navan
/
Daily-Dose
mirror of https://github.com/navanchauhan/Daily-Dose.git
1
0
Fork 0
Code Issues Projects Releases Wiki Activity

Added daily report

This commit is contained in:
Navan Chauhan 2022-12-15 12:51:40 +00:00
parent 57a9f3fb9d
commit e9388dee39
3 changed files with 705 additions and 2 deletions
Show Stats Download Patch File Download Diff File Expand all files Collapse all files

196
archive-covid-19/15 December, 2022.html Normal file
View File

@ -0,0 +1,196 @@
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="" xml:lang="" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><head>
<meta charset="utf-8"/>
<meta content="pandoc" name="generator"/>
<meta content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, user-scalable=yes" name="viewport"/>
<title>15 December, 2022</title>
<style>
code{white-space: pre-wrap;}
span.smallcaps{font-variant: small-caps;}
span.underline{text-decoration: underline;}
div.column{display: inline-block; vertical-align: top; width: 50%;}
div.hanging-indent{margin-left: 1.5em; text-indent: -1.5em;}
ul.task-list{list-style: none;}
</style>
<title>Covid-19 Sentry</title><meta content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0" name="viewport"/><link href="styles/simple.css" rel="stylesheet"/><link href="../styles/simple.css" rel="stylesheet"/><link href="https://unpkg.com/aos@2.3.1/dist/aos.css" rel="stylesheet"/><script src="https://unpkg.com/aos@2.3.1/dist/aos.js"></script></head>
<body>
<h1 data-aos="fade-down" id="covid-19-sentry">Covid-19 Sentry</h1>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" data-aos-anchor-placement="top-bottom" id="contents">Contents</h1>
<ul>
<li><a href="#from-preprints">From Preprints</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-clinical-trials">From Clinical Trials</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-pubmed">From PubMed</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-patent-search">From Patent Search</a></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-preprints">From Preprints</h1>
<ul>
<li><strong>Development and validation of MedDRA Tagger: a tool for extraction and structuring medical information from clinical notes</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Rapid and automated extraction of clinical information from patients9 notes is a desirable though difficult task. Natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning have great potential to automate and accelerate such applications, but developing such models can require a large amount of labeled clinical text, which can be a slow and laborious process. To address this gap, we propose the MedDRA tagger, a fast annotation tool that makes use of industrial level libraries such as spaCy, biomedical ontologies and weak supervision to annotate and extract clinical concepts at scale. The tool can be used to annotate clinical text and obtain labels for training machine learning models and further refine the clinical concept extraction performance, or to extract clinical concepts for observational study purposes. To demonstrate the usability and versatility of our tool, we present three different use cases: we use the tagger to determine patients with a primary brain cancer diagnosis, we show evidence of rising mental health symptoms at the population level and our last use case shows the evolution of COVID-19 symptomatology throughout three waves between February 2020 and October 2021. The validation of our tool showed good performance on both specific annotations from our development set (F1 score 0.81) and open source annotated data set (F1 score 0.79). We successfully demonstrate the versatility of our pipeline with three different use cases. Finally, we note that the modular nature of our tool allows for a straightforward adaptation to another biomedical ontology. We also show that our tool is independent of EHR system, and as such generalizable.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.12.14.22283470v1" target="_blank">Development and validation of MedDRA Tagger: a tool for extraction and structuring medical information from clinical notes</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Bayesian uncertainty quantification to identify population level vaccine hesitancy behaviours</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
When effective vaccines are available, vaccination programs are typically one of the best defences against the spread of an infectious disease. Unfortunately, vaccination rates may be suboptimal for a prolonged duration as a result of slow uptake of vaccines by the public. Key factors driving slow vaccination uptake can be a complex interaction of vaccine roll-out policies and logistics, and vaccine hesitancy behaviours potentially caused by an inflated sense of risk in adverse reactions in some populations or community complacency in communities that have not yet experienced a large outbreak. In the recent COVID-19 pandemic, public health responses around the world began to include vaccination programs from late 2020 to early 2021 with an aim of relaxing non-pharmaceutical interventions such as lockdowns and travel restrictions. For many jurisdictions there have been challenges in getting vaccination rates high enough to enable the relaxation of restrictions based on non-pharmaceutical interventions. A key concern during this time was vaccine hestitancy behaviours potentially caused by vaccine safety concerns fuelled by misinformation and community complacency in jurisdictions that had seen very low COVID-19 case numbers throughout 2020, such as Australia and New Zealand. We develop a novel stochastic epidemiological model of COVID-19 transmission that incorporates changes in population behaviour relating to responses based on non-pharmaceutical interventions and community vaccine uptake as functions of the reported COVID-19 cases, deaths, and vaccination rates. Through a simulation study, we develop a Bayesian analysis approach to demonstrate that different factors inhibiting the uptake of vaccines by the population can be isolated despite key model parameters being subject to substantial uncertainty. In particular, we are able to identify the presence of vaccine hesitancy in a population using reported case, death and vaccination count data alone. Furthermore, our approach provides insight as to whether the dominant concerns driving hesitancy are related to vaccine safety or complacency. While our simulation study is inspired by the COVID-19 pandemic, our tools and techniques are general and could be enable vaccination programs of various infectious diseases to be adapted rapidly in response to community behaviours moving forward into the future.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.12.13.22283297v1" target="_blank">Bayesian uncertainty quantification to identify population level vaccine hesitancy behaviours</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Milk antibody response after 3rd dose of COVID-19 mRNA vaccine and SARS-CoV-2 breakthrough infection and implications for infant protection</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies have been found in human-milk after COVID-19 infection and vaccination. However, little is known about their persistence in milk after booster vaccination and breakthrough infection. In this study, human-milk, saliva and blood samples were collected from 33 lactating individuals before and after mRNA-based vaccination and COVID-19 breakthrough infections. Antibody levels were measured using ELISA and symptoms were assessed using questionnaires. Evaluation of maternal and infant symptomatology revealed that infected mothers reported more symptoms than vaccinated mothers. We found that after vaccination, human-milk anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies persisted for up to 8 months. In addition, distinct patterns of human milk IgA and IgG production we observed after breakthrough infection compared to 3-dose vaccination series alone, indicating a differential central and mucosal immune profiles in hybrid compared with vaccine-induced immunity. To investigate passively-derived milk antibody protection in infants, we examined the persistence of these antibodies in infant saliva after breastfeeding. We found that IgA was more abundant in infant saliva compared to IgG and persist in infant saliva longer after feeding. Our results delineate the differences in milk antibody response to vaccination as compared to breakthrough infection and emphasize the importance of improving the secretion of IgA antibodies to human milk after vaccination to improve the protection of breastfeeding infants.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.12.12.22283367v1" target="_blank">Milk antibody response after 3rd dose of COVID-19 mRNA vaccine and SARS-CoV-2 breakthrough infection and implications for infant protection</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>COVID-19 Outbreak Control Strategies and their Impact on the Provision of Essential Health Services in Ghana: An Explanatory-Sequential Study</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Background The COVID-19 pandemic has led to substantial interruptions in critical health services, with 90% of countries reporting interruptions in routine vaccinations, maternal health care and chronic disease management. The use of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) such as lockdowns and self-isolation had implications on the provision of essential health services (EHS). We investigated exemplary COVID-19 outbreak control strategies and explored the extent to which the adoption of these NPIs affected the provision of EHS including immunization coverage and facility-based deliveries.  Finally, we document core health system strategies and practices adopted to maintain EHS during the early phase of the pandemic. Methods This study used an explanatory sequential study design. First, we utilized data from routine health management information systems to quantify the impact of the pandemic on the provision of EHS using interrupted time series models. Second, we explored exemplary strategies and health system initiatives that were adopted to prevent the spread of COVID-19 infections while maintaining the provision of EHS using in-depth interviews with key informants including policymakers and healthcare providers. Results The COVID-19 pandemic and the interventions that were implemented disrupted the provision of EHS. In the first month of the COVID-19 pandemic, Oral Polio and pentavalent vaccination coverage reduced by 15.2% [95% CI = -22.61, -7.87, p&lt;0.001] and 12.4% [95% CI = 17.68, -7.13; p&lt;0.001] respectively. The exemplary strategies adopted in maintaining the provision of EHS while also responding to the spread of infections include the development of new policy guidelines that were disseminated with modified service delivery models, new treatment and prevention guidelines, healthcare workforce capacity building on outbreak control strategies, the use of telemedicine and medical drones to provide EHS and facilitate rapid testing of suspected cases. Conclusion The implementation of different NPIs during the peak phase of the pandemic disrupted the provision of EHS. However, the Ministry of Health leveraged the resilient health system and deployed efficient, all-inclusive, and integrated infectious disease management and infection prevention control strategies to maintain the provision of EHS while responding to the spread of infections.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.12.12.22283342v1" target="_blank">COVID-19 Outbreak Control Strategies and their Impact on the Provision of Essential Health Services in Ghana: An Explanatory-Sequential Study</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>The effects of sleep disturbance on dyspnoea and impaired lung function following COVID-19 hospitalisation: a prospective multi-centre cohort study</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Background Sleep disturbance is common following hospitalisation both for COVID-19 and other causes. The clinical associations are poorly understood, despite it altering pathophysiology in other scenarios. We, therefore, investigated whether sleep disturbance is associated with dyspnoea along with relevant mediation pathways. Methods Sleep parameters were assessed in a prospective cohort of patients (n=2,468) hospitalised for COVID-19 in the United Kingdom in 39 centres using both subjective and device-based measures. Results were compared to a matched UK biobank cohort and associations were evaluated using multivariable linear regression. Findings 64% (456/714) of participants reported poor sleep quality; 56% felt their sleep quality had deteriorated for at least 1-year following hospitalisation. Compared to the matched cohort, both sleep regularity (44.5 vs 59.2, p&lt;0.001) and sleep efficiency (85.4% vs 88.5%, p&lt;0.001) were lower whilst sleep period duration was longer (8.25h vs 7.32h, p&lt;0.001). Overall sleep quality (effect estimate 4.2 (3.0-5.5)), deterioration in sleep quality following hospitalisation (effect estimate 3.2 (2.0-4.5)), and sleep regularity (effect estimate 5.9 (3.7-8.1)) were associated with both dyspnoea and impaired lung function (FEV1 and FVC). Depending on the sleep metric, anxiety mediated 13-42% of the effect of sleep disturbance on dyspnoea and muscle weakness mediated 29-43% of this effect. Interpretation Sleep disturbance is associated with dyspnoea, anxiety and muscle weakness following COVID-19 hospitalisation. It could have similar effects for other causes of hospitalisation where sleep disturbance is prevalent.