason they cause such debilitating and deadly disease.

Read: Could genetics be the key to never getting the coronavirus?

Coronaviruses in general are pros at interferon sabotage. Among the most powerful is MERS, which just shuts down everything in the interferon assembly line, says Susan Weiss, a coronavirologist at the University of Pennsylvania. That essentially ensures that almost no interferons are released, even when gobs of virus are roiling about, a dismantling of defenses that likely contributes to MERS substantial fatality rate. Weiss doesnt think SARS-CoV-2 is likely to copy its cousin in that respect anytime soon. The virus does have some ability to gum up interferon production, but it would take a lot more, she told me, to silence the system as MERS has.

Still, SARS-CoV-2 seems to be taking its own small, tentative steps toward interferon censorship. For months, several groups of researchers, CU Anschutzs Santiago among them, have been studying how well the virus can invade and replicate inside of cells that have been exposed to interferons. Recent variants such as Delta and Omicron, theyve found, seem to be better at infiltrating those reinforced cells compared with some versions that preceded thema hint that this resistance might be helping new iterations of the virus sweep the globe and cause repeated rounds of disease.

The bump in SARS-CoV-2s resilience doesnt appear to be massivemore at the margins of enhancing infective success, Menachery told me. Antibody evasion, for instance, might be playing the more dominant role in helping the virus spread and sicken more people. Still, the pattern thats unfolding raises a discomfiting question, Santiago told me. Interferons potency against the virus already seems to be getting slowly but surely undermined; what if at some point in the future, the virus becomes a lot more resistant? The challenge of managing COVID, whether through vaccines or antivirals, might disproportionately balloon. And unlike antibody evasion, with interferon resistance, theres not anything we can do to vaccinate against this, Menachery told me.

Read: The BA.5 wave is what COVID normal looks like

Still, theres probably a ceiling to how interferon-resistant the coronavirus can become. Eventually, repeated attempts to disarm our alarm systems may come at a cost to the viruss infective potential, or the speed at which it spreads, Morrison told me. Interferons are also extremely diverse, and have redundancies among them. Should one flavor get flummoxed by a pathogen, another would likely help fill in the gaps.

Many researchers, such as Fish, are also testing interferon-based treatments in people who have very recently been infected by or exposed to the coronavirus. Several of these trials have produced mixed or disappointing results. Even so, I think theres every reason to think that interferons are still going to be effective in some form, once scientists nail the timing, recipe, and dose, says Eric Poeschla, Santiagos collaborator at CU Anschutz. The molecules are, after all, natures DIY antivirals.

For a gamble like that to pay off, though, viral evolutionand thus, viral transmissionwill need to be kept in some check. SARS-CoV-2 has immense wiggle room in its genome; giving it less practice at infecting us is one of the most straightforward ways to halt its self-improvement kick. Every replication cycle is an opportunity, Menachery told me, for the virus to further fine-tune its MO.

Read more:

Another Way the Coronavirus Is Outsmarting Us - The Atlantic

Researchers estimated the prevalence of long covid using survey data from the Netherlands in the early stages of the pandemic

By Jason Arunn Murugesu

A man recovering from covid-19 at a hospital in The Hague, the Netherlands, in April 2020

REMKO DE WAAL/ANP/AFP via Getty Images

One in 8 adults who had a covid-19 infection during the early stages of the pandemic developed long covid symptoms, according to survey data from the Netherlands.

Long covid is defined by the World Health Organization (WHO) as an illness that usually occurs within three months from the onset of covid-19, with symptoms that last for at least two months. These cannot be explained by an alternative diagnosis and can include chest pain, loss of smell and painful muscles.

The symptoms have many causes, so it is hard to determine how many people experience these long-term effects resulting from covid-19 infection.

Aranka Ballering at the University of Groningen and her colleagues surveyed more than 76,000 adults between 31 March 2020 and 2 August 2021 in Drenthe, Friesland and Groningen in the north of the Netherlands.

The researchers initially surveyed people weekly about their health. They then surveyed participants every two weeks from June 2020 and then just once a month from August 2020.

