Wendy W @WendyW@qoto.org

In 2023 you can reuse your 1978 calendars.

“It seemed absolutely crazy. The idea that an Iowa housewife, equipped with the cutting-edge medical tool known as Google Images, would make a medical discovery about a pro athlete who sees doctors and athletic trainers as part of her job?” https://www.propublica.org/article/muscular-dystrophy-patient-olympic-medalist-same-genetic-mutation

Australian universities to return to ‘pen and paper’ exams after students caught using AI to write essays https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/jan/10/universities-to-return-to-pen-and-paper-exams-after-students-caught-using-ai-to-write-essays?CMP=share_btn_tw

Perseguire come criminali pericolosi alla pubblica quiete degli affari sulla pelle dei cittadini gli attivisti di ultima generazione è molto facile e allora di chi è la responsabilità di decine di migliaia di morti per inquinamento atmosferico????

70mila persone hanno perso la vita nel 2020 in Italia a causa dell'inquinamento 
Il nostro paese è primo nell'Ue per morti premature imputabili a Pm 2.5, No2 e Ozono O3, secondo il rapporto dell'Agenzia europea per l'ambiente
https://www.wired.it/article/inquinamento-morti-italia-2020-numero-dati-agenzia-europea-ambiente/

You don’t become cooler with age, but you do care progressively less about being cool, which is the only true way of being cool. This is called the Geezer’s Paradox

The most corrupt president in American history, despite a law requiring IRS audits of sitting presidents, apparently ordered the IRS not to audit him while he held office. This was revealed when Trump's tax returns were released a few days ago, but Big Journalism has almost totally moved on. Here's one reporter who thinks maybe this -- and so much more in Trump's sleazy dealings -- is a problem. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-01-03/trump-s-tax-returns-reveal-murky-global-business-deals

There is a #Divine nature about #Dogs.

#DogsOfMastodon #Shiloh

It has been passed on to me, that I shall pass on this wish:

>> Happy Fibonacci Day! 1 1 23

and I find this an excellent way to begin.

It’s done! 365 days of recording the local temperature and weather in a knitted scarf.

I wrote up some of the tricks and tools and tips I've picked up that have made Mastodon more useful, and which people seem to appreciate when I share with them: https://www.techdirt.com/2022/12/29/some-tricks-to-making-mastodon-way-more-useful/

What will happen if we’ll RETHINK our street corners?

We'll realize that until now, we've made them too car-centric. Street corners are designed for fast driving, which means pedestrians have to risk their safety just to cross the street.

But if we’ll rethink our street corners we’ll get

■ More space for pedestrians
■ Shorter crossing distance and time
■ Greener spaces
■ Safer Streets
■ Beautiful street corners

A great example from PGAA Creative Design in Manila

First, a recap. After COVID infection (especially with the early variants) many/most folks lost their sense of smell - for most it was transient (days-weeks) but for some others much longer (months-years). So how does SARS-CoV-2 actually attack your sense of smell?

Odors are detected by olfactory sensory neurons (OSNs) in your nose, which send information about odors to the brain. These sensory neurons are surrounded by support and stem cells, which enable OSN function and renewal of the olfactory epithelium (which gets banged up every time you breath through your nose).

At the beginning of the pandemic we (including Brad Goldstein, Darren Logan, Hiro Matsumani, John Ngai, Matt Grubb and others) hypothesized that SARS-CoV-2 infects support/stem cells but not OSNs themselves. Since then many studies have explored this issue - most are consistent with the hypothesis that support cell infection and possibly the loss of support cell function indirectly causes sensory neuron dysfunction = transient and/or long term loss of smell

Two key studies from human autopsies (from Stavros Lomvardas and Peter Mombaerts) revealed that in people the virus likely infects support cells and not OSNs, and further that after COVID there are hallmarks of inflammation that could affect OSNs. Animal models also suggested that the nose might be subject to all sorts of immune-mediated madness (see work from Ben tenOever).

But what is going on in living patients suffering from long-term smell loss?

To explore this idea, Brad's lab performed biopsies of the olfactory epithelium from patients with post-COVID smell loss (objectively documented via testing), followed by single cell sequencing to enable definitive cell type identification (side note - in the field there is a lot of confusion about how to identify cell types).

There is a lot of data in the paper, but the most important observation is the presence of an immune infiltrate comprised of T cells and myeloid cells, just camping out in the epithelium of patients with long term smell loss; there is no evidence of viral RNA, but support cells are clearly responding to immune signals. There are also fewer OSNs, there are changes in OSN gene expression, and there is evidence that stem cells may not be renewing the epithelium effectively.

These findings lead to a model in which support cell infection triggers a cascade that culminates in immune infiltration, OSN dysfunction and long-term smell loss. The data argue that persistent smell loss is immune mediated, suggesting possible new strategies for patient treatment; these results are also broadly consistent with the idea that neuroinflammation is the main way SARS-CoV-2 impacts the nervous system.

Our findings are also relevant to long COVID, which affects many other organ systems, and is also thought to be at least in part immune mediated. Many questions remain (why do some patients get their smell back quickly while others have this immune infiltrate and long term loss?). Looking forward to continuing to work on this important problem - congrats to all the authors (and thanks to the patients!)

So, I'm finding out the hard way that if you start a new Mastodon server, nobody can find you.

This is a shameless request for some boosts so some of the bigger instances see me.

#mastodon #twittermigration #mastodonserver #findme #helpimtrappedinawell #imlonely

#london