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.12.13.22283391v1" target="_blank">The effects of sleep disturbance on dyspnoea and impaired lung function following COVID-19 hospitalisation: a prospective multi-centre cohort study</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>A cross-sectional survey of material deprivation and suicide-related ideation among Vietnamese technical interns in Japan in 2021</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Background: Many technical intern trainees in Japan are economically impoverished because of the need to send money back to their home country, debts from the intermediaries that arranged their arrival in Japan, and reduced working hours because of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. In addition, there is concern that COVID-19 may cause mental instability in response to the life changes experienced by interns. The purpose of this study was to elucidate the experience of material deprivation and the relationship between the state of material deprivation and suicidal ideation among Vietnamese intern trainees in Japan. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted from September to October 2021. Of 310 Vietnamese technical intern trainees who responded, we analyzed data from 200 individuals with no missing or abnormal values. The questionnaire obtained information about gender, age, length of residence in Japan, Japanese language proficiency, changes in income related to the COVID-19 pandemic, material deprivation status, and suicidal ideation. The ninth item of the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 was used to examine suicidal ideation. Logistic regression analysis was used to analyze the relationship between material deprivation items and suicidal ideation. Results: Respondents mean age was 26.0 ± 5.1 years, and 62.0% (n = 124) were male. Regarding material deprivation items, food was reported in 82 (41.0%) cases, cellphone bills were reported in 49 (24.5%) cases, and medical expenses were reported in 34 (22.0%) cases. Forty-six (23.0%) respondents reported experiencing suicidal ideation, and the prevalence was associated with age (p = 0.031, odds ratio [OR] = 0.889, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.799-0.990), deprivation regarding food expenses (p = 0.003, OR = 3.897, 95% CI = 1.597-9.511), and deprivation regarding cellphone usage (p = 0.021, OR = 3.671, 95% CI = 1.217-11.075). Conclusions: Vietnamese technical intern trainees in Japan experienced material deprivation in multiple ways, and exhibited a high prevalence of serious psychological problems. Factors contributing to suicidal ideation included age, experience of deprivation in relation to food expenses, and deprivation in relation to cellphone bills. Inability to pay cellphone bills may have increased isolation among Vietnamese trainees during the COVID-19 pandemic.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.12.14.22283455v1" target="_blank">A cross-sectional survey of material deprivation and suicide-related ideation among Vietnamese technical interns in Japan in 2021</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Difference in presentation, outcomes, and hospital epidemiologic trend of COVID-19 among first, second, and third waves in Dhaka Medical College</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Background This study aimed to examine the differences in epidemiologic and disease aspects among patients with COVID 19 Methods: We reviewed the hospital records between April 2020 and September 2021 and followed up on the patients for post COVID complications. Findings: Older adult patients were predominantly affected during the first and second waves, followed by middle-aged patients. Men were predominantly admitted, considering the three waves; although more women were admitted in the second wave. Cough was more common in the second and third waves than in the first wave 522 (59.7%). Respiratory distress was the most common in the third wave, 251(67.1%), and least common in the first wave 403 (46.1%). Anosmia was more common in the third wave 116 (31.2%). In the third wave, patients presenting in a critical state 23 (6.2%) and severe disease 152 (40.8%) were more common. The hospital admission median (IQR) was longer in the first wave, 12 (8–20), than in other waves. More patients were admitted in the first wave (52%) than in the other waves, and patients received more oxygen in the third wave (75%) than in the other waves. Death occurred more commonly in the first wave (51%) than in the other waves. Patients were investigated more commonly in the first and third waves than in the second wave. The positivity rate was high in the third wave (22.8%) than in other waves. In the third wave, the positivity rate was higher in women (24.3%) than in men. Post COVID cough increased in the second wave and fatigue was higher in the third wave than in other waves. Tiredness and memory loss was greater during the second wave than in other waves. Conclusion: This study revealed that the presenting symptoms, outcomes, and epidemiologic trends differed during the COVID 19 waves.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.12.14.22283379v1" target="_blank">Difference in presentation, outcomes, and hospital epidemiologic trend of COVID-19 among first, second, and third waves in Dhaka Medical College</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>COVID-19db linkage maps of cell surface proteins and transcription factors in immune cells</strong> -
<div>
The highly contagious SARS-CoV-2 and its associated disease (COVID-19) are a threat to global public health and economies. To develop effective treatments for COVID-19, we must understand the host cell types, cell states and regulators associated with infection and pathogenesis such as dysregulated transcription factors (TFs) and surface proteins, including signaling receptors. To link cell surface proteins with TFs, we recently developed SPaRTAN (Single-cell Proteomic and RNA-based Transcription factor Activity Network) by integrating parallel single-cell proteomic and transcriptomic data based on Cellular Indexing of Transcriptomes and Epitopes by sequencing (CITE-seq), which contains gene cis-regulatory information. We apply SPaRTAN to CITE-seq datasets from patients with varying degrees of COVID-19 severity and healthy controls to identify the associations between surface proteins and TFs in host immune cells. Here, we present COVID-19db of Immune Cell States (https://covid19db.streamlit.app/), a web server containing cell surface protein expression, SPaRTAN-inferred TF activities, and their associations with major host immune cell types. The data include four high-quality COVID-19 CITE-seq datasets with a toolset for user-friendly data analysis and visualization. We provide interactive surface protein and TF visualizations across major immune cell types for each dataset, allowing comparison between various patient severity groups for the discovery of potential therapeutic targets and diagnostic biomarkers.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.12.14.520411v1" target="_blank">COVID-19db linkage maps of cell surface proteins and transcription factors in immune cells</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>2-Thiouridine is a broad-spectrum antiviral nucleoside analogue against positive-strand RNA viruses</strong> -
<div>
Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection causes significant morbidity and mortality worldwide, seriously impacting not only human health but also the global economy. Furthermore, over 1 million cases of newly emerging or re-emerging viral infections, specifically dengue virus (DENV), are known to occur annually. Because no virus-specific and fully effective treatments against these and many other viruses have been approved, they continue to be responsible for large-scale epidemics and global pandemics. Thus, there is an urgent need for novel, effective therapeutic agents. Here, we identified 2-thiouridine (s2U) as a broad-spectrum antiviral nucleoside analogue that exhibited antiviral activity against SARS-CoV-2 and its variants of concern, including the Delta and Omicron variants, as well as a number of other positive-sense single-stranded RNA (ssRNA+) viruses, including DENV. s2U inhibits RNA synthesis catalyzed by viral RNA-dependent RNA polymerase, thereby reducing viral RNA replication, which improved the survival rate of mice infected with SARS-CoV-2 or DENV in our animal models. Our findings demonstrate that s2U is a potential broad-spectrum antiviral agent not only against SARS-CoV-2 and DENV but other ssRNA+ viruses.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.12.14.520006v1" target="_blank">2-Thiouridine is a broad-spectrum antiviral nucleoside analogue against positive-strand RNA viruses</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>COVID-19 Vaccination in Pregnancy: The Impact of Multimorbidity and Smoking Status on Vaccine Hesitancy, a Cohort Study of 25,111 Women in Wales, UK</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Abstract Background Multimorbidity and pregnancy are two risk factors for more severe outcomes after a SARS-CoV-2 infection, thus vaccination uptake is important for pregnant women living with multimorbidity. This study aimed to examine the impact of multimorbidity, smoking status, and demographics (age, ethnic group, area of deprivation) on vaccine hesitancy among pregnant women in Wales using electronic health records (EHR) linkage. Methods This cohort study utilised routinely collected, individual-level, anonymised population-scale linked data within the Secure Anonymised Information Linkage (SAIL) Databank. Pregnant women were identified from 13th April 2021 to 31st December 2021. Survival analysis was utilised to examine and compare the length of time to vaccination uptake in pregnancy by multimorbidity and smoking status, as well as depression, diabetes, asthma, and cardiovascular conditions independently. Variation in uptake by; multimorbidity, smoking status, and demographics was examined jointly and separately for the independent conditions using hazard ratios (HR) from the Cox regression model. A bootstrapping internal validation was conducted to assess the performance of the models. Results Within the population cohort, 8,203 (32.7%) received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine during pregnancy, with 8,572 (34.1%) remaining unvaccinated throughout the follow-up period, and 8,336 (33.2%) receiving the vaccine postpartum. Women aged 30 years or older were more likely to have the vaccine in pregnancy. Those who had depression were slightly but significantly more likely to have the vaccine compared to those without depression (HR = 1.08, 95% CI 1.03 to 1.14, p = 0.02). Women living with multimorbidity (&gt; 1 health condition) were 1.12 times more likely to have the vaccine compared to those living without multimorbidity (HR = 1.12, 95% CI 1.04 to 1.19, p = 0.001). Vaccine uptakes were significantly lower among both current smokers and former smokers compared to never smokers (HR = 0.87, 95% CI 0.81 to 0.94, p &lt; 0.001 and HR = 0.92, 95% CI 0.85 to 0.98, p = 0.015 respectively). Uptake was also lower among those living in the most deprived areas compared to those living in the most affluent areas (HR = 0.89, 95% CI 0.83 to 0.96, p = 0.002). The validated model had similar performance and revealed that multimorbidity, smoking status, age, and deprivation level together have a significant impact on vaccine hesitancy (p &lt; 0.05 for all). Conclusion Younger women, living without multimorbidity (zero or only one health condition), current and former smokers, and those living in the more deprived areas are less likely to have the vaccine, thus, a targeted approach to vaccinations may be required for these groups. Women living with multimorbidity are slightly but significantly less likely to be hesitant about COVID-19 vaccination when pregnant.