The science news of the week: Researchers at the University of Oxford have begun the first phase of testing a new vaccine based on the principle of vaccines against coronaviruses, but aimed at a very old enemy – the plague. The Black Death, as it was called in the early Middle Ages, wiped out half of Europe and seemed to have disappeared. In reality, however, outbreaks of the plague continue to occur around the world, and even developed countries are not immune: a 10-year-old boy recently died of the plague in the United States. Since the early 1990s, the number of plague cases has increased in 25 countries. From 2010 to 2015, more than 3,000 cases of infection and 584 deaths from plague were recorded worldwide. In 2017 alone, an outbreak in Madagascar infected more than 2 thousand people, of whom 171 died. Plague is caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, which is transmitted from animals to humans through fleas and then from humans to each other. Without treatment, this severe disease is fatal in almost 100% of cases. Initial symptoms can be similar to the flu: high fever, chills, muscle aches and fatigue. However, when a person’s lymph nodes become swollen and painful, called buboes, a definitive diagnosis can be made. When plague bacteria begin to multiply in the blood, it causes septicemic plague, which is accompanied by nausea, stomach problems, bleeding, and can lead to gangrene. We explain quickly, simply, and clearly what happened, why it matters, and what will happen next. The number of offers should remain: episodes. The end of the story: Podcast Advertising
The rarest and most dangerous form is pulmonary plague, in which the bacteria invade the lungs and can cause death within two days of infection. The most effective way to fight the plague remains antibiotics, but to do this it is desirable to detect the disease at an early stage, which is not always possible. “Although antibiotics can control plague, outbreaks sometimes occur in remote areas, where preventive vaccination could be a very successful strategy to control the disease,” says vaccine researcher Christine Rollier of the University of Oxford. It is in Oxford that a group of scientists has developed an intramuscular vaccine against plague based on a modified adenovirus that cannot replicate in the human body – roughly following the same principle as AstraZeneca’s vaccine against Covid-19. This adenovirus is used to deliver the genetic code of the Yersinia pestis protein into the body to teach our immune system to recognize it and build resistance. So far, the vaccine has only been tested on laboratory animals, but the results are so promising that researchers are looking for volunteers willing to be paid for the risk and inconvenience. And risks, doctors say, are always present and can range from moderate pain to the most severe allergic reaction. However, scientists guarantee that no one will contract the plague and promise to closely monitor the condition of volunteers during clinical trials, especially during the first week after vaccination.
Last Tuesday, unusually warm weather caused Greenland to lose enough ice to cover the entire state of Florida with a layer of five centimeters. In total, more than 8.5 billion tons of ice melted in just one day. Of course, experts blame the rapid melting of the ice on climate change caused by human activity. According to British researchers in a recent report published in the journal Cryosphere, our planet has already lost 28 trillion tons of ice since the mid-1990s, mostly Arctic ice, including the ice that makes up the Greenland ice sheet. “Over the past decade, the melting of continental ice in Greenland has become more intense and less predictable,” said the report’s author, glaciologist Thomas Slater of the University of Leeds. “And as temperatures continue to rise, phenomena such as rapid melting will become more common.” Although the melting record was not broken last Tuesday, the frequency and magnitude of such phenomena make one think. Only in 2019, Greenland lost about 532 billion tons of ice, which turned into water and went into the global ocean. That year, July was particularly hot, and the melting of the ice sheet was observed almost throughout Greenland, leading to a permanent rise in global sea level of one and a half millimeters. The increase may seem insignificant, but according to Slater, as Greenland’s ice melts, the threat of storm flooding in coastal cities will increase, especially if such storms coincide with high tides. By the end of this century, Greenland alone will add 2-10 centimeters to global sea levels. Is there a way out? As Slater says, if we set and, more importantly, meet reasonable climate targets, we can still limit global sea level rise and reduce the damage that flooding can cause to infrastructure and residents in coastal cities around the world.
What is creativity? It is difficult to give a clear definition of this concept, and even more difficult to measure. However, scientists led by Harvard psychologist Jay Olson have invented a very simple test that allows us to determine at least one aspect of creativity. By the way, you can take the test yourself, and it would be even better to do it before you become familiar with its essence – the result will be more objective (however, the test requires knowledge of English). Now let’s talk about the test itself. It is called the “Divergent Association Task” (DAT – not to be confused with the IAT – “Implicit Association Test” used in social psychology). The test asks you to name 10 nouns whose meanings are as far apart as possible. For example, “cat” and “book” are further apart than “cat” and “dog”. A computer algorithm then calculates the semantic distance – how close the selected words are in meaning. Several theories suggest that creative individuals are able to generate more diverse ideas, the scientists write in their paper published in the journal PNAS. “If this is indeed the case, then simply selecting unrelated words and then calculating the semantic distance between them can objectively measure divergent thinking.” DAT complements, partially replaces, and competes with two previously used tests: the alternative use test (when you need to find the maximum number of uses for a given object) and the associative bridge test (when you need to connect two words with a third word). In tests conducted on nearly 9,000 volunteers, the DAT has demonstrated its ability to measure creativity as well as, or better than, other, more complex measures. In addition, its wide demographic range allows it to be used for large-scale research. The key advantage of the new test is that it is simple, easy to administer, and the results are scored by a computer program rather than by people who may be biased. Among the drawbacks, Olson himself notes that the test “measures only a fraction of one aspect of creativity. According to him, the DAT can assess your open-mindedness and verbal creativity, but it won’t tell you, for example, how creative your culinary approach will be in the kitchen, because that requires a completely different set of skills. In fact, psychologists believe that more creative people can more easily assemble a mosaic of diverse information in their minds, and it is this ability that a new test reveals. “Creativity is the basis of human existence,” says Olson, “and the more we learn about this complex phenomenon, the better we will be able to nurture creativity in all its forms.”