Enlarge / The flu virus, showing the H and N proteins on its surface. (credit: CDC )

An mRNA-based flu vaccine designed to offer long-lasting protection against a broad range of influenza viruses is now in a phase I clinical trial, the National Institutes of Health announced this week .

The trial brings the remarkable success of the mRNA vaccine platform to the long-standing efforts to develop a universal flu vaccine. Currently, health systems around the globe battle the seasonal scourge with shots that have to be reformulated each year to match circulating strains. This reformulation happens months before typical transmission, providing manufacturers time to produce doses at scale but also giving the strain circulation chances to shift unexpectedly. If the year's shot is a poor match for the strains that circulate in a given season, efficacy against infection can be abysmal. Still, even when the shot is well-matched, people will need another shot next year.

"A universal influenza vaccine would be a major public health achievement and could eliminate the need for both annual development of seasonal influenza vaccines, as well as the need for patients to get a flu shot each year," Hugh Auchincloss, acting director of the NIH's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in a news release. "Moreover, some strains of influenza virus have significant pandemic potential. A universal flu vaccine could serve as an important line of defense against the spread of a future flu pandemic."

Enlarge / The flu virus, showing the H and N proteins on its surface. (credit: CDC )

An mRNA-based flu vaccine designed to offer long-lasting protection against a broad range of influenza viruses is now in a phase I clinical trial, the National Institutes of Health announced this week .

The trial brings the remarkable success of the mRNA vaccine platform to the long-standing efforts to develop a universal flu vaccine. Currently, health systems around the globe battle the seasonal scourge with shots that have to be reformulated each year to match circulating strains. This reformulation happens months before typical transmission, providing manufacturers time to produce doses at scale but also giving the strain circulation chances to shift unexpectedly. If the year's shot is a poor match for the strains that circulate in a given season, efficacy against infection can be abysmal. Still, even when the shot is well-matched, people will need another shot next year.

"A universal influenza vaccine would be a major public health achievement and could eliminate the need for both annual development of seasonal influenza vaccines, as well as the need for patients to get a flu shot each year," Hugh Auchincloss, acting director of the NIH's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in a news release. "Moreover, some strains of influenza virus have significant pandemic potential. A universal flu vaccine could serve as an important line of defense against the spread of a future flu pandemic."

Enlarge / The flu virus, showing the H and N proteins on its surface. (credit: CDC )

An mRNA-based flu vaccine designed to offer long-lasting protection against a broad range of influenza viruses is now in a phase I clinical trial, the National Institutes of Health announced this week .

The trial brings the remarkable success of the mRNA vaccine platform to the long-standing efforts to develop a universal flu vaccine. Currently, health systems around the globe battle the seasonal scourge with shots that have to be reformulated each year to match circulating strains. This reformulation happens months before typical transmission, providing manufacturers time to produce doses at scale but also giving the strain circulation chances to shift unexpectedly. If the year's shot is a poor match for the strains that circulate in a given season, efficacy against infection can be abysmal. Still, even when the shot is well-matched, people will need another shot next year.

"A universal influenza vaccine would be a major public health achievement and could eliminate the need for both annual development of seasonal influenza vaccines, as well as the need for patients to get a flu shot each year," Hugh Auchincloss, acting director of the NIH's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in a news release. "Moreover, some strains of influenza virus have significant pandemic potential. A universal flu vaccine could serve as an important line of defense against the spread of a future flu pandemic."

Enlarge (credit: Thomas Trutschel / Contributor | Photothek )

While based in the United States from 2008 to 2014, human rights activist Abdulrahman Al-Sadhan tweeted critically about the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) to more than 160,000 followers. After he returned to Saudi Arabia in 2015, his anonymous account allegedly became unmasked by former Twitter employees who were charged with conspiring with the Saudi regime to silence dissidents. Now, his sister, Areej Al-Sadhan, is suing Twitter for allegedly violating its terms of service and giving her brother's "identifying information to the government of Saudi Arabia" when his Twitter speech should've been protected.

