Experts Answer the Biggest COVID Vaccine Questions

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February 22, 2021

Public Health Experts Answer the Biggest COVID Vaccine Questions What does "95 percent effective" mean? Should you get vaccinated if you have had COVID? Is there a best vaccine?  By Jim Daley

Energy Massive Power Failure Could Finally Cause Texas to Connect with the Nation's Power Grids Energy from neighboring states could have helped Texans survive their extreme winter storm By Robin Lloyd

Public Health The Coronavirus is Here to Stay--Here's What That Means A Nature survey shows many scientists expect the virus that causes COVID-19 to become endemic, but it could pose less danger over time By Nicky Phillips,Nature magazine

Space New Supernova Alert System Promises Early Access to Spectacles in Space Upgrades to the SuperNova Early Warning System (SNEWS) detection system offer advance notice of impending blasts By James Riordon

Biology 'March Mammal Madness' Brings Simulated Animal Fights to Huge Audiences The annual science education event describes imaginary encounters to teach ecology By David Shiffman

Policy & Ethics Facebook Would Rather Ban News in Australia Than Pay for it The tech giant's ban on Australians searching for news on its platform suggests that equitable control of international reporting is very much a work in progress By Vanessa Freije,The Conversation US

Space Until Recently, People Accepted the 'Fact' of Aliens in the Solar System For centuries, right up until the 1960s, the notion life on Mars—and elsewhere—wasn't considered especially remarkable By Caleb A. Scharf

Energy After Blackout, Questions Emerge on Future Greening of Texas's Grid The state simultaneously has the highest-emissions grid in the country and leads the nation in wind power By Benjamin Storrow,E&E News

Behavior & Society A Vaccination against the Pandemic of Misinformation False beliefs, similar to those seen in Alzheimer's patients, may result from a lack of science literacy By Serggio Lanata,Bruce L. Miller

Policy & Ethics Physicists Need to Be More Careful with How They Name Things The popular term "quantum supremacy," which refers to quantum computers outperforming classical ones, is uncomfortably reminiscent of "white supremacy" By Ian Durham,Daniel Garisto,Karoline Wiesner

Biology Even Tiny Phytoplankton Have Microbiomes These algae exchange vital chemicals with bacteria that live around their surface By Leslie Nemo

Cognition Are Dolphins Right-Handed or Left-Handed? That is a trick question because dolphins obviously don't have hands. But studying whether they have "handedness" led to identifying a quirk of human perception By Kelly Jaakkola

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QUOTE OF THE DAY "Eradicating this virus right now from the world is a lot like trying to plan the construction of a stepping-stone pathway to the Moon. It's unrealistic." Michael Osterholm, epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis

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