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NPR News
Parts of the moon have stable temperatures fit for humans, researchers find
The moon has pits and caves where temperatures stay at roughly 63 degrees Fahrenheit, making human habitation a possibility, according to new research from planetary scientists at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Although much of the moon's surface fluctuates from temperatures as high as 260 degrees during the day to as low as 280 degrees below zero at night, researchers say these stable spots could transform the future of lunar exploration and long-term habitation.
University of California — Los Angeles
UCLA scientists discover places on the moon where it’s always ‘sweater weather’
Future human explorers on the moon might have 99 problems but staying warm or cool won’t be one. A team led by planetary scientists at UCLA has discovered shady locations within pits on the moon that always hover around a comfortable 63 degrees Fahrenheit.
The pits, and caves to which they may lead, would make safer, more thermally stable base camps for lunar exploration and long-term habitation than the rest of the moon’s surface, which heats up to 260 degrees during the day and drops to 280 degrees below zero at night.
Pits were first discovered on the moon in 2009, and since then, scientists have wondered if they led to caves that could be explored or used as shelters. About 16 of the more than 200 pits are probably collapsed lava tubes, said Tyler Horvath, a UCLA doctoral student in planetary science, who led the new research. Two of the most prominent pits have visible overhangs that clearly lead to some sort of cave or void, and there is strong evidence that another’s overhang may also lead to a large cave. […]
The results, recently published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, revealed that temperatures within the permanently shadowed reaches of the pit fluctuate only slightly throughout the lunar day, remaining at around 63 degrees. If a cave extends from the bottom of the pit, as images taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera suggest, it too would have this relatively comfortable temperature
Space.com
James Webb Space Telescope detects a surprise supernova
The James Webb Space Telescope has surprised scientists by unexpectedly detecting its first supernova, an explosion of a dying star. The detection could possibly open up an entirely new area of research possibilities, scientists say.
Just a few days after the start of its science operations, the
James Webb Space Telescope's NIRCam camera spotted an unexpected bright object in a
galaxy called SDSS.J141930.11+5251593, some 3 to 4 billion
light-years from
Earth. The bright object dimmed over a five-day period, suggesting that it could have been a
supernova, caught by sheer luck shortly after the star exploded. (The astronomers compared the new observations with archived data from the
Hubble Space Telescope to confirm the light was new.)
The discovery is surprising as the James Webb Space Telescope wasn't built to search for supernovas…
The Washington Post
This vegetable garden is 25 feet underwater. Take a look.
About 25 feet under the ocean surface, just off the coast of Noli, Italy, six plastic biospheres glow, part of an experiment with a novel type of aquaculture.
The biospheres, tended by a group of scuba divers, are growing basil, strawberries, lettuce and other greens that are being farmed there for human consumption. Once harvested, the plants have been found to possess higher levels of essential oils and antioxidants — suggesting a potential use in pharmaceuticals — and a purer, more intense taste when eaten. […]
It’s all part of a vision by Sergio Gamberini, a chemical engineer and the president of the Ocean Reef Group… Founded in 2012, the project — dubbed Nemo’s Garden — … aims to create a sustainable method of growing food in a world increasingly affected by climate change.
Phys.org
Faster growth may help bacteria remove lake plastic waste: study
Chemicals leaking from plastic waste make bacteria grow faster in European lakes, according to research published Tuesday that authors said could provide a natural way to remove plastic pollution from freshwater ecosystems.
Microplastics have been found in virtually every corner of the globe—from the highest glaciers to the bottom of the deepest sea trench—but the impact of plastic pollution in lakes is less well researched than in oceans.
When plastic materials such as carrier bags break down in water, they release simple carbon compounds slightly different to those produced when organic matter such as twigs and leaves disintegrate.
Researchers from the University of Cambridge wanted to see what effect these compounds had on bacteria populations in 29 lakes across Scandinavia.
Science
Is this pillbug-like organism a pollinator of the sea?
The birds and the bees are expert pollinators on land, but how does this vital task happen in the sea? A decade ago, scientists discovered small marine worms and crustaceans transport pollen between flowering seagrass, and now another research team has found a possible new pollinator: a slender crustacean called an isopod that swims between red algae with its sperm cells stuck to its body, fertilizing the plant as it grazes.
