Author Archives: markdowe1

Health, Medical, Research, Science

Inoculation that protects against all strains of flu for 10 years

FLU-v JAB

A SINGLE jab which protects against all strains of flu for up to a decade could be available on the NHS in just two years.

The results of a UK human trial suggest the jab is more effective than existing vaccines which target only a few types of the virus.

Its creators claim it will end the scourge of flu globally, turning it into a mild illness rather than a killer.

The FLU-v jab, which is the work of British company Imutex, is said to fight off every strain, from the yearly winter virus to virulent strains such as swine flu and the recent Aussie flu. It is likely to cost between £20 to £50 per person but will need to be given only every five to ten years.

Current vaccines target proteins on the virus surface, but regions of these proteins constantly change in a bid to fool the immune system.

This means the virus is always one step ahead of the vaccine, which is why it must be remade each year. The new jab has been created to target unchanging regions of the virus proteins by boosting the immune system’s T-cells that recognise and attack foreign invaders.

The trial involved 123 participants aged 18 to 60 being infected with the H1N1 swine flu virus and spending eight days in a room. Eighty per cent were prevented from getting flu after having the jab. The vaccine was also twice as effective as limiting flu-like symptoms, with 60 per cent of those given the jab developing fewer than two symptoms. This suggests that even when people catch the flu virus, the vaccine can reduce the impact of its symptoms.

And a less severe infection for the elderly would slash the likelihood of complications and hospitalisations. After participants received FLU-v, their immune cells were tested against a range of flu strains. In all instances, the cells recognised and killed the virus.

It is hoped the results give the vaccine “breakthrough designation” from the US Food and Drug Administration – fast-tracking it through the approval process and paving the way for it to be available on the NHS within two years.

The new study was part of the collaboration with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which is part of the world’s largest medical research establishment, the National Institute of Health in Washington, USA. The UK’s most senior influenza expert John Oxford, emeritus professor of virology at Queen Mary University of London, said: “I am enthusiastic about universal vaccines. It is recognised as being a good way forward.

“If one should have an effective universal flu vaccine, people could relax because you could have a dose of it and it would give years of protection against whichever virus is circulating.”

Dr Ed Schmidt, from the Universal Influenza Vaccine Consortium at Groningen University, Holland, said the vaccine could be “a game changer”, adding: “It would lead to a serious reduction in deaths and have a major impact.”

This winter, the annual jab worked in just a quarter of the population in what was deemed as the worst epidemic in seven years.

The NHS spends more than £100million annually on its flu vaccination programme alone.

A universal jab could save the NHS around £27,000 per person over the course of their lifetime from less illness, absences and reduced pressure.

Standard
Business, Government, Politics, Scotland, Society

Digital Economy: Many small firms not able to cope with cyber attack

SCOTLAND

ONE in five businesses in Scotland is unprepared for dealing with a cyber-attack, raising fears that the economy is at risk unless action is taken.

A Scottish Government survey of more than 3,000 firms has revealed 19 per cent of them are “not equipped” or “poorly equipped” for dealing with an attack.

The research indicates that the private sector is at risk if hackers deploy viruses to disrupt the Scottish economy, which could also threaten the personal information of firms’ customers.

. See also Digital interfacing must be embraced by public sector

The survey comes just months after a malware attack wreaked havoc on NHS Scotland as hackers deployed a virus that sealed off vitally important files and demanded payment to unlock them.

The findings have sparked calls for more help from the Scottish Government to ensure firms are better prepared to deal with such incidents.

In 2015, the Scottish Government set a target for Scotland to become “a world leading nation in cyber resilience” by 2020. The UK Government has previously blamed Russia for major cyber attacks and the growing tensions between the two countries have increased fears of another major strike.

Separate research found a quarter of firms are struggling to grow because of the threat of a cyber-attack.

A spokesperson for the Federation of Small Business in Scotland, said: “We know there is a growing digital threat out there for Scottish firms and that is why the FSB offers services to members on this and have made the case to government north and south of the Border for extra help for small businesses.

“Like traditional crime, firms need to keep themselves safe and take sensible precautions. There have been high-profile cases where crooks have got the better of businesses and firms large and small need to protect against that threat.”

The Scottish Government surveyed 3,258 firms as part of a Digital Economy report. It asked them to what extent they felt equipped to protect against and deal with cyber-security threats.

Nine per cent said they were “not equipped at all” to deal with a cyber-attack and 10 per cent were “poorly equipped”. A further 47 per cent described themselves as “somewhat equipped”, while only 30 per cent rated themselves as “fully equipped”.

Standard
Arts, History, Philosophy

(Philosophy) Essential Thinkers: Plato

c.427 – 347BC

Plato seeks to understand and discover the ideal form of society. This is propagated through his concept of The Republic. But this notion has had scholars divided.

STUDENT of Socrates and founder of the Academy, the first reported institution of higher education – no philosopher has had a greater or wider-ranging influence in the history of philosophy than Plato. Alfred North Whitehead once said, with much justification, that the safest characterisation of Western philosophy is that of a series of footnotes to Plato. There is no topic of philosophical concern for which one cannot find some view in the corpus of his work.

Accordingly, it can be difficult to characterise such a vast and comprehensive canon of thought. However, much of Plato’s work revolves around his conception of a realm of ideal forms. The world of experience is illusory, Plato tells us, since only that which is unchanging and eternal is real, an idea he borrowed from Parmenides. There must, then, Plato asserts, be a realm of eternal unchanging forms that are the blueprints of the ephemeral phenomena we encounter through sense experience.

. More Quantum Leaps: Plato

According to Plato, though there are many individual horses, cats and dogs, they are all made in the image of the one universal form of ‘the horse’, ‘the cat’, ‘the dog’ and so on. Likewise, just as there as many men, all men are made in the image of the universal ‘form of man’. The influence of this idea on later Christian thought, in which man is made in the image of God, is only one of many ways in which Plato had a direct influence on Christian theology.

Plato’s Theory of Forms, however, was not restricted to material objects. He also thought there were ideal forms of universal or abstract concepts, such as beauty, justice, truth and mathematical concepts such as number and class. Indeed, it is in mathematics that Plato’s influence is still felt strongly today, both Frege and Gödel endorsing Platonism in this respect.

The Theory of Forms also underlies Plato’s most contentious and best-known work, The Republic. In a quest to understand the nature and value of justice, Plato offers a vision of a utopian society led by an elite class of guardians who are trained from birth for the task of ruling. The rest of society is divided into soldiers and the common people. In the republic, the ideal citizen is one who understands how best they can use their talents to the benefit of the whole of society, and bends unerringly to that task.

There is little thought of personal freedom or individual rights in Plato’s republic, for everything is tightly controlled by the guardians for the good of the state as a whole. This has led some, notably Bertrand Russell, to accuse Plato of endorsing an elitist and totalitarian regime under the guise of communist or socialist principles. Whether Russell and others who level this criticism are right or not is itself a subject of great philosophical debate. But it is important to understand Plato’s reasons for organising society in this way.

The Republic is an attempt, in line with his theory of forms, to discover the ideal form of society. Plato thinks there must be one ideal way to organise society, of which all actual societies are mere imperfect copies, since they do not promote the good of all. Such a society, Plato believes, would be stronger than its neighbours and unconquerable by its enemies, a thought very much in Greek minds given the frequent warring between Athens, Sparta and the other Hellenistic city-states. But more importantly, such a society would be just to all its citizens, giving and taking from each that which is their due, with each working for the benefit of the whole. Whether Plato’s republic is an ideal, or even viable society, has had scholars divided ever since.

Standard