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.