New Approvals for Inhaled Vaccines
India and China have approved new Covid-19 vaccines that can be inhaled to give the linings of the airways "mucosal immunity," reports Jessica Hamzelou for MIT Technology Review. The new vaccines bolster the body's first line of defense against airborne viruses, the mucosal surfaces. In June, the immunologist Akiko Iwasaki spoke with Yasemin Saplakoglu for Quanta about nasal spray vaccines.
The Resilient Brain
Born without a left temporal lobe in her brain, Helen Santoro developed normal language processing abilities and went on as an adult to become a writer. She describes her experience and the mysteries of neural plasticity in an article for The New York Times. Brains can sometimes adapt to injuries and harmful experiences in remarkable ways. A 2020 book excerpt in Quanta by the late neuroscientist Richard Masland described how the visual cortex of blind people can stay active as a processing center for the other senses. Neurons are impressively plastic, but rigid structures called perineuronal nets (PNNs) can prevent certain connections from growing. The neuroscientist R. Douglas Fields wrote for Quanta in July about research that reveals the role of PNNs in suppressing pain. | |
