Round Up: CART meets CRISPR, ancient conversation. beavers and museums

A quick run through of a few stories that caught our eye this week

Two’s better than one We love those old crossover films where two franchises meet-Godzilla v King Kong, or Jesse James Meets Frankenstein’s Daughter, to name but a few. How much more thrilling then to see two of our favourite recent breakthrough techniques paied together for a tour de force of cancer treatment? CRISPR makes CAR T cells inside mice as Nature Briefing would have it:

Using the CRISPR–Cas9 gene-editing tool, researchers have developed a method to safely engineer cancer-fighting immune cells — called chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells — inside a mouse’s body. The method uses a combination of virus-like particles to carry RNA and CRISPR–Cas9 machinery to T cells, and an engineered virus to deliver DNA that contains the CAR-encoding gene. A T cell had to receive both payloads to become a CAR T cell, lowering the risk of off-target effects. Reprogramming T cells inside the body would be quicker than removing and re-injecting them, which is how CAR-T-cell therapies are currently made.

Nature | 5 min read

It seems we’ve stood and talked like this before No not Lorenz Hart but some serious scientists who have attempted to reconstruct the languages of our hirsute ancestors like Neanderthal Man(surely person?-ed) and Homo erectus Could their conversations have been any less enlightened than some we hear today? The Mail has the answers

Ever wondered what Neanderthals sounded like? Scientists recreate the lost languages of ancient humans | Daily Mail Online

Beavering away at carbon capture The recent, heartwarming, trend to restore the Beaver (Castor fiber) to its rightful habitat in these islands has had some unexpected side effects. Its seems the busy little creatures hydrological engineering may also help with carbon capture, or so The Conversation thinks:

https://theconversation.com/beavers-can-turn-streams-into-carbon-stores-we-measured-how-much-278489?utm_medium=email&utm_ca

Funky Gibbon OK we’re bit Edward Gibbon heavy on this blog at times, endlessly talking about declines and falls of mighty empires when we should be getting on with some antibiotics. But we’re not alone. Larry Elliott of the Guardian compares the current US plight to the stae Britain was at the time of the Boer war: judge for yourself

Iran could be the US’s Boer war: a hollow victory that marks the beginning of the end of empire | Larry Elliott | The Guardian

Megafauna v Marbles No trip to London would be complete without a visit to the British Museum. Or the Natural History Museum. Problem is: which? But just like in one of those old Harryhausen movies it seems the gallant Greek warriors are losing out badly to the giant saurians as far as the Box Office is concerned Try this from the BBC

Natural History Museum most popular tourist attraction in 2025 – BBC News

Quote of the week ( we think it rather topical)

I will have such revenges on you both/That all the world shall-I will do such things-What they are yet, I know not/ But they shall be the terrors of the earth

King Lear Act 2 Scene 4

#tourism #museums #carbon capture #rewilding #health #medicine #evolution

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Heroes of Learning: Piero Della Francesca

Birth Virgin Fra Carnevale (Bartolomeo by themet is licensed under CC-CC0 1.0

Think back to school: did you ever know the kid who was bright at everything? Most of us were good at something, but that alone: the sporty type who to put it politely, was not too strong on sciences. The maths nerd with negative social skills. The arty type, the musician, the classroom politician…..but did you ever know someone who was brilliant all around the block? We think that Piero Della Francesca (1415-1492) must have been one of those irritating subset of pupils who really was.[1]

Apprenticed as a painter and artist in his birthplace of Borgo Santo Sepolcro, he was soon brushing up against giants like Fra Angelico, Donatello and Brunelleschi. Something must have rubbed off, because within a few years he was earning the first commissions for what was to become a remarkable canon of early Renaissance masterpieces: they remain favourites of the art-loving public to this day. And for once we can be very specific about their USP: because alongside his studies in art the young Piero had been busy studying geometry and other branches of mathematics. Their influence is not just glimpsed in his work, they are the very basis of its careful precision and intellectual rigour. Here was a Renaissance man par excellence, who can stand comparison with Leonardo or indeed the genius of any age in human history. A Polymath for All Seasons.

One of the downsides of the immense quantities of knowledge in the modern world is the way it drives ever narrower specialisation. And this is quite necessary: one must spend years studying a particular enzyme system or economic model before there is anything new to say. In the course of a long life we have met one, possibly two, polymathic geniuses who might make useful contributions in several fields in the way that Della Francesca did. But to see the light sparkle in his pictures is to glimpse a time when the educated could still delight in all discoveries, and learning seemed to be something more than a task.

