That vaccines are more effective when they're dirty, a pure vaccine that just contains antigens will frequently fail to create enough antibodies to protect you in the future, vaccines are usually made dirtier by adding an adjuvant. Precisely how adjuvants work is still not entirely understood - early on it was discovered that contaminated vaccine batches are often more effective.

The main supplier of the UK flu vaccines is Novartis, and they have patented the MF59 adjuvant, which makes the H1N1 vaccines a milky white (otherwise they would be clear).

My lay person understanding of this is that our immune system deals with the pure antigens too effectively (which prompts the question why we need a vaccine in the first place). Did I mention Novartis's annual turnover? :p I'd like a more scientific explanation for adjuvants if anyone on here knows about them?

No one fully understands why adjuvants boost the effectiveness of nonliving vaccines. Several theories have been proposed but none have been widely accepted.

The National Jewish team was investigating a phenomenon known as MHC class II signaling, which occurs during interactions between B cells and T cells. When properly stimulated, B cells mature into plasma cells, which release antibodies, one of the immune system's major disease-fighting tools. However, researchers had noticed that B cells must be prepared, or primed, if they are to be stimulated through this signaling pathway. If not primed, they will do nothing or even self-destruct. Priming, however, had been mainly observed in cell cultures. The National Jewish team wanted to determine whether priming occurs in animals, learn how it occurs, and how it might affect the overall antibody response.

They discovered that the injection of the adjuvant alum alone could prime B cells in mice. Then they discovered that cells bearing a marker known as Gr1 appeared in the spleen shortly after the injection of alum into mice. Gr1 is a marker found on a variety of immune-system cells, including granulocytes. This group of Gr1 cells in the spleen had not been previously recognized, and researchers have not yet completely characterized them. But they did show that the Gr1 cells secrete interleukin-4 and that both the Gr1 cells and the interleukin-4 are necessary for the priming of the B cells. When they inactivated the Gr1 cells, mice responded to a vaccine containing the adjuvant with fewer B cells and fewer antibodies.

"Our research shows that alum injection triggers the accumulation of Gr1 cells in the spleen, which prime B cells and facilitate their response to vaccines," said senior author John Cambier, Ph.D.,

That box you see at the top of email newletters etc (usually with headlines, key points and so on) is called a Johnson Box.

That MVC is confusing.

Lol, yup.

But when you get it right it's worth the effort.

Does the fact that I didn't know that I didn't know what MVC stands for mean that saying I learnt today that I don't know what MVC stands for is a valid entry?

I can learn you what it stands for if you want and then you can have another entry!

It stands for Model - View - Controller.

It's a programming design pattern that separates the data and the GUI from the logic.

And I still can't get my head around it.

More reading tomorrow by the looks of it.