typo: Lonestar Tick

Because it was loony. Dude espoused an amazingly false understanding of the purpose and functionality of adjuvants.

The way our immune system works is that co-factors are usually needed to alert it to the presence of new dangers. Because usually, in nature, whenever a foreign agent is inserted into the blood, it's never a single agent. For example, if a bacteria enters the blood .. it has various lipids and other metabolites simultaneously. That causes multiple parts of the immune systems to activate in a synergistic manner. The adjuvants is a way of telling the immune system that the vaccine (which consists of parts of the virus or pathogen) .. "this is enemy". Let me give you a specific example: You can eat all the beef .. which contains a substance called "alpha-gal" you want. But if you get bitten by a tick that recently bit a cow, specifically the Lodestar Tick, you will forever be allergic to beef (alpha-gal syndrome -- look it up). Because the tick injected alpha-gal (from the cow) alongside all the tick specific junk. That acts as an adjuvant to the alpha-gal .. and specifies alpha-gal as your bodies enemy. If a person gets alpha-gal in their blood any other way, they likely won't get allergic. It needs to be injected alongside an adjuvant. Vaccines too are the same way. Since vaccines are just fragments of a pathogen, a adjuvant is needed alongside it so that the body realizes it has to make itself immune to the vaccine's proteins. Summary: A vaccine's job is to make your immune system react to pathogenic substances -- the immune system won't take the bait unless it sees more than just some protein fragments presented to it.

Thank God we greatly reduced our funding of science, so now the Japanese and Europeans can make all the science and engineering breakthroughs while we focus on getting more farming and shoe factory jobs.

I could see a couple of causes.
One, communication is a bit more democratized. So people who read and write have less formal training around grammar than they used to.

Second, language evolves. The gap between a comma and period was always a bit tenuous. The semicolon simply lost it's niche.

Impossible;

I agree though, maybe more people should look at newts too (in addition to axolotl).

Newts can compete with Axolotl but according to AI they are harder to raise in the lab, less studied (so scienceing it is harder because there are more unknowns), and also hard to genetically modify.

Newts (e.g., Red-spotted newt – Notophthalmus viridescens)
Regeneration capacity: Very high, rivaling or in some cases exceeding axolotls.
Can regenerate:
Limbs
Tail
Eye lens
Heart tissue
Spinal cord
Differences with axolotl:
Newts go through metamorphosis and still retain regenerative ability, which axolotls don't.
Slightly more studied in lens and eye regeneration.
Note: Axolotls are easier to genetically manipulate and raise in labs, which is why they’re more commonly used in research.

Axolotl (Ambystoma mexicanum):
Regeneration capacity: Highest among the animals listed.
Can regenerate:
Entire limbs (multiple times)
Tail
Spinal cord
Portions of the heart and brain
Eyes (lens and retina)
Jaws
Skin
Uniqueness: Regenerates without scar tissue. Maintains lifelong regenerative capability due to its neoteny (it retains larval features into adulthood and doesn't undergo metamorphosis unless artificially induced).
Model organism: Extensively used in regenerative biology research because of its clear-cut regenerative processes and large, manipulable tissues.

Iguanas (e.g., Green iguana – Iguana iguana)
Regeneration capacity: Low (compared to amphibians).
Can regenerate:
Tail (partial regeneration with cartilage rather than bone, and not fully structurally identical to original)
Limitations: Cannot regenerate limbs, organs, or complex tissues. Tail regrowth is slower and less complete than in amphibians.
Mechanism: Regeneration is more like regrowth via wound healing rather than true tissue regeneration.

Tiger Salamander (Ambystoma tigrinum)
Regeneration capacity: Moderate to high, but less than axolotl.
Can regenerate:
Limbs and tail
Limitation: After metamorphosis, regenerative ability decreases substantially.
Relation to axolotl: Close relative, but axolotls retain larval state; tiger salamanders typically undergo metamorphosis and lose regenerative potential as adults.

Sorry, I worded (or recalled) that a little wrong. She didn't originally request MAID. She was seeing a counsellor for depression, partly due to being unable to pay her rent, and the counsellor suggested MAID as a possible solution for her. That's where it seemed to go off the rails.

Most of the concern these days isn't some old notion of it being a "sin". It's concern over abuse. That is, are there children in the picture that are trying to convince an elderly person to get MAID? Or is the system incentivized to offer MAID to people who are no longer paying into the system? In one case in Canada, a woman who was getting therapy for depression because she couldn't pay rent was *offered* MAID as a solution to her problems. I think this crosses an ethical line. There's a difference between someone requesting it, and it being offered as a solution. These are difficult ethical issues, and there's no simple right/wrong answers.

Yes, and this is the main problem that needs oversight. Most people are OK with MAID if a person is in pain and won't get better, and is lucid enough to understand the decision they're making. But you're correct that a system that has an incentive to offer it to a person who isn't paying into the system and is just a cost... that's an ethical problem. There was a woman in Canada who was approved for MAID, and her reason was that she was poor and couldn't pay her rent. There's just too many cases like this in Canada, which is why the inquiry recommended improvements. I'm just saying that anyone else who wants to try this should learn from our mistakes in Canada.

In Canada the law wasn't supposed to allow MAID for people with only mental health conditions, but an inquiry determined that the system was approving it for practically anyone who asked. It needs to have proper oversight that the rules are clear and are being followed to maintain public trust.

There are some examples of good writing out there (Andor is the most recent example I can think of). But the last few years has been particularly bad. From what I've heard, there was a short-sighted push to not just hire a whole bunch of diverse young writers, but to *get rid of* the old grey haired ones. The logical consequence is that you lose the necessary mentorship to support those young writers, and teach them the craft. Exhibit A is Disney's big flop: "Wish". This was supposed to be a big 100th anniversary movie for Disney, but the animation and writing was so atrocious that people in the industry couldn't believe Disney's famed animation department would release such an amateur movie. Insiders told the same story: management pushed out all the knowledgeable experienced people and replaced them with fresh new blood.

That tax money was at least spent on useful services, such as launching satellites or moving people to and from the ISS, and which costs *much* less than the same services performed under the NASA space shuttle program. You're laughing at them because they sold you services for cheaper? Doesn't make sense to me. I think you're laughing at them because you don't like their weird CEO. Why not just criticize the CEO, and let the engineers do their thing?

Scott Manley's video points out that there's a downcomer from the header tanks that goes right down that side of the ship, and it could be an overpressure event in that downcomer line.

They didn't discover that retinoic acid is a key molecule. I worked in a lab on regeneration decades ago .. and it was common knowledge that retinoic acid is a key player. The questions were surrounding how the heck it does its thing and why. This new research answers some of that.