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.12.12.22283200v1" target="_blank">COVID-19 Vaccination in Pregnancy: The Impact of Multimorbidity and Smoking Status on Vaccine Hesitancy, a Cohort Study of 25,111 Women in Wales, UK</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Robust SARS-CoV-2 antibody and T cell immunity following three COVID-19 vaccine doses in inflammatory bowel disease patients receiving anti-TNF or alternative treatments</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Vaccine-mediated immune responses in patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) may be influenced by IBD therapies. We investigated in-depth humoral and T-cell responses to SARS-CoV-2 vaccination in IBD patients following three COVID-19 vaccine doses. METHODS: Immune responses of 100 SARS-CoV-2-uninfected IBD patients on varying treatments were compared to healthy controls (n=35). Anti-S1/2 and anti-RBD SARS-CoV-2-specific antibodies, CD4+ and CD8+ T-cell responses were measured at baseline and at five time-points after COVID-19 vaccination. RESULTS: Anti-S1/2 and anti-RBD antibody concentrations at ~1 month after second dose vaccination were significantly lower in anti-TNF-treated patients compared to non-TNF IBD patients and healthy controls (126.4 vs 262.1 and 295.5, p&lt;0.0001). Anti-S1/2 antibodies remained reduced in anti-TNF treated patients before and after the third dose (285.7 vs 365.3, p=0.03), although anti-RBD antibodies reached comparable titres to non-TNF patients. Anti-RBD antibodies were higher in the vedolizumab group than controls after second dose (4.2 vs 3.6, p=0.003). Anti-TNF monotherapy was associated with increased CD4+ and CD8+ T-cell activation compared to combination anti-TNF patients after second dose, but comparable after third dose. Overall, IBD patients demonstrated similar CD4+/CD8+ T-cell responses compared to healthy controls regardless of treatment regimen. CONCLUSIONS: Anti-TNFs impaired antibody concentrations when compared to non-TNF patients and controls after two vaccine doses. These differences were not observed after the third vaccine dose. However, vaccine induced SARS-CoV-2-specific T cell responses are robust in anti-TNF-treated patients. Our study supports the need for timely booster vaccination particularly in anti-TNF treated patients to minimise the risk of severe SARS-CoV-2 infection.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.12.13.22283434v1" target="_blank">Robust SARS-CoV-2 antibody and T cell immunity following three COVID-19 vaccine doses in inflammatory bowel disease patients receiving anti-TNF or alternative treatments</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Trends in inequalities in avoidable hospitalisations across the COVID-19 pandemic: A cohort study of 23.5 million people in England</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Background: The COVID-19 pandemic and associated national lockdowns created unprecedented disruption to healthcare, with reduced access to services and planned clinical encounters postponed or cancelled. It was widely anticipated that failure to obtain timely treatment would cause progression of illness and increased hospital admissions. Additional concerns were that social and spatial inequalities would widen given the disproportionate impacts of COVID-19 directly. The aim of our study is to determine whether this was observable in England. Methods: With the approval of NHS England we utilised individual-level electronic health records from OpenSAFELY, which covered ~40% of general practices in England (mean monthly population size 23.5 million people). We estimated crude and directly age-standardised rates for potentially preventable unplanned hospital admissions: ambulatory care sensitive conditions and urgent emergency sensitive conditions. We considered how trends in these outcomes varied by three measures of social and spatial inequality: neighbourhood socioeconomic deprivation, ethnicity, and geographical region. Findings: There were large declines in avoidable hospitalisations during the first national lockdown, which then reversed post-lockdown albeit never reaching pre-pandemic levels. While trends were consistent by each measure of inequality, absolute levels of inequalities narrowed throughout 2020 (especially during the first national lockdown) and remained lower than pre-pandemic trends. While the scale of inequalities remained similar into 2021 for deprivation and ethnicity, we found evidence of widening absolute and relative inequalities by geographic region in 2021 and 2022. Interpretation: The anticipation that healthcare disruption from the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns would result in more (avoidable) hospitalisations and widening social inequalities was wrong. However, the recent growing gap between geographic regions suggests that the effects of the pandemic has reinforced spatial inequalities.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.12.14.22283458v1" target="_blank">Trends in inequalities in avoidable hospitalisations across the COVID-19 pandemic: A cohort study of 23.5 million people in England</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Trivalent SARS-CoV-2 S1 Subunit Protein Vaccination Induces Broad Humoral Responses in BALB/c Mice</strong> -
<div>
This paper presents a novel approach for improving the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines against emergent SARS-CoV-2 variants. We have evaluated the immunogenicity of unadjuvanted wild-type (WU S1-RS09cg) and variant-specific (Delta S1-RS09cg and OM S1-RS09cg) S1 subunit protein vaccines delivered either as a monovalent or a trivalent antigen in BALB/c mice. Our results show that a trivalent approach induced a broader humoral response with more coverage against antigenically distinct variants, especially when compared to monovalent Omicron-specific S1. This trivalent approach was also found to have increased or equivalent ACE2 binding inhibition, and increased S1 IgG endpoint titer at early timepoints, against SARS-CoV-2 spike variants when compared monovalent Wuhan, Delta, or Omicron S1. Our results demonstrate the utility of protein subunit vaccines against COVID-19 and provide insights into the impact of variant-specific COVID-19 vaccine approaches on the immune response in the current SARS-CoV-2 variant landscape. Particularly, our study provides insight into effects of further increasing valency of currently approved SARS-CoV-2 vaccines, a promising approach for improving protection to curtail emerging viral variants.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.12.12.520124v1" target="_blank">Trivalent SARS-CoV-2 S1 Subunit Protein Vaccination Induces Broad Humoral Responses in BALB/c Mice</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 detection in induced sputum of asthmatic patients using saliva sampling device</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Since the beginning of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 pandemic, the potential contamination of the induced sputum obtained from asthmatic patients in routine is a question of concern. The goal of this study was to assess this contamination using a saliva sample collection device. One hundred seventy-five sputum samples of asthmatic patients without fever were tested. We did not identify any positive PCR on sputum samples from asthmatic patients reporting chronic/episodic respiratory symptoms similar to what is seen in case of COVID-19. This technique was useful to evaluate the contamination of sputum samples generated during the pandemic.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.12.12.22283341v1" target="_blank">Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 detection in induced sputum of asthmatic patients using saliva sampling device</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Modelling the adjustment of COVID-19 response and exit from dynamic zero-COVID in China</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Background Since the initial Wuhan outbreak, China has been containing COVID-19 outbreaks through its “dynamic zero-COVID” policy. Striking a balance between sustainability and cost-benefit, China has recently begun to adjust its COVID-19 response strategies, e.g. by announcing the “20 measures” on 11 November and further the “10 measures” on 7 December 2022. Strategies for safely exiting from dynamic zero-COVID (i.e. without catastrophically overburdening health systems and/or incurring unacceptably excessive morbidity and mortality) are urgently needed. Methods We use simulations to assess the respective and combined effectiveness of fourth-dose heterologous boosting, large-scale antiviral treatment and public health and social measures (PHSMs) that might allow China to further adjust COVID-19 response and exit from zero-COVID safely after 7 December 2022. We also assess whether local health systems can cope with the surge of COVID-19 cases posed by reopening, given that chunyun, a 40-day period with extremely high mobility across China associated with Spring Festival, will begin on 7 January 2023. Findings Reopening against Omicron transmission should be supported by the following interventions: 1) fourth-dose heterologous boosting 30-60 days before reopening by vaccinating 4-8% of the population per week with ≥85% uptake across all ages; 2) timely antiviral treatment with ≥60% coverage; 3) moderate PHSMs to reduce transmissibility by 47-69%. With fourth-dose vaccination coverage of 85% and antiviral coverage of 60%, the cumulative mortality burden would be reduced by 26-35% to 448-503 per million, compared with reopening without any of these interventions. Simultaneously reopening all provinces under current PHSMs would still lead to hospitalization demand that are 1.5-2.5 times of surge hospital capacity (2.2 per 10,000 population per day). Interpretation Although the surge of disease burden posed by reopening in December 2022-January 2023 would likely overload many local health systems across the country, the combined effect of vaccination, antiviral treatment and PHSMs could substantially reduce COVID-19 morbidity and mortality as China transits from dynamic-zero to normality. Planning for such a nationwide, coordinated reopening should be an urgent priority as part of the global exit from the acute phase of the COVID-19 pandemic.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.12.14.22283460v1" target="_blank">Modelling the adjustment of COVID-19 response and exit from dynamic zero-COVID in China</a>
</div></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-clinical-trials">From Clinical Trials</h1>
<ul>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A Study for Immunocompromised Patients for Pre Exposure Prophylaxis of COVID-19 With AZD5156.</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID 19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Biological: Placebo;   Biological: AZD5156;   Biological: AZD7442 (EVUSHELD™)<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   AstraZeneca<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Animation Supported COVID-19 Education</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19 Pandemic<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Other: Animation-Supported Education<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Siirt University<br/><b>Completed</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Pilot Clinical Trial to Explore Efficacy and Safety of Pyramax in Mild to Moderate COVID-19 Patients</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Drug: Pyramax<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Shin Poong Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd.<br/><b>Completed</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>COVID-19 Huashi Baidu Formula Clinical Study</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: Huashi Baidu Granule;   Drug: Monapiravir<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   Xiyuan Hospital of China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences;   Beijing YouAn Hospital;   Kossamak Hospital;   Kamuzu University of Health Sciences<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Shaping Care Home COVID-19 Testing Policy</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Diagnostic Test: Lateral Flow Device<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   University College, London<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Baldachin: Ceiling HEPA-filtration to Prevent Nosocomial Transmission of COVID-19</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Device: Baldachin<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   University Hospital Inselspital, Berne<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Asunercept for the Treatment of Patients With Moderate to Severe COVID-19 Disease</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Biological: Asunercept;   Other: Placebo<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Apogenix AG<br/><b>Recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Study in Adults to Assess the Safety and Efficacy of Inhaled IBIO123, for Post-exposure Prophylaxis of COVID-19</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Biological: IBIO123;   Other: Placebo<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Immune Biosolutions Inc<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The Roles of Vitamin D and Microbiome in Children With Post-acute COVID-19 Syndromes (PACS) and Long COVID</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   Post-acute COVID-19 Syndromes<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Other: Vitamin D;   Other: Placebo<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   China Medical University Hospital<br/><b>Recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The Efficacy of Azvudine and Paxlovid in High-risk Patients With COVID-19: A Prospective Randomized Controlled Trial</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   SARS-CoV-2 Infection<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: Azvudine;   Drug: Paxlovid group<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   Southeast University, China;   Hohhot First Hospital, Hohhot, Inner Mongolia, China<br/><b>Recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Post-COVID-19 Chronic Fatigue Syndrome</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   Post-COVID-19 Syndrome;   Post-COVID Syndrome<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Drug: Synthetic Vitamin B1<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   ClinAmygate;   As-Salam Center, Maadi, Cairo, Egypt<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Effectiveness of Supportive Psychotherapy Through Internet-Based Teleconsultation on Psychological and Somatic Symptoms, Neutrophil-Lymphocyte Ratio, and Heart Rate Variability in Post Covid-19 Syndrome Patients</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   Post-COVID-19 Syndrome<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Behavioral: Supportive Psychotherapy<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Indonesia University<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A Study to Evaluate the Efficacy, Safety, and Immunogenicity of SARS-CoV-2 Variant (BA.4 /5) mRNA Vaccine</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Biological: ABO1020;   Biological: Placebo<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Suzhou Abogen Biosciences Co., Ltd.