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A key aspect of your immune system is to distinguish “self” from “nonself” so it can destroy and remove foreign materials from your body. While this immune reaction protects you from viruses, it also has implications for how well foreign materials such as medications work" More at The Conversation ➜ 

Hood ornament “Spirit of Ecstasy” (commonly known as “Emily”) of a Rolls-Royce Phantom II.

Dietmar Rabich, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Can you spot famous celestial objects in this image? 18th-century astronomer Charles Messier cataloged only two of them: the bright Lagoon Nebula (M8) at the bottom, and the colorful Trifid Nebula (M20) at the upper right. The one on the left that resembles a cat's paw is NGC 6559, and it is much fainter than the other two. Even harder to spot are the thin blue filaments on the left, from supernova remnant (SNR G007.5-01.7). Their glow comes from small amounts of glowing oxygen atoms that are so faint that it took over 17 hours of exposure with just one blue color to bring up. Framing this scene of stellar birth and death are two star clusters: the open cluster M21 just above Trifid, and the globular cluster NGC 6544 at lower left.

Photo by J. De Winter, C. Humbert, C. Robert & V. Sabet; Text: Ogetay Kayali (MTU)

View towards Sorano, Italy- taken from San Rocco viewpoint (W of Sorano) during blue hour.  

Virtual-Pano, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

A newly discovered comet is already visible with binoculars. The comet, C/2025 R2 (SWAN) and nicknamed SWAN25B, is brightening significantly as it emerges from the Sun's direction and might soon become visible on your smartphone -- if not your eyes. Although the brightnesses of comets are notoriously hard to predict, many comets appear brighter as they approach the Earth, with SWAN25B reaching only a quarter of the Earth-Sun distance near October 19. Nighttime skygazers will also be watching for a SWAN25B-spawned meteor shower around October 5 when our Earth passes through the plane of the comet's orbit. The unexpectedly bright comet was discovered by an amateur astronomer in images of the SWAN instrument on NASA's SOHO satellite. The comet is currently best observed in southern skies but is slowly moving north. The featured image was captured at sunset three days ago just above the western horizon in Zacatecas, Mexico.

Photo by Daniel Korona

Gaztelugatxe, Bermeo, Basque Country, Spain.

Diego Delso, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.

Basketball, European Qualifiers, match between Germany and Poland in July 2022: Dennis Schröder (GER, 17). Today is his birthday.

Steffen Prößdorf, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.

Avram Noam Chomsky, born in 1928 is an American professor and public intellectual known for his work in linguistics, political activism, and social criticism. Chomsky is also a major figure in analytic philosophy and one of the founders of the field of cognitive science. He is a laureate professor of linguistics at the University of Arizona and an institute professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Chomsky has written more than 150 books on topics such as linguistics, war, and politics. In addition to his work in linguistics, since the 1960s. More Chomsky has been an influential voice on the American left as a consistent critic of U.S. foreign policy, contemporary capitalism, and corporate influence on political institutions and the media. More