Johanna Dodd - Chemistry and General Science Tutor

07/16/2021

I love Chris and Xand. There. I said it! It has nothing to do with Operation Ouch (though that's very cute), it has more to do with their thoughtful exploration of their own twinness and the differences life extracts from being someone else's clone. This podcast is no exception. I am looking forward to listening to the second one as it has my project supervisor, Andrea Sella, explaining the chemical composition of ultra processed food (UPF), and its impacts on the body.

Welcome to 'A Thorough Examination with Drs Chris and Xand'. The first series is "Addicted to Food", it's specifically about the growing global addiction to ultra processed food aka UPF. Chris thinks UPF is driving Xand’s (and everyone else's) weight problem. So he proposes a simple experiment - t...

01/07/2021

Great explainer for RNA vaccines. Husband just had his (Moderna) as a first responder.

Wondering how the RNA vaccines which are now approved in a number of countries are made? This graphic in C&EN has you covered: https://cen.acs.org/pharmaceuticals/vaccines/Periodic-Graphics-RNA-vaccines-made/99/i1

08/03/2020

This is very good news indeed.

Time to talk about something different (you know, all coronavirus, all the time) like a potential Lyme disease vaccine. A new vaccine for this terrible

06/26/2020

This *is* utter rubbish but also gives rise to this thought: if there was no inequity, if everyone had enough to eat, if everyone had all the things that modern life could offer them, if everyone had meaningful work that enriched them, if everyone had exactly the right healthcare, would there be any crime? And is that actually what we should be striving for, rather than a camera system and a racially-biased AI that assesses whether you 'might' commit a crime.

Its creators said they could use facial analysis to determine if someone would become a criminal. Critics said the work recalled debunked “race science.”

06/22/2020

Even considering that the protesters were tear gassed, thereby severely compromising their lungs, as well as many being jailed without recourse to social distancing, it does seem that in the main it hasn't had an impact on Covid cases in those municipalities.

On the other hand, the ones who *are* seeing a spike are those who have opened up indoor entertainments...

Does that mean other outdoor activities are safe?

06/01/2020

This is brilliant! It's also something anyone can do, given enough pavement!

05/11/2020

Slovakia Foreign Policy article on masks and lockdowns and why they have the lowest Covid 19 infection rate in Europe.

Without an intelligent quarantine in place, public trust and the media have been crucial to the country’s success.

05/10/2020

I am just putting this here so I can constantly refer to it over the next few weeks. I will be adding the article about Slovakia as well. So, so fed up with arguing that basic cloth masks don’t do anything. They *absolutely* do.

There’s compelling evidence that Japan, Hong Kong, and other East Asian locales are doing it right and we should really, truly mask up—fast.

05/08/2020

Fantastic article on transmission and infection rate for the current virus as we head into this rather odd time where various governments think it's OK to reopen. TL;DR? The novel coronavirus causing Covid 19 isn't currently 'airborne' but if you sit in someone's breath soup for long enough (or the air conditioning wafts it over you), you increase your chances of getting it.

It seems many people are breathing some relief, and I’m not sure why. An epidemic curve has a relatively predictable upslope and once the peak is reached, the back slope is also predictable. Assuming we have just crested in deaths at 70k, that would mean that if we stay locked down, we lose anothe...