<br/><b>Active, not recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Prednisolone and Vitamin B1/6/12 in Patients With Post-Covid-Syndrome</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   Post-COVID-19 Syndrome<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: Prednisolone 20 mg/ 5 mg;   Drug: Vitamin B compound (100mg B1, 50 mg B6, 500 µg B12);   Drug: Placebo for Vitamin B compound;   Drug: Placebo for Prednisolon<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   Wuerzburg University Hospital;   University Hospital Tuebingen;   University Hospital Schleswig-Holstein<br/><b>Recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Evaluate the Efficacy and Safety of Azvudine in Preventing SARS-Cov-2 Infection in Household Contacts of Covid-19</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   SARS-CoV-2 Infection<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: Azvudine;   Drug: Placebo<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   Shanghai Henlius Biotech;   Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical Industrial Development Co. Ltd.;   HeNan Sincere Biotech Co., Ltd<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-pubmed">From PubMed</h1>
<ul>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Dynamics and binding affinity of nucleoside and non-nucleoside inhibitors with RdRp of SARS-CoV-2: a molecular screening, docking, and molecular dynamics simulation study</strong> - No abstract</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Repurposing FDA-approved drugs cetilistat, abiraterone, diiodohydroxyquinoline, bexarotene, and remdesivir as potential inhibitors against RNA dependent RNA polymerase of SARS-CoV-2: A comparative in silico perspective</strong> - No abstract</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Effect of Near-Infrared and blue laser light on Vero E6 cells SARS-CoV-2 infection model</strong> - No abstract</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The Upper Respiratory Tract Microbiome Network Impacted by SARS-CoV-2</strong> - No abstract</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Reduced immunogenicity of BNT162b2 booster vaccination in combination with a tetravalent influenza vaccination: results of a prospective cohort study in 838 health workers</strong> - No abstract</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Design, synthesis, and pharmacological evaluations of pyrrolo[1,2-a]quinoxaline-based derivatives as potent and selective sirt6 activators</strong> - No abstract</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Discovery and structural optimization of 3-O-β-Chacotriosyl betulonic acid saponins as potent fusion inhibitors of Omicron virus infections</strong> - No abstract</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Synergism of TNF-α and IFN-β triggers human airway epithelial cells death by apoptosis and pyroptosis</strong> - No abstract</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Nirmatrelvir Plus Ritonavir for Early COVID-19 in a Large U.S. Health System : A Population-Based Cohort Study</strong> - No abstract</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Phenotypic screening of 1,953 FDA-approved drugs reveals 26 hits with potential for repurposing for Peyronie’s disease</strong> - No abstract</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The preclinical discovery and development of molnupiravir for the treatment of SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19)</strong> - No abstract</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Inhibition of glycogen synthase kinase-3-beta (GSK3β) blocks nucleocapsid phosphorylation and SARS-CoV-2 replication</strong> - No abstract</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Antiviral properties of porous graphene, graphene oxide and graphene foam ultrafine fibers against Phi6 bacteriophage</strong> - No abstract</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Enhancing motivation and psychological wellbeing in the workplace through conscious physical activity: Suggestions from a qualitative study examining workers’ experience</strong> - No abstract</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Sequential Treatment by Antiviral Drugs Followed by Immunosuppressive Agents for COVID-19 Patients with Hematological Malignancy</strong> - No abstract</p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-patent-search">From Patent Search</h1>
<script>AOS.init();</script></body></html>

507
archive-daily-dose/15 December, 2022.html Normal file
View File

@ -0,0 +1,507 @@
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="" xml:lang="" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><head>
<meta charset="utf-8"/>
<meta content="pandoc" name="generator"/>
<meta content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, user-scalable=yes" name="viewport"/>
<title>15 December, 2022</title>
<style>
code{white-space: pre-wrap;}
span.smallcaps{font-variant: small-caps;}
span.underline{text-decoration: underline;}
div.column{display: inline-block; vertical-align: top; width: 50%;}
div.hanging-indent{margin-left: 1.5em; text-indent: -1.5em;}
ul.task-list{list-style: none;}
</style>
<title>Daily-Dose</title><meta content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0" name="viewport"/><link href="styles/simple.css" rel="stylesheet"/><link href="../styles/simple.css" rel="stylesheet"/><style>*{overflow-x:hidden;}</style><link href="https://unpkg.com/aos@2.3.1/dist/aos.css" rel="stylesheet"/><script src="https://unpkg.com/aos@2.3.1/dist/aos.js"></script></head>
<body>
<h1 data-aos="fade-down" id="daily-dose">Daily-Dose</h1>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" data-aos-anchor-placement="top-bottom" id="contents">Contents</h1>
<ul>
<li><a href="#from-new-yorker">From New Yorker</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-vox">From Vox</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-the-hindu-sports">From The Hindu: Sports</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-the-hindu-national-news">From The Hindu: National News</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-bbc-europe">From BBC: Europe</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-ars-technica">From Ars Technica</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-jokes-subreddit">From Jokes Subreddit</a></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-new-yorker">From New Yorker</h1>
<ul>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Kyrsten Sinema and the Fantasy of the Political Lone Wolf</strong> - Surely there’s some electoral calculation behind the Arizona senator’s decision to leave the Democratic Party, but the timing is especially confusing. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-political-scene/the-political-mystery-of-kyrsten-sinema">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Some Good News on Inflation</strong> - The latest Consumer Price Index indicates moderating price pressures—something the Federal Reserve should take on board in setting interest rates. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/some-good-news-on-inflation">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Can the U.N. Save the World from Ecological Collapse?</strong> - At this week’s summit, delegates will consider ambitious new conservation targets—even though the old ones have yet to be achieved. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/can-the-un-save-the-world-from-ecological-collapse">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A Professor Who Challenges the Washington Consensus on China</strong> - Jessica Chen Weiss argues that Biden Administration policy is contributing to an “action-reaction spiral.” - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/persons-of-interest/a-professor-who-challenges-the-washington-consensus-on-china">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The Fusion Breakthrough Suggests That Maybe Someday We’ll Have a Second Sun</strong> - In the meantime, we need to use the sun we’ve already got. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-fusion-breakthrough-suggests-that-maybe-someday-well-have-a-second-sun">link</a></p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-vox">From Vox</h1>
<ul>
<li><strong>ChatGPT has given everyone a glimpse at AI’s astounding progress</strong> -
<figure>
<img alt="OpenAI logo displayed on a phone screen and ChatGPT website displayed on a laptop screen are seen in this illustration photo taken in Krakow, Poland on December 5, 2022" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Xi5rJbyoYqTSAMbLT7rehAQ6vas=/294x0:3251x2218/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/71752528/GettyImages_1245391800.0.jpg"/>
<figcaption>
Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
The results are impressive — and a little bit scary.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="BLm98d">
There’s a new AI chatbot to check out — provided the servers that host it aren’t down from overwhelming traffic.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="zdUyD9">
Since ChatGPT launched last week, more than a million people have signed up to use it, <a href="https://twitter.com/gdb/status/1599683104142430208">according to OpenAI’s president, Greg Brockman</a>. It’s a funny, inventive, engaging, and totally untrustworthy conversation partner, and I highly recommend you check it out when the servers aren’t staggered under the load.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="K4jZL2">
Other writers have had a ball getting ChatGPT to, say, write a rap battle between <a href="https://www.blopig.com/blog/2022/12/a-chatgpt-rap-battle/">antibodies and small molecule groups</a>, or a <a href="https://twitter.com/goodside/status/1598077257498923010?s=20&amp;t=m8CiD-ncul-pi_I8lDW5RQ"><em>Seinfeld </em>script where Jerry learns about the bubble sort algorithm</a>. But there’s no funny AI-generated text here for you today, just some thoughts on ChatGPT and where we’re headed.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="k8uvjR">
A few weeks ago, I <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/23447596/artificial-intelligence-agi-openai-gpt3-existential-risk-human-extinction">wrote</a> about the stunning recent advances in AI, and I quoted Google executive Mo Gawdat, who tells the story of how <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/can-this-man-save-the-world-from-artificial-intelligence-329dd6zvd">he became concerned about general AI</a> after he saw robotics researchers working on an AI that could pick up a ball: After many failures, the AI grabbed the ball and held it up to the researchers, eerily humanlike. “And I suddenly realized this is really scary,” Gawdat said. “It completely froze me. … The reality is we’re creating God.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="yKkxHb">
Many people working on AI systems have had a moment like that at one point or another over the past few years — a moment of awe mixed with dread when it suddenly became clear to them that humanity is on the verge of something truly enormous. But for the general public, before 2022, there was little chance to come face to face with what AI is capable of. It was possible to play with OpenAI’s GPT-3 model, but on a relatively inaccessible site with lots of confusing user settings. It was possible to talk with chatbots like Meta’s Blenderbot, but Blenderbot was <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23307252/meta-facebook-bad-ai-chatbot-blenderbot">really, really dumb</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="21uZuV">
So ChatGPT is the general public’s first hands-on introduction to how powerful modern AI has gotten, and as a result, many of us are having our version of the Gawdat moment. ChatGPT, by default, sounds like a college student producing an essay for class (and its most immediate implication is that such essays will likely <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/12/chatgpt-ai-writing-college-student-essays/672371/">become a thing of the past</a>).
