Disability Pride month let’s not forget about the people in our community with intellectual disabilities!
I just found out about the Stay Up Late campaign to advocate for people with intellectual disabilities to have the right to go out in the evening and not have to be in bed by 8pm
I learned about it from this video:
And I found the website for the campaign which is here:
i feel like we dont talk enough about how distressing and disturbing memory loss issues are. forgetting what you were talking about halfway through a sentence, putting something down and instantly forgetting where you put it. having to reread one paragraph over and over again because by the time youve moved onto the next sentence you dont remember what the one before it said. always doubting if your memories of things are real, not being able to remember important life events.
its so incredibly scary, it feels like your mind is constantly playing tricks on you and you start to doubt whats real and what isnt.
“i forgot” is treated like a lazy excuse when it’s genuinely such a big issue for so many people.
Grizzly 399 is so cool! I went to her Wikipedia page intending to screenshot interesting facts about her, but I would really recommend you go check out the whole thing for yourself.
Grizzly 399 lives in close proximity to humans but has never caused problems or attacked a human - she has taught her many cubs important skills like looking both ways before crossing the road. She has had more triplets than is normal for grizzlies, and is far better at keeping triplets alive than less experienced mothers.
She had 22 progeny, (though not all survived) including Grizzly 610, who in 2011 adopted one of 399’s triplets along with her own two cubs. 399 previously went viral on social media for keeping her quadruplets alive through two seasons, despite bear cubs only having a 55% survival rate.
UPS has reached an agreement with the Teamsters union to equip its iconic brown delivery trucks with air conditioning for the first time for new units.
The agreement, announced by UPS on Tuesday, comes as the delivery giant and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters negotiate the terms of a new contract for more than 330,000 U.S. employees. (source)
Unions work, unionize.
Workers need unions because It’s 2023 and I can still see a post like this and involuntarily scream “What do you MEAN they didn’t have air conditioning?!” out loud
Estimated number of people displaced due to conflict in Sudan, by location (as of Jul. 11, 2023)
As this infographic shows, there are now thought to be more than three million people currently displaced due to the conflict, forced to flee their homes due to the threat of being caught up in the fighting or being directly targeted by what the UN has described as “increasing reports of gender-based violence– including conflict-related sexual violence against internally displaced and refugee women and girls”.
sometimes i think about how american schools still teach kids that using the atomic bomb to kill countless japanese civilians was a good thing because it “ended the war”, even though that was straight up not true. theres lots of conversations about other countries denying their war crimes, but i dont think there’s enough about america actively celebrating its war crimes and teaching children that it was good to massacre unarmed civilians, that non-american lives dont matter
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
25. Queer. She/They. White. Canadian. Multifandom. Mostly shows bc tv owns my ass. Books and movies occasionally. Lots of posts about social and political issues.
