Recent comments in /f/askscience

quarter_cask t1_j1pil6z wrote

Reply to What % of people got long covid who were vaccinated VS those who weren't? by CarrionAssassin2k9

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-01453-0

tldr, not that effective as expected but studying long covid is problematic cause it's hard to diagnose due to many diverse symptoms overlapping with other illnesses...
still, if you don't get one due to vaccine then you can't get a long one obviously. also if you get a very mild or unsymptomatic due to vaccine then you also can't get a long one...

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PercussiveRussel t1_j1pi0im wrote

Reply to comment by Beaulderdash2000 in I recently learned that humans can smell rain / petrichor (ozone and geosmin) better than sharks smell blood, now considering we don't have any extra hyper specific olfactory organs like some other animals do, how do we achieve this level of detection? by Corvuscoraxaphro

More specifically, the smell of fresh rain isn't water, but rather some chemical that's released from the soil.

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slogginmagoggin t1_j1pgwg8 wrote

Reply to I recently learned that humans can smell rain / petrichor (ozone and geosmin) better than sharks smell blood, now considering we don't have any extra hyper specific olfactory organs like some other animals do, how do we achieve this level of detection? by Corvuscoraxaphro

Being able to smell fresh rainfall must have been pretty useful in the dry environments humans evolved in. Bonus fact, geosmin is produced by soil bacteria to attract tiny insects called springtails to eat them and spread their spores. But it also attracts us!

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0oSlytho0 t1_j1pbrid wrote

Reply to comment by danrthemanr in Maybe a simple question, but why are proteins structural? by danrthemanr

Entropy just is, it's not trying anything. Same for nature.

Cells actively remove proteins which arem't needed anymore. E.g. Ubiquitin gets attached so the proteasome can recognise them and break them down. Protein decay happens over time as well but that's also a good thing for cells. It's part of the waste management to keep cells from getting stuffed with old proteins that can aggregate together.

So no, they are not destroyed faster than they can be built. There's a whole system in place to determine what needs to go when.

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