[1] Piero della Francesca – Wikipedia

#art #science #polymath #Italy #renaissance #mathematics

Why North Sea Oil is an error in critical thinking

It’s always touching to listen to the philosophical musings of our old friend Dave Watford and the lads at the Dog and Duck. Last night they favoured us with their thoughts(is that the right word?-ed) on the current Energy crisis:

“ Iss Bonkers! Why don’t we jus drill fer all that oil inna (expletive deleted) norwf sea, an forget orl this (expletive deleted) green palaver? There’s loads of it aht there, an we’d be enji sufichent and all that. Thass wot we did inner noineen (expletive deleted) ighteez an we ad loadsa munny”

That was the gist of what they said. But however well-meant their intentions, their chain of reasoning suffers from two fatal flaws: availability bias, and simplification. In fact this article from Cassandra Etter-Wenzel Anupama Sen and Nadia Schroedern so utterly confronts these errors that we offer it to you more in the spirit of a master class in clear thinking than a comment on energy policy.

Availability Trap 1 Yes there is oil under the North Sea. But even if extracted, it would go straight to world markets, meaning it would have no effect on consumer energy prices in the UK.

Simplicity Trap 1 All that gas would bring down prices The precise cost of the energy (gas renewable, whatever) is called the wholesale price and consitutes only 41% of the price paid per house. The rest includes many other factors like network running costs, etc.

Availability trap 2 Ignore the potential cost savings from renewables, which would actually bring the wholesale price of energy faster

Simplicity trap 2 Ignore other factors like insulation (at which the UK is dire) which would be addressed by a renewable based modernisation policy

Availability Trap 3 Completely ignore that the UKs utter dependency on fossil fuels has led to disaster in the past (1973: 2022) and is therefore likely to do so again

And finally: nostalgia for a vanished golden age is no guide to policy whatsoever. We don’t know the name for that error, but it’s probably the biggest one of all.

Hats off to Will de Freitas of the Conversation for commissioning this exquisite article

https://theconversation.com/would-more-north-sea-drilling-lower-uk-energy-bills-our-analysis-says-no-278467?utm_m

#fossil fuels #renewables #energy #climate change #north sea

Who Will Win the War Between Israel, the United States, and Iran? Here’s our Prediction

Photo by Inge Wallumru00f8d on Pexels.com

China

Beyond the Nation#3: Assorted Pollution

We kicked off this series with a blog about global warming: if that’s not a pollution story, we don’t know what is. But as several of you pointed out, there are many other forms of pollution in the world, all equally insidious and all resistant to efforts to clean them up. So here we go.

Pollution is the purest demonstration of the nation state’s irrelevance. PFAS don’t recognise sovereignty. Microplastics don’t stop for border guards. Nitrates don’t care who won the last election. They move through the world according to the laws of physics, chemistry, and biology, not geopolitics. And yet we persist with a governance model that is incapable of addressing a problem so acute it threatens basic survival.

Meaning companies have every incentive to dump where enforcement is weakest. Meaning diplomatic stalemates ensure treaties — if they exist at all — move at the speed of the slowest government. Meaning a jungle equilibrium of absolute economic self‑interest prevails, and no state wants to, or can afford to, be the first to tighten rules.

Take mercury. The Minamata Convention (2013)[1] was meant to curb global pollution from this utterly unpleasant and dangerous substance. But it is a broken reed, riddled with exemptions, get‑out clauses and pulled punches. National opt‑outs, slow phase‑outs, feeble enforcement and zero penalties for non‑compliance. Global mercury emissions have not meaningfully declined since the treaty was signed — and in some sectors have increased — seeping into rivers, seas and oceans, and contaminating supposedly healthy foods with a potent neurotoxin.

And alongside mercury we could list such fracases as PFAS (no treaty at all), the Asian brown‑cloud smogs, [2] the Basel Convention on plastic waste (more holes than Emmental cheese), not to mention our own bête noire of antibiotic resistance, where a total failure of international co‑ordination may yet lead to the most deadly health emergency of all.

At no point do we blame individuals, nor look for sinners against whom we may throw stones. Everyone caught in this trap is acting in their own rational self‑interest. Governments, by definition, measure themselves against other governments. The system has worked reasonably well up to now — at least it allowed copying from better practitioners. And companies are simply obeying the iron economic rules of profit and loss, buy and sell.

The trouble is that these rules now operate globally, while regulation remains national. And all the pollutants we have mentioned fall into those gaps — where they will continue to accumulate with deadly effect.