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="YiYOW2">
But it doesn’t have to sound like that; tell it to <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/could-an-ai-chatbot-rewrite-my-novel">clean up its essays in the New Yorker house style</a>, and it writes better. Tell it to write Shakespeare, <a href="https://www.economist.com/business/2022/12/08/how-good-is-chatgpt">and it’ll try</a> (the cadence of anything meant to be spoken is generally not very good, so good luck with iambic pentameter). It is particularly good for rephrasing great philosophers or great works of literature in the <a href="https://www.learngpt.com/prompts/give-painstakingly-minute-instructions-on-how-to-cross">vernacular of a 1920s mobster</a> or a <a href="https://medium.com/@farhadmalik/i-asked-openai-chatgpt-to-rap-about-medium-vs-youtube-in-drake-vs-eminem-style-7e5b6e54bda5">1990s rapper</a>; it can be funny, though it’s never clear how intentionally. “This is big,” I have heard from multiple people who were previously AI-skeptical.
</p>
<h3 id="uOkp0f">
The First Law: Don’t get canceled
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="zNPZHM">
It’s still far from perfect. Despite OpenAI’s best efforts, ChatGPT still frequently makes up nonsense and still sometimes can be coaxed into <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2022-12-08/chatgpt-open-ai-s-chatbot-is-spitting-out-biased-sexist-results">saying racist or hateful things</a>. And as part of a desperate effort to train the system to not say racist and hateful things, OpenAI also taught it to often be silly or evasive on any question that might even touch on a controversial topic.
</p>
<aside id="ePHqY6">
<div>
</div>
</aside>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="YenUXN">
Sometimes, though not reliably, ChatGPT will claim that it’s offensive to “make generalizations about any group of people based on their gender,” if asked a basic factual question such as “are men typically taller than women?” (<a href="https://ourworldindata.org/human-height#:~:text=Where%20are%20men%20much%20taller,3%25%20to%20over%2012%25.">They are</a>.) If asked about difficult topics, it immediately insists at length that it is just a language model trained by OpenAI, with no beliefs or opinions, and yet at other times, if prompted cleverly, it will <a href="https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/RYcoJdvmoBbi5Nax7/jailbreaking-chatgpt-on-release-day">happily express beliefs and opinions</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="cJ4OsX">
It’s not hard to see why OpenAI did its best to make ChatGPT as inoffensive as possible, even if getting around those limits is eminently doable. No reputable AI company wants its creation to start spewing racism at the drop of a hat, as Microsoft’s Tay chatbot did a few years ago. If OpenAI trained its system using some <a href="https://webhome.auburn.edu/~vestmon/robotics.html">Isaac Asimov-style Laws of Robotics</a>, the first law is definitely “don’t embarrass OpenAI.”
</p>
<h3 id="wALXof">
A glimpse into what’s ahead for us
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="iMgQkX">
But if ChatGPT is flawed, it’s smart enough to be useful despite its flaws. And many of the flaws will be edited away with more research and effort — quite possibly very soon, with the next major language model from OpenAI just weeks or months away.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="2GU311">
“The piece of this that just makes my brain explode … is that ChatGPT is not even OpenAI’s best AI chatbot,” the New York Times’s Kevin Roose <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/09/podcasts/can-chatgpt-make-this-podcast.html">said this week</a> on the Times tech podcast <em>Hard Fork</em>. “Right now, OpenAI is developing the next version of its large language model, GPT4, and if you talk to people in Silicon Valley who work in AI research, they kind of talk about this like it’s magic.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="MAwrlS">
Silicon Valley’s biggest names have been entirely candid about why they’re doing this and where they think it’s headed. The aim is to build systems that surpass humans in every respect and thereby fundamentally transform humanity’s future, even though that comes with a <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/23447596/artificial-intelligence-agi-openai-gpt3-existential-risk-human-extinction">real chance of wiping us out if things go wrong</a>. “ChatGPT is scary good. We are not far from dangerously strong AI,” Elon Musk <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1599128577068650498">tweeted earlier this month</a>. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman offered qualified agreement, <a href="https://twitter.com/sama/status/1599134747761946624">replying</a>, “i agree on being close to dangerously strong AI in the sense of an AI that poses e.g. a huge cybersecurity risk. and i think we could get to real AGI in the next decade, so we have to take the risk of that extremely seriously too.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Exy9Cg">
There’s been a tendency to dismiss such claims as meaningless hype; after all, every startup in Silicon Valley claims that it’s going to transform the world, <a href="https://towardsdatascience.com/history-of-the-first-ai-winter-6f8c2186f80b">and the field of AI has been marked by summers of optimism followed by winters of dashed hopes</a>. But ChatGPT makes it clear that behind the hype and the fear, there’s at least a little — and maybe a lot — of substance.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="C9FXee">
<em>A version of this story was initially published in the Future Perfect newsletter. </em><a href="https://confirmsubscription.com/h/d/A2BA26698741513A"><em><strong>Sign up here to subscribe!</strong></em></a>
</p></li>
<li><strong>How workers fought back in 2022</strong> -
<figure>
<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/eexy3OJngqZ6bBwW3acmmsDBpmM=/189x0:3656x2600/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/71752498/GettyImages_1245289556a.0.jpg"/>
<figcaption>
Gloria Bartolo leads marching postdoctoral scholars and academic researchers as they demand better wages, student housing, child care, and more from the University of California Los Angeles, on December 1, as contract negotiations continue and thousands strike. | Sarah Reingewirtz/MediaNews Group/Los Angeles Daily News via Getty Images
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Workers unionized, quit their jobs, and refused to go back to the office.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="rK7EVa">
Marissa Peterson quit her job as a bartender in Durham, North Carolina, in June, after she was sexually assaulted by a customer and felt management didn’t do enough to keep her assailant from returning to the establishment.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Y7l3Rm">
Her decision, Peterson said, was informed by time she spent at home during the pandemic, after being laid off from another job. Extended pandemic unemployment insurance gave her, for the first time in her adult life, space from work and time to consider her relationship with it.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="edKD3g">
“I was able to truly start thinking about how I had been mistreated by several employers, and just the things that I tolerated, and, unfortunately, how I allowed them to mistreat me by not saying anything or by not leaving sooner,” she said.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="rPt344">
When the incident happened at her new job, the decision was clear, even though it meant missing out on much-needed paychecks.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="wWgxNX">
“When I ended up quitting, it was because I felt as though my own self-respect was worth more than money,” Peterson explained.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="eOhQCH">
Even as the worst of the pandemic has waned and many things have returned to normal, many are refusing to let work return to how it was before. Workers like Peterson are expressing that sentiment by their willingness to quit their jobs. Currently, the quit rate in the US is at 2.6 percent, down from its peak of 3 percent<strong> </strong>last winter but still above historic norms. In other words, the <a href="https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2022/article/empirical-evidence-for-the-great-resignation.htm">Great Resignation</a> is still going. Others are trying to improve the jobs they’re in through collective action like unionizing and striking. Those who were able to work from home during the pandemic and felt it made their jobs and lives better are refusing to come back to the office.
</p>
<div id="Yl0UyL">
<div id="datawrapper-F1Y6c">
</div></div></li>
</ul>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="QrLerR">
These decisions have been made possible, in part, by a tight hiring market where employers have struggled to find enough workers. But the fact this scenario has lasted so long — as <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/22638555/unemployment-extension-benefits-biden">extended unemployment insurance</a> ran out, as <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/2022/11/10/23451038/silicon-valley-layoffs-meta-facebook-jobs-work-identity">layoffs</a> crowd the headlines — suggests there’s more at play. There seems to have been a fundamental shift in how many Americans consider work’s role in their lives, moving the needle ever so slightly from “live to work” to “work to live.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="4rQuNh">
This change came about for many reasons. The pandemic shed more light on and caused more appreciation for the plight of front-line workers, whose jobs were exceedingly difficult and underpaid even before they became more overtly dangerous. For knowledge workers, who can do most tasks with just a computer and an internet connection, it showed that commuting to a physical location wasn’t necessary to do their jobs or for their companies to thrive. Perhaps most poignantly, the millions of deaths that the pandemic wrought showcased the fleetingness of life and made people a little more cautious about how they spend their short time on Earth.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="kN0Uns">
Importantly for many Americans — including Petersen, who currently works three jobs —quitting is not simply a decision of having an income or not. Many Americans have learned how to survive on a spouse’s income, <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2022/12/13/23500066/pandemic-savings-inflation-recession">dwindling savings</a>, or simply less. That means the decision to quit a job is a little less arduous than it used to be.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ry9TxB">
In some ways, the current moment is also a reaction to what came before, when overwork became not only commonplace but also glorified, according to Simone Stolzoff, author of the upcoming book <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/704142/the-good-enough-job-by-simone-stolzoff/"><em>The Good Enough Job</em></a><em>. </em>The 2000s and 2010s were plagued by celebrity tech CEOs, hustle culture, and the misplaced <a href="https://www.thecut.com/2021/08/demise-of-the-girlboss.html">promise of the #girlboss</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="3q3tj7">
“Now we’re seeing the pushback,” Stolzoff said. “Employees have been able to see an alternative both with their eyes on social media and taste it in their lived experience of their own work.”
</p>
<div id="Ilo1Dy">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" dir="ltr" lang="en">
The Office was good TV for the age of gifs, lolcats and wordart memes and less so for today’s content economy. But also, the stranglehold workplaces have on people now is far greater for it to really be a relatable workplace comedy
</p>
— HK (<span class="citation" data-cites="HKesvani">@HKesvani</span>) <a href="https://twitter.com/HKesvani/status/1600427033061777409?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 7, 2022</a>
</blockquote>
</div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="EdMaD8">
As we enter a potential recession — even a <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/recession-economy-unemployment-jobs-11656947596">jobful</a> recession, as some have dubbed this one — jobs will likely become scarcer, and decisions to leave or fight back at work will become tougher. Still, there are reasons to believe this era of worker power won’t go away without a fight.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="O9A14G">
Demographic changes in the US, including an aging population, low birth rates, and low immigration, suggest the tight hiring market could continue beyond the pandemic. And as members of Generation Z, some of whom came of age during the pandemic and its hardships, enter the job market, so too will their <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/22977663/gen-z-antiwork-capitalism">views on work</a>, which are decidedly critical.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="GsfIEZ">
How long this era of worker power lasts could change what more workers expect from their jobs. And depending on how aggressive workers get with their demands, employers could change what they have to offer in the first place.