“It’s a really exciting piece of work,” says Susan Kalisz, a plant evolutionary ecologist at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, who was not involved with the research. That’s because most plant fertilization in the ocean takes place without animal help, with eggs and sperm brought together by the sloshing of seawater. But with more sleuthing, Kalisz says, researchers might turn up further examples of animal-assisted pollination.
Myriam Valero, a population geneticist at CNRS, the French national research agency, has been studying the genetics of the red alga Gracilaria gracilis for many years in the tidepools of Europe. The reproduction of the plant is unusual. In many marine organisms, males and females release their sperm and egg cells to mix in the water. In the case of Gracilaria, however, things are more complicated: The female alga doesn’t release its egg cells, but keeps them inside funnel-shaped filaments. The male’s sperm must somehow reach them—even though the cells lack tails to help them swim.
The Conversation
Meet Qikiqtania, a fossil fish with the good sense to stay in the water while others ventured onto land
Approximately 365 million years ago, one group of fishes left the water to live on land. These animals were early tetrapods, a lineage that would radiate to include many thousands of species including amphibians, birds, lizards and mammals. Human beings are descendants of those early tetrapods, and we share the legacy of their water-to-land transition.
But what if, instead of venturing onto the shores, they had turned back? What if these animals, just at the cusp of leaving the water, had receded to live again in more open waters?
A new fossil suggests that one fish, in fact, did just that. In contrast to other closely related animals, which were using their fins to prop their bodies up on the bottom of the water and perhaps occasionally venturing out onto land, this newly discovered creature had fins that were built for swimming.
University of Toronto
Whales' eyes offer glimpse into their evolution from land to sea
University of Toronto researchers have shed light on the evolutionary transition of whales' early ancestors from on-shore living to deep-sea foraging, suggesting that these ancestors had visual systems that could quickly adapt to the dark.
Their findings show that the common ancestor of living whales was already a deep diver, able to see in the blue twilight zone of the ocean, with eyes that swiftly adjusted to dim conditions as the whale rushed down on a deep breath of surface air.
"In the evolution of whale diving, there's been a long-standing question of when deep-sea foraging evolved," says Belinda Chang, a professor in the Faculty of Arts & Science's departments of ecology and evolutionary biology, and cell and systems biology. "And it seems that based on our data, this happened before toothed and baleen whales diverged. The common ancestor of all living cetaceans was deeper diving – and then later species evolved all the diverse foraging specializations we see in modern whales and dolphins today."
Scientific American
Eerie Photo Proves the Existence of Milky Seas—A First
For centuries, mariners have told stories of sailing at night in “milky seas”—ephemeral patches of steadily glowing ocean that make the water’s surface appear ghostly green or white, sometimes stretching from horizon to horizon. Scientists have long been intrigued by this unusual type of bioluminescence, which is thought to be produced by bacteria. But they searched in vain for photographic evidence—until now.
Steven Miller, an atmospheric scientist at Colorado State University, has just published a paper that includes the first known photograph of a milky sea. It was taken by crew members on a ketch that sailed near the island of Java in the summer of 2019. […]
Miller’s report of [Naomi] McKinnon’s sighting was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA. It includes two shots taken by the crew: one was captured with a smartphone, and the other with a GoPro camera. The images provide a long-sought glimpse of an elusive phenomenon. They also confirm the accuracy of Miller’s satellite detection methods—raising hope that researchers can use satellite data to detect a milky sea as it forms and go to the location to study it firsthand.
Science News
Electrical bacteria may help clean oil spills and curb methane emissions
The small motorboat anchors in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay. Shrieks of wintering birds assault the vessel’s five crew members, all clad in bright orange flotation suits. One of the crew slowly pulls a rope out of the water to retrieve a plastic tube, about the length of a person’s arm and filled with mud from the bottom of the bay. As the tube is hauled on board, the stench of rotten eggs fills the air.
“Chesapeake Bay mud is stinky,” says Sairah Malkin, a biogeochemist at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science in Cambridge who is aboard the boat. The smell comes from sulfuric chemicals called sulfides within the mud. They’re quite toxic, Malkin explains.
Malkin and her team venture out onto the bay every couple of months to sample the foul muck and track the abundance of squiggling mud dwellers called cable bacteria. The microbes are living wires: Their threadlike bodies — thinner than a human hair — can channel electricity.
