“Josiah Zayner’s plan was simple: replicate a Covid-19 vaccine that had worked in monkeys, test it on himself and then livestream the experiment online over a period of months,” reports Bloomberg. “Zayner discovered, testing a vaccine is far more complicated than he had imagined.”
Even though his experiment yielded a promising result, Zayner found too many unanswered questions to say that it…
Tag: rhesus
COVID-19 Vaccines With ‘Minor Side Effects’ Could Still Be Pretty Bad
“The risk of nasty side effects in the Moderna and Oxford trials should be made clear now, before it ends up as fodder for the skeptics,” argues Hilda Bastian, a former consumer health care advocate and a Ph.D. student at Bond University who studies evidence-based medicine. An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from her article via Wired: On Monday, vaccine researchers…
Stanford Begins America’s First Large-Scale Test For Coronavirus Antibodies
“Crowds flock to Santa Clara County test sites to learn if they have antibodies to COVID-19,” reports the Bay Area Newsgroup, citing long lines of cars forming at three Stanford research sites for the drive-through tests:
The 2,500 test slots on Friday and Saturday filled up within hours, as news of the project — the first large scale study of its type…
Monkeys can use basic logic to decipher the order of items in a list
Rhesus macaque monkeys don’t need rewards to learn and remember how items are ranked in a list, a mental feat that may prove handy in the wild. Source: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/monkeys-can-use-basic-logic-decipher-order-items-list4…
Monkeys seem to prefer each other’s company after a scary experience
Rhesus macaques appear to have become closer to each other after hurricane Maria devastated their island home in the Caribbean Source: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2201698-monkeys-seem-to-prefer-each-others-company-after-a-scary-experience/?utm_campaign=RSS%7CNSNS&utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=RSS&utm_content=home…
Chupacabras? No: Rhesus Monkeys!
They say that truth is stranger than fiction. And they are right – whoever “they” actually are. For me, at least, this really hit home on an expedition I made to Puerto Rico in 2010. It turned out to be one of the most memorable, and strangest, of all my many treks around Puerto Rico,… Continue reading Chupacabras? No: Rhesus Monkeys!
Scientists Put Human Brain Genes in Monkeys and Made Them Smarter
It’s time for the latest edition of “What Could Possibly Go Wrong?”, the game show that pits seemingly unethical science against potentially catastrophic predictions. In today’s competition, scientists in China (one point already for the catastrophic team) announce they used gene-editing to place human brain genes in rhesus macaque monkeys and it made their brains… Continue reading Scientists Put Human Brain Genes in Monkeys and Made Them Smarter