</p>
<h3 id="67Q7pP">
The fight to keep work remote
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="eF0z4l">
What worker power looks like in practice varies by industry and by worker, but it has cropped up most noticeably among knowledge workers as a push to continue working from home. People are eating at restaurants and attending concerts and sporting events, but they have not returned to the office at pre-pandemic rates, suggesting their reluctance is not simply due to fears of getting Covid. After successfully working from home for more than two years while corporations made <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-08-25/us-corporate-profits-soar-taking-margins-to-widest-since-1950">record profits</a>, many companies’ decisions to call workers back to the office have fallen on deaf ears. That has meant many workers have <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/23161501/return-to-office-remote-not-working">refused to come back in</a>, while others have gone as far as to quit in order to find the privilege at another employer.
</p>
<div id="V1cGYd">
<div id="datawrapper-1JgjM">
</div>
</div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="joNrZp">
The jobs with the biggest growth in people looking to quit are in positions that were remote during the pandemic and where people are being called back, according to a <a href="https://www.payscale.com/research-and-insights/hottest-jobs-end-of-year-report-2022/#module-16">new report</a> from compensation software company Payscale.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="HsTAd6">
Craig Register, a father of two in Los Angeles, quit his job directing operations at a beauty company in January after his employer asked workers to return to the office full time. Register said he left along with his whole team, but soon got a call from the company attorney asking if he’d come back, remotely, until the company found a replacement. He did, and it took two months.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="XJMc8v">
For Register, who spoke to Recode after he was able to duck out of work midday to see his son’s play, there was no going back to his hour-long commute each way and trying to juggle child care.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="xgFWYy">
“You went to work and you commuted if you had to, and that was just the way things were,” Register said. “Then the pandemic really, I think, opened a lot of people’s eyes to, well, it can be a different way, and this different way is better.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="LHBEWZ">
Remote work has had even more dramatic impacts on people’s lives, like allowing people to become homeowners since they weren’t tied to a single region and its real estate costs.
</p>
<div class="c-float-right">
<aside id="A20zOg">
<q>“Then the pandemic really, I think, opened a lot of people’s eyes to, well, it can be a different way, and this different way is better”</q>
</aside>
</div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="5MdimB">
Dustin Tanner, an interface designer at Apple, had been commuting three hours back and forth to company headquarters in Cupertino, California, each day. When the pandemic hit and Tanner was able to work remotely, he was finally able to afford a home he and his family had long wanted — in Texas.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="sgQEr2">
“The housing market is so crazy that even working in the executive design team at Apple designing all of their flagship products, it was still really hard to buy a home if you hadn’t been established in California for a long time,” he said.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="0uZun8">
When Apple told workers <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2022/08/15/apple-tells-employees-to-come-in-3-times-a-week-starting-september.html">this past summer</a> they’d be expected to return to the office three days a week, Tanner considered flying back and forth from Texas every week but ultimately decided to give up his “dream job” in exchange for one that would allow him to continue working remotely and spend more time with his family.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="qjE9Fj">
“If we take those remote opportunities, we don’t have to make all these sacrifices,” he said.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ilNTDT">
Remote jobs make up less than 15 percent of jobs on LinkedIn but get more than half of all applications, the company told Recode. That suggests there are more people who want to work remotely than there are jobs. It also suggests that employers who offer remote work will get more interest.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="aVBaVK">
It’s also possible that workers won’t have to fight as hard for remote work soon, as the move to return to the office is coming up against the need to save money. Employers, loath to fire workers, are <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/2022/11/30/23484001/recession-cost-cutting-return-to-office-software">cutting back on office space</a> instead.
</p>
<div id="MPUCTA">
<div id="datawrapper-iHdT6">
</div>
</div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="SSFLak">
Currently, 79 percent of people whose jobs could be done from home are working from home, either in a hybrid or fully remote arrangement, according to data from Gallup. That rate has remained surprisingly <a href="https://www.gallup.com/workplace/397751/returning-office-current-preferred-future-state-remote-work.aspx">consistent</a> over the last year and a half.
</p>
<h3 id="R8zPQW">
The state of the union is strong
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="JTgyFC">
Workers are not only taking stands on single issues like remote work, they’re collectively organizing to tackle a much broader range of issues. Americans are joining unions at levels not seen in years, as workers organize to get better conditions. More than 1,000 unions have won elections in 2022, the most since 2015, according to preliminary data for this year provided by <a href="https://pro.bloomberglaw.com/">Bloomberg Law</a>, which will likely be revised upward.<strong> </strong>People are also organizing in sectors that were once considered impossible to unionize, like retail. Workers at <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/22993509/starbucks-successful-union-drive">Starbucks</a>, Apple, <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/23005336/amazon-union-new-york-warehouse">Amazon</a>, and <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/2022/8/13/23299622/trader-joes-starbucks-union-movement">Trader Joe’s</a> all unionized this year in the hope of getting better working conditions by collectively organizing.
</p>
<div id="nMJk7D">
<div id="datawrapper-zy0ph">
</div>
</div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ThpUL0">
The pandemic, again, seems to be the galvanizing force here, Kate Bronfenbrenner, director of labor education research at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations, told Recode.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="iTb74M">
“They were greedy, and they took too much from workers, expected too much from workers, and, most of all, took too much for themselves,” she said, referring to companies and their record profits while workers, especially front-line workers, endured poor working conditions. “I think that’s the spark.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="M6mkj8">
It helps that there’s <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/2022/8/30/23326654/2022-union-charts-elections-wins-strikes">extremely high approval for unions</a> in the US right now, with more people saying they support unions than at any time since 1965. That’s happening even in the face of strikes that could potentially make life more difficult for Americans.
</p>
<div class="c-float-right">
<aside id="Gpv3ak">
<q>“They took too much from workers, expected too much from workers, and, most of all, took too much for themselves”</q>
</aside>
</div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="xefHa4">
There were 360 strikes from January to November this year, a 45 percent jump from the same period last year — which was also a big year for strikes — according to data shared by Johnnie Kallas, project director of Cornell’s <a href="https://striketracker.ilr.cornell.edu">ILR Labor Action Tracker</a>. Earlier this year, <a href="https://abc17news.com/money/cnn-business-consumer/2022/09/12/massive-health-care-strike-15000-minnesota-nurses-walk-off-the-job/">15,000 nurses went on strike in Minnesota</a> to try and get better staffing and patient care. Last month, Starbucks workers across the country <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/2022/11/17/23464263/starbucks-workers-red-cup-rebellion-union-strike">stood on picket lines</a> on what’s considered one of the company’s busiest days of the year in the hope of getting the company to finally bargain on a contract. Congress was forced to <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2022/11/29/23484623/congress-rail-strike-biden-sick-days">intervene</a> earlier this month to stop a rail strike, as rail workers nearly <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/business-63798110">incapacitated</a> cross-country trade to protest strict attendance policies and the fact that they don’t have a single paid sick day. And last week, more than 1,000 New York Times employees <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/07/business/media/new-york-times-union-walkout.html">stepped off the job</a> and asked readers not to cross their digital picket line by going to any of the company’s publications to protest stalled contract negotiations.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="MK7zOw">
The more people unionize and strike, the more others are encouraged to do so as well.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="GrWMyh">
“Organizing and strikes are contagious,” Bronfenbrenner said. “When they see that workers just like them have done it and succeeded, it inspires them that they can do it, too.”
</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/mlRT-mX-ivqeRH9D4gq4AWJVU04=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24288632/GettyImages_1447762081a.jpg"/> <cite>Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>
More than 1,100 unionized New York Times staff members participated in a 24-hour strike on December 8 outside of the paper’s headquarters in New York City. Continued negotiations between the Times Guild and the paper’s management broke down mostly over pay. Journalists at the newspaper have not had a working contract since March 2021.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="PcGZdQ">
That was the case for Tracy V. Wilson, host of the podcast <em>Stuff You Missed in History Class</em>, who successfully organized with her colleagues at iHeartMedia, which voluntarily recognized the union in <a href="https://twitter.com/iheartpodunion/status/1496902608979693580">February</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="G2VNnM">
“Seeing other podcast shops successfully unionize and successfully bargain contracts was a pretty big inspiration,” Wilson said. “A lot of the same core issues drove my colleagues to start organizing.” Those issues include overwork and not having enough resources to do their jobs.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="V2oOhr">
Writ large, these realizations have caused workers across the country and across industries to try their hand at unionizing and to test just how much power they have.
</p>
<h3 id="i6sWEl">
The case for continuing worker power
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="yHNuYz">
The current situation won’t last forever. Layoffs and fewer job openings will put a dent in worker power. And the magnitude and length of any coming recession will determine just how big that hit will be. Still, there are structural and cultural reasons to think worker power has staying power.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="B90six">
While the working-age population is still growing, it’s not growing as fast as it has historically, according to a recent <a href="https://lightcast.io/resources/research/demographic-drought">report</a> by market analytics firm Lightcast, formerly Emsi Burning Glass. And as boomers age, more people will be retiring and leaving the workforce than entering it. By 2034, older Americans will outnumber children for the first time in history, according to <a href="https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2018/03/graying-america.html">census projections</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="NhOdTz">
Compounding the situation are <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/22411236/immigration-census-population-growth">low immigration numbers</a> and low workforce participation rates. The labor force participation rate, or the share of the working population that’s working or wants to work, is still notably lower than it was pre-pandemic, thanks to fears of the ongoing pandemic, early retirement, and terrible child care options, among other reasons.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="X4QJ4F">
All of this goes to say that there aren’t enough workers, so those who are working have a little bit more power and not as much fear of replacement as they would otherwise. Additionally, the generation entering the workforce may not be as deferential to their employers as their predecessors.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="OZE5VD">
Gen Z workers have a front-row seat to an economy where wage growth <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/23451232/2022-crypto-inflation-abortion-flu-remote-ukraine">isn’t enough to counter inflation</a> and where no matter how hard they work, they may never be able to afford a home like their parents or grandparents. That’s done a number on their career outlook. People in Gen Z, the oldest of whom are about 25, say they’re <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/22977663/gen-z-antiwork-capitalism">forgoing striving and ambition</a> in exchange for leisure and simply enjoying life. They’re working out of financial necessity rather than some inborn calling. And they expect a lot more out of their jobs than previous generations.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="p5LKfM">
That’s not to say getting better working conditions will be easy. Forming a union and negotiating a contract is an uphill battle with odds in favor of employers. Quitting a job can be terrifying and financially ruinous. Demanding better work-life balance takes a lot of energy. Still, many workers have done the calculus and have decided that better work is worth it.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="i01PW7">
“If workers aren’t feeling safe or fairly compensated or protected, they will continue to speak up and advocate for change,” Stoltzoff said. “I imagine there will be fewer workers quitting with nothing lined up on the other side, but I think the push to try and reform and make the workplace better will continue.”
