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Showing posts from August, 2021

BBC Earth’s “Eden: Untamed Planet” explodes with life and heartache in Pantagonia

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Pantagonia is one of the natural world’s most resplendent treasures, teeming with life on the one hand, mourning its wildlife and glacial losses on the other. Its massive size - 402,700 square miles, shared by Argentina on the east and Chile on the west coast - means it is hard to pin down. The tragic climate change-enduced ramifications on its glaciers in the west will break your heart; the Andean cat’s brilliant hunting techniques in the steppe region of the east stir other emotions, like fear and lust. The new BBC Earth film-cum-documentary explodes with Episode 5, “Pantagonia: The Ends of the Earth” August 21, following an episode on the Galapagos (see here for a list of all episodes). If you think you know anything about this part of the world, you are wrong. The photographers, camerawomen and men spent a year traipsing around impossible-to-reach fjords and desert steppes, searching for flamingo babes or tiny monkeys. They risked their lives and were constantly exhausted, but...

“Variants!” reveals how Covid can continue to evolve and threaten vaccine efficacy

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Like other coronaviruses, SARS CoV-2 evolves and threatens to become endemic. Even the “common cold” is debilitating at times but - at least pre-masking - most of us had learned to live with it. Renowned virologist Dr. William Hazeltine in his book “Variants! The Shape-Shifting Challenge of COVID-19” teaches that obstacles to freeing ourselves of Covid begin with the virus itself. The more opportunity it has to mutate, the wilier it can become. He published this at the beginning of this year before the Delta variant proved the veracity of that prognostication. Although the “living e-book” concept doesn't quite work in paperback form, it is important reading. And unless you are a virologist or immunologist you too may struggle with terms like “ deletion ” - but skip past what you do not understand. Hazeltine has a prestigious background as a professor at Harvard and in AIDS research, and knows whereof he speaks. In the back he includes several articles he wrote for Scientific Ameri...