Not skinsane

 

Sorry, this one wrote itself.

Common Acne Drug Linked to Lower Schizophrenia Risk

I recommend reading the article to get the background, especially about excessive synaptic pruning, which is implicated in the development of schizophrenia. Here's the takeaway:

"The finding aligns with research linking neuroinflammation and abnormal synaptic pruning to schizophrenia, suggesting that modifying inflammatory processes early in life could help protect the brain. Since doxycycline is already widely prescribed and well understood, it presents a realistic starting point for exploring preventive strategies in psychiatry."

Reference: Lång U, Metsälä J, Ramsay H, et al. Doxycycline use in adolescent psychiatric patients and risk of schizophrenia: an emulated target trial. Am J Psychiatry. 2025. doi: 10.1176/appi.ajp.20240958

Sophia Quinn Nomikou is tall

 

Sophia Quinn Nomikou is a 1.98 meter tall model, and I'll show you how I know that.

In addition to a pair of very long legs, a slender and extended torso, and just the right amount of curves, she also has fabulous eyes.  Long dark brown hair is quite nice, too.

Bird flu is bad -- for elephant seals

 

I hate to be the bearer of bad news -- in fact, I hate to be the reader of bad news.

Reading about what H5N1, otherwise known as avian/bird flu, has done to populations of pinnipeds (seals, sea lions, elephant seals) is definitely reading about bad news.

It's downright scary. And the BBC headline doesn't make it less so.

'It was a horrible scene to witness': How bird flu has decimated elephant seal populations

"In 2023, however, it was impossible to know the full number of dead adults, as additional deaths could have occurred at sea. Or how many females had become pregnant after the outbreak. So at the end of 2024, in the following breeding season, Campagna and colleagues from WCS [World Conservation Society] along with scientists from the University of California, Davis and the Argentinian research agency Conicet – returned to survey the beaches once again.

Their results, released at the end of September 2025 and seen by the BBC, reveal that the elephant seal population at Peninsula Valdés decreased by 60% overall after the bird flu outbreak. According to researchers, this population drop fits the criteria of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) to push a species population once considered of "Least Concern" to "Endangered". While the official change of the species conservation status hasn't happened yet, Uhart believe it will soon.

According to their latest findings, the total number of alpha males dropped 43% (from approximately 450 to 260), while female adults decreased by 60% (from about 12,000 to 4,800), compared to pre-pandemic seasons. The annual offspring was also slashed by nearly two-thirds, from around 14,000 to only 5,000.

"Before 2023, it was impossible to think that a healthy population like the one in Peninsula Valdés could become endangered from one year to another," says biologist Valeria Falabella, seashore conservation director at WCS Argentina. "This is a warning," she adds, noting that climate change brings additional risks and uncertainties for the species."

There are a lot of warnings out there in the wild world. It doesn't seem to me enough people are heeding them.

 

It's definitely something to shout about

The travails of New College

 

If it has slipped past your attention (and that's OK, there's a lot of news these days), a couple of years ago the Florida government decided to re-tool and re-configure a lot of their higher educational assets.  They strove to end DEI, get rid of or pressure "liberal" professors to leave, changed the membership of various Boards of Regents to be more conservative, attacked curricula, changed departments and classes they offered, and generally tried to wreck a decent university system.

But the worst was what they have attempted to do to New College. It was a bastion of liberalism, attracting an outstanding and diverse student body (emphasis on diverse), with a unique curriculum and scholarship model.

DeSantis and friends dismantled it, installing new leadership, getting lots of outstanding professors to leave, and forcing out scads of students that had made the college what it was, and what it no longer is.

So, what was the result?  As might be predictable, disaster.  But not more progresssive liberalism, aka "wokeness".  The Daily Kos summed it up this way.

Florida college goes broke -- but at least it's not woke

"Despite having shed all sorts of woke baggage like qualified faculty, library books, and gender studies, New College somehow costs the state much more. Much, much more. In the 2020-2021 school year, New College’s total spending was $53 million. Now? $93 million.

Hmm. Did they keep any math people on at New College? Because some back-of-the-envelope math shows that’s a 75% jump. Similarly, the college’s costs per student sit at $83,000—or four times the university system average.

But surely this money is getting great results, right?

Wrong. The graduation rate at New College stands at a triumphant 19%, which is the second worst in the state."

Not exactly a conservative success story, is it?

 

Another great vaccine story

 

Just when you thought vaccines in the USA were being phased out (and under the idiocy of RFK Jr.'s leadership of our national health structure, that could still happen) -- we get a great story about a form of a vaccine for whooping cough that can be administered via the nose.

Well, it's an advance.

Nasal Vaccine Blocks Whooping Cough Spread and Infection

This strategy could transform both whooping cough prevention and the broader market for respiratory bacterial vaccines.

The first three paragraphs sum it up pretty well; the rest is details.

"In a landmark study published in Nature Microbiology, the team demonstrated that their nasally-delivered, antibiotic-inactivated Bordetella pertussis (AIBP) vaccine not only prevents severe disease but also curbs bacterial transmission — an achievement long sought by vaccine developers worldwide.

The work, led by Professor Kingston Mills and Dr Davoud Jazayeri of Trinity’s School of Biochemistry and Immunology, introduces a needle-free mucosal vaccine platform capable of inducing durable local immunity directly at the infection site.

This strategy could transform both whooping cough prevention and the broader market for respiratory bacterial vaccines, addressing an urgent global need for next-generation immunisation technologies."