</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Why are Christmas movie “miracles” never miracles at all?</strong> -
<figure>
<img alt="The stars of Great American Christmas’s “A Christmas...Present” strike a pose in front of a Christmas tree." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/bG1xhHu13ja-ndsqHPmpbttfoEg=/0x0:1333x1000/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/71748403/gac1.0.jpeg"/>
<figcaption>
Christmas movies are full of miracles and togetherness. Or are they? | Courtesy of Great American Media
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Candace Cameron Bure wants to put the Christ back into Christmas movies, but she’s not really following through.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="3BV6E6">
Last month, I started mainlining made-for-TV Christmas movies — Hallmark movies and their otherly-channeled clones — to research an entirely different article, not the one you’re reading right now. (Maybe next year.) What arrested my attention instead was a common claim in every single one of the movies, one so insistently made that I started to feel a tad skeptical. It’s summed up best, perhaps, in a line from the Lindsay Lohan Netflix vehicle <em>Falling for Christmas</em>: “Christmas,” a grandmother insists, “is a time for miracles.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="zwoNmF">
Miracles, and also magic; the terms are interchangeable, and also made more specific. “Holiday” magic. “Christmas” miracles. Hot single business women find hot single dads to date. Small businesses on the verge of bankruptcy are saved at the eleventh hour. Children wish for family togetherness, and the wish is granted.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="CfIgCr">
These are wonderful things, but not actually miracles, or not in the sense of the actual meaning of the word. A miracle is definitionally an unexplained occurrence that people believe is the work of some divine entity. It’s more often used as a metaphor these days — I bet you’ve uttered the phrase “it’s a Christmas miracle!” ironically a time or two yourself. But in the gentle made-for-TV Christmas movie, they refer to ordinary events that many people experience in their lives — securing a home, finding love, discovering a profitable and sustainable business model — now made sparkly and near-supernatural simply because they occur in the midst of snow and holly. These not-quite-miracles live a double life of divinity and inevitability, because they’re also an expectation. If something is going wrong, it’s okay — once Christmas rolls around, it will be fixed.
</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="A very Christmasy scene, in which a man and a woman and a child talk to a person who looks suspiciously like Santa Claus in a place full of Christmas decorations." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/5n9UeRHm0C3j5Jikjxn98xMNZes=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24288892/gac3.jpeg"/> <cite>Courtesy of Netflix</cite>
<figcaption>
The Lindsay Lohan vehicle <em>Falling for Christmas</em> was one of the season’s goofier offerings.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="f9KZ4r">
I saw the miracle idea in movies from the Hallmark Channel, which <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/12/23/how-hallmark-took-over-cable-tv">was created</a> when parent company Crown Media took over the formerly Christian channel Odyssey in 2001. I saw the miracle mantra in Christmas movies on Lifetime, which offers similar fare to Hallmark but exactly two notches sexier, and on Netflix, which delightfully has instituted the practice of having characters in its Christmas movies stumble across other Netflix Christmas movies in their own world. (Lindsay Lohan, playing the <em>Falling for Christmas</em> heroine, an heiress who experiences amnesia and wakes up in an unfamiliar setting, flicks on the TV in the morning, triggering the Netflix “tudum” sound and the landing page for 2021’s <a href="https://www.netflix.com/title/81026181"><em>A Castle for Christmas</em></a>.)
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ruifDD">
And I saw them in the movies of the new “Great American Family” channel, which <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/candace-cameron-bure-traditional-marriage-great-american-family-1235262724/">made news</a> when its star and a channel executive, Candace Cameron Bure, <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/candace-cameron-bure-great-american-family-11668205295">told the Wall Street Journal</a> that the channel would keep “traditional marriage at the core.” (A tiny number of Hallmark movies feature same-sex couples.) Bure, the former <em>Full House</em> star sometimes dubbed the “Queen of Christmas,” starred in the 2014 film <em>Christmas Under Wraps</em>, which more or less kicked off the genre. For many viewers, she comes with built-in cred.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="stptzj">
The fledgling channel’s official moniker for its Christmas programming, “Great American Christmas,” left me sort of in awe. What an artless marketing strategy to name your network and its associated properties — like production company Great American Media — by employing a rather obvious Trump campaign slogan echo. It was blatant and cynical and brilliant, all at once. I had to see what they were actually doing.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="PnXa2C">
It turns out that “Great American Christmas” programming is pretty similar to that of Hallmark or any other channel, but seemingly a lot whiter (and I don’t mean the snow) and, yes, no gay couples. In the grand tradition of Hallmark, the Great American Christmas movies remain studiously “apolitical” (in the sense that politics aren’t referred to directly); perhaps the only textual trope that seemed to smack directly of the grander MAGA belief system is a number of very pointed “Merry Christmas” salutations and no “Happy Holidays.” Otherwise, it’s mostly the familiar greatest hits. The only red hats are on Santa.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="NlJmPp">
In the film <em>Destined at Christmas</em>, for instance — kind of a <em>Serendipity</em> knock-off — a hot single dad (Casey Elliott) and a single, career-focused woman (Shae Robins) meet in a pre-dawn Black Friday shopping line, where he’s finding gifts for his daughter and she for her niece. They wind up spending the morning together chatting and shopping and sipping hot cocoa, then lose one another when the electricity goes out in a store, and they spend the rest of the movie trying to locate one another. They finally do — at the town’s “Christmas village” (a common trope of the genre) and the Christmas Eve “Santa send-off.” The film ends a year later, when they are still together, exchanging gifts and talking about the miracle of love.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="uBv066">
There are many ways to criticize these movies, and <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-152-hallmark-christmas-movies-and-the/id1258545975?i=1000545076424">many</a> <a href="https://www.salon.com/2019/12/25/hallmark-christmas-movies-fascist-propaganda/">have</a> <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/12/23/hallmarks-christmas-movies-are-part-culture-war-their-viewers-are-losing/">done</a> it. The genre can be toxically nostalgic and regressive; they’re usually the opposite of inclusive; the illusion of apoliticality is, itself, political. They’re technically billed as “originals,” but they’re the antithesis of original (though I started to admire the endless variations on the theme that writers seem to invent — Hallmark released 40 Christmas originals this year, while the still-new Great American Family released 18 originals.)
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="fmOopo">
But whatever my feelings as a critic about this material (in part, that they’re so sincere that taking them down feels exhausting and silly and mean, like picking on your grandma), I continually found myself fixating on the “magical miracle” thing.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="NkgUp5">
I was raised in an environment that took the idea of Christmas as a religious holiday very seriously. I wasn’t allowed to believe in Santa as a kid. At church, we often spoke about the “reason for the season” (Jesus) and about the dangers of letting the secular commercialization of Christmas overtake its true meaning. That true meaning was, in fact, framed as a miracle: God became a baby <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%202:6-7&amp;version=NIV">born in a barn</a> to <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+1%3A18-25&amp;version=NIV">a virgin</a>, <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+2%3A8-20&amp;version=NIV">angels appeared to shepherds</a> to announce it all, and for Christians, history pivoted on its axis around that event.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="r0mX5N">
It was not really a sweet story, though, at least not as we learned it. Christmas also included <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+2%3A1-3&amp;version=NIV">tyranny and forced occupation</a>, the terror of babies being <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_of_the_Innocents#:~:text=The%20Massacre%20of%20the%20Innocents,in%20the%20vicinity%20of%20Bethlehem.">murdered by a desperate king</a>, and a small family <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_into_Egypt">fleeing for their lives to Egypt</a>. Even Santa was less a jolly grandpa in the sky and more a warrior; we learned he was based on St. Nicholas of Myra, who stood for justice and, reportedly, rescued girls from forced prostitution <a href="https://www.wctrib.com/lifestyle/saint-nicholas-sparks-legend-of-santa-claus">by dropping gold down their chimney</a> (you see the connection).
</p>
<div class="c-float-right">
<aside id="h2gdSw">
<q>That sort of miracle — the one where your dad can pay his debts and doesn’t have to sell you into enslavement — is not quite the same as saving your new boyfriend’s small ski chalet or finding your true love after some mildly pleasant hijinks.</q>
</aside>
</div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="iX37r5">
That sort of miracle — the one where your dad can pay his debts and doesn’t have to sell you into enslavement — is not quite the same as saving your new boyfriend’s small ski chalet or finding your true love after some mildly pleasant hijinks. Instead, this is the softer miracle of Santa, American-style: he winks or touches his nose and your wish lands on the tree, or there’s some extra light in the sky, or you suddenly realize the guy you’ve been playfully fight-flirting with is actually your soulmate.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="kyVVnc">
These are really lovely things, but they lack the wonder of a real miracle and — perhaps more fascinating — they lack a divine entity making them happen. It seems sometimes like “Christmas” itself is the god of the machinery, the being to be worshiped and celebrated and prayed to. Or it’s Santa, who pops up throughout these movies often as a kindly stranger in the town square selling snow globes or ornaments and listening to our characters’ wishes and woes.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="5hMKDb">
I’m far from wishing God would pop up in American Christmas movies — the holiday is long past being observed in more than a cursory religious way for most who celebrate it, and that’s fine. You don’t have to be a practicing Christian to celebrate Christmas. You don’t have to believe in anything at all. What was curious to me was the near-total absence of even those cursory religious practices; rather than go to church on Christmas Eve, the characters go to the Santa send-off. In a genre so enamored with “miracles,” so rooted in Christianity, it seemed odd to never hear about, for instance, the birth of Jesus.
</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="A family at church, decorated for Christmas." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/-eJ4aRvSPbl6KXxTLTBpPfdQYvo=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24288896/gac2.jpeg"/> <cite>Great American Media</cite>
<figcaption>
In <em>A Christmas…Present</em>, the family actually goes to church!
