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LAST WEEK THIS YEAR (Holiday break)
Monday, December 14, 2020
In just 8 months, the first US COVID-19 vaccine is preparing to ship. The vaccine by the American company Pfizer was given emergency approval (not full approval, which is a longer, separate process) by the FDA on Saturday. It hoped that the vaccine could be made available starting Monday, and asked the CDC to confirm the authorization. A vaccine from Moderna is also going through FDA approval. The Pfizer vaccine requires two shots with a 21-day wait in between, and the company says that it has a 95% effectiveness rate. Healthcare workers and high-risk people will be prioritized. However, there is currently not enough data supporting the safety of this vaccine for pregnant women and children under the age of 16, so those groups will have to wait. Some healthcare workers in the UK also had allergic reactions to ingredients in Pfizer's vaccine, so make sure that if you get it, you do not have allergies to the ingredients. The Pfizer vaccine is also the first of its kind to be approved - it uses mRNA. Most traditional vaccines involve injecting someone with an antigen, a watered-down version of a virus, in hopes that the body antibody proteins protecting against the virus. mRNA is messenger RNA, which carries the genetic information to create proteins and is naturally created by our bodies. In this case, the mRNA in the vaccine codes for the spike protein on COVID-19, which allows it to enter our cells. By doing this, our bodies will also make antibodies against that protein so that it could repel the actual virus if it were to enter our body. Desertification occurs when fertile soil becomes desert. A new company called Desert Control believes it has the solution to this problem around the world. Clay is often mixed into the sand in order to help it retain water. But this process can take years. Desert Control turns clay into Liquid NanoClay by combining it with water, and it can be sprayed onto desert soil. This makes the land sort of like a sponge, dramatically increasing water retention and crop yields. Although the product is currently very expensive - it could cost millions to cover an average-sized US farm - Desert Control believes costs will go down as the company gets bigger. Scientists believe that the total mass of everything humans have created may actually outweigh biomass - the things that exist naturally. Both are estimated at around 1.1 tons, and researchers say that the lesson is to consider what things we actually need.
Tuesday, December 15, 2020
Yesterday, electors in states across America cast their votes for the next president. This is because in the electoral college system, US citizens don't directly vote for president, but for electors who cast their votes depending on their state's results. Some electors vote against the popular result, and they are called faithless electors. And even though there were as many as 10 in 2016, they have never influenced the outcome of an election. 33 states have laws that impose fines, remove electors, or charge criminal offenses on faithless electors. States were expected to certify the results on Monday (they did, with Biden passing the 270 vote threshold), and they will be sent to Congress for a formal count next month. President Trump still has not conceded the election, even though all of his legal suits in various states have failed. Archaeologists have discovered cave paintings in Colombia depicting humans living with large herbivores, indicating that they are very old. They have been estimated at around 12,000 years ago. Back when we were all sent home, most people probably believed they'd be back at the office in a few months at the latest. But now, the new hybrid/distance forms of school and work might become more permanent. As people get used to it, more of them are wanting to work from home even when the pandemic is over.
Wednesday, December 16, 2020
So far over 1.6 million deaths have been blamed on the coronavirus and tens of millions of infections. Experts estimate that over 40% of those infected do not have symptoms, so the total number is probably higher. Many areas of guidelines in place to try to curb the spread of the disease, and as the situation changes, the rules change as well. Some states and countries are on full lockdown, while others are just coming out of them. In the US, rules can even vary across county lines as neighboring counties have different levels of infection. A nor'easter is forming in the US northeast and could impact as much as 13% of the population. As a low-pressure system from the Rockies combined with one from the south, they formed a storm that could have winds up to 40 mph and feet of snow - more than every storm last year combined for some areas. The Hubble Space Telescope cost $1.5 billion - and at first, it didn't work. It took blurry photos because of a fault in its mirrors, which was fixed a few years later. It has received other upgrades over the years, and it just turned 30. So NASA and other agencies released photos taken by Hubble of 30 different celestial objects that had previously been for research only. Currently, silicon is used in solar panels, but it only converts around 22% of the Sun's energy. Perovskite is a better alternative that can absorb up to 28% of the Sun's energy. It's also translucent, printable, and flexible, so its applications are far more diverse.
Thursday, December 17, 2020
The commercial airlines United and Delta are planning to ask for customers' names, email, phone numbers, and places that they plan on going to upon landing in an effort to expand contact tracing. It's intended to identify the places that infected people have been so that people who might have gotten the virus from them can be notified and self isolate. Proponents say that it is critical to tracing and preventing the disease; critics say that the data could fall into the wrong hands or become a way of mass surveillance. South Korea has received praise for its use of contact tracing; its process involves identifying infected people, figuring out who they might have infected, then contacting and quarantining those individuals. In the nation's most recent outbreak, officials say that the rise in cases in multiple areas makes it harder to track. China's most recent mission to the Moon is returning to Earth after 23 days, set to land in Inner Mongolia. It's the first probe sent to the Moon in decades, and it brings the first lunar samples since the US-Soviet Space Race of the '70s. This is part of China's aerospace ambitions, and the samples were collected from a previously unexplored lava plain known as the Ocean of Storms. The Autobahn is a highway system connecting all of Germany's cities. It's famous for the stretches of road that have no speed limit whatsoever. The first part of it was completed in 1931 between the cities of Cologne and Bahn, and Hitler actually tried to claim credit for building it. However, it was actually started by Konrad Adenauer, former mayor of Cologne and the first chancellor of postwar Germany. It has expanded to more than 8000 miles long, making it one of the world's longest highways.
Friday, December 18, 2020
For the last show of 2020, we'll recap everything that's happened this year. At the beginning of the year, as people in Times Square celebrated the start of a new decade, Australia was experiencing its worst-ever bush fire season, and a virus that we now know as COVID-19 first appeared in China. It ended up causing a paper shortage, record stimulus spending, and new ways of working. Civil unrest exploded across America with police brutality and killings of African Americans, and just 11 months after the first COVID case in America, Pfizer's vaccine was given emergency approval - the fastest ever. The weather also broke records in 2020 - the biggest ever Atlantic hurricane season along with 4 million acres burned across California. President Trump initiated a drone attack on Iranian general Qasem Soleimani, and Iran retaliated by firing missiles at US bases. President Trump also did manage to make peace in the Middle East with the Abraham Accords, but has still yet to concede the election to President-elect Biden. In January, former Laker Kobe Bryant and his daughter Gianna died in a helicopter crash (he has now been inducted to the Hall of Fame). Many women made history; Kamala Harris became the first woman and woman of color to be elected Vice President, and trailblazing jurist Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed away from pancreatic cancer. SpaceX completed its first manned mission to the ISS in a partnership with NASA and took 4 more a few months later. TikTok became a popular app, and President Trump attempted to ban it over privacy concerns. On a different note, a white Christmas occurs when more than an inch of snow falls on December 25th, and it inspired the popular holiday song in the 1940s.
Happy Holidays!
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