Seed, Star, Song is a little collection of nature poems to soothe all you hearts yearning for the outdoors and a tender place to land (so…quite a few of us rn). This little microchap contains forests, constellations, birds, and an undisclosed number of beetles.
Ghost City Press chapbooks are free (that’s right folks, free poetry for your hungry eyes) BUT, and this is a sizable BUT, if you can please consider making a donation as well. The button on that page funnels 100% of the proceeds to the writer. Trust me when I say with the exchange rate what it is, even a little token can go a long way.
(roughly one in ten covid infections is going to get long covid! not one in ten people, one in ten infections. which is gonna get fun as people continue to catch it again and again. and long covid can trigger me/CFS and pots in people who’ve never had it before. apparently it can also trigger diabetes as well as heart problems, as per that link.)
[img description] screenshot of a twitter post by saradayarts
“Learning to live with c*vid” could have meant: -medicare/medicad expansion -permanent roles that are hybrid/remote -massive overhaul of ventilation systems in public buildings & businesses -permanent free testing sites -expansion of employee benefits and PTO
What “learning to live with c*vid” actually meant: -pretend it’s over -obscure & erase public health data -make it harder for people to come to responsible conclusions -remove public safety nets, stimulus payments -mass death
The proof-of-concept device was created by researchers from the McKelvey School of Engineering and the School of Medicine at Washington University…
The results are contained in a July 10 publication in Nature Communications that provides details about how the technology works.
The device holds promise as a breakthrough that - when commercially available - could be used in hospitals and health care facilities, schools, congregate living quarters, and other public places to help detect not only the SARS-CoV-2 virus, but other respiratory virus aerosol such as influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) as well.
“There is nothing at the moment that tells us how safe a room is,” Cirrito said, in the university’s news release. “If you are in a room with 100 people, you don’t want to find out five days later whether you could be sick or not. The idea with this device is that you can know essentially in real time, or every 5 minutes, if there is a live virus in the air.”
How It Works
The team combined expertise in biosensing with knowhow in designing instruments that measure the toxicity of air. The resulting device is an air sampler that operates based on what’s called “wet cyclone technology.” Air is sucked into the sampler at very high speeds and is then mixed centrifugally with a fluid containing a nanobody that recognizes the spike protein from the SARS-CoV-2 virus. That fluid, which lines the walls of the sampler, creates a surface vortex that traps the virus aerosols. The wet cyclone sampler has a pump that collects the fluid and sends it to the biosensor for detection of the virus using electrochemistry.
The success of the instrument is linked to the extremely high velocity it generates - the monitor has a flow rate of about 1,000 liters per minute - allowing it to sample a much larger volume of air over a 5-minute collection period than what is possible with currently available commercial samplers. It’s also compact - about one foot wide and 10 inches tall - and lights up when a virus is detected, alerting users to increase airflow or circulation in the room.
Testing the Monitor
To test the monitor, the team placed it in the apartments of two Covid-positive patients. The real-time air samples from the bedrooms were then compared with air samples collected from a virus-free control room. The device detected the RNA of the virus in the air samples from the bedrooms but did not detect any in the control air samples.
In laboratory experiments that aerosolized SARS-CoV-2 into a room-sized chamber, the wet cyclone and biosensor were able to detect varying levels of airborne virus concentrations after only a few minutes of sampling, according to the study.
“We are starting with SARS-CoV-2, but there are plans to also measure influenza, RSV, rhinovirus and other top pathogens that routinely infect people,” Cirrito said. “In a hospital setting, the monitor could be used to measure for staph or strep, which cause all kinds of complications for patients. This could really have a major impact on people’s health.”
The Washington University team is now working to commercialize the air quality monitor.”
-via Forbes, July 11, 2023
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Holy shit. I know it’s still early in the technology and more testing will inevitably be needed but holy shit.