Mongabay
Shade-grown coffee won’t support all birds, but adding a forest helps: Study
Organic, shade-grown, bird-friendly: coffee comes with a lot of labels these days, certifications that tell the consumer their beans were farmed in a way that supports the people who grow them and the ecosystems that sustain them. And with coffee now growing on more than 1 million square kilometers (386,000 square miles) of agricultural land in some of the most biodiverse regions around the world, these distinctions can mean a lot. […]
A recent study from the SMBC as well as scientists from Colombia and the U.S. examined whether other types of conservation actions would conserve birds as well as or better than their current certification standard.
The researchers found that while growing coffee under the shade of a diverse tree canopy protects more habitat-generalist and nonbreeding birds, setting aside areas of intact forest on or around coffee plantations conserves more forest-specializing and breeding birds. The results have been published in the journal Biological Conservation.
Gizmodo
Scientists Are Using Dead Spiders as Horrifying Claw Grabbers
[…] Researchers at Rice University in Texas … and are pioneering the field of “necrobotics” by injecting dead spiders with air to use them to grasp small objects.
When Rice University assistant professor of mechanical engineering Daniel Preston was setting up his lab, he and graduate student Faye Yap wondered why a dead spider in the corner of the room had its legs curled up. It turns out that spiders extend their legs using hydraulic pressure, which comes from fluid pumped into their legs from a central cavity, which means that when they die, their legs permanently retract. Preston and Yap wondered if they could hack that hydraulic process by injecting air into a dead spider’s legs to force them open. They found that they could, and their study on this macabre opportunity to make a biological gripper was published in Advanced Science on Monday.
“[Spiders] actually only have flexing muscles,” Yap said in a video call, meaning that spiders can pull their legs in, but have no muscles to extend them. “The way they extend their legs is using hydraulic pressure.”
Max Planck Society
The brains of Neanderthals developed differently from those of modern humans
Neanderthals are the closest relatives to modern humans. The neocortex, the largest part of the outer layer of the brain, is unique to mammals and crucial for many cognitive capacities. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Dresden and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig have now discovered that neural stem cells – the cells from which neurons in the developing neocortex derive – spend more time preparing their chromosomes for division in modern humans than in Neanderthals. This results in fewer errors when chromosomes are distributed to the daughter cells in modern humans than in Neanderthals or chimpanzees, and could have consequences for how the brain develops and functions.
After the ancestors of modern humans split from those of Neanderthals and Denisovans, their Asian relatives, about one hundred amino acids, the building blocks of proteins in cells and tissues, changed in modern humans and spread to almost all modern humans. The biological significance of these changes is largely unknown. However, six of those amino acid changes occurred in three proteins that play key roles in the distribution of chromosomes, the carriers of genetic information, to the two daughter cells during cell division.
The New York Times
Early Europeans Could Not Tolerate Milk but Drank It Anyway, Study Finds
[…] Scientists have long suspected that dairy consumption and the persistence of lactase rose together in human history. When people started herding cattle and other livestock some 10,000 years ago, the theory went, those with a mutation for lactase persistence gained a new source of calories and protein. People without the mutation, in contrast, became sick when they tried to consume milk and so did not take advantage of the new milk supply.
But a new study of ancient human DNA and milk-drenched pottery shards suggests that the traditional story does not hold up. “Something was not quite right with the received wisdom,” said Richard Evershed, a biogeochemist at the University of Bristol in England, and an author of the study.
Dr. Evershed and his colleagues found that Europeans were consuming milk without lactase for thousands of years, despite the misery from gas and cramping it might have caused. The scientists argue that the lactase mutation only became important to survival when Europeans began enduring epidemics and famines: During those periods, their poor health would have exacerbated gastric distress, leading to life-threatening diarrhea.
University of Zurich
Communication Makes Hunting Easier for Chimpanzees
[…] Chimpanzees don’t only forage for fruit, from time to time they also seek out opportunities to acquire protein-rich meat. To catch their agile monkey prey in the canopy, chimpanzees are better off having companions hunting alongside them. Scientists have found for the first time that communication is key to recruiting group members to join the hunt.
By studying more than 300 hunting events recorded over the last 25 years at the Kanyawara chimpanzee community in Uganda, researchers from the University of Zurich (UZH) and Tufts University in Boston have discovered that by making bark vocalizations, the wild apes catalyze group hunting, rendering this form of cooperative behavior more effective.