During the study period, 4251 people were diagnosed with covid-19 for the first time. The team matched each of these people to two others of the same age and sex who didnt get infected.

By comparing the people who had covid-19 with the matched controls on the same dates, the researchers could better determine which symptoms experienced three to five months after infection were caused by long covid.

They defined long covid as a condition in which at least one symptom increased to moderate severity three to five months after a person developed covid-19. According to this definition, 1 in 8 people in the study who got covid-19 developed long covid. Loss of smell and taste, painful muscles and general tiredness were the most prevalent long covid symptoms.

The team also found that it took longer for long covid symptom severity to return to baseline levels in women compared with men. Some studies suggest that women face greater barriers to healthcare and so seek out help for symptoms later, and this may affect the severity of long covid, says Ballering.

The researchers couldnt say whether these symptoms lasted beyond five months, nor could they say how badly they interfered with daily life.

The ancestral and alpha SARS-CoV-2 variants were most prevalent during the study period, so the findings may not extend to people infected with other variants. The study also doesnt show what effect vaccines may have had on long covid. Just 10 per cent of the participants had been fully vaccinated by the end of the study, as most of the data was collected before vaccines were available.

About 98 per cent of those studied were white and they were all in the Netherlands, so these results may not extend to other ethnic and national groups. It is also unclear how long covid risk changes when people are infected with the virus multiple times, says Ballering.

I think these figures are an underestimate, says Danny Altmann at Imperial College London. What I can say from my research is that I think were undercounting long covid, not overcounting it.

He says this study highlights the gaps in our knowledge regarding long covid. What were not good at yet is working out the nuances of long covid after different variants, such as delta.

Journal reference: The Lancet, DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(22)01214-4

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Long covid: One in 8 have symptoms months after coronavirus infection - New Scientist

Since early July, Virginias COVID-19 case counts have remained relatively stable, with an average of around 3,000 new infections reported every day. But over the same time period, hospitalizations have risen, with more than 800 inpatients as of Wednesday, according to data from the Virginia Hospital and Healthcare Association.

The discrepancy, experts say, can be chalked up to data limitations. In a recent report, researchers with the University of Virginias Biocomplexity Institute wrote that the states current case rates are similar to those seen during last falls delta wave, which threatened to overwhelm local hospital systems. Detecting those cases, however, has become much more challenging.

In some ways, we might be revisiting early stages of the pandemic where all were observing is severe COVID, said Bryan Lewis, a computational epidemiologist on the Biocomplexity Institutes research team. People who end up going to the hospital are the only ones who end up getting confirmed.

Thats largely because testing, once in extremely limited supply, has become easily accessible to most Virginians. Rather than seeking out more sensitive PCR tests from pharmacies and local health department events, most patients with symptoms are relying on at-home antigen tests, whose results typically arent reported back to the Virginia Department of Health. And as pandemic fatigue sets in for more and more people, many arent testing at all, said Dr. Akira Shishido, an infectious disease specialist for VCU Health.

Like other public health experts, he said the lack of clarity around rising case rates has made it more challenging to offer guidance as the pandemic approaches its third year. Currently, the Biocomplexity Institute estimates that there are roughly 16 coronavirus infections for every reported case in Virginia, given the rise of highly infectious subvariants and the decline in test results reported to VDH. If thats true, it would put the states current infection rate closer to levels seen during the winter omicron surge.

Unlike this past winter, though, most Virginians arent taking the same health precautions. The states COVID-19 state of emergency expired last summer along with previous requirements for indoor masking and social distancing in public spaces. And after Gov. Glenn Youngkins successful push to repeal mandatory masking policies in schools, students and parents are expecting a mixed approach to face coverings at the start of the year. With community transmission already high in 55 of the states 133 localities and cases rising in most local health districts some providers say theyre worried about the coming fall and winter.

We still have circulating COVID, and I think well still see some people being admitted with severe COVID pneumonia, said Dr. Kyle Enfield, the medical director of UVA Healths medical intensive care unit. People are making the choice to not get vaccinated and not wear masks. And I think that will be compounded by a larger spread of other respiratory viruses that seemed to have decreased back when masks and social distancing were common.