Literally, if it bears out, this could revolutionize medicine. And maybe let immunocompromised people fucking go places again
Also, for those who don’t know, Nature Communications is a very prestigious scientific journal that focuses on Pretty Big Deal research. Their review process is incredibly rigorous. This is an absolutely HUGE credibility boost to this research and prototype
Been trying to think of a way to explain to American audiences why the 9 dash line thing is so important to SEAsians and why it’s justifiable to ban the Barbie movie for it, but the closest explanation I can give is this: imagine if this painting was in the Barbie movie with no explanation and we were all just supposed to accept it without comment
I don’t care if people watch the movie, I know everyone was excited for it, me included. But I’d hope in the very least we can tell people why the Vietnam ban was 100% justified. 9 dash line maps are a distillation of over a decade of Chinese imperialist oppression against SEAsian countries. Most of the world doesn’t care, but that’s how it is.
At least have this as a learning experience.
Basically in 2015 international courts ruled against China taking up the majority of the West Philippine / South China sea, since it was maritime territory shared between the different countries. China then ignored the ruling, destroyed the local ecosystem to build an artificial military island, and has been policing it heavily ever since.
It’s like if someone moved into your shared kitchen and threatened to shoot you for trying to get food.
Since then Vietnam has had a hard line stance against them and the Philippines has had to rely on American military power to match threat for threat. We’d love to not have either of these superpower imperialist fucks looming over us but that’s not the world we live in.
Anyway. That’s why. If they remove it from the movie, that’ll be nice, but it’s a bigger statement than just a picture.
Being raised by areligious jews with 0 exposure to christianity outside pop culture is so fun. One time I asked my ex-catholic friend why a picture of jesus had a bristle crown and she looked at me like I was insane. One time I heard someone mention the “lance of longinus” and responded, word for word, “Like from Evangelion?” One time during a history lesson my professor described an important monk and scholar as “Dominican” and I spent the rest of class super confused and hung up on it because I was very sure that the Dominican Republic didn’t meaningfully exist as an entity back then, maybe she meant he was a native Taino or something but that’s a weird way to say that and I’m pretty sure this was pre- European contact? Really fucks people up when they realize I genuinely have no idea.
This but it’s my partner taking an art history class in college and the professor looking at them like they grew a second head when they answered “What came out of Jesus’ wound when he was stabbed on the cross” with “…Blood?”
Additions that prove my point by mystifying me because what on earth would come out of a nail wound besides blood. Are you telling me it was something besides blood. What was jesus full of that wasn’t blood. You guys are scaring me
Apparently it was water?? I guess he was also stabbed on top of being crucified (which feels like overkill imo) and water came out, which was a huge deal in medieval symbolism and also to my medieval poetry professor, who was genuinely shocked and upset that I didn’t know. This man fully docked me points because I, a whole ass Jew, hadn’t somehow heard about the secret waterballoon Jesus lore that I guess everyone is supposed to like… intuit
On the plus side, it does lead to some absolutely wild medieval Jesus art of angels tapping him like a fucking keg
i think that we as people need to get more pissed at nintendo for making nintendo online a subscription service like actually they should go fuck themselves for that
yeah what the fuck . i already paid fucking 60 bucks for splatoon can i just play it
I LITERALLY MADE THIS POST ABOUT SPLATOON i bought it months ago but when i realized i had to pay for online for multiplayer i was like. oh. okay. hasnt touched the game since
The best part is you aren’t actually paying for anything. Nintendo doesn’t have actual servers, all their multiplayer games run on peer-to-peer connection. It’s not even covering server costs or anything, it’s an empty charge.
I guarantee you the studios are going through every outspoken actor’s files looking for something, anything to discredit them. Ron Perlman is probably undergoing the deepest background check of his life right now, thanks to Bob Iger.
So brace yourself to hear some unsavory shit about your favorite actors in the next few weeks. Some of it might even be true. But that doesn’t change the righteousness of the cause or the truths they speak.
