BLUE BIOTECHNOLOGY

                       From Worldometer (new  COVID-19 deaths yesterday):

        DAY  USA  WORLD   Brazil    India    South Africa

June     9    1093     4732         1185        246       82

July    22     1205     7128         1293      1120     572

Aug    12     1504     6556        1242        835     130

Sept     9     1208      6222       1136       1168       82

Oct     21     1225      6849         571        703       85

Nov    25      2304    12025        620        518      118

Dec    30      3880    14748       1224       299      465

Jan     14       4142     15512        1151        189      712              

Feb      3       4005    14265       1209       107      398

Mar     2        1989      9490        1726       110      194

April   6          906     11787         4211       631       37

May    4         853     13667         3025     3786      59 

June   1         287    10637         2346      3205       95

 July   7          251      8440        1595        817       411

Aug    4          656    10120        1118         532      423 

Sept   1        1480    10470          703        505      235

          8        1700      9836          250        339     253

        14        1934      9001          709        281      300

        22       2228      9326          839        279      124

        29        2190      8859         643        309     108

Oct    5        1811       7495          686        285     103

          6        2102       8255         543        315       59

Summary:

• Just when you thought the decline was occurring, we get this.  
• Of course, the USA led with the most deaths yesterday, but #2 was Russia with 929, #3 Mexico with 790 and #4 Brazil with 543.
• #5?  Texas with 364.

Said the New York Times this morning;

• Economic growth has been disappointingly slow in the U.S., as has income growth for most families. According to many measures of well-being, the U.S. is faring worse than other high-income countries. Life expectancy here has risen less since 1980 than in Canada, Japan, Australia, Britain, France, Germany and dozens of other countries.

When Biden took office, the Democratic Party seemed united in its desire to reverse some of the sharp decline in high-end tax rates. Every Democrat in Congress — including Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia — had voted against Donald Trump’s 2017 tax cut. And polls show that most voters support higher taxes on the rich. About 80 percent of Americans say they are bothered by wealthy people and companies not paying “their fair share” of taxes, according to the Pew Research Center. House and Senate Democrats are shrinking Biden’s proposed tax increases, and the party still does not have a consensus on what a final bill should include. The tax plan will probably end up closer to a proposal from Manchin than Biden’s campaign platform.

Also from the NYT:

• W.H.O. endorsed the first malaria vaccine, which could save the lives of many children in sub-Saharan Africa.
• I might add that the vaccine to be used is known as RTS,S, requires four injections and has a relatively low efficacy of between 29-39%.  This version comes from GlaxoSmithKline with support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and uses a recombinant platform.
• There is a better one, known as R21/Matrix-M by the University of Oxford and partners, with a 77% effectiveness rate, but is still undergoing trials.
• There is another candidate by Sanaria, which has been shown to have an efficacy of 80%, but needs to be stored in liquid nitrogen.
• The RTS vaccine, when used with other treatments, does significantly reduce hospitalizations.
• In 2019 there were 229 million malaria cases with 409,000 deaths.  In comparison, COVID-19, in 20 months or so has had 238 million cases and 4.9 million deaths.  In short, annually, malaria has more cases/year, but COVID-19 has almost 10 times the fatality rate.
•  Children under the age of 5 years are the most vulnerable group.  Africa has 94% of all the malaria cases.
• 
  A sum close to $4 billion is annually spent to combat this disease.
• By the way, that drug, hydrochloroquine, touted by Donald Trump, is used to treat malaria patients.

• 
  ALSO, A SCARE STORY OF A SERIAL KILLER:
• MALARIA MAY GAVE KILLED HALF OF ALL THE PEOPLE THAT EVER LIVED!!!
• MORE PEOPLE ARE TODAY INFECTED THAN ANY POINT IN HISTORY.
• THE PARASITE (almost like an amoeba) RESPONSIBLE IS  Plasmodium falciparum, WHICH IS THE SERIAL KILLER.

• BUT THE MOSQUITO THAT INFECTS YOU IS THE FEMALE ANOPHELES.  
  

Here is something you probably did not know:  

There are 200 types of mosquitos in the the continental United States.  12 of them can make you sick.  The Anopheles mosquito can be found in the USA.  See that big green area?

Today I will introduce you to the field of Blue Biotechnology, an element of the Blue Revolution, drawing from a special issue of Aquatic Microbial Resources for Sustainable Life on Earth.  This was a call for papers, with a submission deadline at the end of March 2022.

This special issue editors are:  Laurent Dufosse (above) of Reunion (France) and Ramesh Chatragadda (Goa, India).

Dear Colleagues,

Biotechnology is the exploitation or manipulation of living organisms, systems, and processes for the benefit of society, the environment, and industry. 

We all know the color code developed by Kafarski (2012) to differentiate the main areas of biotechnology: white (industrial), green (agricultural), blue (marine and fresh water), red (pharmaceutical), brown (desert biotechnology), and purple (patents and inventions), among others. More recently, insect biotechnology, an emerging field of applied entomology that covers the use of insects in drug discovery, food, and feed has been coded yellow.

Blue biotechnology seeks to explore and use marine and fresh-water biodiversity as, for example, a source of new products, bioprospecting the environment and using molecular biology and microbial ecology in fresh-water and marine organisms to obtain beneficial advances for humanity (Barcelos et al., 2018).

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2000 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

I'll close with a few photos sent to me by readers.  Some facts about pistacchios:

• First cultivated in the region now known as Afghanistan and Iran, so prominent in the news today, and was grown in the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.
• Tree lives up to 300 years and grows to 33 feet or so.  A mature one provides 50/000 seeds/two years.
• Do you know why they were first dyed red or green?  To hide the shell stains.
• Bet you didn't know that three-quarters of this nut comes from Iran and the USA, where it first arrived in 1854?

All these chemicals are found in your banana:

Lungs of a horse.

Finger from a gorilla:

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