“Chimps who produce hunting barks provide information to those nearby about their motivation to hunt, and this information may persuade reluctant individuals to join, boosting the overall chances of success,” says Joseph Mine, PhD student at the Department of Comparative Language Science of UZH, who led the study.
University of Manchester
Graphene scientists capture first images of atoms ‘swimming’ in liquid
Graphene scientists from The University of Manchester have created a novel ‘nano-petri dish’ using two-dimensional (2D) materials to create a new method of observing how atoms move in liquid.
Publishing in the journal, Nature, the team led by researchers based at the National Graphene Institute (NGI) used stacks of 2D materials including graphene to trap liquid in order to further understand how the presence of liquid changes the behaviour of the solid.
The team were able to capture images of single atoms ‘swimming’ in liquid for the first time. The findings could have widespread impact on the future development of green technologies such as hydrogen production.
When a solid surface is in contact with a liquid, both substances change their configuration in response to the proximity of the other. Such atomic scale interactions at solid-liquid interfaces govern the behaviour of batteries and fuel cells for clean electricity generation, as well as determining the efficiency of clean water generation and underpinning many biological processes.
Universe Today
A Black Hole can Tear a Neutron Star Apart in Less Than 2 Seconds
Almost seven years ago (September 14th, 2015), researchers at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) detected gravitational waves (GWs) for the first time. Their results were shared with the world six months later and earned the discovery team the Noble Prize in Physics the following year. Since then, a total of 90 signals have been observed that were created by binary systems of two black holes, two neutron stars, or one of each. This latter scenario presents some very interesting opportunities for astronomers.
If a merger involves a black hole and neutron star, the event will produce GWs and a serious light display! Using data collected from the three black hole-neutron star mergers we’ve detected so far, a team of astrophysicists from Japan and Germany was able to model the complete process of the collision of a black hole with a neutron star, which included everything from the final orbits of the binary to the merger and post-merger phase. Their results could help inform future surveys that are sensitive enough to study mergers and GW events in much greater detail.
The research team was led by Kota Hayashi, a researcher with Kyoto University’s Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics (YITP). He was joined by multiple colleagues from YITP and Toho University in Japan and the Albert Einstein Institute at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (MPIGP) in Postdam, Germany. The paper that describes their findings was led by YITP Prof. Koto Hayashi and recently appeared in the scientific journal Physical Review D.
Our solar system's citrus-colored gas giant, Jupiter, is no stranger to chaos. And earlier this month, NASA's Juno mission captured a mesmerizing snap to prove that point.
During the probe's 43rd close flyby of the enormous planet, its JunoCam instrument caught sight of watercolor vortices near the north pole. These hypnotic views are deceptively stunning -- they are of hurricane wind patterns that can reach over 30 miles (48 kilometers) in height and spread across hundreds of miles of gaseous plains.
Though the picture we see of the frightening spectacle is decked out in lovely ceruleans, iridescent opals and strong teals, it's important to realize that it's digitally processed to hold such vivid blue-ish hues. After collecting raw JunoCam data -- specifically an image taken by the space explorer at about 15,600 miles (25,100 kilometers) above Jupiter's cloud tops -- citizen scientist Brian Swift enhanced these Jovian storms for analytic purposes.
LiveScience
Over 60 million years ago, penguins abandoned flight for swimming. Here’s how.
Penguins are perhaps best known for being flightless birds whose wings help them "fly" through frigid Antarctic waters. But penguins lost their ability to fly and instead became streamlined swimmers some 60 million years ago, long before the Antarctic ice sheet formed — and researchers have now revealed how that happened.
A new study of penguin fossils and the genomes of current and recently extinct penguins identified an array of genetic adaptations the birds made to live an aquatic lifestyle; from vision that is sensitive to underwater blue tones to genes related to blood oxygenation, and even to changes in bone density. Together, the findings suggest that penguins as a group adapted to survive some serious environmental changes that unfolded over millions of years. […]
In the study, researchers evaluated fossil evidence alongside the genomes of all still-living penguins, and partial genomes for those that went extinct within the past few hundred years. The findings suggest that penguins originated near what is today New Zealand sometime before 60 million years ago, dispersed to South America and Antarctica, and then returned to New Zealand. Most species alive today diverged from each other in the last 2 million years or so, [study co-author Daniel Ksepka, a paleontologist at the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, Connecticut,] said. During that period, Earth has gone through cycles of glacial and interglacial periods in which the polar ice expanded and retreated. Advancing ice pushed penguins northward, probably cutting some populations off from one another and enabling them to take their own evolutionary paths for about 100,000 years. By the time the ice retreated, the separated penguins had evolved into different species.