"This puts every Twitter user at risk," Areej alleged in an affidavit supporting her complaint . "As a result, Saudi Arabia kidnapped, tortured, imprisoned, and—through a sham trial— sentenced my brother to 20 years in prison, simply for criticizing Saudi repression on his Twitter account."

Areej is a US citizen who alleges that she has been stalked, threatened, and targeted by the KSA ever since she began speaking out on her brother's behalf—including on Twitter, where her account currently has nearly 15,000 followers. She filed the lawsuit on behalf of Abdulrahman in a US district court in San Francisco, claiming that her brother is an incompetent (unable to help their attorney) because he disappeared after the KSA sentenced him to prison and thus cannot defend himself. He has not been heard from since 2021, the lawsuit said.

Enlarge (credit: Thomas Trutschel / Contributor | Photothek )

While based in the United States from 2008 to 2014, human rights activist Abdulrahman Al-Sadhan tweeted critically about the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) to more than 160,000 followers. After he returned to Saudi Arabia in 2015, his anonymous account allegedly became unmasked by former Twitter employees who were charged with conspiring with the Saudi regime to silence dissidents. Now, his sister, Areej Al-Sadhan, is suing Twitter for allegedly violating its terms of service and giving her brother's "identifying information to the government of Saudi Arabia" when his Twitter speech should've been protected.

"This puts every Twitter user at risk," Areej alleged in an affidavit supporting her complaint . "As a result, Saudi Arabia kidnapped, tortured, imprisoned, and—through a sham trial— sentenced my brother to 20 years in prison, simply for criticizing Saudi repression on his Twitter account."

Areej is a US citizen who alleges that she has been stalked, threatened, and targeted by the KSA ever since she began speaking out on her brother's behalf—including on Twitter, where her account currently has nearly 15,000 followers. She filed the lawsuit on behalf of Abdulrahman in a US district court in San Francisco, claiming that her brother is an incompetent (unable to help their attorney) because he disappeared after the KSA sentenced him to prison and thus cannot defend himself. He has not been heard from since 2021, the lawsuit said.

Enlarge (credit: Thomas Trutschel / Contributor | Photothek )

While based in the United States from 2008 to 2014, human rights activist Abdulrahman Al-Sadhan tweeted critically about the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) to more than 160,000 followers. After he returned to Saudi Arabia in 2015, his anonymous account allegedly became unmasked by former Twitter employees who were charged with conspiring with the Saudi regime to silence dissidents. Now, his sister, Areej Al-Sadhan, is suing Twitter for allegedly violating its terms of service and giving her brother's "identifying information to the government of Saudi Arabia" when his Twitter speech should've been protected.

"This puts every Twitter user at risk," Areej alleged in an affidavit supporting her complaint . "As a result, Saudi Arabia kidnapped, tortured, imprisoned, and—through a sham trial— sentenced my brother to 20 years in prison, simply for criticizing Saudi repression on his Twitter account."

Areej is a US citizen who alleges that she has been stalked, threatened, and targeted by the KSA ever since she began speaking out on her brother's behalf—including on Twitter, where her account currently has nearly 15,000 followers. She filed the lawsuit on behalf of Abdulrahman in a US district court in San Francisco, claiming that her brother is an incompetent (unable to help their attorney) because he disappeared after the KSA sentenced him to prison and thus cannot defend himself. He has not been heard from since 2021, the lawsuit said.

Enlarge / Still life of a boy blowing a bubble (circa 1734) by 18th century French painter Jean Siméon Chardin. (credit: Public domain)

French painters Jean Siméon Chardin and Édouard Manet both created well-known paintings that depicted children blowing bubbles through straw-like tubes, albeit more than a century apart. Those realistic depictions of bubble dynamics have now inspired two physicists at the Université Grenoble Alpes in France, who conducted their own soap bubble experiments to learn more about the early formation stages of bubble dynamics. They describe their experimental results in a forthcoming paper to be published on May 22 in the journal Physical Review Fluids.

Bubbles may seem frivolous, but there is some complex underlying physics, and their study has long been serious science. In the 1800s, Belgian physicist Joseph Plateau outlined four basic laws of surface tension that determine the structure of soapy films. Surface tension is why bubbles are round; that shape has the least surface area for a given volume, so it requires the least energy to maintain. Over time, that shape will look more like a soccer ball than a perfect sphere as gravity pulls the liquid downward ("coarsening").

More recently, French physicists in 2016 worked out a theoretical model for the exact mechanism for how soap bubbles form when jets of air hit a soapy film. The researchers found that bubbles only formed above a certain speed, which depends on the width of the jet of air. In 2018, we reported how mathematicians at New York University's Applied Math Lab had fine-tuned the method for blowing the perfect bubble based on a series of experiments with thin, soapy films. In 2019, physicists at MIT and Princeton University demonstrated how to develop spherical bubbles uniformly by confining them in a narrow tube. Something about the interactions between the walls of the tube and the bubble makes the whole system less sensitive to irregularities in the initial conditions.

Enlarge / Still life of a boy blowing a bubble (circa 1734) by 18th century French painter Jean Siméon Chardin. (credit: Public domain)

French painters Jean Siméon Chardin and Édouard Manet both created well-known paintings that depicted children blowing bubbles through straw-like tubes, albeit more than a century apart. Those realistic depictions of bubble dynamics have now inspired two physicists at the Université Grenoble Alpes in France, who conducted their own soap bubble experiments to learn more about the early formation stages of bubble dynamics. They describe their experimental results in a forthcoming paper to be published on May 22 in the journal Physical Review Fluids.

Bubbles may seem frivolous, but there is some complex underlying physics, and their study has long been serious science. In the 1800s, Belgian physicist Joseph Plateau outlined four basic laws of surface tension that determine the structure of soapy films. Surface tension is why bubbles are round; that shape has the least surface area for a given volume, so it requires the least energy to maintain. Over time, that shape will look more like a soccer ball than a perfect sphere as gravity pulls the liquid downward ("coarsening").

More recently, French physicists in 2016 worked out a theoretical model for the exact mechanism for how soap bubbles form when jets of air hit a soapy film. The researchers found that bubbles only formed above a certain speed, which depends on the width of the jet of air. In 2018, we reported how mathematicians at New York University's Applied Math Lab had fine-tuned the method for blowing the perfect bubble based on a series of experiments with thin, soapy films. In 2019, physicists at MIT and Princeton University demonstrated how to develop spherical bubbles uniformly by confining them in a narrow tube. Something about the interactions between the walls of the tube and the bubble makes the whole system less sensitive to irregularities in the initial conditions.

Enlarge / Still life of a boy blowing a bubble (circa 1734) by 18th century French painter Jean Siméon Chardin. (credit: Public domain)

French painters Jean Siméon Chardin and Édouard Manet both created well-known paintings that depicted children blowing bubbles through straw-like tubes, albeit more than a century apart. Those realistic depictions of bubble dynamics have now inspired two physicists at the Université Grenoble Alpes in France, who conducted their own soap bubble experiments to learn more about the early formation stages of bubble dynamics. They describe their experimental results in a forthcoming paper to be published on May 22 in the journal Physical Review Fluids.

Bubbles may seem frivolous, but there is some complex underlying physics, and their study has long been serious science. In the 1800s, Belgian physicist Joseph Plateau outlined four basic laws of surface tension that determine the structure of soapy films. Surface tension is why bubbles are round; that shape has the least surface area for a given volume, so it requires the least energy to maintain. Over time, that shape will look more like a soccer ball than a perfect sphere as gravity pulls the liquid downward ("coarsening").

More recently, French physicists in 2016 worked out a theoretical model for the exact mechanism for how soap bubbles form when jets of air hit a soapy film. The researchers found that bubbles only formed above a certain speed, which depends on the width of the jet of air. In 2018, we reported how mathematicians at New York University's Applied Math Lab had fine-tuned the method for blowing the perfect bubble based on a series of experiments with thin, soapy films. In 2019, physicists at MIT and Princeton University demonstrated how to develop spherical bubbles uniformly by confining them in a narrow tube. Something about the interactions between the walls of the tube and the bubble makes the whole system less sensitive to irregularities in the initial conditions.