Thats not to say there isnt a bright side to the current stage of the pandemic. Enfield emphasized that if hospitals do feel strained over the colder months, it will likely be due to a combination of cases that includes flu and possibly even monkeypox, an emerging virus thats spreading in Virginia and across the country. And theres evidence that omicron subvariants, while highly transmissible, are causing less severe disease, bolstered by growing population immunity.

Even as COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations rise across the state, Lewis pointed out that ICU admissions have remained relatively low, indicating that fewer people are developing severe illness from the virus. COVID-19 deaths have also sharply declined since mid-January, and theres evidence that vaccines and previous infections convey lasting protection against the worst outcomes.

At this point, so many Virginians have some degree of immunity against COVID-19 that its unlikely the state will experience the same rates of hospitalizations and deaths that occurred during last winters omicron surge, according to Lewis. Still, he said its unnerving to see hundreds of patients admitted for the virus every week.

Its pretty incredible were still generating a fair number of hospitalizations, Lewis added. Yeah, its not as horrible as the catastrophes that have happened a couple of times during this pandemic, but you just dont see that with other infectious agents, even during the worst flu seasons.

Thats why public health experts are still encouraging caution, especially in anticipation of cooler weather and more indoor gatherings. Shishido said the chance of reinfection is substantial even for those who have been vaccinated, boosted and previously infected with COVID, largely thanks to the antibody-evading capabilities of omicron subvariants.

Luckily, he said, vaccines still generate a type of protection known as cell-mediated immunity, which provides strong protection against hospitalization and death even in the case of breakthrough infections. But while severe outcomes are unlikely for immunized Virginians, Lewis cautioned theres limited information on the effect of repeated COVID-19 infections or long-lasting symptoms.

Long COVID is something we dont fully understand and is messing people up pretty badly, he said. Were finding a lot of studies out there where a fair portion of people were talking 20 or 30% of people, even young people were still reporting symptoms like shortness of breath, the loss of taste and smell, even six to nine months out.

Enfield said that unvaccinated and partially vaccinated Virginians are still driving hospital admissions at UVA, a trend borne out by national data (the Virginia Department of Health no longer reports cases and deaths by vaccination status). But he also warned that high community transmission increases the risk of spreading COVID-19 to more vulnerable populations including immunocompromised and elderly patients, who are still at risk of worse outcomes even if theyre fully vaccinated.

High infection rates also mean the virus will continue to mutate, and public health experts still worry an even more dangerous variant could emerge in the future. Thats unlikely, according to Shishido, given that the most successful viruses are typically highly infectious without killing their hosts. But like other doctors, he encouraged Virginians to avoid unnecessary risks.

The hard thing is, the public health measures we were pushing a year ago are the same things we want people to be doing now.

Dr. Kyle Enfield, medical director of UVA Healths medical intensive care unit

For Shishido, that means masking indoors and making use of COVID-19 therapies including Paxlovid, an antiviral pill for high-risk patients, and Evusheld, an experimental medication that can lower the risk of infection for immunocompromised patients. Enfield said people should continue to limit the size and number of social gatherings they attend, particularly if theyre regularly in contact with more vulnerable groups.

He also encouraged anyone with COVID-19 symptoms to seek confirmatory PCR testing if their antigen test results are negative given the lower sensitivity of most at-home tests. And like Shishido and Lewis, Enfield strongly encouraged Virginians to take advantage of upcoming COVID-19 boosters, which will be reformulated to offer better protection against omicron subvariants.

We know people can get reinfected with COVID even after a natural infection, and that immunity wanes over time and might not be as good as some of the vaccines, he said. So I would stress that vaccines are still in everyones best interest.

The hard thing is, the public health measures we were pushing a year ago are the same things we want people to be doing now, Enfield added. I know were at a point where people want to fully relax, but were really just not at a point where thats the right thing to do.

The rest is here:

Data limitations are making it harder to detect when COVID-19 is surging in Virginia - Virginia Mercury

Pregnancy is a really exciting time, to be sure. But lets be real: It can also be stressful especially during this era of COVID-19.

