Two recent articles showed showed changes in the focus and funding of clinical trials for Alzheimer's disease therapies.

And they suggested the change might be evidenced by today, when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) seemed ready to approve aducanumab (Biogen) as the first new drug therapy to Alzheimer's patients in nearly 20 years.

Namely the emergence of taxpayer-funded government and nonprofit organizations as the primary drivers of research. 

The Tibetan plateau covers nearly 1,600,000 square miles. With an average altitude of nearly 14,000 feet, Tibet is called the Roof of the World for good reason. It contains the world's two highest peaks, Mount Everest and K2, and the vast Himalayan mountain range towers higher than anywhere else on Earth.

Some researchers contend it has been that height for most of its existence while others argue the roof of the world has gotten higher.

LeRoche Benicoeur/ConceiveEasy; EU Natural Inc.; Fertility Nutraceuticals LLC; SAL NATURE LLC/FertilHerb; and NS Products, Inc. have received warning letters from the US FDA due to their selling fraudulent treatments that claim to help with infertility.

Though dietary supplements are mostly exempt from FDA scrutiny due to the Clinton administration giving them a free pass if they put a small disclaimer on the packaging, companies still can't do things like claim to treat cancer, or anything that legitimate medicine does. They can only use marketing to suggest they might make you feel better and other claims that allow naturopaths and homeopaths to make money.

In a recent study, scholars did a prospective review of charts of nearly 300 adult patients hospitalized for COVID-19 at Michigan Medicine during the pandemic's first wave between March and April 2020. They analyzed discharge locations, therapy needs at the time of release and if they needed durable medical equipment or other services..

The investigators found that 45 percent of patients hospitalized for COVID-19 experienced significant functional decline after being discharged.

An analysis of ancient fish bones from 30 archaeological sites in Israel and Sinai which date from the Late Bronze Age (1550-1130 BC) until the end of the Byzantine period (640 AD) finds that Judeans commonly ate non-kosher - lacking scales or fins - fish.

This finding sheds new light on the origin of Old Testament dietary laws that are still observed by many Jews today - and how well people adhered. Some things become part of culture because they are common. If people in Tennessee banned eating sharks it wouldn't be a huge loss. The ban on finless and scaleless fish deviated from longstanding Judean dietary habits, the authors note.

The Mars Curiosity rover has been on the job since the summer of 2012, exploring Gale Crater on the red planet. It's slow going, it has driven only 25 kilometers to date.  

But it can be fun to watch, like its ascent of Mount Mercou, a broad outcrop of rocks on the northern flank of Mount Sharp near the center of the crater, on April 18th 2021.

Mt. Sharp is over 2 miles high and Curiosity is the size of a small car. In the picture, it is above a 20-foot-high cliff where it examined the exposed rocks.


Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona