The Center for Politics at University of Virginia founded by Prof. Larry Sabato has boosted the electability ratings for Democrats in 11 US House districts. 10 have incumbent Dems running for re-election and 1 is an open seat currently held by a Democrat.

It's as important to hold on to seats we already have as it is to flip seats now held by MAGA Republicans.

Here's a link to the article about the by Kyle Kondik.

The House: 11 Rating Changes in Democratic-Held Seats; Non-Presidential Party Typically Doesn’t Lose Many of Their Own Seats in Midterms

Wherever you live, support Democratic candidates regardless of ratings. In various special and regularly scheduled elections over the past half year, Dems have been overperforming by over 11%. A Democrat even flipped Trump's Florida legislative district. So let's not automatically assume that a contest anywhere is out of reach.

Stop Overreacting

You’ve hired a gardener, but they’re a little overenthusiastic. They discover slugs eating your flowers, so they fetch their flamethrower and torch everything. The slugs are gone, but the collateral damage is terrible. Your immune system can overreact too. Ross River virus (RRV) causes painful arthritis that can last for years, but most of the damage is due to inflammation triggered by the immune system. The left panel shows fibres of skeletal muscle (yellow) from a mouse infected with RRV. The right panel gives a closer look at helper T cells (white) and killer T cells (pink) producing interleukin-17 (green), a molecule that activates inflammation to keep viruses in check. Researchers found that interleukin-17 levels dramatically increased in RRV-infected mice but blocking this signal decreased inflammation and arthritis severity. Importantly, blocking interleukin-17 didn’t increase the number of viruses present. This strategy may soon be applied as a treatment for people with arthritis caused by RRV.

Written by Henry Stennett

Image adapted from work by Helen Mostafavi and colleagues

Emerging Viruses, Inflammation and Therapeutics Group, Menzies Health Institute Queensland, Griffith University, Gold Coast, QLD, AU

Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Published in PLOS Pathogens, February 2022

A TV meteorologist in Des Moines resigned as a result of harassment from climate deniers.

A small but loud and aggressive group on the far right thinks it can cancel science when it contradicts their ideological extremism.

After spending the last two years as chief meteorologist at Des Moines news station KCCI, a CNN affiliate, (Chris) Gloninger announced Wednesday he is resigning as one of the many faces of local TV weather. His departure comes months after receiving a series of harassing emails from a viewer who disagreed with one thing he did on-air: he explained how weather was linked to the climate crisis. He also received other negative feedback via private messages and social media, which has become a common experience for weather and climate communicators. The decision was not easy, Gloninger told the Washington Post, but in a tweet announcing his exit, he cited a “death threat stemming from my climate coverage” which he said resulted in post-traumatic stress.

Death threats directed at people advocating real science are nothing new. We know how Galileo was persecuted by the Catholic Church for daring to prove Copernicus correct.

The emails from the viewer, according to screenshots Gloninger’s tweeted, called the meteorologist a “liberal conspiracy” theorist and told him to “go east and drown from the ice cap melting.” It escalated last summer when he received a more menacing threat from the viewer. “It is mentally exhausting and at times I have not been ok,” Gloninger tweeted at the time. “The threat of course was concerning, but the stream of harassing emails is even more distressing.” Gloninger said he plans to “embark on a new journey dedicated to helping solve the climate crisis,” in addition to spending more time with family. His last day is on July 7. A statement from KCCI about his departure said Gloninger plans to go into climate consulting: “Gloninger is leaving television to focus on caring for his family and his own mental health. He plans to pursue work in climate consulting.” Gloninger’s experience is not an isolated one. Climate change has become a highly politicized topic, despite hundreds of global scientists concluding it is “unequivocal” that humans have caused the crisis and that “widespread and rapid changes” have already occurred around the world. Climate communicators, journalists, meteorologists and national weather services, including those in the US, Spain and Australia, have reported an increase in harassment, threats and abuse for connecting extreme weather events to climate change.

Some climate stripes to stick it to those halfwit climate deniers.

