Jenna Luche-Thayer

Study: Third dose COVID-19 vaccination elicits immune memory in patients with inborn errors of immunity even in absence of neutralizing antibodies. Published: November 13, 2025 medrxiv.org/content/10.110…

In 1930, rural Virginia, a Black girl born into sharecropping poverty wasn't supposed to leave the tobacco fields. But Gladys Mae Brown had other plans.... Her hands picked crops. Her mind solved equations no one asked her to solve. Her parents, despite barely scraping by, made a choice that defied every expectation placed on them. They kept her in school. She became valedictorian at a segregated high school with torn textbooks and broken windows. She earned a scholarship to Virginia State College in an era when being Black, female, and intellectually brilliant meant the world tried to crush you three different ways. In 1956, she walked through the doors of the Naval Proving Ground in Dahlgren as the second Black woman they'd ever hired. Four Black employees. Hundreds of white men. Most didn't think she'd survive the week. They were catastrophically wrong. Gladys calculated weapons trajectories by hand. Complex differential equations that consumed hours of meticulous work. Her accuracy became legendary. When computers arrived, she didn't resist the future. She learned Fortran. She mastered programming languages. She transformed weeks of calculations into hours. Then came Seasat in the 1970s. The first satellite studying Earth's oceans from orbit. She became project manager. But her true contribution remained hidden in the mathematics. For GPS to function, you need Earth's exact shape. Not close. Exact. Earth isn't a smooth sphere. It's an asymmetrical, gravity-distorted, irregular mass of mountains and ocean trenches. Gladys spent years constructing mathematical models describing every deviation, every curve, every gravitational anomaly of our planet's true form. She analyzed satellite data. She built geoid models. Tedious, invisible, revolutionary work. That mathematics became the foundation of GPS. Every navigation app. Every emergency rescue. Every autonomous vehicle. Every precision farming system. Her equations make it possible. Forty-two years at Dahlgren. Retirement in 1998. GPS fully operational worldwide. Billions of users. Almost nobody knew her name. She raised three children. Earned her PhD at seventy after surviving a stroke. Lived quietly. Until 2018, when someone at a sorority event read her biography aloud. The room went silent. The story exploded. At eighty-eight, Gladys West was inducted into the Air Force Space and Missile Pioneers Hall of Fame. The world finally learned her name. She mapped the entire planet. Then everyone forgot. Until they remembered. Gladys West worked alongside her husband Ira West, who was also a mathematician at the Naval Proving Ground. They met at Dahlgren and built both a family and parallel careers in an environment that actively discriminated against them. After retirement, she didn't stop. She earned her PhD from Virginia Tech at age 70, proving that intellectual curiosity doesn't have an expiration date. The GPS system relies on something called the geoid, a mathematical model of Earth's shape that accounts for gravitational variations. Gladys West's calculations helped create these models by analyzing millions of data points from satellite altimetry. Without accurate geoid models, GPS coordinates would be off by hundreds of meters, making the technology essentially useless. Her story remained hidden partly because classified military work doesn't generate headlines. Many pioneers of satellite and navigation technology worked in obscurity for national security reasons. The sorority member who recognized her contribution was reading through Alpha Kappa Alpha biographies when she noticed the GPS connection and brought it to public attention. © Women Stories #drthehistories

.@ChefJoseAndres: I am a cook and I know there is no America without immigrants. There is no food at our table without immigrants. There is no farm without immigrants. There are no kitchens without immigrants.

Read this as many times as you need. mdpi.com/2673-8112/5/9/…

This study is a great one on N*, the novel protein SARS-CoV-2 evolved early in the pandemic. I plundered this paper when it came out in preprint form for the N* thread I made back in the XEC days. Great to see it officially published. x.com/LongDesertTrai…

Not me because I mask and use the Swiss cheese approach

COVID safety and clean air advocates are noticing N95 masks on (almost) all NASA personnel as they prepare Artemis astronauts to launch. NASA takes viral contamination seriously. Official policy nasa.gov/live/ @envidreamz @drseanmullen @1goodtern @HarrySpoelstra

BA.3.2 is starting to pick up speed. We officially added it to our variant list; I assume CDC will add it to Nowcast at the next update. It's probably about 10% or more. I'm starting to be surprised there aren't more sequences.

Sick leave is hitting France so hard that it's going to impact the national budget. Maybe it was a bad idea to repeatedly infect everyone with a virus that harms your ability to defend against infection.

Oregon Live: 'A formerly low-profile COVID variant is spreading fast. Here’s what to know' 'As a pulmonary and critical care doctor, I see many patients...patients living with long COVID..' '..the number of people who develop long COVID..still occurs..' oregonlive.com/health/2026/03…

what about besties

A bystander apoptosis. The study in Nature argues that Omicron can drive the death of nearby, uninfected T cells. This paper shows an HIV-like pattern of immunopathology.🧵

1/ New evidence confirms that SARS-CoV-2 can reach the fetus through the amniotic fluid. This isn't just about maternal health; researchers have now detected the virus directly within fetal organs, including the lungs and intestines. Here’s why this changes the conversation. ⬇️

It'll be 12 years together this year, I can't believe it's been that long. We protect each other 💜

If you're aware that Covid: 😪 hasn't gone anywhere ⬆️ causes cumulative health consequences 🧠 accelerates aging and disease 📉 damages the immune system 😷 and you choose to wear a respirator in public spaces to protect yourself and others... We should be friends. 😊

@Leseerlaubnis @BSchodlok @rolalaloves we also do the multi-layered mitigations 😊 I love to see others state they have adapted to the reality of this ongoing pandemic👋👋👋

@JennaLuche @BSchodlok @rolalaloves Same here, although married for a longer time. Never had COVID-19. Vaccinations and masks as well as HEPA filters indoors kept us safe.

Been masking since 2020 with my husband of 20 years because we learned to adapt to a new normal. We don’t dine out indoors anymore but we go out to exhibitions and events with our masks. It’s possible to live life and have fun in masks.

Amazing No Kings protest in Nashville Tennessee yesterday. The marchers were led by women dressed up as handmaids from “The Handmaids Tale.” Each of them was holding a sign with a name of one of the people named in the Epstein files on it. MAGA hates this.

For Japanese people, the nickname of BA.3.2, "Cicada," sounds "Shikeida," which tranlates to "You are sentenced the death penalty."

17+ years together. masked to protect ourselves and others every time we've been outside our home since Spring 2020. 🩷💕