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National Geographic: Can COVID-19 alter your personality? Here's what brain research shows.

By Sharon Guynup

    We all know that COVID-19 has myriad health impacts, ranging from the lungs and heart to other areas of the body. But new symptoms and patients have revealed that it can also affect cognitive function.

    This was first noticed in patients after they returned to their daily lives and began experiencing side effects like loss of memory, bad mood, anxiety, among other symptoms that suggested brain damage had occurred. The symptoms were similar to those seen in patients of other neurological diseases such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's.

    COVID-19 most likely causes these changes because of the immune response to the virus. When the immune system fights a virus, one of the cells it releases is an inflammatory cell. These are released into the bloodstream, and when they end up in the brain for a prolonged time, it can cause neurons to die, block capillaries, and create other side effects. In addition, the virus can also infect brain cells directly, also causing them to die.

    Brain damage has been seen to be most impactful on those with long fights with the virus, since prolonged sickness increases the amount of inflammation that occurs. Scientists have yet to find a definitive way to stop these effects, but antivirals like Remdesevir can help patients recover more quickly, and other drugs target specific areas in the brain. Researchers hope to be able to study these effects from the coronavirus to dig deeper into neurodegenerative diseases.

Mr. Lemoncello's All-Star Breakout Game

By Chris Grabenstein

    In the latest game, Mr. Lemoncello's game goes live on national TV! Kyle Keeley and his friends are playing his newest picture guessing game, What Else Do You See?, on a library computer when their old enemy from the very first breakout game, the stuck-up Charles Chiltington, tells on them to the librarian and gets them all detention, sticking Kyle with 5 of them. Later that day, Mr. Lemoncello, the famous game-maker, goes on TV, telling everyone about the new breakout game that he will be hosting live on the Kidzapalooza network. He also explains that the teams will be chosen in auditions at the Alexandriaville Middle School in Ohio, his hometown, where Kyle and his friends go to school.

    Only one problem...Kyle has detentions to serve at the same time the auditions are taking place. He does the only thing he can do - he skips his final detention, earning him 5 more, and attends the audition. To get into the auditorium, teams of 5 must first pass a preliminary word scramble, which he, Akimi, Andrew, Miguel, and Sierra easily pass. Of course, Charles isn't one to be outdone, and at the advice of his rich, competitive, and oppressive father, he gathers a group of 8th graders known to be the biggest bookworms in school history. In the audition, his team, aptly named the Bookworms, take first place, while Kyle's Lemonheads take second. Both teams will be moving on to the real deal!

    In a final attempt to undermine his adversary, Charles emails Kyle's parents, informing him of the detentions and the skipped detention, painting Kyle as badly as possible. Kyle almost gets grounded, but Akimi is able to explain why it happened and that Charles is a bad person, often insulting Kyle's father for working as a mechanic.

    In the meantime, Mr. Lemoncello and his Imagination Factory have been madly working on their latest invention to be used in the breakout game - the Fictionasium. The immersive virtual reality simulation will enable participants to weave their own story in a genre of their choosing, be it fiction, nonfiction, history, anything, using a combination of motion capture suits and Smell-A-Vision. When the Bookworms and Lemonheads are brought in to train on the system, Mr. Lemoncello tells them that there will be a special third team joining them in the breakout race, to be revealed on the day of the competition.

    The team is the Kidzapalooza All-Stars, a combination of the biggest young stars on the network, including Alexandriavill's own Haley Daley, who gained fame after being featured in commercials as a prize for being one of the winners of the first library breakout game.

    When the contest begins, two things quickly become clear. First, that the All-Stars are indeed all-stars. They quickly took the lead and progressed through the Fictionasium room for each genre. Meanwhile, Charles's Bookworms were found to be indeed bookworms, and not gamers. He had failed to anticipate the interactive aspect of the Fictionasium, and one by one, his teammates resigned, leaving him all alone. Soon, he seems to have given up as well, disappearing for a hour.

    In the meantime, the Lemonheads and the All-Stars work through their rooms, getting all the way to the fourth room, despite all sorts of surprises, while Charles remains AWOL. Then, all of a sudden, Chiltington reappears and works his way through the rooms at breakneck speed, looking like he already knew the answers - because he did. He had found his way into the Fictionasium control room while the guard was in the bathroom, attempted and failed to sabotage the others, then found all the answers before resuming the competition. He is onto his final room, the mythology room, where he discovers that a lightning blaster meant to resemble Zeus's lightning bolts is a bonafide laser blaster! With it, he resolves to take down the entire library, which he and his mother believe to be dangerous and bad for the city.

    In another room, the All-Stars and Lemonheads must collaborate to complete their final room - realistic fiction. And Kyle gets an experience that changes his entire mindset. In it, he plays the part of Charles Chiltington under the name Miles Millerson. When he meets Mr. Millerson, modeled after Mr. Chiltington, he understands why Charles is the way he is. His father is an oppressive man, focused solely on winning, and spares no one from his wrath - not even his son. Mr. Millerson gives him two keys - the two keys that the teams need to open their boxes with the final clue - and tells him to use one for himself and forget the other. Instead, he shares the keys and the two teams race off to stop Charles from destroying the library.

    Kyle decides that the best way is to show him a version of Mr. Millerson who tells him to reconsider his actions. But once Charles is prevented from destroying the library, he tries to win the competition, resulting in a three-way tie playing the game, What Else Do You See?, where the Lemonheads prevail.

CNN 10 12/13/2021 ~ 12/17/2021

Go to cnn.com/cnn10 for the latest video 

LAST SHOW OF THE YEAR

Happy Holidays!

Tuesday, December 14, 2021

The Omicron variant is continuing the spread around the world. The UK has reported dozens of cases, 10 hospitalizations, and one death from the variant. Based on preliminary reports, the WHO says that existing vaccines are less effective against the new variant. It's still uncertain whether a surge in cases in many areas is due to existing variants like Delta or the new Omicron. The tornados that swept through the Midwest have left devastation in their wake. Entire cities have been flattened, dozens are dead, and crews are still digging through the rubble as over 100 people remain unaccounted for. Charities and other organizations are leading efforts to get help, and they say that the most urgent need right now is blood donations. The latest economic report for the country is out - it showed around half the jobs growth than economists had expected, likely due to new variants. Inflation is also up nearly 7 percent, but partially offset by 5 percent gains in wages. But the continuing inflation is having detrimental impacts, not only on city dwellers but on rural residents, who have seen the costs of their most important goods go up.

Wednesday, December 15, 2021

There is a security flaw in a popular server software called Log4J. The flaw, which has not yet been patched fully, could allow hackers to take control of servers, potentially impacting big businesses like Amazon, Apple, and Tesla. The Microsoft-owned game Minecraft has already been affected, and Microsoft quickly released a patch to fix the issue. Log4J is recommending all users to find out if their systems have been impacted as soon as possible and for end-users of software distributions to download security updates as soon as they become available. Since news of the hole became public, hundreds of thousands of hackers have already attempted to exploit it. Rivers are important parts of the world's ecosystem, but like most "renewable" resources, they aren't infinite. Some of the biggest threats to their survival are pollution and invasive species. Jeremy Shelton, part of a wildlife conservancy effort in South Africa, is using photography to try to get people more involved in protecting the environment. He hopes his images will help people understand the underwater ecosystem in a more real way.