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="XuJv7y">
Until I watched the new original movie that Bure starred in for the Great American Christmas, entitled <em>A Christmas…Present</em>. She plays Maggie, a busy Type A mom with a family of two teens and her lawyer husband, from whom she’s been feeling a bit distant. On a whim, she decides the family actually needs to go to Ohio for Christmas — starting tomorrow, 10 days before the actual holiday — to spend time with her recently widowed brother Paul (Paul Fitzgerald) and his tween daughter. And she has many activities planned.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="z10gPx">
<em>A Christmas…Present</em> hits most of the genre’s greatest hits: busy career woman returns home and rediscovers herself; lots of talk about family togetherness; plenteous Christmas decorating and cookies and all the trappings. What set this one apart (aside from the fact that the reconnecting couple is already married) was that it actually was religious. Paul quotes the Bible to Maggie a lot — chapter and verse. They talk about belief together. The family goes to church. The word “Jesus” is uttered. In essence, it’s a Christian movie that is set at Christmas, and that’s a rare thing for the made-for-TV Christmas movie, even (as far as I could tell) on the Great American Family channel.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="NCtYFH">
This isn’t a movie where the whole Christmas story gets told, though, or even read aloud as a family. (They do sing specifically Christian carols.) Nobody has an altar call at church. Santa is a real figure in the world, and the Christmas magical miracle is still what everyone’s after — in this case, the miracle of reconnecting with your family.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="5qpnjw">
It felt in keeping with recent research that shows that labels like “evangelical” (the <a href="https://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/11/2015/05/Religious-Composition-of-U.S.-Adults.pdf">largest Christian group</a> in America) are <a href="https://theweek.com/christianity/1016833/is-us-evangelical-christianity-more-a-culture-than-a-religion">increasingly associated with culture over religious belief</a>. The miracles served up by the original Christmas story are messy and scary and threatening to the Hallmark ideals of comfort and safety and not rocking the boat. They might threaten the wealthy, spendy Christmas showcased in the genre, even when the movie is set in what’s meant to be a small town. Actual Christmas miracles, if you take the religious origins of the story to be true, are uncomfortable and frightening and weird. They’re the exact opposite of a Christmas movie.
</p>
<div class="c-float-right">
<aside id="qcrRxL">
<q>In the movies’ world, not getting in the Christmas spirit is not just unforgivable — it’s unthinkable.</q>
</aside>
</div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Q4p8Vq">
In the end, that’s the unsettling part of watching all of these movies: that the thing they prize most is a feeling of happiness and peace and expectation, all things we wish for at Christmas. But the thing they <em>promise</em> is that this <em>will</em> happen; it’s the foregone conclusion in a cheaply made, churned-out production, not an actual miracle at all. And if you don’t experience those wonderful but quotidian Christmas feelings, you’re a spoilsport with no faith. If you’re feeling downtrodden on the holiday, or if you don’t feel like singing that carol or decorating that cookie, the problem would have to be with you. In the movies’ world, not getting in the Christmas spirit is not just unforgivable — it’s unthinkable. A religion that understands the inherently disturbing nature of the holiday could be helpful in moments like these, but it’s been squeezed out of Christmas entirely.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="qBEDf7">
It’s true that, at the end of the day, <em>A Christmas…Present</em> aims to remind people that God is a big part of Christmas — something you’d think might be a bigger part of the genre. But even by the end of that film, God is, in essence, Santa: a benevolent presence who brings what you want. At the end of the film, embracing her husband and promising to be more intentional about their relationship when they return home, snowflakes begin to land on their coats. It’s a Christmas miracle. Maggie turns her face up toward the falling snow. “Thank you, God,” she says.
</p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-the-hindu-sports">From The Hindu: Sports</h1>
<ul>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>FIFA World Cup 2022 | Resilient Argentina bounds past a flagging Croatia</strong> - Argentina scored three in the semifinal match against Croatia who otherwise dominated the midfield</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>FIFA World Cup 2022 | Inside a football-crazy Tamil Nadu village</strong> - When Cristiano Ronaldo appeared on the screen during the World Cup quarter-final between Portugal and Morocco, Tamil Nadu’s Thoothoor and its adjacent villages along the Kanniyakumari coastline cheered enthusiastically. We were among the crowd.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Hyderabad-based Srinivas and Radhika Reddy make a mark with Telugu commentary for Pro Kabaddi League Season 9</strong> - The two are the only couple commentating in Telugu</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>When is FIFA World Cup 2022 final? Date and kick-off time in India</strong> - The 80,000-capacity Lusail Iconic Stadium will host the 2022 FIFA World Cup final between Argentina and France</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Review of Luciano Wernicke’s The Most Incredible World Cup Stories: Football snapshots</strong> - The FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 has showcased a game full of history, anecdotes, joy and angst</p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-the-hindu-national-news">From The Hindu: National News</h1>
<ul>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Kerala government to consider introducing Bill to curb evil practices and black magic</strong> - The government informs the Kerala High Court that it will consider introducing the Kerala Prevention and Eradication of Inhuman Evil Practices, Sorcery and Black Magic Bill, 2019 in the next session of the Assembly</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Himachal Pradesh cabinet will be formed after State Assembly session: CM Sukhu</strong> - Mallikarjun Kharge asked Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu to share power with party workers so that they also feel the ownership of the government and work more closely with public</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Dense fog engulfs Kochi, three in-bound flights diverted</strong> -</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Vishwanath hits back at Srinivas Prasad for calling him “political nomad”</strong> -</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>‘U.S. created Indo-Pacific concept to bring in India to contain China,’ says Chinese official</strong> - Chinese diplomat and Ambassador to France Lu Shaye blames ‘foreign forces’ for fanning recent protests in China</p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-bbc-europe">From BBC: Europe</h1>
<ul>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Denmark’s new government drops public holiday to boost defence budget</strong> - The new government says it will scrap a public holiday observed since the 17th Century.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Boy run over and killed after France World Cup win</strong> - A 14-year-old is knocked down by a car draped with a flag in the southern city of Montpellier.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Hungary’s risky bet on Russia’s nuclear power</strong> - Russia’s war in Ukraine is making a new power station - the biggest single investment in Hungarian history - less likely by the day.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Four in EU-Qatar bribery inquiry to stay in custody</strong> - The arrests follow a year-long investigation into an alleged bribery affair involving Qatar.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>French police search Macron party office and consulting firm</strong> - The raids are part of inquiries into the use of consultancies by France’s president in 2017 and 2021.</p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-ars-technica">From Ars Technica</h1>
<ul>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A Russian spacecraft started leaking uncontrollably on Wednesday night</strong> - After three hours Wednesday night the leak remained ongoing. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1904662">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>High class: A strong electric assist transforms a classic cruiser</strong> - Mixed messages from a casual cruising machine with a powerful motor. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1901684">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Oppo prototypes Magic Mouse-looking health tracker for the whole family</strong> - ECG, sleep tracking, and heart and lung auscultation—all in one unusual design. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1904375">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>COVID is here to stay, but global emergency could end next year, WHO chief says</strong> - Vaccine inequity, long COVID, and weak variant surveillance loom as big challenges. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1904591">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Prosecutors charge 6 people for allegedly waging massive DDoS attacks</strong> - 48 Internet domains associated with the services have also been seized. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1904558">link</a></p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-jokes-subreddit">From Jokes Subreddit</h1>
<ul>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A man finds a genie lamp, rubs it and poof a Genie appears.</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Genie: I have the power to grant you 3 wishes but keep in mind, whatever you wish, your mother-in-law will receive two-fold…
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Man: Ok. My first wish is for 1 billion dollars.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Genie: Your wish is granted, but keep in mind that your mother-in-law will receive 2 billion dollars.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Man: That’s fine. My second wish is for a 20,000sq ft mansion in the Hamptons.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Genie: Your wish is granted, but keep in mind that your mother-in-law will receive a 40,000sq ft mansion in the Hamptons.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Man: That’s fine.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Genie: Ok. What is your third wish?
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Man: I want you to beat me half to death.
</p>
</div>
<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/liquidstone_"> /u/liquidstone_ </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/zm1efr/a_man_finds_a_genie_lamp_rubs_it_and_poof_a_genie/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/zm1efr/a_man_finds_a_genie_lamp_rubs_it_and_poof_a_genie/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>What’s the difference between model trains and titties?</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Nothing, both are intended for children but it’s the dads who are playing with them.
</p>
</div>
<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/cawnion"> /u/cawnion </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/zmasnl/whats_the_difference_between_model_trains_and/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/zmasnl/whats_the_difference_between_model_trains_and/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The old professor started each lecture with a dirty joke.</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
After a real objectionable example of that one day, the female students got together and decided that next time, when this happens again, they will all walk out in unison.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
The professor got wind of this plot. Next morning, after he entered the lecture hall, he said: “Good morning! Have you heard about the shortage of prostitutes in Alaska?”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Now all the female students stood up and headed toward the exit.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
The professor continued: “Oh, ladies, please wait, the plane to alaska doesn’t leave until tomorrow!”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
“We know, but it takes all of us and a whole day to carry your mom” replied one of the students
</p>
</div>
<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/DerRaumdenker"> /u/DerRaumdenker </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/zlw9k7/the_old_professor_started_each_lecture_with_a/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/zlw9k7/the_old_professor_started_each_lecture_with_a/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>My friend tries to impress girls by drawing realistic pictures of a Ford F-150.</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
He’s ….a pickup artist.
</p>
</div>
<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/porichoygupto"> /u/porichoygupto </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/zlstn6/my_friend_tries_to_impress_girls_by_drawing/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/zlstn6/my_friend_tries_to_impress_girls_by_drawing/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Two scientists walk into a bar.</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
“I’ll have H2O,” says the first. “I’ll have H2O, too,” says the second. The bartender gives them water because he is able to distinguish the boundary tones that dictate the grammatical functions of homonyms in coda positions, as well as pragmatic context.
</p>
</div>
<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/SpeedTuber"> /u/SpeedTuber </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/zlzu69/two_scientists_walk_into_a_bar/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/zlzu69/two_scientists_walk_into_a_bar/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
</ul>
<script>AOS.init();</script></body></html>

4
index.html
View File

File diff suppressed because one or more lines are too long