Reference: Jazayeri SD, Borkner L, Sutton CE, Mills KHG. Respiratory immunization using antibiotic-inactivated Bordetella pertussis confers T cell-mediated protection against nasal infection in mice. Nature Microbiology, 2025:1-13. doi: 10.1038/s41564-025-02166-6

So there's a global need, but the USA is going to be left out of it, apparently.

Idiocy.

BTW, in 2024, whooping cough cases hit their highest numbers in a decade.

So not being part of a great advance for preventing and treating it?

That's REAL idiocy.

State parks are great; another example

 

Not all state parks feature remarkable geological features or beautiful sights or wildlife, both plant and animal, that deserves protection and preservation.

Some of them are just for fun.

I found out about this one from the Food Network show Girl Meets Farm, which features some very good food. She made sandwiches (BLFGT, which stands for bacon, lettuce, and fried green tomatoes) and took them to the park for a picnic with a couple of friends. The episode was entitled "Turtle River Hike". 

So, about the park. It's located about 20 miles west of Grand Forks, which you can see on this map.

The North Dakota Tourism Division has this page on it, with a short video: Turtle River State Park

So, it's a nice little park, created by the Civilian Conservation Corps (a very liberal FDR program responsible for a lot of the nice little things we take for granted in state and national parks, and national forests, and national seashores and lakeshores, etc.)  It has a lodge and cabins and trails and a river (the Turtle River, of course). 

So here are a couple of pictures, but it's probably better in person.

Nicola in color

 

I led off the year with a gorgeous picture of stunning model Nicola Cavanis, which I captured from her reels.  She obliged our curious eyes with a color version of the same shot, as shown below.

It's an amazing shot.  Kudos to the photographer.

Reducing the jitters (at least the heart kind)

 

So coffee, normally accused of making people more edgy and jittery (The Flash TV show had a coffee shop named Jitters), can actually help with the cardio jitters called atrial fibrillation.

Really.

A Daily Coffee May Cut Atrial Fibrillation Risk by 39%

"  “Coffee increases physical activity which is known to reduce atrial fibrillation,” said Gregory M. Marcus, MD, MAS, who holds the Endowed Professorship in Atrial Fibrillation Research and is an electrophysiologist at UCSF Health. Marcus is the senior author of the paper, which appears Nov. 9 in JAMA. “Caffeine is also a diuretic, which could potentially reduce blood pressure and in turn lessen A-Fib risk. Several other ingredients in coffee also have anti-inflammatory properties that could have positive effects.”

"Researchers named their study DECAF for Does Eliminating Coffee Avoid Fibrillation? It is the first randomized clinical trial to investigate the link between caffeinated coffee and A-Fib, and it was supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH)."

Now that was a clever name.




Reference: Wong CX, Cheung CC, Montenegro G, et al. Caffeinated coffee consumption or abstinence to reduce atrial fibrillation: the decaf randomized clinical trial. JAMA. 2025. doi: 10.1001/jama.2025.21056

God may have made things tough on humans on this Earth, but he did give us aspirin and coffee.

I didn't expect it to snow here

 
I found a place in Italy where it snows quite a bit.  It happens to be north of the latitude of Mount Etna, and Etna is high in altitude and gets snow, but this place is at a much lower altitude (though it does have mountains).

It's called Sila National Park, and it's located here.  It seems to be nearly surrounded by the usually warm waters of the Mediterranean Sea, which is why I didn't expect much snow.

But it does. This is a picture of the ski area. Apparently the Calabrian region does have four seasons.

Learn more about it:

Sila National Park

Lighthouse of the Week, January 4-10, 2026: Goat Island, Rhode Island, USA

 

If you search my blog for "Rhode Island" and "lighthouse", you'll find a few Lighthouses of the Week.  Given the size of the state (it's not big), there can't be that many, right? But it is on the coast, and it does have a big bay, and it has several harbors. 

This lighthouse is semi-officially the Newport Harbor lighthouse, but it goes by the somewhat ignominious moniker of the Goat Island lighthouse.  Let's find out where it is (sometimes people have to be reminded where Rhode Island is, east of Connecticut.)

As I was looking up the location, I discovered there is also a Goat Island lighthouse in Kennebunkport, Maine.  Maybe I'll do that one next week.

Back to Rhode Island, here's some info from the Lighthouse Directory:

"1842 (station established 1823). Active; focal plane 33 ft (10 m); continuous green light. 35 ft (10.5 m) octagonal granite tower with lantern and gallery, 250 mm lens. The keeper's house was demolished in 1923 after being damaged when a submarine ran aground on the island. [I bet that's a unique aspect of this one.] A 5th order Fresnel lens is on display at the Suffolk County Vanderbilt Museum in Centerport, Long Island. ... . Located on the northern tip of Goat Island in Newport Harbor; the island is accessible by a bridge from RI 238 in downtown Newport and the lighthouse is accessible by walking through the hotel lobby. [That might be unique, too.]

Lighthouse Friends (with more history):  Newport Harbort (Goat Island), RI

Now consider the pictures. I acquired one from Lighthouse Friends that shows the lighthouse keeper's house that got hit by the submarine.  I wish there was a picture of that.

 

Nicola Cavanis is more than beautiful

 Let's start the 2026 blogging right.

In this black-and-white photograph, with stunningly perfect lighting accentuating the close-to-perfection of her beauty, Nicola Cavanis is luminous and transcendent.

(And hot.)

See if you agree.  This was captured from her Instagram reels.