National Geographic
Tigers have nearly tripled in Nepal, but at what cost?
Nepal has become the world’s front-runner for tiger conservation. The country … announced that it has 355 of the endangered cats within its borders, almost tripling its known population since its estimate of 121 tigers in 2009.
At the Global Tiger Summit in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 2010, all 13 countries that have tigers in the wild pledged to double their tiger numbers. Only Nepal has met this goal.
The country's successes are largely the result of “strong government buy-in” for tiger conservation and the enforcement of strict anti-poaching policies, says Abishek Harihar, the deputy director of the tiger program at the wildcat conservation group Panthera, which supported Nepal’s recent efforts to survey its population of Bengal tigers. […]
Yet Nepal’s tiger progress has come at a cost: Some critics say that the focus on increasing tigers is at odds with community safety.
Nature
Carbon dating hampered by rising fossil-fuel emissions
The researchers who track the ever-rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide have charted a landmark moment. As of 2021, the burning of fossil fuels has officially shifted the composition of carbon isotopes in the air of the Northern Hemisphere enough to cancel out a useful signal from nuclear-weapons testing.
This could cause problems for valuable carbon-dating techniques. Modern items now look like objects from the early twentieth century in terms of radiocarbon dating, says Heather Graven, a chemical physicist at Imperial College London who has been charting this effect for years. The trend “could soon make it difficult to tell if something is 1,000 years old or modern”, says Paula Reimer, a radiocarbon-dating specialist at Queen’s University Belfast, UK. Although there are usually other clues to an object’s provenance, “there are often stray finds without that information”, says Reimer, such as unidentified human remains that might come from a historic burial site or from a person who died recently.
The development also means that forensic scientists will no longer be able to use radiocarbon fingerprints to pinpoint the ages of materials such as ivory, antiques and wine. “If you’re working in forensics or detecting fakes, this is a really sad moment,” says Tom Higham, an archaeologist at the University of Vienna.
High Country News
As waters warm, Alaska experiences salmon booms and busts
Every June, Serena Fitka goes home to her Yup’ik community of St. Mary’s, Alaska, near the confluence of the Yukon and Andreafsky rivers in the southwest part of the state. Usually, she helps her family fish for salmon and preserve it in the smokehouse for the leaner winter months. But this year, that didn’t happen: This year, there were no salmon to catch.
“I could feel the loss,” she said. “I didn’t know what to fill my days with, and I could sense it was like that for everyone along the Yukon River.”
There are five kinds of salmon in Alaska: Chinook, sockeye, chum, coho and pink. Chum is the most harvested fish on the Yukon, but both chum and chinook are crucial to the lives and culture of the roughly 50 communities around Alaska who rely on the river and its tributaries for subsistence.
Around the state, chinook counts have been declining for a decade, but this year’s run is the lowest ever recorded. Chum counts took a nosedive in 2021, and this year’s count is the second-lowest on record; as a result, state and federal fishery managers have closed chum fishing on the Yukon. […]
Warmer waters have caused a downturn in chinook and chum numbers across the Pacific, and those changes are hurting salmon in the Yukon as well.
AP News
Climate change and vanishing islands threaten brown pelicans
Sliding off the side of her small boat, seabird biologist Bonnie Slaton wades through waist-high water, brown pelicans soaring overhead, until she reaches the shores of Raccoon Island.
During seabird breeding season, the place is a raucous symphony of noise and motion — and one of the few remaining refuges for the iconic pelicans. […]
A dozen years ago, there were around 15 low-lying islands with nesting colonies of Louisiana’s state bird. But today, only about six islands in southeastern Louisiana harbor brown pelican nests — the rest have disappeared underwater.
“Louisiana is rapidly losing land,” said Slaton, a researcher at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. “Subsidence and sea level rise are a double whammy.”