[1] Minamata Convention on Mercury – Wikipedia [2] Asian brown cloud – Wikipedia

#pollution #governance #treaties #PFA #mercury #nitrates #antibiotic resistance

Meningitis in Canterbury: Pray those antibiotics keep working

Bacterial meningitis[1] isn’t some Victorian relic. The organisms that cause it, such as Neisseria meningitidis or Streptococcus pneumoniae are lurking in respiratory tracts across entire communities. Waiting for their chance. When that chance comes the attack can be terrifyingly swift. For once inside the system, the bacteria trigger a storm of inflammation around the brain — the body’s own defences become part of the damage. The swelling inside the skull crushes delicate neural tissue; the toxins shred blood vessels; the immune response turns lethal by accident. This is why survivors often live with hearing loss, seizures, cognitive injury, amputations — the aftermath is not a tidy recovery story. Some. of course, do not survive. As we write another outbreak is tearing through the quiet university town of Canterbury in Kent, as described by Mark Newman and Patrick Barlow of the BBC [2] It won’t be the last.

Because up to now our most effective defence against meningitis has been antibiotics. Which is why the UK Health Security Agency is rushing some to the epicentre of this latest outbreak, desperately hoping to stem it before it spreads further. Maybe, this time, they will succeed. But the next time? On current trends we are heading towards a world with no antibiotics. Given declining rates of vaccination generally, that means a return to a world where meningitis is once more common. Victorian Values, anyone?

[1] Meningitis – NHS

[2] Meningitis – NHS

[3] Global burden of bacterial antimicrobial resistance 1990–2021: a systematic analysis with forecasts to 2050 – The Lancet

#antibiotic resistance #meningitis #health #medicine #canterbury #kent #bacteria #epidemic

Friday Night with an Opera

What’s your favourite opera? Dido and Aeneas? The Marriage of Figaro? La Traviata? Tosca? Our answer is: all of the above, and many more. But our real honest-to- God favourite is a drink, gentle readers, not a load of people chorusing on top of a windy hill in Sussex, or close to a handy pub in Covent Garden. That’s right, you guessed that today we are going to present the Opera, one of the tastiest, easiest-to-make homages to a great art form that we know. So with due reverence to the handy Hamlyn Ultimate Cocktail Book-(23 years old and still a go-to)-here is our (adapted)delicious recipe

Take 5 of your best ice cubes and drop ‘em in a shaker. Add one measure of Dubonnet, one half measure of Curaçao, and two measures of your best London dry gin. Put on the overture to Carmen and shake for the first three bars. Pour to a chilled cocktail glass, sin hielo, and decorate with a sprig of orange rind. This will get you through the longest passages of difficult East European composers ,with the added advantage that it’s easy to sneak in to your box, provided the ushers are not looking.

So now imagine you are in your box in the Royal Opera House with your feet up sipping your drink as Bryn Terfel and the whole chorus belt out that sublime, that ultimate, that immense Te deum from Tosca.. Is your cocktail going to last right through? Go on, it’s a night out, and you’re going large.-Slip a tenner to the usher and send him off for another of the same! Tosca, mi fai dimenticare Iddio !

#opera #cocktail #puccini #drinks

Round up: Adam Smith canes the free marketeers, China ups its game, Power from below, Rain panels, and Milton asks “why?”

Adam Smith revisited: Some would have you believe the great economist Adam Smith was a zealous free-market fundamentalist. The truth is more nuanced, as this thoughtful Guardian piece explains

The Guardian view on Adam Smith: he deserves rescuing from the free-market myth | Editorial | The Guardian

China Ramps up Support for science reports Nature Briefing We are not anti USA, nor pro China. But just as the USA cuts its science budgets and pours billions into wars, China steadily invests in the future. Last time this happened was Iraq in 2003: the subsequent trajectories of the two nations has been clear ever since.

The Chinese government has announced plans to increase two of its key science budgets at the country’s biggest political meeting.
The government proposes to increase its science and technology budget by 10% this year, and its overall research and development expenditure by at least 7% per year over the next five years — a boost that translates to billions of extra dollars each year. The latter target was set as part of China’s next five-year plan, which will serve as an overarching blueprint for the country’s policies from 2026 to 2030. Nature | 4 min read

Geothermal to the rescue: Wind, solar, nuclear, fusion: current events make the search for non-fossil energy more urgent than ever. Ever since the 1970s we’ve heard chat about geothermal energy, which draws cheap power from the warm rocks beneath our feet. Looks like these canny Cornishmen are making it the idea real, according to the BBC

Earth’s heat to produce electricity for homes in UK clean energy first – BBC News

Only happy when it rains What if you had a panel which collected energy when the sun shone, and then when it rained? Spanish scientists have taken a big step towards this happy end by developing a sorty of laminate which collects energy from falling raindrops Here’s El País:

Una lámina desarrollada en España es capaz de generar hasta 100 voltios con una sola gota de agua | Ciencia | EL PAÍS

Quote of the week : Rash hand, what fury urges thee?

