Incredible speech delivered by Baroness Linforth in the House of Lords today calling for clean indoor air in schools.
“It would cost less than a tenner per child per year to provide pupils and staff with clean air - about the same cost as a coffee and a cake.”
☕️🧁
A Norwegian neuroscientist spent 20 years proving that the act of writing by hand changes the human brain in ways typing physically cannot, and almost nobody outside her field has read the paper.
Her name is Audrey van der Meer.
She runs a brain research lab in Trondheim, and the paper that closed the argument was published in 2024 in a journal called Frontiers in Psychology. The finding is brutal enough that it should have changed every classroom on Earth.
The experiment was simple. She recruited 36 university students and put each one in a cap with 256 sensors pressed against their scalp to record brain activity. Words flashed on a screen one at a time.
Sometimes the students wrote the word by hand on a touchscreen using a digital pen, and sometimes they typed the same word on a keyboard. Every neural response was recorded for the full five seconds the word stayed on screen.
Then her team looked at the part of the data most researchers had ignored for years, which is how different parts of the brain were communicating with each other during the task.
When the students wrote by hand, the brain lit up everywhere at once.
The regions responsible for memory, sensory integration, and the encoding of new information were all firing together in a coordinated pattern that spread across the entire cortex. The whole network was awake and connected.
When the same students typed the same word, that pattern collapsed almost completely.
Most of the brain went quiet, and the connections between regions that had been alive seconds earlier were nowhere to be found on the EEG.
Same word, same brain, same person, and two completely different neurological events.
The reason turned out to be something nobody had really paid attention to before her work. Writing by hand is not one motion but a sequence of thousands of tiny micro-movements coordinated with your eyes in real time, where each letter is a different shape that requires the brain to solve a slightly different spatial problem.
Your fingers, wrist, vision, and the parts of your brain that track position in space are all working together to produce one letter, then the next, then the next.
Typing throws all of that away. Every key on a keyboard requires the exact same finger motion regardless of which letter you are pressing, which means the brain has almost nothing to integrate and almost no problem to solve.
Van der Meer said it plainly in her interviews.
Pressing the same key with the same finger over and over does not stimulate the brain in any meaningful way, and she pointed out something that should scare every parent who handed their kid an iPad.
Children who learn to read and write on tablets often cannot tell letters like b and d apart, because they have never physically felt with their bodies what it takes to actually produce those letters on a page.
A decade before her, two researchers at Princeton ran the same fight using a completely different method and ended up at the same answer. Pam Mueller and Daniel Oppenheimer tested 327 students across three experiments, where half took notes on laptops with the internet disabled and half took notes by hand, before testing everyone on what they actually understood from the lectures they had watched.
The handwriting group won by a wide margin on every question that required real understanding rather than surface recall.
The reason was hiding in the transcripts of what the two groups had actually written down.
The laptop students typed almost word for word, capturing more total content but processing almost none of it as they went, while the handwriting students physically could not write fast enough to transcribe a lecture in real time, which forced them to listen carefully, decide what actually mattered, and put it in their own words on the page.
That single act of choosing what to keep was the learning itself, and the keyboard had quietly skipped the choosing and skipped the learning along with it.
Two studies. Two countries. Same answer.
Handwriting makes the brain work. Typing lets it coast.
Every note you have ever typed instead of written went into your brain through a thinner pipe. Every meeting, every book highlight, every idea you captured on your phone instead of on paper was processed at half depth.
You did not forget those things because your memory is bad. You forgot them because typing never woke the part of the brain that would have made them stick.
The fix is the thing your grandmother already knew.
Pick up a pen. Write the thing down. The slower road is the faster one.
Study: Presence and Persistence of Andes Virus RNA in Human Semen
"We demonstrate that the ANDV genome persists within the reproductive tract for at least 71 months.... Taken together, our results show that ANDV has the potential for sexual transmission.
PMC
https://t.co/zQkEaR2GPp
Dieses Dekret ist natürlich viel mehr als nur gelungenes Trolling - es ist knallharte psychologische Kriegführung, die bei den RU Milbloggern auch Wirkung zeigt, sie toben heute
mE ist es der Anfang vom Ende der Ära Putin. Nicht weil es ein gelungener Scherz ist, sondern weil es in aller Deutlichkeit zeigt, dass RU den Krieg nicht mehr gewinnen kann. Das gleiche Dekret vor genau 2 Jahren - die RU Blogger hätten sich kaputtgelacht, wir hätten gegrinst über den Scherz, der mit der Realität wenig zu tun hat, Putins 5. Kolonne - @FabioDeMasi , @KrahMax und ihre Fußtruppen wie @JohannesVarwick - hätte Selenski als größenwahnsinnigen Kriegstreiber beschrieben. Heute:
Nichts. Und mit Nichts meine ich: überhaupt gar nichts. Nada. Niente. Kein einziger Trollbot unter meinen Tweets dazu - da würden sonst Kompanien aufmarschieren
Das heißt: Moskau hat keinen Plan, wie man damit umgehen soll und hat deshalb keine Weisungen dazu rausgeschickt. Oder man hofft, dass diese Demütigung bald vergessen ist
Wird sie aber nicht, am allerwenigsten in RU, bei den rechten Hardlinern. Die werden sich bei jeder brennenden Raffinerie daran erinnern. Das schürt Unruhe im Kriegslager
Vor allem aber: ein Mafia-Regime ist zuverlässig ein totales Macho-System, in dem der Chef keine Schwäche zeigen darf, sonst droht ihm das Ende. Und Selenskis Dekret lässt Putin als Schwächling dastehen, was die Wirkung der mickrigen Parade multipliziert. Dass er Trump um Hilfe bitten musste, um überhaupt einen Waffenstillstand bewilligt zu bekommen tut ein Übriges
Mit dem gestrigen Tag ist der Pate angezählt. Und Selenski wird bei Gelegenheit nachlegen - oder Budanow, womöglich sehr bald
📣🌍 Strengthening IPC across Europe
New ECDC guidance proposal with contributions from EUCIC, WHO and EU partners 🤝
✨ Proud to have contributed and pleased to share this work!