Pregnant people are one of several groups at a higher risk of becoming very ill from COVID-19. COVID-19 can also lead to serious pregnancy complications as well.

The good news is that the COVID-19 vaccine can protect against severe illness and complications. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends that anyone who is pregnant, breastfeeding, or plans to become pregnant get a COVID-19 vaccine and booster.

Getting vaccinated during pregnancy may feel intimidating, but were here to help. Keep reading as we go over eight facts about the COVID-19 vaccine that are backed by research.

According to the CDC, if youre pregnant, you have a higher risk of serious illness from COVID-19. This can include things like:

Thats not all, though: COVID-19 can also have serious consequences for your pregnancy. Thats because if you get COVID-19 while pregnant, you have a higher risk of pregnancy complications.

A March 2022 review of research notes that various studies have found that getting COVID-19 while pregnant is associated with an increased risk of:

Vaccination can go a long way in helping prevent these complications.

Lets get a big concern out of the way next: COVID-19 vaccines are indeed safe and effective during pregnancy.

Since the COVID-19 vaccines have been available, many studies have supported this. Were not going to cover each one of them here (that would take all day), but lets explore what some of them say.

Researchers in a 2021 study looked at the effectiveness of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine in pregnant women. They compared 7,530 vaccinated pregnant women and 7,530 unvaccinated pregnant women.

Overall, researchers found vaccinated women had a significantly lower risk of contracting the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 than their unvaccinated counterparts.

Further, none of the vaccinated women reported serious side effects from vaccination. The most common side effects were similar to those seen in the general population and included:

Vaccines work by introducing your immune system to a germ. Your immune system crafts a response, which includes antibodies, to the vaccine. Your immune system can then call upon this response to protect you from the actual germ in the future.

Another bit of good news is that pregnant people appear to make the same immune response to COVID-19 vaccination as nonpregnant people.

In a 2021 study, researchers compared immune responses in 131 pregnant, lactating, or nonpregnant women. They found the levels of antibodies made in response to vaccination were similar between all three groups. Side effects were also similar in all groups.

And theres more: Antibody levels made in response to vaccination during pregnancy were higher than the antibodies made from infection during pregnancy.

Despite the safety and effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccine during pregnancy, vaccination in this group is still low compared with the general population.

For example, a January 2022 study in Scotland found that in October 2021, only 32.3% of women giving birth had received two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine, compared with 77.4% of the total female population.

A 2021 study found that out of a group of 1,328 pregnant women, less than one-third got the COVID-19 vaccine when it was offered to them. Vaccinated women still had similar pregnancy outcomes to those who were not vaccinated.

Raising vaccine coverage is vital for preventing severe illness and complications during pregnancy. However, concerns about the vaccine and its potential effects have made people hesitant. Lets explore some of these concerns next.

One concern about the COVID-19 vaccine is whether it increases the risk of miscarriage. Research says this isnt the case.

A 2021 research letter outlines a study on this topic. For the study, researchers used the Vaccine Safety Datalink database to analyze COVID-19 vaccines and miscarriage rates. Data from about 3% of the U.S. population is included in this database.

Researchers found 105,446 unique pregnancies, 92,286 of which were ongoing and 13,160 of which resulted in miscarriage. All three COVID-19 vaccines used in the United States were represented within this large group.

Researchers wanted to see whether COVID-19 vaccines were linked with miscarriage. They were specifically looking to see whether people who had a miscarriage were more likely to have received a COVID-19 vaccine in the past 28 days.

This isnt what they found. Instead, researchers saw that, compared with those with ongoing pregnancies, women who had a miscarriage were not more likely to have received a COVID-19 vaccine in the previous 28 days.

COVID-19 vaccination is also not associated with birth and delivery complications.

Researchers in a March 2022 study reviewed data from a population-based survey. Among a group of 97,590 pregnant people, 22,660 (23%) had gotten at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine during their pregnancy.

Researchers compared people who were vaccinated during their pregnancy to those who got vaccinated after their pregnancy. They found that vaccination during pregnancy did not lead to a significantly increased risk of:

Another large March 2022 study also supports these findings. This study used data from 157,521 deliveries of single babies (no twins, triplets, etc.) in Sweden and Norway.