Lancaster University
New Antarctic study shows levels of ‘forever chemicals’ reaching the remote continent have been increasing
New evidence from Antarctica shows that toxic ‘fluorinated forever chemicals’ have increased markedly in the remote environment in recent decades and scientists believe CFC-replacements could be among likely sources.
Known as forever chemicals because they do not break down naturally in the environment, chemicals such as perfluorocarboxylic acids (PFCAs) have a wide array of uses such as in making non-stick coatings for pans, water-repellents for clothing, and in fire-fighting foams. One of these chemicals, perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), bioaccumulates in foodwebs and is toxic to humans with links to impairment of the immune system and infertility.
In this new study, published by the journal Environmental Science & Technology, and led by scientists from Lancaster University along with researchers from the British Antarctic Survey and the Hereon Institute of Coastal Environmental Chemistry, Germany, firn (compacted snow) cores were taken from the extremely remote, high and icy Dronning Maud Land plateau of eastern Antarctica.
E&E Climate Wire
How the Senate climate bill could slash emissions 40%
A surprise climate and energy agreement between Sen. Joe Manchin and Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer promises a large U.S. emissions cut of 40 percent that seemed out of reach just a few days ago. […]
The bill includes $60 billion to boost domestic clean energy manufacturing, including $30 billion in production tax credits for solar panels, wind turbines, batteries and critical mineral processing. It also offers lower- and middle-income motorists a $7,500 tax credit for clean vehicles, while states and electric utilities would see $30 billion in grants and loans to expand clean energy. The bill also includes $60 billion for environmental justice communities and a fee on methane emissions that will rise to $1,500 a ton by 2026.
Biden praised the deal last night, saying it’s “the action the American people have been waiting for.”
“We will improve our energy security and tackle the climate crisis — by providing tax credits and investments for energy projects,” Biden said in a statement. “This will create thousands of new jobs and help lower energy costs in the future.”
The Atlantic
Of Course Biden Has Rebound COVID: What is even going on with Paxlovid?
Four days after recovering from a COVID-19 infection, President Joe Biden has tested positive again. When he first got sick, Biden—like more than one-third of the Americans who have tested positive for COVID-19 this summer, according to the U.S. government’s public records—was prescribed Paxlovid, an antiviral pill treatment made by Pfizer. Like many Paxlovid takers, he soon tested negative and resumed his normal activities. And then, like many Paxlovid takers, his infection came right back. (Biden does not currently have symptoms, according to his physician.)
With more than 40,000 prescriptions being handed out a day, we’re taking Paxlovid at about the same rate that we’re taking oxycodone. When Biden got sick last week, he started taking the pills before the day was out. When Anthony Fauci had COVID in June, he took two courses. That enthusiasm is in line with the government’s messaging around the drug.
The Biden administration has consistently hailed Paxlovid as an effective tool in the fight against SARS-CoV-2. “For the most part, Paxlovid is doing what you’re asking it to do,” Fauci told me recently. Many researchers and physicians agree. Ann Woolley, the associate clinical director of transplant infectious diseases at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, told me that she feels “very fortunate” to be able to offer Paxlovid to her patients, even if it’s not a COVID panacea.
But some providers are prescribing the drug with a bit less enthusiasm, particularly when it comes to vaccinated patients (such as Biden and Fauci). Reshma Ramachandran, a family-medicine doctor and researcher at Yale, told me that she’s feeling a sense of “resignation” about Paxlovid. Though it’s one of the few COVID treatments she can offer, she can’t say with confidence that the pills will help someone who’s been immunized…
Ars Technica
As BA.5 continues to blaze across US, feds scrap summer booster plans
Federal officials have reportedly scrapped plans to expand access to second COVID-19 booster doses this summer, opting instead to pressure vaccine-makers Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech to produce their next-generation BA.5-targeting boosters even faster than before, possibly in September.
Currently, people ages 50 and over, as well as those 12 and up with certain health conditions, can received a second COVID-19 booster dose. But, with the ultratransmissible BA.5 wave threatening more infections and reinfections at a time when vaccine protections are fading, officials earlier this month toyed with the idea of opening second boosters to all adults. At the time, they were expected to decide the matter within the following weeks.
That decision window has now closed. And although BA.5 is still raging, the Biden administration has reportedly abandoned the plan to instead focus on the new booster vaccines for those 12 and up, which were previously expected to roll out in October and November.