There's an organization called 3.14 Action which is dedicated to electing more people with a science background to Congress and to public office in general.

3.14 Action | Electing scientists who will use evidence and facts to fight climate change and fix our broken healthcare system.

One of their successes in 2022 was helping meteorologist Eric Sorensen get elected to the US House from a swing district in Illinois.

Christopher Wiggins at The Advocate:

First-term U.S. Rep. Eric Sorensen, a Democrat from Illinois’s 17th District, is used to being a first. The former meteorologist, who served as a trusted local voice on television for almost two decades, is currently the only out LGBTQ+ representative from Illinois, representing a diverse district that stretches across Rockford, Peoria, and the Quad Cities. In a spring interview with The Advocate, Sorensen opened up about his journey, his challenges as a gay lawmaker, and what’s at stake for LGBTQ+ rights as the 2024 election approaches. Sorensen is one of the 29 members selected for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s Frontline program, which provides support to incumbents in competitive races. It’s a designation that emphasizes the importance of his seat for the Democrats’ hopes of reclaiming the U.S. House of Representatives.

The fight for LGBTQ+ rights in Congress

Since taking office, Sorensen has been a vocal advocate for LGBTQ+ rights, standing up to a wave of anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric that has made its way from the states to the halls of Congress. “We have taken some incredibly terrible votes on LGBTQ rights that are so hurtful,” Sorensen reflected. “Sometimes I wonder to myself, where are we? Where are the people that should be standing up and shouting that this isn’t OK?” [...]

Representing rural America as an out lawmaker

He notes that his Illinois seat’s district is deeply rural, dotted with cornfields and small towns, far removed from the urban and suburban neighborhoods that usually elect out LGBTQ+ lawmakers. He says stepping away from a beloved 20-year career as a local meteorologist wasn’t easy, but his sense of duty to Illinois’s 17th District drove him to take that leap. “One of the hard things was walking away from that job,” he shared, reflecting on his days in Rockford and the Quad Cities, where he was a trusted figure on people’s television screens, particularly during severe weather alerts. “People trusted me literally for their lives when the bad weather was coming.” He was more than a familiar face; for many, he was the only LGBTQ+ person they knew — a role he took to heart when viewers sought him out for advice on LGBTQ+ issues.

Over time, Sorensen says he became accustomed to emails from parents and grandparents in the area who had questions about LGBTQ+ identity. “My son thinks that they’re gay. What do I say?” Sorensen recalled people asking. “I can answer that,” he explained, drawing from his personal experience. But when similar questions started surfacing about transgender family members, Sorensen realized he needed to seek guidance himself. “When I started getting questions of ‘My granddaughter says she’s trans, and I don’t know what to say,’ I reached out to our LGBTQ+ community center in Rock Island,” Sorensen said. There, he connected with Chase Norris, the center’s trans executive director, who became a trusted friend and helped Sorensen understand how best to support trans youth and their families. Sorensen’s experience as a weatherman in a largely rural area built his reputation for trustworthiness and laid the foundation for his role in Congress. He may have worried at first, he admitted, about how people would react to an out gay weather forecaster on TV in Illinois, but he found his community embraced him. “I doubted myself,” Sorensen reflected, “but my community supported me.”

Interleukin-17 (IL-17) is a pro-inflammatory cytokine. IL-17 is produced by a group of helper T-cells known as T-helper 17 cell in response to their stimulation with another cytokine, IL-23.

Image of the IL-17 cytokine and its interactions/molecular pathways. photo taken from invitogen

Recently, new research from Washington University in St. Louis has found a connection between IL-17, the…

Vitamina D e cellule T: citochine chiave nella SM

Numerosi studi suggeriscono che bassi livelli di vitamina D nel sangue sono fortemente legati ad un aumento del rischio di sviluppare la Sclerosi Multipla (SM); e che i pazienti affetti da SM con bassi livelli ematici di vitamina D (25- idrossicolecalciferolo) hanno maggiori probabilità di avere una maggiore disabilità e una più forte attività di malattia.

Già uno studio, pubblicato nel 2007 sul