Paradise Lost, Book 1X

#renewable energy #science #China #USA #economics

Ten years looking for new antibiotics: how are we doing?

How’s the campaign to get more antibiotics going?” We still sometimes get asked this in pub or supermarket. Not surprising really, after more than ten years on the job. And to answer that question we can think of no one better than the acute Julia Kollewe of the Guardian whose piece is as good a state-of- play message ( Pipeline of New Drugs to fight superbugs is “worryingly thin,” experts warn) as any we’ve seen for some time[1] So, what’s the score? How indeed is humanity meeting this existential challenge?

Not too well, actually. The bad news is that antibiotic resistant infections are still very much on the rise. More than 40% of known antibiotics lost potency between 2018 and 2023.[2] The number of antimicrobial projects run by big pharmaceutical companies has actually declined in the last five years. But you can read these and many other statistics from Julia and her linked organisations for yourself.

There are some bright spots: hats off to the UK’s GSK ,Japan’s Shionugi and Otsuka, and certain valiant American firms in California. But America’s real giant, Pfizer, seems to be falling off the pace-not surprising we think, given the political end cultural climate they now have to work in.

But for us Julia’s killer trope was to consult the learned Ara Darzi, an expert in cancer treatment. Who adduces the following gloomy thought:

New therapies mean cancer can be fought, “but then sadly patients succumb to an infection that was treatable a decade ago”, Lord Darzi said at the launch of the AMF report, adding: “You don’t win a game if you have three good strikers and your defence is weak.”

Cancer is indeed a deadly illness. And cures should be sought. But what’s the point if the poor patient dies three days later from an infection? That is why your interest in new antibiotics is still important, gentle reader: please keep supporting us.

[1] Pipeline of new drugs to fight superbugs is ‘worryingly thin’, experts warn | Pharmaceuticals industry | The Guardian

[2] Tools to fight AMR exist, but industry-wide action is needed to tilt the battle against superbugs | Access to Medicine

#antibiotic resistance #microbiology #health #medicine #drugs

Beyond the Nation State #2: Climate Change and all that

Global warming is here, real, now and it’s getting faster.[1] God knows how many times you’ve been beaten over the head with that , and we loathe to insult your intelligence. But we live in a world of rising temperatures, melting glaciers, collapsing ocean currents, dwindling food supplies and the massive shifts in human migrations which all of these entail. And this set against the possibility of a world which could be cleaner, healthier and politically stable-consequences which a safe climate would bring.[2] So-why bring it all up again, right in the middle of a massive, near-world, war? Because we think it is the ne plus ultra example of this series’ main purpose. The existential threat of global warming is beyond the capacity of a world organised into nation states.

We take today’s reasons from History and Information Theory: is that eclectic or what? The first shows that every time nation states are faced with the issue, they duck it. As we noted before (LSS 30 8 23) the 1970s oil shocks didn’t trigger a transition; they triggered a doubling‑down on fossil dependence in the name of “energy security”. Kyoto collapsed[3] the moment the United States decided it didn’t suit its short‑term interests, and Canada followed like a polite echo. And Information theory explains why: because the nation‑state is, at heart, an information‑processing machine optimised for short‑term competitive advantage. It filters every signal — scientific, moral, existential — through the question: does this keep us ahead of our rivals in the next decade? Long‑term planetary risk is systematically down‑weighted, not because leaders are cowards, but because sovereignty itself is a bandwidth problem. No single state can act at the scale or speed required, and pretending otherwise is a comforting fantasy.

Once again we stress: we do not advocate the abolition of sovereign nation states, as to abolish them would invite utter anarchy. But, just as national governments sit above local governments there must now be some sort of global authority to deal with the dangerous, the pressing, the existential risk of utter ecological and economic collapse. And just to cheer you up, we’ve got several more like this, so keep reading.

[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-00745-z?utm_source=Live+Audience&utm_campaign=366c08b912-nature-briefing-daily-20260309&utm_medium

[2]https://theconversation.com/four-ways-to-tackle-health-and-climate-together-and-lift-millions-of-people-out-of-poverty-276696?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=L [3] Kyoto Protocol – Wikipedia

#climate change #global warming #geopolitics #nation #state #sovereignty #meteorology