@ECDC_EU@WHO_Europe@EUjamrai
🔗Learn and share: https://t.co/AljYp53a00
Andes HantaVirus, my personal take!👇
Andes hantavirus has been endemic to Argentina and Chile for decades, carried by local rodents, with occasional human cases and well documented person-to-person spread,
The current outbreak on the MV Hondius cruise ship (departed Ushuaia, Argentina) is serious and deserves attention, but it’s not new territory,
Caution is smart. Panic is not!
A detailed 2018–2019 investigation in a small Argentine village (34 confirmed cases from a single rodent spillover) showed this virus does have real super-spreader potential: high viral loads, droplet/aerosol transmission, and big social gatherings drove chains of person-to-person spread,
Mortality was 32 %. Yet it was contained,
If the genomic features haven’t changed, that’s exactly why an in-depth genomic mapping of this current strain is crucial right now, to confirm we’re still dealing with the known virus and not one with altered behaviour,
Crucial takeaway from that outbreak: transmission was stopped with standard public-health tools , social distancing, proper masks/PPE, contact tracing, self-quarantine, and good ventilation,
The researchers noted that every HPS case needs the same transmission precautions regardless of severity,
No extra/special measures required,
Exactly the same approach works today on the ship and anywhere else,
Ventilation, masks, and quarantine are enough. This is all well-known and should be standard practice/precaution for all airborne pathogens! #precautionaryprinciple
So, let’s stay cautious, follow the protocols, and keep perspective: this virus has been with us in South America for years.
➡️Informed caution beats fear every time!
https://t.co/8rrv36g0tF
https://t.co/sXCqUbkv7f
On #WorldHandHygieneDay, we join ESCMID to reaffirm:
🧼Hand hygiene = cornerstone of IPC
📉Compliance is declining
🦠AMR remains a major threat
At EUCIC, we call for renewed commitment and sustained action.
👉Clean hands save lives!
Read more https://t.co/ixYINWkKqh
Vor ein paar Tagen kritisierte ich einen Text in der BILD von @ronzheimer & @fpiatov über Merz, vermutete Spahn als Akteur. Es gab viele Reaktionen. Für mich ein Anlass, meine These weiter zu belegen.
Ein längerer Thread 🧵zum Netzwerk Döpfner, Spahn, Ronzheimer: 1/x
#Tempo100 statt 130 reduziert den Spritverbrauch im Schnitt um 23 Prozent. Damit wirkt mit 100 statt 130 km/h zu fahren so, als würde Sprit statt 2 Euro nur 1,54 Euro pro Liter kosten. Wer langsamer fährt, schont Geldbörse und Umwelt. #Spritsparen#Spritverbrauchbremse
Bestimmung einer unteren Schranke der Inzidenz von Mitarbeitenden im Krankenhaus von Post- Covid und ME-CFS mit anhaltender Fatigue nach SARS-CoV-2 Infektion vor Impfung 2020/2021
Forschung zu Long-Covid und anderen postinfektiösen Syndromen wird mit einer halben Milliarde Euro gefördert. Bislang unbekannte Dokumente zeigen, dass das Forschungsministerium das gar nicht wollte.
https://t.co/eS60LN9Wfn
A study of hospitalized COVID-19 patients found that azithromycin quickly alters the respiratory microbiome and increases antibiotic resistance genes, with effects lasting over a week.
➡️ Importantly, it did not provide clear anti-inflammatory benefits.
➡️ These findings suggest that routine use of azithromycin in viral infections may promote antimicrobial resistance without significant clinical advantage.
https://t.co/omndTcM2Fg
Stell dir vor, dein Akku ist immer bei 5%. Du bist gerade aufgewacht, aber bleibst müde. Den ganzen Tag – gestern, heute, morgen. Du kannst dich nicht konzentrieren. Jeder Lichtstrahl, jedes Geräusch ist zu viel. Arbeiten, Freunde treffen, einkaufen gehen - all das ist (wenn überhaupt) nur mit großer Anstrengung möglich. Und jede Anstrengung kann bedeuten, dass es dir danach schlechter geht.
Für hunderttausende Menschen in Deutschland mit #MECFS und #LongCovid ist das kein Gedankenexperiment. Es ist Alltag. Die Krankheit lässt Kinder, Freunde, Kolleginnen, Nachbarn quasi aus dem Leben verschwinden.
Diese Menschen brauchen unsere Aufmerksamkeit, unsere Stimme. Und vor allem braucht es: mehr Forschung, Fortbildungen für Ärzt*innen und Entlastung für Angehörige.
Wie Norweger die Nachrichten zur Ölkrise zur Kenntnis nehmen im Wissen, dass der Anteil von E-Autos bei Neuzulassungen bei 98% liegt, der Anteil von Wärmepumpen bei 97% und der Anteil Erneuerbarer Energien beim Strom bei 98%😎🥱
Someone saved all of the Epstein emails from the releases and set up a Gmail clone site that you can scroll as if you were in Jeffery's Gmail.
You can search by contacts, photos and even flight history.
👉 https://t.co/OJ43Zm6seT