The Evolution of the Onion Sandwich

Long before James Beard was famous for championing American foods and mentoring a generation of chefs, long before he was an immediately recognizable celebrity, he was sick and tired of not being famous. Sick and tired of working in kitchens, unseen and uncelebrated, stalling out while the people around him came up. In 1940, working…

The Lancet: Herd immunity approaches to COVID-19 control are a ‘dangerous fallacy’, say authors of open letter

A group of 80 researchers warn that a so-called herd immunity approach to managing COVID-19 by allowing immunity to develop in low-risk populations while protecting the most vulnerable is “a dangerous fallacy unsupported by the scientific evidence”. Faced with a second wave of COVID-19, and more than a million recorded deaths worldwide, the authors present…

Will SARS-CoV-2 become endemic?

To date, a few verified repeat SARS-CoV-2 infections have been documented around the world. “Should reinfection [with SARS-CoV-2] prove commonplace, and barring a highly effective vaccine delivered to most of the world’s population, SARS-CoV-2 will likely become endemic,” write Jeffrey Shaman and Marta Galanti in this Perspective. For many viruses, a number of processes –…

Novel software assesses phonologial awareness

Understanding sounds in language is a critical building block for child literacy, yet this skill is often overlooked. Researchers from Michigan State University have developed a new software tool to assess children’s phonological awareness — or, how they process the sound structure of words. The ATLAS, or Access to Literacy Assessment System, program — the…