Short Takes – 10-8-24

Viewing abortion rights through the lens of religious liberty is revealing. TheHill.com commentary. Pull quote: “A group of plaintiffs sued under the state’s [Indiana] Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Among them are Jews who assert a religious obligation to terminate pregnancy under certain circumstances. In liberal Judaism — which is to say, for most American Jews — a woman has a duty to exercise her judgment about what is necessary to her own well-being. This duty may require her to end a pregnancy.”

The end of smallpox was ... the beginning for mpox. NPR.org article. Pull quote: “Smallpox and mpox are so closely related that immunity to one helps fight off the other. When smallpox vaccinations were terminated, the world’s immunity to mpox evaporated, and the medical training needed to combat a pox virus started to dissipate too.”

Anonymous answers: How can we manage infohazards in biosecurity? 80000Hours.org article. Pull quote: “Do I think navigating information hazards can affect day-to-day work of people in the field? Absolutely. When people handle DNA sequence orders, for example, they have to make risk assessments about whether this thing is weaponizable. They can ask the government for information to carry out this risk assessment, but the government only gives some, not all, of the DNA sequences they believe may be dangerous.”

Human Longevity May Have Reached its Upper Limit. ScientificAmerican.com article. Pull quote: “Nalini Raghavachari, a program officer at the U.S. National Institute on Aging, who was not involved in the study, agrees that research should focus on understanding and achieving healthy aging. Clues for how to do that could come from some of the world’s longest-lived populations, she says. “A deeper understanding of the protective influences and mechanisms underlying exceptional health span could lead to the development of novel therapeutic targets and interventions to promote healthy aging,” Raghavachari adds.”

Acrylonitrile Standard; Extension of the Office of Management and Budget's (OMB) Approval of Information Collection (Paperwork) Requirements. Federal Register OSHA 60-day ICR renewal. Summary: “OSHA is requesting that OMB extend the approval of the information collection requirements contained in the Acrylonitrile Standard. The agency is requesting an adjustment decrease in burden from 14,706 to 11,373 hours, a difference of 3,333 hours. This decrease in burden is due to a decrease in the number of employees and the number of establishments. Also, the agency is requesting a decrease in cost from $1,164,653 to $930,142, a difference of $234,511.” Comments due December 9^th, 2024.

New study eases concerns over possible 'doomsday' asteroid swarm. Phys.org article. Pull quote: “"We took advantage of a rare opportunity when this swarm of asteroids passed closer to Earth, allowing us to more efficiently search for objects that could pose a threat to our planet," said Quanzhi Ye, who supervised the project and is an assistant research scientist in UMD's Department of Astronomy. "Our findings suggest that the risk of being hit by a large asteroid in the Taurid swarm is much lower than we believed, which is great news for planetary defense."”

NASA's laser comms demo makes deep space record, completes first phase. Phys.org article. Pull quote: “"The milestone is significant. Laser communication requires a very high level of precision, and before we launched with Psyche, we didn't know how much performance degradation we would see at our farthest distances," said Meera Srinivasan, the project's operations lead at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. "Now the techniques we use to track and point have been verified, confirming that optical communications can be a robust and transformative way to explore the solar system."”

The US Is Loading Up on Bird Flu Vaccine. Wired.com article. Pull quote: “The H5N1 virus has affected millions of wild and commercial birds nationwide, and in March it made the jump to dairy cows for the first time. As the number of affected animals grows, so does the concern for spread to people. In the past, H5N1 has had a high mortality rate in humans, and scientists are monitoring the virus closely to determine whether it poses a pandemic risk. The US government has a stockpile of approved H5N1 vaccines, but today’s awards, which will go to CSL Seqirus, GSK, and Sanofi, will double that number.”