Within this group, 28,506 pregnancies (18%) included COVID-19 vaccination at some point during pregnancy. Compared with pregnancies in which no COVID-19 vaccine was given, researchers found that among the pregnancies with vaccination, there was no increased risk of:

If youre not yet pregnant but plan to be in the near future, you may wonder whether the COVID-19 vaccine could affect your fertility. According to the CDC, theres currently no evidence that COVID-19 vaccines cause fertility issues.

Research supports this statement. A January 2022 study included 2,126 self-identified female participants ages 21 through 45 who were trying to get pregnant. Participants completed surveys every 8 weeks about:

After analyzing the data, researchers concluded that COVID-19 vaccination was not associated with long-term decreased fertility in either females or males.

But researchers did find that getting COVID-19 itself was associated with a potential temporary decline in male fertility for about 60 days.

Now that weve debunked the main concerns about COVID-19 vaccination during pregnancy, lets take a look at some of the benefits that vaccination may give your baby.

Antibodies that your body makes after vaccination can be passed to your baby through the placenta. These antibodies can go on to protect them when theyre particularly vulnerable to germs in the months after birth.

A June 2022 study included 21,643 babies, 9,739 (45%) of whom were born to mothers who had gotten their second or third dose of a COVID-19 vaccine during pregnancy.

Researchers found these babies had a lower risk of having a positive COVID-19 test within 4 months of birth. This finding persisted during both the Delta and Omicron coronavirus variant waves, although protection was stronger against Delta.

A February 2022 study included 379 hospitalized babies; 176 of them had COVID-19 and the other 203 babies were hospitalized for other reasons.

Researchers wanted to see how effective maternal vaccination was at preventing COVID-19 hospitalization of a baby within their first 6 months of life. Using this parameter, researchers found that vaccine effectiveness was:

How long does this protection last, though? Researchers aimed to find this out.

According to a February 2022 research letter, experts compared antibody levels in babies whose mothers had either been vaccinated against COVID-19 during pregnancy or who had actually had COVID-19 during pregnancy.

Overall, researchers found that antibody levels in babies whose mothers had been vaccinated against COVID-19 while pregnant stuck around for longer.

Six months after birth, 57% of babies born to vaccinated mothers still had detectable antibodies. Only 8% of babies whose mothers had COVID-19 during pregnancy had detectable antibodies.

Its known that breastfeeding parents pass antibodies to their babies through breast milk. These antibodies can help protect a baby from various germs.

Antibodies made in response to COVID-19 vaccination have been detected in breast milk. Lets look at a research letter about a 2021 study that discussed this.

The study included 84 breastfeeding mothers who provided 504 breast milk samples over the course of the study. After getting the first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, participants were followed up weekly for 6 weeks.

Researchers looked for two types of antibodies to COVID-19 called IgA and IgG. IgA is found earlier in the immune response. IgG appears later.

They found the amount of breast milk samples with IgA rose early after vaccination. They peaked at week 4 (1 week after the second dose) before beginning to drop at week 6.

Few breast milk samples contained IgG after the first vaccine dose. However, by weeks 4 and 6, more than 90% of breast milk samples had detectable IgG.

This all sounds great, right? There are some caveats: The number of participants was small, and its unknown how long these antibodies last or the strength of protection they provide to a baby. More research will help find these things out, though.

The COVID-19 vaccine is safe and effective during pregnancy. Its vital for preventing serious illness and pregnancy complications from COVID-19.

The COVID-19 vaccine has not been associated with an increased risk of infertility, miscarriage, or other pregnancy and delivery complications.

In fact, vaccinated pregnant people can pass antibodies to their baby both through the placenta and breast milk. These antibodies can continue to protect babies after theyre born.

The COVID-19 vaccine is recommended for all people who are pregnant, breastfeeding, or plan to get pregnant. If you ever have questions or concerns about getting the COVID-19 vaccine, be sure to raise them with your doctor or another healthcare professional.

Excerpt from:

8 Facts You Need to Know About the COVID-19 Vaccine & Pregnancy - Healthline